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Few businesses appear ready to defend themselves from cybercrime, report findsFew Businesses Appea

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The study released Wednesday found that of the businesses surveyed, about 70 per cent had no procedure in place to deal with a successful hack and only 22 per cent actually looked to identify where they were most vulnerable.

There was even less awareness of the government’s cyber-security strategy, with about seven per cent of respondents aware of the document that was released in 2010, and about 12 per cent aware of the government’s cybercrime prevention campaigns.

Of the 520 businesses surveyed in the national study, 69 per cent reported some kind of digital attack against them in the previous 12 months, with one-quarter saying the attack had “considerable” effects on their business.

The telephone survey of 520 companies across Canada touched on companies in six industries — financial services, airlines and shipping, telecommunications, critical infrastructure, aerospace and defence, and retail — and companies with revenues from under $1 million up to more than $100 million.

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Microsoft releases fix-it for Internet Explorer 8 vulnerability

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The vulnerability is described as a problem in the way IE “accesses an object in memory that has been deleted or has not been properly allocated.”

The company normally issues updates for its products on the second Tuesday of the month, but will issue an out-of-schedule patch if the problem is deemed serious enough.

The code redirected people to another infected page within the site, which then attempted to exploit the IE 8 vulnerability. AlienVault said the hacking campaign appeared similar to a known China-based one called “DeepPanda,” which installed remote-access trojans (RATs).

Link: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9239041/Microsoft_releases_fix_it_for_Internet_Explorer_8_vulnerability?source=CTWNLE_nlt_dailyam_2013-05-09

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Anonymous May 7 Target List Includes 12 Large Credit Unions

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Other credit union sites listed on the OpUSA post on Pastebin include the $54 billion Navy FCU of Vienna, Va., the $27 billion State Employees’ Credit Union of Raleigh, N.C., the $12 billion Boeing Employees Credit Union of Tukwila, Wash., the $9.8 billion SchoolsFirst FCU of Santa Ana, Calif., the $8.2 billion The Golden 1 Credit Union of Sacramento, Calif., the $5.4 billion Suncoast Schools FCU of Tampa, Fla., the $5.6 billion American Airlines FCU of Fort Worth, Texas, the $8.3 billion Alliant Credit Union of Chicago, the $7.2 billion Security Service FCU of San Antonio, Texas, the $6.2 billion San Diego County Credit Union of San Diego and the $5.8 billion America First FCU of Riverdale, Utah. John Magill, CUNA executive vice president of governmental affairs, said during a Monday morning press call he has spoken to NCUA staff members about the attack, and they said the regulator is aware of the target list and has contacted the 12 credit unions.

Kevin Prince, chief technology officer at the Santa Ana, Calif.-based technology management firm Compushare, said the attack could be impactful, but added nobody knows how it could play out. Compushare has worked on an FBI task force for a long time combating Anonymous cyberattacks, and Prince said the bureau “is having a hard time doing anything about it.”

Prince, who was a guest on CUNA’s call, recently released a white paper that reassures small financial institutions they’re not likely targets, but nonetheless provides ways to prepare in case they are, or simply worry they may be.

Instead, Prince advised, credit unions should work with their internet service provider to stop the attack “upstream” before it gets to the credit union’s website or online banking service.

Because most credit unions don’t host their own online banking site, working instead with a third party provider or core processor, their prep time would be better spent reviewing third party due diligence than attempting to shore up their own connections, he said.

The white paper, titled “DDoS Attacks: How Real Are the Risks for Community Financial Institutions”, is available to be downloaded on Compushare’s website.

Link: http://www.cutimes.com/2013/05/06/anonymous-may-7-target-list-includes-12-large-cred?ref=hp

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AutoIt scripting increasingly used by malware developers

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“Recently, we have seen an uptick in the amount of nefarious AutoIt tool code being uploaded to Pastebin,” Kyle Wilhoit, a threat researcher at antivirus vendor Trend Micro, said Monday in a blog post. “In addition to tools being found on sites like Pastebin and Pastie, we are also seeing a tremendous increase in the amount of malware utilizing AutoIt as a scripting language,” Wilhoit said.

The use of AutoIt in malware development has steadily increased since 2008, Bogdan Botezatu, a senior e-threat analyst at antivirus vendor Bitdefender said Tuesday via email. What’s interesting about the variant found by Trend Micro is that it’s written in AutoIt and has a very low antivirus detection rate.

The use of scripting languages to develop sophisticated malware is not a widespread practice, because most of these languages require an interpreter to be installed on the machine or produce very large stand-alone executable files, Botezatu said.

AutoIt is extremely intuitive and easy to use, produces compiled binaries that run out of the box on modern Windows versions and is well documented, the Bitdefender researcher said.

“Most importantly, malware created in AutoIt is extremely flexible and can be easily obfuscated, which means that a single breed of malware written in AutoIt can be repackaged and re-crafted in a number of ways to prevent detection and extend its shelf life,” Botezatu said. “The ease of use and learning, as well as the ability to post code easily to popular dropsites make this a great opportunity for actors with nefarious intentions to propagate their tools and malware.”

Link: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9238968/AutoIt_scripting_increasingly_used_by_malware_developers?source=rss_security&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+computerworld%2Fs%2Ffeed%2Ftopic%2F85+%28Computerworld+Malware+and+Vulnerabilities+News%29

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Cybercrime booming in Latin America and Caribbean, Trend Micro finds

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Conventional file infector malware was a major issue in the region, which Trend takes to suggest that patching is poor, operating systems run in insecure states and indicative of a general complacency among consumers about the risks of poor software behaviour.

This includes gangs that develop their own crimeware kits, with 2012’s ‘PiceBot’ a good example of banking malware that heralds a new level of sophistication for homegrown malware.

Protection for Industrial Control Systems (ICS) is also a worry with many Internet-facing systems open to attack; Trend itself recorded 39 attacks on infrastructure systems in the geography in a single month during 2012, 12 of which it classified as automated, repeated and targeted.

Money, expertise, and a lack of cyber-awareness remains an issue although Trend did find that many countries were now being positively galvanised by the emerging global culture in government cyber-defence.

“On the whole, political leaders are aware of the dangers of cybercrime and hacking but efforts are often restricted by the lack of resources dedicated to building cybersecurity capacity and shortage of specialized knowledge and expertise to implement technical policies,” said Trend’s researchers.

Link: http://news.techworld.com/security/3445748/cybercrime-booming-in-latin-america-caribbean-trend-finds/

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