A Valentine's Day Wakeup Call: The Heartbleed Vulnerability and the Urgent Need for Improved Cybersecurity

By Ken Buckler on Feb 14, 2023 6:05:20 AM

As of January 2023, Over 194,000 Systems on Internet Still Vulnerable to Heartbleed

The Bleeding Heart of the Internet

In April 2014, the Heartbleed vulnerability was publicly disclosed, sending the information technology world into a panic and rushing to patch this critical vulnerability in OpenSSL, which was allowing the theft of information directly from the memory of vulnerable systems, including private keys and other secrets. This vulnerability featured extremely easy exploitation by attackers, leaving no trace of attacks. Heartbleed ultimately resulted in many late nights for most of the information technology industry, who worked to implement and validate patches for open and closed source products that have integrated the OpenSSL libraries – which accounts for an extremely large percentage of technologies connected to the internet.

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Intelligent Mice, Intelligent Mouse Traps – The Future of Cybersecurity and AI

By Ken Buckler on May 31, 2022 6:27:37 AM

Long gone are the days of simple, signature-based defenses against cyber-threats.

Cyber-threats are growing at an exponential rate in the perpetual cat-and-mouse game of cybersecurity, and traditional approaches to cybersecurity are struggling to keep pace. In 2021, anti-malware vendors estimated that they detected between 300,000 and 500,000 new pieces of malware every day. That means than in 2021 alone, over 100 million new pieces of malware were created. Even if cybersecurity vendors can keep up with the sheer volume of new pieces of malware, traditional signature-based and even heuristic-based detection algorithms will struggle to keep up – and that’s only for known malware.

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Not so Quiet on the Cyber Front: Why Your Organization is Still a Target

By Ken Buckler on Mar 4, 2022 2:27:34 PM

It's been quite an interesting couple of weeks. What started off with rising tensions as Russia amassed troops at the Ukraine border evolved into a full invasion of the country. Our newsfeeds are filled with stories and images of ace fighter pilots, brave soldiers making their final stands, and farmers stealing Russian tanks by hooking them up to farm equipment – but another battle has been taking place behind the scenes for many years.

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Cyber Attackers Turn Their Sight to ERP Applications

By Paula Musich on Sep 26, 2018 7:58:29 AM

In late July, the Department of Homeland Security issued a warning about a growing number of malicious cyberattacks aimed at ERP systems based on a research project conducted by Digital Shadows and Onapsis. This warning comes at the heels of the first-ever DHS CERT Alert focused on SAP Business Applications released in May of 2016. According to the report, hackers exploited old, unpatched vulnerabilities to successfully hack multiple organizations, including government agencies, energy businesses, and financial services companies. Onapsis and Digital Shadows found significant evidence of increased interest on ERP applications, including bad actors in criminal forums on the dark web asking for exploits specifically targeting ERP technology vulnerabilities. The study, “ERP Applications Under Fire: How Cyberattackers Target the Crown Jewels,” found that the attackers do not need to use advanced techniques to breach their targets because the current state of ERP application security across organizations is such that old vulnerabilities still affect these systems. This means that attackers don’t need to develop new zero-days or advanced exploitation techniques.

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Effective Security Requires a Change in Mindset and the Protection Paradigm

By David Monahan on Aug 24, 2016 11:05:53 AM

Nearly every day another successful breach is reported. In 2016 alone, organizations from major governmental agencies such as the IRS and Department of Defense, to major retailers including Wendy’s, have succumbed to attack. These organizations are not alone; every major business and governmental sector has been compromised. Large tech companies such as LinkedIn and Oracle, healthcare providers including Premier Healthcare (as well as numerous hospitals), manufacturers, major educational institutions, and large financial organizations have all succumbed to either internal or external threats.

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EMA Research Shows that Cyber Security is Achieving Executive Visibility in a Big Way

By David Monahan on Nov 20, 2015 12:50:32 PM

One of the services that EMA provides to the tech industry is research. During the course of the year, numerous projects are launched to help IT consumers and vendors understand market perceptions. EMA then provides analysis and forecasts on trends based upon those perceptions.

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Vectra Provides Pervasive Visibility & Analysis to Detect Cyber Attacks

By David Monahan on Apr 9, 2015 2:21:39 PM

Though cyber attacks have been around for years, in 2014 there was an explosion in the volume of attacks and a marked increase in the losses and damages they inflicted. In 2015, this does not seem to be lightening up.

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PFP CyberSecurity Breaks on to the Scene to Identify Malware at the Chip Level.

By David Monahan on Mar 2, 2015 11:51:59 AM

A few weeks ago, I briefed with a new company called PFP Cybersecurity, also known as Power Fingerprinting, Inc., and was so intrigued by the concept alone that I wrote a Vendor to Watch about them. They officially launched on January 26, , and currently their claim to fame is their physics-based scanning technology which monitors the electromagnetic frequency (EMF) emanations of a microchip while operating. It then compares those readings to either a previous reading or to an established manufacturer’s baseline to determine the state of the chip. There are numerous uses for the technology from supply chain chip counterfeit detection, to operational failure prediction, and most unique of all, malware detection. The scanners are useful in many environments, but especially those that are change and failure/fault intolerant like space vehicles, nuclear and other critical infrastructure environments, and multiple military and natural resource acquisitions environments because they are touchless. There is nothing to install on the system using the microchip, so no change control requests or outage windows are needed. The other interesting thing about their technology is it is disruptive to the current scanner market, costing significantly less than competing products. Their platform is that each model of chip has a different EMF/power signature. These also vary by manufacturer because of variances in raw materials sourcing and manufacturing processes. It is well known that under use conditions, especially when heat dissipation is not well implemented, the chips degrade over time until failure. (That’s the point when the ‘magic smoke’ comes out and it stops working.) The cool part for me was the concept of malware detection. Aside from the physical properties of the chip, the software running on the chip will change the output pattern because of register changes and associated changes in code execution. This means that if a probe is scanning a chip and malware installs itself, the scanner can detect it at the time of installation and alert an operator that it has happened, potentially avoiding larger impact failures and data exfiltration. This technique reminds me of classic side channel attacks on CPUs that perform encryption to attempt a key extraction based on how the various chip leads changed over time. (The key difference being those attacks required contact with the open leads.) In a sense, this technology is highly disruptive, in a positive way, to both the current scanning system suppliers because of the lower cost, and to the infrastructure and supply chains because of not only the cost, but also because of the reported accuracy. It will significantly improve supply chain verification, system reliability, and security. I am looking forward to see how they progress in the marketplace over the next few years. About PFP Cybersecurity Headquartered in Washington, D.C., PFP Cybersecurity provides a unique, anomaly-based cyber security threat detection technology that can instantly identify software and hardware intrusion including active and dormant attacks. With its innovative technology, PFP shortens the compromise detection gap to milliseconds by monitoring changes in electromagnetic frequencies and power usage. This physics-based technology can be applied to detect advanced malware and sophisticated threats in critical cyber systems. It can also detect hardware Trojans and counterfeits in the supply chain. For more information, please visit: www.pfpcyber.com

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