November 21, 2021

Ransomware Phishing Emails Sneak Through SEGs

The original email purported to need support for a “DWG following Supplies List,” which is supposedly hyperlinked to a Google Drive URL. The URL is actually an infection link, which downloaded an .MHT file. “.MHT file extensions are commonly used by web browsers as a webpage archive,” Cofense researchers explained. “After opening the file the target is presented with a blurred out and apparently stamped form, but the threat actor is using the .MHT file to reach out to the malware payload.” That payload comes in the form of a downloaded .RAR file, which in turn contains an .EXE file. “The executable is a DotNETLoader that uses VBS scripts to drop and run the MIRCOP ransomware in memory,” according to the analysis. ... “Its opening lure is business-themed, making use of a service – such as Google Drive – that enterprises employ for delivering files,” the researchers explained. “The rapid deployment from the MHT payload to final encryption shows that this group is not concerned with being sneaky. Since the delivery of this ransomware is so simple, it is especially worrying that this email found its way into the inbox of an environment using a SEG.”

How Decentralized Finance Will Impact Business Financial Services

In essence, DeFi aims to provide a worldwide, decentralized alternative to every financial service now available, such as insurance, savings, and loans. DeFi’s primary goal is to offer financial services to the world’s 1.7 billion unbanked individuals.?And this is possible because DeFi is borderless. These financial services are available to anybody with a smartphone and internet connection in any part of the world. For the impoverished and unbanked, this will revolutionize banking. They can invest anywhere in the world in anything with just the touch of a button. By providing open access for all, DeFi empowers individuals and businesses to maintain greater control over their assets and gives them the financial freedom to select how to invest their money without relying on any intermediary. DeFi is also censorship-resistant, making it immune from government intervention. Furthermore, sending money across borders is extremely costly under the existing system. DeFi eliminates the need for costly intermediaries, allowing for better interest rates and lower expenses, while also democratizing banking systems.

Addressing the Low-Code Security Elephant in the Room

What are some development choices about the application layer that affect the security responsibility? If the low-code application is strictly made up of low-code platform native capabilities or services, you only have to worry about the basics. That includes application design and business logic flaws, securing your data in transit and at rest, security misconfigurations, authentication, authorizing and adhering to the principle of least-privilege, providing security training for your citizen developers, and maintaining a secure deployment environment. These are the same elements any developer — low-code or traditional — would need to think about in order to secure the application. Everything else is handled by the low-code platform itself. That is as basic as it gets. But what if you are making use of additional widgets, components, or connectors provided by the low-code platform? Those components — and the code used to build them — are definitely out of your jurisdiction of responsibility. You may need to consider how they are configured or used in your application, though.

Google Introduces ClusterFuzzLite Security Tool for CI/CD

ClusterFuzzLite enables you to run continuous fuzzing on your Continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipeline. The result? You’ll find vulnerabilities more easily and faster than ever before. This is vital. A 2020 GitLab DevSecOps survey found that, while 81% of developers believed fuzz testing is important, only 36% were actually using fuzzing. Why? Because it was too much trouble to set fuzzing up and integrate it with their CI/CD systems. At the same time, though, as Shuah Khan, kernel maintainer and the Linux Foundation’s third Linux Fellow, has pointed out “It is easier to detect and fix problems during the development process,” than it is to wait for manual testing or quality assurance later in the game. By feeding unexpected or random data into a program, fuzzing catches bugs that would otherwise slip past the most careful eyeballs. NIST’s guidelines for software verification specify fuzzing as a minimum standard requirement for code verification. After all as Dan Lorenc, founder and CEO of Chainguard and former Google open source security team software engineer, recently told The New Stack,?

Bitcoin Is How We Really Build A New Financial System

When it comes to a foundational sound money, Bitcoin is unmatched. Compared to other blockchain assets, Bitcoin has had an immaculate conception.Also, Bitcoin has an elegantly simple monetary policy and an immutable supply freed from human discretion – something no other cryptocurrency asset can provide. Bitcoin's monetary policy is based on algorithmically-determined parameters and is thus perfectly predictable, rule-based and neither event- nor emotion-driven. By depoliticizing monetary policy and entrusting money creation to the market according to rule-based parameters, Bitcoin’s monetary asset behaves as neutrally as possible. Bitcoin is truly sound money since it provides the highest degree of stability, reliability and security. Most crypto enthusiasts would probably object that while Bitcoin might be the soundest money, its technical capabilities do not allow for DeFi to be built on top of it. As a matter of fact though, nothing could be further from the truth.?

A Simple 5-Step Framework to Minimize the Risk of a Data Breach

The first step businesses need to take to increase the security of their customer data is to review what types of data they're collecting and why. Most companies that undertake this exercise end up surprised by what they find. That's because, over time, the volume and variety of customer information that gets collected to expand well beyond a business's original intent. For example, it's fairly standard to collect things like a customer's name and email address. And if that's all a business has on file, they won't be an attractive target to an attacker. But if the business has a cloud call center or any type of high touch sales cycle or customer support it probably collects home addresses, financial data, and demographic information, they've then assembled a collection that's perfect for enabling identity theft if the data got out into the wild. So, when evaluating each collected data point to determine its value, businesses should ask themselves: what critical business function does this data facilitate. If the answer is none, they should purge the data and stop collecting it.?

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