Weaponized

November 1 2020

Growing Cyber Attacks

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The year 2020 has become remarkable in many ways, especially when it comes to the surge in cyber attacks. The Covid-19 pandemic has given an unprecedented opportunity to cyber attackers to hack and break down the organizations’ IT infrastructure. The work-from-home working module adopted by such organizations has been attributed to the rise of cyber attacks.

The security gap between the home and office network has played a key role to make way for the data breaches in 2020. This issue has resulted in the theft of confidential information, leading to the loss of millions of dollars for breached organizations.

Today, cyber attackers have come up with more innovative ideas to set a new trend in phishing, cryptojacking, ransomware attack, IoT attack, etc. According to a security research firm, 81 global firms from 81 countries reported data breaches in the first half of 2020 alone.

In fact, 80% of firms have seen an increase in cyber attacks this year. Coronavirus is alone blamed for a 238% rise in cyber attacks on banks. Phishing attacks have seen a dramatic increase of 600% since the end of February.

Whereas due to pandemic, ransomware attacks rose 148% in March and the average ransomware payment rose by 33% to $111,605 as compared to Q4 2019. (Source: Fintech News)

We discussed how cyber attacks have dramatically increased today. Let us walk you through the five major cyber attacks that have happened in 2020 till now. These staggering cyber attacks have crippled some famous organizations across the world.

Software AG Ransomware Attack

The second-largest software vendor in Germany and the seventh-largest in Europe, Software AG has been reportedly hit by a ransomware attack in October 2020. ZDNet reported that the German tech firm has been attacked by the Clop ransomware and the cyber-criminal gang has demanded more than $20 million ransom.

The report also says that the company has still not recovered from the attack completely. The company disclosed that the ransomware attack disrupted a part of its internal network. But services to its customers, including cloud-based services, remained unaffected. The company also tried to negotiate with the attackers but it all went in vain.

As per the statement released by Software AG, the company is in the process of restoring its system and database for resuming orderly operation.

Sopra Steria Ransomware Attack

French IT service giant Sopra Steria was attacked by ransomware on the evening of 20th October, as confirmed by the company. Its fintech business, Sopra Banking Software, identified the virus which is a new version of the Ryuk ransomware and previously unknown to cyber security providers.

Sopra Steria claimed that it was able to confine the attack to a limited part of its IT framework, even though it caught the attack after a few days. However, following an in-depth investigation, the company did not identify any leaked data or damage caused to its customers.

Ryuk is one of the most inventive ransomware which has already targeted organizations like EWA, a US defense contractor, and Prosegur, a Spanish logistics firm.

Telegram Hijack

In September 2020, hackers gained access to Telegram messenger and email data of some big names in the cryptocurrency business. Hackers used Signaling System 7 (SS7), which is used for connecting mobile networks across the world, to hack the data.

According to cyber security experts, the hackers were most probably after two-factor authentication (2FA) login codes. They spoofed the short message service center (SMSC) of mobile network operators to send a request on location updates to at least 20 targeted high-profile victims.

This attack is believed to have occurred to obtain cryptocurrency. This type of cyber attack is well known in the cryptocurrency community but the users are generally aware of such requests.

Therefore, there are better authentication methods than just SMS or call-based 2FA in the cryptocurrency community. Cyber security experts think telecom standards must move away from using protocols like SS7, which cannot resolve modern issues.

Seyfarth Shaw Malware Attack

Chicago based leading global legal firm, Seyfarth Shaw LLP became a victim of an “aggressive malware” attack. This attack was later confirmed by the firm as a ransomware attack. The cyber attack reportedly took place on October 10, 2020, and downed the firm’s email system completely, as per a statement published by the company.

The firm claimed in its statement that there was no evidence of client data or firm data unauthorized access or removal. However, many of its systems were found encrypted, following which the firm shut down all of those as a precautionary measure.

The global legal firm notified law enforcement and the FBI has already started investigation. Apart from this, no further information was revealed on how the attack occurred and what family of ransomware hit the firm.

Carnival Corporation Data Breach:

The world’s largest cruise line operator, Carnival Corporation reported a data breach due to a ransomware attack that took place in the month of August 2020. Hackers stole confidential information of customers, employees, and crew members at the time of the attack.

On August 15, 2020, the company detected the ransomware attack that breached and encrypted one of its brand’s IT infrastructure. Following the attack, the cruise line operator notified law enforcement and hired legal counsel and cyber security experts and launched an investigation.

Though the company claimed that no misuse of exposed personal data has come to light, the type of ransomware and how the attack happened have remained unrevealed.

How to Secure Your Organization Against Cyber Attacks?

The global transition to the work-from-home culture has made a way for cyber-criminals to execute incredibly advanced cyber attacks. Moreover, ransomware, phishing, DDoS, malware, etc., are amongst the most prominent forms of cyber attacks that we have experienced this year, till now.

Here are some of the “must follow” measures to secure your organization against emerging cyber attacks:

Conduct VAPT periodically to check for exploitable security vulnerabilities in the IT infrastructure of your organization.
Back up all the sensitive or confidential data and store it separately from time to time.
Keep all the systems, software, and applications up to date with the latest security patches.
Restrict employees from sharing passwords at work openly and encourage them to use unique and strong passwords.
Block email spoofing, spam, and BEC attack by securing your email domain with email authentication protocols like DMARC, SPF and DKIM.
Run a cyber attack simulation campaign to assess the level of cyber awareness among employees. Then train them accordingly with the best in class security awareness training tool.
Make sure to implement the practice of using multi-factor authentication to maintain security and privacy.
Restrict IT admin and access rights to limited employees. Ensure that they are adequately trained on the safe usage and encrypted storage of sensitive data.

September 7 2020

Quitting Social Media

“I’m quitting social media,” you declare. Suddenly a feeling of freedom washes over you as you’re no longer concerned with likes, views and who’s doing what. You stop hunching over your phone and your posture straightens, elongating your spine and immediately you’re an inch taller than just before. You weightlessly drift away from the endless scroll to a trailhead in the mountains. Your free time is filled by strolling through meadows, journaling, meditation, long conversations and lots and lots of “being present.”

Or at least that’s what some of the “I quit social media and it changed my life” blog posts would have you believe. Unfortunately, dropping social media alone will not lead you to full self-actualization. But that doesn’t mean the idea is entirely without merit, either.

In improving your health and wellness, no one change is going to drastically alter your entire life (We know. We’re sorry. We were really hoping it would be green smoothies.). A series of small behavioral changes that lead to positive habits make a lasting impact. Can quitting social media be one of those changes? Absolutely. Some research suggests that social media is harming us in several ways. But that doesn’t mean it’s all bad and cutting it off entirely could have both positive and negative effects on your life.

We weigh the pros and cons.

To Quit Social Media …

Quitting social media is not just a trend or something to make you seem ultra-enlightened. Research has revealed some valid reasons why you might want to toss aside your virtual networks.

Happiness and Mood

Our happiness is one of the most important aspects of our lives. Still, we check on the very thing that might be chipping away at our happiness dozens – or hundreds! – of times a day.. Studies have shown that social media can have a negative effect on your life satisfaction and subjective well-being. Evidence also suggests that social media is linked to depressive symptoms.

We know more about the end result, that those who use social media more tend to be less satisfied, than we do about what causes this result. Social comparison is often cited, because your friends are likely posting about the new job they got and not the 14 jobs they applied for and didn’t get before that. Looking at others’ perpetual highlight reel, versus your own behind-the-scenes life, can make you feel inadequate if you don’t feel like you have anything “post-worthy” at the moment. The Happiness Research Institute also found that people on Facebook had trouble concentrating, felt less present and thought they were wasting their time at a higher rate than peers not using Facebook.

If you’re on social media a lot, enough research suggests that you might want to run your own little experiment to see if a social media break or decrease can boost your mood.

Self-Esteem

What if you can’t hit those selfie angles quite like a Kardashian? (P.s. They hired a photographer for that “selfie.”) Or your entire Facebook community seems to be getting promotions while you can’t seem to impress your boss or get ahead at work?

Social media makes you a lot more aware of what is happening in your world and if you feel like you don’t stack up to those around you it can have a negative effect on your self-esteem. The era of filters, Instagram models and influencers, online fitness celebrities and readily available photo-editing tools can be particularly burdensome on our self-esteem. Two studies looked particularly at the effect of selfies and determined that looking at others’ selfies harmed self-esteem and caused women to compare themselves negatively to others. Another study found that social media use correlated with feeling unattractive.

Going back to social comparisons, Facebook might also be making you feel less successful in your career and relationships.

In just minutes, you can easily be inundated with images of people who seemingly have it better than you in one way or another. Just remember that social media is not real life and every post is made by a person (Well, except for the bots. Actually, there are a lot of bots posting.) and that person has ups and downs, too.

Sleep

So many of us are not getting enough sleep. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that 35 percent of Americans don’t get the recommended seven hours of sleep a night. But when it comes time to actually go to sleep so many of us get in our comfortable pajamas and cuddle up cozilly with a … cold chunk of glass, metal and plastic that emits a hue of light and messages that inhibit our sleep.

Yes, the light from our devices, particularly the blue hue that is common, is disruptive to sleep in itself. And one study found that young adults who check social media more frequently and for more time, have greater sleep disturbances.

And given the impact sleep has on the rest of our health, it’s wise to find a way to detach your phone from your bedtime routine.

To Not Quit Social Media …

Frankly, this argument is not as common. And you’re not going to shake up your social networks when you post, “I’ve decided to continue using social media at my current pace!” But particularly in our current reality there are advantages to using social media, provided you do it judiciously.

No Mo’ FOMO

We may not love it, but much of the news about our friends and family is communicated via social media. Particularly as we age, spread out geographically from old friends and family and start families, we have less time to check in via the old-fashioned methods. And the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is a well-known feeling to certain generations raised with social media as the norm.

So if you disconnect from social networks you’re simply going to miss pregnancy and engagement announcements, baby pictures, birthday invites, good news and the latest and greatest in memes, goofy kids and cat videos. The thing about quitting social media is all the people you care about don’t magically also quit at the same time and spend their newly-found free time texting and calling you with updates.

Yes, you can make other efforts to stay in touch and up-to-date with what is happening with your friends and family. Certainly, previous generations manage this feat. But sometimes social media simply makes keeping up easier and without it your could feel out of touch and isolated.

The Internet is Good, Actually (Sometimes)

We’ll level with you, a lot of content on social media is probably mean, not particularly useful, unwanted ads, false or somehow otherwise bad. But it also doesn’t take that much digging to find some really positive, uplifting content online.

Body positivity is represented, heard and seen on social media in a way it simply wasn’t in previous generations. Writers with relatively modest Twitter followings can cultivate a loyal community that has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to charity, including $132,000 to Hurricane Harvey victims. Social media aids in many natural disasters, human rights revolutions and other worthy endeavors. Not to mention crowdsourcing local recommendations for everything from finding a handyman to planning a vacation.

These are just a few ways social media can and has been used for good. You can find your own way. Just remember that you’re in control of your feeds. Bring in the positive and block out the rest. That’s what the mute and block functions are for, or at least that’s how we choose to employ them.

Expand Your Networks

Social media has helped us break down our geographical and ideological barriers and connect with people we wouldn’t be able to otherwise. Sure, that means some overly intense political and sports opinions find their way into your feed, but it also allows you to learn about groups and opinions you don’t see in your everyday life.

Particularly if you live in a remote or non-diverse area, social media can expose you to people and viewpoints you simply wouldn’t encounter where you live. Ideas about new books, movies, activities and interests all help to create a more well-rounded view of the world. If you’ve recently moved, social media can help you build a network around common interests or causes.

And while LinkedIn can be kind of a punchline online, if you sift through the spam and use it to your advantage, it can be a worthwhile networking tool and resource for professional development. And depending on your industry, Twitter, Instagram or lesser-known platforms can be just what your business needs to reach that next rung of success.

This is far from a comprehensive list. Do your own research if you’re considering deleting social media.

Yes, social media is bad. It’s also good. Like most things on the internet, it depends on how you use them. Filter out the negativity, limit your social media exposure, use it for the right reasons and bring your own positivity to your online world.

If you feel like social media is making you less happy, then maybe it needs to go. Just make a plan to replace the positive you do find in social media.

April 1 2020

How far will this take us?

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We all know now how badly underequipped America was to fight a public health battle on the scale of COVID-19. But as we struggle to catch up with countries that have successfully pushed back on the outbreak, we start to see new dangers in the weapons we deploy to fight this disease, including some of those used abroad.

As federal, state and local governments increasingly contemplate big tech and mass surveillance as a tool to combat the spread of the deadly virus, we must guard against surveillance opportunists who will endanger public health and the health of our democracy. For some Americans, the consequences of expanded data collection could be as deadly as the disease itself.

As we’ve seen in China, Taiwan and South Korea, every facet of modern life can become a tool for tracking the virus’s spread. Whether it’s the government using cellphone tower data to track the movement of travelers from Wuhan to other parts of China, or pushing for using new apps that predict if users have been exposed to the disease, or gathering information from social media to map where users are posting from, our digital lives are becoming medical diagnostic tools.

As much as this surveillance might seem like a smart way to fight the pandemic, these programs can get it wrong. There is a profound risk that these types of artificial intelligence systems will mirror the prejudices of their human designers, falsely targeting Asian Americans and other marginalized groups. There is also the risk that they drive many of those who have been infected into the shadows, worsening the spread. And once the period of contagion is over, these emergency surveillance tools may easily be co-opted for other purposes — everything from tracking graffitiing to tax evasion — making Orwellian surveillance a permanent part of American life.

Perhaps the most high-profile public health tech tool that’s actually been put in place to deal with the coronavirus, rather than merely discussed, is the partnership (albeit fraught) between the Trump administration and Google to create a screening triage website to determine whose symptoms, travel history, and other risk factors mean that they should be prioritized for treatment. Users seeking tests at participating facilities log in with their google account, enter their health data, then get a referral to COVID-19 testing if they are deemed a priority.

Making Google part of the national emergency response (long before it was agreed to by Google), caused privacy advocates to ask what would happen with the data. The law is completely unclear on whether this data can also be used by government agencies ranging from public health authorities to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Furthermore, if potential patients have to register with a Google account using their real name, it could dissuade certain groups of individuals from getting screened. Take a moment to imagine what it is like for undocumented immigrants living through the coronavirus crisis. For those who have the symptoms of COVID-19, a trip to the emergency room could bring a death sentence: deportation to a far-off country even less equipped to handle the threat of the pandemic. If even a small fraction of undocumented immigrants feel unsafe getting medical treatment, the virus could expand.

Similarly, those Americans who have outstanding police warrants may also be dissuaded from handing their information to public-private partnerships. And some Americans will avoid registration on ideological grounds to avoid giving corporate entities or the government their intimate health details.

The potential for far-reaching consequences from faulty technology is also greatly enhanced by using surveillance widely to cope with this pandemic. For instance, it’s not that far out to imagine government officials using current tracking software such as HealthMap (which scours social media sites for flu-related words to identify incipient flu outbreaks) or Flu Near You (which asks its users to self-identify their flulike symptoms) to impose quarantines or otherwise restrict people’s movements; local governments in Chicago and New York have relied on similar programs that scraped people’s social media for terms related to foodborne illnesses in order to identify and shut down restaurants prone to food poisoning.

But despite successes using these apps for food poisoning and the flu, the effectiveness of this sort of mass surveillance system is decidedly unclear, especially if expanded more broadly by relying on cellphone locations and internet history. Previously, systems might have been able to guess who had seasonal flu based on their Google queries, for example, but in the midst of this pandemic nearly every American is running these same searches. Other attempts to develop this technology, such as Google Flu Trends, were abandoned as failures.

Moreover, using artificial intelligence to determine who can leave their home or take transit raises the risk of AI bias. In the U.S. (and particularly New York City), where housing is appallingly segregated, it’s easy to imagine how AI could lead to a form of COVID-19 redlining or otherwise replicate the worst shortcomings of “predictive policing,” which often draws on racially biased crime data to recommend even more racially biased policing.

Ultimately, there’s the threat this technology poses to our civil rights and the rule of law. Government access to this type of tracking and personal data means officials will have the power to exclude people from society, effectively subjecting them to home confinement without trial, appeal or any semblance of due process. It’s an appealing response when the government gets that decision right, but a chilling power if abused.

In China, residents have been forced to install phone apps that track their movements and assign them a red, green or yellow coronavirus score. Get a bad score and suddenly public transportation, work and school are out of bounds. And, as people in China are learning, when a computer program quarantines you, that automated judgment can be impossible to challenge and reverse. Disturbingly, there’s growing evidence that the expanded behavioral tracking will stick around long after the crisis is over, giving Beijing a new way to track religious minorities and political dissidents.

In the weeks ahead, we must be vigilant. Whether it was the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the profiling of Muslim Americans following the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, or the mass incarceration for petty and nonviolent crimes when crime rates spiked in the ’80s and ’90s, our rights are most at risk when we feel scared. And the changes we accept in times of crisis can last far longer than the immediate crisis.

In the weeks following 9/11, Congress hastily expanded surveillance powers through the USA PATRIOT Act. Many of those emergency provisions were originally supposed to expire more than a decade ago. This week, Congress voted to renew them yet again. Taking evidence-based steps to protect public health will save lives in the coming days, but any damage we do to our Constitution may not heal for decades.

March 19, 2020, 5:50 PM EDT

By Albert Fox Cahn and John Veiszlemlein