Ukraine Under Cyber Siege 🏰 Defense Giant Hensoldt Hacked 🛡️ & Gen Z Security Lesson 👧🏾👦
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This Week’s Stories:
🏰 Ukraine is in a state of ongoing cyber siege
🛡 Even defense giants are not safe against ransomware attacks
👧🏾👦 What cybersecurity lessons should we take from Gen Zs
Ukraine On Our Mind
Ukraine has received a lot of attention in recent days. The country, which is in the midst of a political crisis, is now under extensive cyber attack. Today, we’ll look at two cyber incidents that occurred in the country in the previous week, both of which are linked.
The first is the cyberattack, which occurred last week, January 13–14. Around 70 state websites were targeted, including numerous ministries of the Ukrainian government. The IT teams in charge of the incident believe that the attackers exploited a flaw in the October CMS services that the various systems rely on.
The second news story is a follow-up to the first. According to Microsoft researchers, the attackers appear to have put malware on government networks, and the estimations we’ve heard thus far are inaccurate. They uncover the Whispergate damage. Which overrides its victims’ systems, displays a ransom note, and finally assaults when the target’s system is shut off.
HUB Perspective: The first story is a classic illustration of a supply chain attack. Supply chain attacks are on the rise. Every organization should have procedures to check every new update and version. Including sandboxing, monitoring and tracking, and also ongoing scans, before deploying any new vendor’s software or update in the production environment. Defining normal behavior would allow organizations to detect abnormal behavior which indicates the presence of malware or other threat actors.
Similarly to Log4j supply chain attacks can be weaponized to trigger ransomware and other malware in the environment. In order to know if those vulnerabilities were exploited, organizations should run threat hunting campaigns.
Defense Giant Experiences Ransomware Attack
The Ransomware giants don’t spare the defense titans. This week saw the disclosure of yet another incidence of ransomware use. This time, the victim is the defense firm Hensoldt. In 2020, the corporation rolled over deals worth more than one billion euros. Its products include radars, avionics, battleships, as well as other equipment that is widely used by the US. The new attack employs the Lorenz ransomware, and classified materials have thus far been leaked online, still encrypted. If their demands are not met, the attackers threaten to decrypt those materials.
HUB Perspective: As always there are two challenges to ransomware. The first has to do with the inability to get access to the data, which is encrypted or deleted. The second has to do with the attacker publishing stolen data to the public or to the highest bidder. So even if there is a good backup to restore from, the organization still needs to address the challenge of stolen data, and the potential of exposing it. This is why ransomware needs a multi-layer defense that starts with remediating vulnerabilities, continues through detecting attacks and ransomware, and all the way to saving clean backups and regularly exercising restore.
A Passwordless Generation
Many young individuals appear to choose to skip the idea of using passwords in general. Instead, they choose to use other forms of identification, such as biometrics. While it may appear intrusive to older users, it is an essential aspect of life for the younger generation. The great majority of Generation Z purchases are made via mobile devices. The majority of them also use their phones to monitor their financial accounts. More than half of young people will abandon a purchase in the middle because the registration process is overly difficult. There are modern times for you.
HUB Perspective: Passwords are both weak and provide a bad user experience for being so arduous, demanding users to memorize multiple passwords or risk even lower security by synchronizing passwords. This is a rare occasion where security concerns and user concerns are on the same side. Going passwordless will provide better security and a better user experience. Passwordless solutions use multi-factor authentication methods such as mobile devices, enabled by biometric authentication, to allow smooth access to systems. Modern technology allows all these procedures to take place, all the while maintaining privacy and security.
