Where is this coming from?

Over the last two #WeekendWisdoms I talked about needing to do updates for vulnerabilities and when it comes to software vulnerabilities zero days are usually the most critical.

You see when security researchers are analysing various software like Microsoft, Apple and Google products, if they discovery a vulnerability in that software, they will report it to the vendor and give them an opportunity to rectify it and fix it before they make it public. They usually give them a period of months, normally it is usually 3 months.

What are Zero Days?

But in the case of zero days what happens is that a vulnerability is exposed on a day when nobody is aware of it until everybody is suddenly aware of it, including the vendor and including criminal gangs.

These cyber criminal gangs will immediately start looking to try and exploit that zero day vulnerability, while the vendors are rushing to try and fix it, to put out an update to fix that vulnerability.

That can take time. It can take days, it could take weeks to fix it. So it’s kind of a race against time for the cyber criminals to try and crack it and exploit it and for the vendors to fix it and update it.

What should you do?

So if you ever hear me talking about “There’s a zero day vulnerability out there that you need to patch!”, you should be looking to try and patch that as quickly as possible.

So that’s it for this week. Lets be careful out there and we’ll talk to you again next week.

The post #WeekendWisdom 096 Zero Days appeared first on L2 Cyber Security Solutions Ltd..

This sounds familiar

Waaaay back in the early days of the #WeekendWisdom series, back at number 3, I talked about updates. I’ll have a link to that video somewhere on the social media post associated with this video.

The events of the last week has brought it back to me that this really is an important topic that we all need to be aware of.

What happened this last week?

Apple, earlier this week, released updates to its iPhones and Mac computers and watches that plugged a vulnerability which was being exploited by a surveillance software maker which literally all they had to do if they wanted to take control of somebody’s iPhone we’ll say, all they need to do is send a message to that phone and just when the phone receives the message, they now have control of it. The user of the phone did not have to do anything. So that’s pretty scary.

Also there was the vulnerability that I talked about in last week’s #WeekendWisdom. Microsoft have issued updates for that this week. So again, it’s really critical that if you have updates waiting on your Windows computer to apply them.

This is the reason why updates are important

You see the problem here is that when the likes of Apple or Microsoft issue updates, criminals go and take those updates, they look at them and they find out what exactly has been fixed in Windows or in the iPhones or whatever. Then they can figure out how they can exploit that, that vulnerability that was there that was fixed. If people don’t do the updates, the criminals can now exploit them, for those people who don’t, because there are quite a lot of people who don’t apply updates.

But it’s really important that you do.

So that’s it for this week. Lets be careful out there and we’ll talk to you again next week.

The post #WeekendWisdom 095 Why Updates are Important appeared first on L2 Cyber Security Solutions Ltd..

Didn’t you already talk about ransomware incidents?

I previously talked about ransomware back in #WeekendWisdom number 10 but as it’s constantly evolving threat model it’s worthwhile coming back for an update.

Earlier this week the Honda Motor Company has been reportedly affected by a ransomware incident. The Snake ransomware that is in the reports, typically targets industrial control systems. So it would appear that production has been stopped globally for Honda.

Aha, so it’s only after the big boys?

But it’s not just big corporations that get affected by ransomware. The Verizon data breach investigations report from last year showed that of the 32,000 incidents that they investigated, some 1,500 were ransomware related. So small businesses get targeted as well.

So what’s new in the world of ransomware?

While email is one of the popular vectors for ransomware, criminals are now turning to scanning the internet. They look for vulnerable remote access solutions that businesses have put in place as a result of the COVID19 crisis. If they find a weakness in these, they will break into the company’s network. After that they look around, find some juicy data, important, confidential information. They will download it to themselves and then they’ll execute the ransomware.

What happens then?

Then they say to the company, “Now you must pay us to unscramble the data.”

The company says “No thanks. We will restore our backups.”

The criminals will then say “Well OK, we’re going to breach all this data that we stole from you. So give us money still so we won’t breach it.”

So that’s what they’re doing.

What do we do to stop this?

So if you put in place or have in place a remote access solution, have that independently verified and checked to see if it is vulnerable or not and make sure you remediate anything as soon as possible.

So that’s it for this week. Let’s be careful out there and we’ll talk to you again next week.

How can L2 Cyber Security help you?

We offer a full range of training programmes, which can be delivered online or in-person*.

L2 Cyber Security are also a partner of CyberRiskAware for online self-directed Cyber Security Awareness training.

We can also provide assistance on implementing mitigation measures to help protect your business from #Ransomware.

Contact us for more information at info@L2CyberSecurity.com.

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The post #WeekendWisdom 032 Ransomware Incidents appeared first on L2 Cyber Security Solutions Ltd..