The US government is considering allowing companies to “hack back” against cyber attackers. The Active Cyber Defense Certainty Act (ACDC) amends the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to allow limited retaliatory strikes against cyber attackers. The full PDF amendment is available online. As noted in some comments in an article on the UK Register there is some skepticism about this … [Read more...]
Were the US Navy Ship Collisions the Result of Hacking?
With the recent string of US Navy ship collisions including the USS McCain and Fitzgerald, the mind of a security professional will instantly think of all the possible malicious ways an attacker could target naval systems to cause a vessel to crash. Multiple collisions with similar factors will lead to even more speculation. Although professionals should not claim attribution … [Read more...]
What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate… About Cybersecurity Breaches
According to a recent study, an alarming number of companies don't have an established strategy in place for informing the public of a security breach. EY's latest Global Information Security report revealed that while half of the 1,735 companies surveyed were confident in their ability to detect an attack, 42 percent wouldn't have an official communication plan to rely on if … [Read more...]
Ransomware Upped Its Game in 2016
From January to September of 2016, ransomware attacks targeting companies increased by three hundred percent since 2015. Attackers have become more intentional on crafting spear-phishing techniques and more strategic about the way in which they use social engineering to assault selected victims. A recent report from Kaspersky Lab reveals that ransomware attacks against … [Read more...]
How to Hook a Spear Phisher
Spear phishing is an advanced type of phishing attack in which criminal hackers specialize their approach to deceive a particular individual or group of individuals. Spear phishing assaults mainly arrive as emails appearing to be from people that the individual is familiar with; supervisors, vendor contacts and even family members. Criminals can actually spoof real ‘sender’ … [Read more...]
