Revolution Against Cyber Thefts

Over a month ago, the WannaCry ransomware attacked several hundred thousands of Windows machines around the world.   Just couple days ago, the malware stroked again.  This time it visited Honda Motor production plant in Sayama, Tokyo, and several dozen traffic lights in Australia.  WannaCry is a computer worm that uses weaknesses in the communication protocols to spread over the network.  The worm is called ransomware because, once infected the target, it encrypts data on the infected machine and ask the owner for a ransom to turn the data. This computer worm exploited the vulnerability in the  Server Message Block (SMB) version 1.  The vulnerability allows a source remotely send fake requests to the SMB server without going through authentication.  Microsoft released the patches to correct the issues about two days after the first attack in May.  The patches applied to Windows Vista SP2 and newer.  According to Khandelwal, Honda Motor did ...

When you feel unsafe in your house, the first thing that probably comes to your mind is to setup security system.  Or maybe you have kids and want to setup one or two cameras to watch over them.  I am sure doing that will bring you some level of comfort.  Other than the emotional comfort do you really think you are safer?  Yes, of course! I felt the same way.  In fact, I purchased several cameras myself.  Until today, when I came across an article, New Persirai IoT Botnet Emerges by Ionut Arghire, that was posted on May 9, 2017.  Arghire reported that thousands of internet protocol (IP) base security cameras from different manufacturers are vulnerable to the new internet of things (IoT) malware called Dubbed Persirai (Arghire, May 9, 2017).  Persirai is a malware that was built on top of Mirai, another malware that gained its popularity in late 2016.  Beside Persirai and Mirai, there are two other botnets called DvrHelper and TheMoon which ar...

Ana, Kirsten, and Alexandra, in their article, SWIFT Issues Cybersecurity Warning Following Bangladesh Central Bank Theft, on April 4th, 20016 reported a cyber-theft case.   The article reported that hacker successfully stole $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank.   According to Ana, FireEye Inc. and World Informatrix investigated the incident (Badour, 2016).   The two companies reported that the hackers installed a malware into the bank's server and monitor its activity for around two weeks.   The malware was identified as Dridex (Bangladesh 2016). The investigators also said that the hackers used keylogger program to steal the bank's SWIFT credentials.   The credentials were used to make the transaction after several logins during 14 day period. After a little more research, I found more details about the case.   The hackers made three large transactions, $20 million to the Shalika Foundation account at a bank in Sri Lanka, $81 mi...