cyber attack recipes
Social Networking: How Secure is Your Business?
Companies of all sizes are increasingly using sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to advertise their services and products, to communicate with customers, and even to recruit new employees. Most businesses, however, remain unaware of the dangers that lurk in this rapidly expanding arena. Phishing scams are but one example of this, where devious ploys are used to manipulate employees into clicking on links that immediately download malicious software into your computer system. Once inside, this malware can run riot, gathering sensitive personal and company data at will, much like a vacuum-cleaner, all to be used later to perpetrate fraud or to steal someone’s identity. Pharming is another danger, similar in nature to phishing, whereby an employee is encouraged to click on a link in a bogus email that then directs them to a false website geared to fleece them. Smishing is the mobile phone form of phishing, where a text message contains the menacing link.
These, of course, are incoming threats. On the outgoing side, there are employees who divulge sensitive corporate information while on social networking sites. There, their idle banter can be harvested as public property and used in a way that may damage your company’s reputation, if not demolish public trust in your products and services.
Just how insidious social networking sites can be was brought home to Britons when the UK Justice Minister, Jack Straw, revealed in February that 30 Facebook pages had been taken down because prisoners were using them to taunt their victims. Facebook removed the offending pages within 48 hours. “It’s not that people at Facebook have a different sense of morality from us,” the Minister told the BBC. “They have the same sense of morality but they have to police hundreds of thousands of their sites, so what we have to do is set up a better system with Facebook.” He said he was reassured by the cooperation his department was receiving from Facebook as the government sought a longer-term solution “to this very modern version of the old problem of victim harassment.”
Cyberspace-Junk: Three Top Ways to Avoid a Collision
The start of 2010 brought with it a spate of reporting on the dangers of cyberspace, whether it be cyberattacks on an individual, a corporation, a public utility system like an electricity grid, or nation states playing games with each other. Mid-January saw an unlikely cyberwar breaking out when Iranian hackers attacked China’s largest internet search engine, Baidu, and Chinese counterparts retaliated against Iranian websites. In this rapidly expanding arena of competition, Russia, China and a number of other countries have been accused of mounting massive operations, though in this field there are far more sinners than saints.
A McAfee survey of 600 international technology executives (‘In the Crossfire: Critical Infrastructure in the Age of Cyberwar’, available at www.mcafee.com), released in January, helped wipe away any New Year complacency. It found that recession-driven cuts in spending on online security over the past 12 months had led to an increase in threats. The result was that more than one-third of those interviewed believed their sector was unprepared to deal with a major attack. More than half felt that the laws in their country were inadequate in deterring potential cyber-attacks, and almost half lacked any faith in their government’s capacity to prevent or deter them. One expert believes that consumers will increasingly bear the cost of online crime and security breaches as organisations seek to limit their exposure in an escalating battle against such attacks.
Art Coviello, president of EMC’s data security arm RSA, for example, has little confidence in government, pointing out that data security regulations have fallen way behind the internet age. He believes that government regulation on security should focus on outcomes and not on prescriptive measures. Data breach regulation is a great regulatory initiative because it does just that. It says, if you are negligent in protecting information, you need to publicly confess. He says it’s amazing what California has done to ensure that people do the right thing because they don’t want to be embarrassed. “Compare that,” says Coviello, “with prescriptive regulation like the obligation to encrypt this or provide that. That relies on the government having the kind of technological sophistication to keep up with the threats. What do you suppose are the odds that governments are going to move quickly enough? They can’t even update the laws for the internet age, let alone data protection. It’s much easier for government to say don’t let something happen and put the onus back on the organisation to protect its infrastructure however it sees fit.”
Hackers: Barbarians at Your Corporate Gate
The risk of hackers penetrating your company’s database and exposing your commercial secrets – if not some dirty linen as well – was brought home recently when the internal musings of Britain’s leading climate science research centre were laid bare. Thousands of private emails between top climate change scientists were made public, revealing the bitter disagreements over the cause of this contentious phenomenon. It’s like a paper trail from hell. Whether or not your company is involved in a controversial industry, make sure that hackers don’t plant malware in your system that allows them to monitor what you’re doing until they feel the time is right for a massive exposé. Computer forensics and a host of other state-of-the-art technology can save you from such an ignominious fate.
The climactic downpour in the UK, which included some 2,000 emails and 3,000 related documents, first appeared online on November 20, courtesy of an anonymous Russian server. While there’s nothing surprising about that, there is in the degree of spite that some of the communications display. One top man at the Climate Research Unit, based at the University of East Anglia, wrote in 2004 that he was “cheered” by the news that a prominent climate change sceptic in Australia had suddenly died of a heart attack. Another says he would like to meet his adversaries in a dark alley one night. Other experts refer to their colleagues in highly unflattering terms.
Scientists who support the theory of man-made climate change are lined up against their heretical opponents, each side armed to the teeth and ready to fight the War of Roses all over again. One rues the fact that his team can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment, which he sees as a travesty. He cites data published only a few months ago that shows that there should be even more warming. The data must surely be wrong, he suggests. The sceptics hurl missiles back, claiming that the emails are evidence of a conspiracy to bully into submission those who challenge the man-made hypothesis. With Copenhagen just around the corner, something is clearly rotten in the State of Denmark.
The Cyberspace Explosion: Five Tips for Survival
The new digital world of easy communications and social networking is so surprisingly open that many no longer see the problem as one of Big Brother watching us. It’s more a matter of us being obsessed with watching each other. And sharing, too. As The New York Times put it in September, “Your parents probably told you that sharing was simply the right thing to do. But on the Web, inducing people to share links has become big business, all about driving traffic back to a site and increasing revenue.”1 This is music to the ears of cyber-crooks and hackers.
The notion of being open and passing everything on is bolstered by stories like the following, which suggest that because everyone’s participating in one way or another, we can easily sit back and enjoy the freedoms that come with this ‘global electronic community’.
Until recently, the wife of the new head of the British Secret Intelligence Service – the country’s external spy agency, commonly known as MI6 – had a Facebook page. It had no privacy protection so details of the family’s London home, daily transport arrangements, vacations and friendships with other senior British officials were freely available to some 200 million users around the globe. The page was speedily removed when its contents were published in the media, raising more than a few eyebrows in the intelligence world in London and beyond. You see, Sir John Sawers, who was Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations when his appointment was announced in mid-2009, was once an MI6 officer himself and should have been aware of the implications of his family’s networking profile well before his new job was broached. After all, he had worked in places like Yemen, Syria, Egypt and Iraq, and also been closely involved at the policy level with Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.
FBI Operation Catches Online Bank Fraudsters
In what the FBI is calling Operation Phish Phry, it has arrested 53 people on charges of conducting a vast financial fraud based on phishing. Numerous Internet users have been tricked into revealing vital information, according to an 86-page indictment filed in the US District Court in Los Angeles. The New York Times reported on October 7 that the arrests took place in Southern California, Nevada and North Carolina, while the authorities in Egypt have sought to arrest 47 people whom the FBI says were co-conspirators.
The FBI has revealed that this is the largest number of defendants ever charged in a cybercrime case, and that they had stolen at least $US2 million from 2007 until last month. The scams victimised people with accounts at Bank of America and Wells Fargo, two of the largest banks in the United States. The online component of the fraud was perpetrated in Egypt, with the defendants there sending mass email messages that appeared to be authentic communications from the banks. The people who clicked on these messages were sent to fake websites made to look identical to the real banking sites. There they were asked to enter personal information like their bank account numbers, passwords, social security numbers and drivers’ license numbers.
The co-conspirators in the US took over from there, transferring funds into their own accounts and remitting some money back to their accomplices in Egypt. The FBI has said that it was a very well organised crime and that everyone involved got paid. Now the 53 named in the indictment might also get 20 years in prison.
If Fake Anti-Virus Software Doesn’t Get You, Something Else Will.
A Russian security researcher who heads Canada’s virus lab, Sophos, has recently shown how most spam on email, search engines and social networking sites originates with ‘affiliate networks’. These networks pay generous commissions to geeks who refer unsuspecting web users to their illegal products. Not only are they selling fake anti-virus software but also illegal penis pills, fake watches and other counterfeit luxury products. Whatever it is that might take your fancy, if you get caught out by these people they can do a lot of damage. Good computer forensic work is the only thing that can help you detect their presence and grapple with it.
In a paper for the Virus Bulletin Conference September 2009, Dmitry Samosseiko outlines how scareware, ‘Canadian Pharmacy’ spam, adult sites, and comment spam on forums and blogs have plagued the web and email world of most people in the past few years. But what, he asks, links these things together? What makes them grow in volume and complexity? Who is behind them? What business model drives the perpetrators’ profits to millions of dollars annually?
The answer is hundreds of well-organised Russian affiliate networks known as “partnerka”, which have coalesced to form a booming business industry. Thousands of affiliates, each calling themselves ‘webmasters’, work day and night to drive as much user traffic to their partners’ stores as possible, raking in thousands of dollars in the process.
Cyber scams and cheats target job seekers: Six tips to protect yourself
As more and more job seekers turn to the internet looking for positions, scammers are finding ways to dupe them of their money. Cyber fraud, money laundering and scams are confronting online job seekers. Authorities have reported a large rise in online scams targeting those looking for a new job or part time position. Investigators are uncovering new methods being utilized by groups including organized crime rings.
One of the boom businesses on the internet has been online recruitment whereby job seekers have an easy way to review various positions vacant in their area which suit their qualifications and experience. Along with the established pay to advertise sites displaying adverts on behalf of recruitment agencies and businesses, there are now a number of free to advertise sites; these sites often focus on part time or work from home positions.
Unfortunately, many job seekers in their desperation to grab the opportunity of making some money; have fallen foul of fake adverts for nonexistent jobs. The advertisers often use a rolling index of generic business name such as Alpha Recruitment Inc and obscure their office location and contact details – choosing to communicate via email only.
One in Eight UK Internet Users Victims of Fraud
A recent survey of 2,000 Internet users in Britain, commissioned by VeriSign UK – part of the American network infrastructure firm – has revealed how prevalent this form of online crime is. The monetary loss in Britain in the past year alone has been put at £2.61 billion. Of the UK’s population, not only has 12 per cent been a victim of online ID fraud, with an average of £463 stolen, but 14 per cent are still waiting to be reimbursed. Many victims say they have been extra careful when buying online, but with so many fraudsters lurking in the shadows it is clear that much more education on how to protect yourself is required.
The survey found that in general British web users are conscientious when it comes to online shopping. Of the respondents, 82 per cent claimed to buy only from sites with enhanced security settings, with 3 per cent more women saying they checked security before making a purchase. People aged between 45-54 are defrauded most often, with Londoners the most careless online buyers and the Welsh the biggest victims. Interestingly, Scots are the least likely to fall victim.
Richard Hurley, communications manager at CIFAS, the UK’s Fraud Prevention Service, comments that, “Increasing numbers of cost-conscious consumers are now shopping online, and whilst the rise in online spending is great for online retailers, it opens up a Pandora’s Box of security threats. Cyber criminals are undoubtedly getting more devious, but consumers can easily lessen the likelihood of online fraud by stepping up their own awareness of how they can protect themselves.”
It Pays to Take Cyber Security Seriously
As experts in the field of computer forensics will tell you, cyber attacks are usually a deadly serious business. Cleaning up after them can be time-consuming and expensive. With the threat continuing to expand, organizations need to be on constant alert, with staff regularly made aware of emerging dangers. Slip-ups, however, can bring this process into ridicule, ultimately serving only those who seek to abuse the electronic systems upon which we increasingly rely.
An example of this came in Australia recently where a group of disgruntled geeks crashed the prime ministerial website.
As The Australian Financial Review – the country’s national daily economic newspaper – highlighted on September 11, experts from one of the government’s super-sensitive spy agencies had to be called in to help. This was an embarrassing affront to the hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money spent on cyber security by the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), the equivalent of the US electronic eavesdropping organization, the National Security Agency, and Britain’s GCHQ. A brand new Cyber Security Operations Centre was put in place by DSD in May this year to handle threats such as suspected Chinese and Russian government probes of computer systems. Now it has been called in to help stop a group of geeks attacking the prime minister’s site to protest against the government’s attempts to censor the internet.
Cyber-Crooks Exploit Shared Links
Glance at any business magazine or financial newspaper these days and you’ll spot at least a couple of references to the spread and impact of social networking. Often a new threat is revealed, one that not only shocks the reader as an individual but also alarms business people who quickly recognise the implications for their company. That’s why it pays to have the cell-phone number of an experienced team of experts in computer forensics close to hand. If you fear you might already be in trouble, you’ll need to call straight away.
A good coverage of this evolving challenge came in The Financial Times on September 2 in a lengthy article examining how friends and not editors were shaping internet habits. Traditional portals are being spurned as sharing makes news personal. The problem is that cyber-crooks have picked up on the growing trend among users of social networks to share links. The technological ease of doing so brings with it a security risk that can have a knock-on effect on the popularity of such sites. That’s the view of the FT’s San Francisco correspondent, Joseph Menn, who defined the dangers involved.
He explains how spammers and cyber-crooks are using the new conventions to disguise their dangerous programming and get around online security policies at the same time. The problem stems from the habit among users of the likes of Facebook to use shortened web addresses, or urls, when they forward items of interest to friends. On Twitter, such shorthand is essential, since traditional urls – often composed of long combinations of numbers, letters and forward slashes – can eat up most or all of the 140 characters allowed for each tweet.
