General Interest

How Long Before You Experience A Cyber Attack?

October 9, 2018 by Joseph Martin

According to this year’s Traveler’s Risk Index, published by The Traveler’s Indemnity Company, a majority of business owners have a somewhat fatalistic view of hacking and data breaches.

The index includes 52 percent of survey respondents indicating that they believe a cyber-attack is inevitable.

The other statistics in the report paint a grim picture. Here’s a quick overview:

55 percent of business owners say that they have not completed a cyber risk assessment

63 percent say that they have not yet completed a cyber risk assessment on vendors who have access to their data

62 percent indicate that they have not yet developed any kind of business continuity plan, which means they don’t even have the basic outline of the steps they’ll need to take in the face of a successful attack against their company

The number of survey participants saying they have been the victim of a cyber attack has doubled from 10 percent in 2015 to 20 percent in this year’s survey

Yet in spite of this staggering lack of preparation, fully half of all survey respondents say they have cyber insurance.

Tim Francis, the Enterprise Cyber-Lead at Travelers, had this to say about the report:

“Cyber risks carry serious consequences for any business, threatening everything from revenue to operations. These findings reveal some surprising things about how companies view their cyber exposure, their relative confidence in dealing with them and the clear opportunity that exists for them to be better prepared for a cyber-attack.”

It’s a thorny problem, for sure. Most small to medium sized business are strapped for cash and simply can’t dedicate the level of resources they’d like to toward data security.

The good news is that this most recent survey reveals a few simple, low-cost things you could do starting today that would dramatically improve your chances of dealing with a cyber-attack. Given that most people agree it’s inevitable and just a matter of time, that would be an excellent place to start.

Joseph Martin

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Firefox Adds Data Breach Monitoring Service

October 6, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Firefox is upping the ante where digital security is concerned, having just announced the release of a new, free service called ‘Firefox Monitor.’ The new service is designed with one specific goal in mind: To assist users in finding out if their accounts were exposed via a data breach.

It was developed in partnership with Troy Hunt, whose website, “Have I Been Pwned” is one of the most popular destinations on the web for security-minded individuals. This website, in fact, is the driving force behind Mozilla’s new service.

People will be able to engage with the service in two different ways. First, by making a direct inquiry to check the status of their various accounts, passwords, and email addresses that may have been compromised. Or second, by configuring the new subsystem to notify them when their information has been detected by the system.

Nick Nguyen, of Mozilla, had this to say about the new feature:

“It can be hard to keep track of when your information has been stolen, so we’re going to help by launching Firefox Monitor, a free service that notifies people when they’ve been part of a data breach. After testing this summer, the results and positive attention gave us the confidence we needed to know this was a feature we wanted to give to all of our users.”

If you find out via active polling or receive a notification that one of your accounts was compromised, you should take action immediately. You should change the password and audit the account to address instances where you may have used the same password associated with the compromised account in order to minimize your risks.

This is great news, and a fantastic addition by Mozilla. While it’s not a magic bullet that will solve all your security woes, it should help give users greater peace of mind, and it puts a powerful new tool in their hands to monitor the integrity of their own accounts. Kudos to Mozilla!

Joseph Martin

Windows 10 Adoption Continues To Grow

October 5, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Windows 10 is far and away the fastest growing version of the OS in the company’s history. It recently hit an installation base of a staggering 700 million devices after about three years on the market.

Note that these installation figures include installs not just on PCs, but also on Surface Hubs, Xbox, HoloLenses and smartphones.

Unfortunately, as impressive as that number is, it falls well short of Microsoft’s original estimate of a billion installs in three years.

The smaller than expected number of smartphone installations is the key reason behind the shortfall. Initially, the company had envisioned these devices adding several hundred million installations to the total count. However, when Microsoft switched gears and decided to abandon the smartphone market, it was inevitable that they would fall well short of their original target.

It matters because part of Microsoft’s pitch to developers was the massive (projected) size of the Windows 10 market. Now that the official numbers are in, and the final count is some 30 percent lower than anticipated, part of that appeal is understandably gone.

Even so, a market made up of 700 million devices is certainly nothing to sneeze at and developers are heavily invested in the platform, so it would make little sense for them to abandon it now. Not to mention the fact that the number of installations is expected to continue to grow at a healthy clip for the foreseeable future.

Inside the Windows ecosystem, 43 percent of Windows PCs are currently running Windows 10, with another 45 percent still running Windows 7. Given that support has officially ended for Windows 7, it’s all but guaranteed that Windows 10 will ultimately reach one billion installations. It will probably reach a bit more than that as users continue to slowly migrate away from Windows 7.

At the end of the day then, although Microsoft’s time frame was a bit too aggressive, it looks like they’re going to hit the magic number.

Joseph Martin

Government Payment Processor Exposes Data On Millions Of Americans

October 4, 2018 by Joseph Martin

If you use the GovPayNet portal, be advised that your personal information is currently at risk. Although at this point, there’s no indication that any hacker has made use of it. The portal is run by Government Payment Service, and is used by many Americans to pay fines, fees and bills generated by more than two thousand different government agencies operating in 35 states.

Unfortunately, the way the website is configured, when it issues a receipt for a payment, it numbers those receipts sequentially. All a hacker would have to do would be to change the receipt number in the URL to see any previous receipts, and all of the information it contains.

When the flaw was discovered by journalist Brian Krebs, more than fourteen million old records were exposed in this manner. He contacted Government Payment Service to inform them of the flaw, and the agency moved quickly to address the issue. They said in a formal statement that they “did not adequately restrict access to only authorized recipients.”

They went on to assure their users that there’s no indication that any data had been improperly accessed. They added that the receipts generated don’t include any information that could be used by a hacker to initiate any type of financial transaction.

Unfortunately, the reality was a bit different. The receipts contain the names, addresses and phone numbers of the person paying the fee in question, along with the last four digits of whatever credit or debit card was used to make payment. That is more than enough information to enable a hacker to initiate a phishing attack to get the rest.

Nick Bilorgoskiy of Juniper Networks had this to say about the matter:

“Online payment providers…should take special care to protect their customers’ receipts by using HTTPS and checking that the user is logged in and has permissions to view them. To avoid information disclosure and directory traversal issues, I also recommend denying anonymous web visitors the ability to read permissions for any unnecessary files from web-accessible directories.”

It’s good advice, and here’s hoping that Government Payment Service will take it. If you use the service, there’s nothing for you to do. You don’t need to change your password, since it was never exposed. Just be mindful that someone may have seen any data your receipts contain before the site was secured.

Joseph Martin

Google’s Emergency Location Service Improves 911 Response

October 3, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Google is making a small but pivotal change as it relates to calls placed to 911 operators. Having recently finalized a complex partnership with RapidSOS and West (two emergency technology companies) and T-Mobile, Google will now send location data from its “Emergency Location Service” when an Android user places a 911 call.

If the caller is a T-Mobile customer, the information will be passed along via the carrier. Where 911 call centers use RapidSOS, Google will send the location data via the technology company. In the US Virgin Islands, Google has made the same arrangement with the Emergency Tech company, West.

While the announcement may raise some surprised eyebrows, the change has been in the works for more than a year. Google has spent much of that time testing. Their findings were that the location data Google sent over was more accurate and arrived more quickly than the data the 911 call centers had been getting previously.

Not to be outdone, Apple announced in June of this year that it was developing a similar service for iOS users, and that beginning with iOS 12, Apple devices would automatically send location data to emergency call centers when users dial 911.

Even privacy advocates agree that this is generally a good move, and it’s one of the growing number of instances where smart use of technology can save lives. Anything we can do to give our nation’s emergency call centers an edge is an important change. Currently, those call centers take an average of 140,000 calls a day, so this is by no means a trivial issue.

Kudos to both Google and Apple for taking bold action on this issue. While we may not like the idea of having our location data shared, in this particular instance, it certainly seems like a smart play.

Joseph Martin

Android May Be Coming To More New Cars Soon

October 3, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Google scored a major coup in the auto industry. They just inked a deal that will put the Android OS in every car made by the global auto alliance Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi. It sold a staggering 10.6 million vehicles around the world last year.

The tech giant has struggled to get its foot in the door, primarily because auto makers have been hesitating on handing over the keys to their Infotainment and other computerized systems, in fear of being shut out of the data collected by those systems.

It’s a fair complaint and a valid concern, but Google has been working hard to build trust in the auto world and has taken a variety of approaches.

Their first move was to build an OS called “Android Auto” which mirrors the functionality of the Android OS but offers scaled down functionality which means it falls well short of “Android running on a car.”

Having gained some ground with that approach, they next introduced Android Automotive, which is essentially the entire Android OS, geared specifically for vehicular use. They showed off their work last year at the 2018 I/O Tech conference, and their persistence paid off.

It’s a big win on all fronts. The automakers win by retaining access to their data, while handing off the software function to a company with a long history of getting it right.

Google wins because it expands the Android ecosystem in a whole new way. Consumers win because it offers a seamless (and improved) user experience and makes it easier for an auto owner to sync their Android device to their car.

Google also wins because they get access to all the data generated by the in-auto OS after gaining permission from the user. Plus, having scored a partnership with one major auto alliance, others will surely follow, which will further expand the tech giant’s footprint.

Joseph Martin

Malware Reports Continue To Rise

September 26, 2018 by Joseph Martin

We’ve known for some time now that the next big crisis the internet will have to come to grips with is the dramatic rise of the Internet of Things (IOT).

The problem isn’t with the devices themselves, which are enormously helpful and rapidly growing in their popularity. Rather, it lies in the fact that the overwhelming majority of IoT manufacturers have been notoriously lax when it comes to building even basic security protocols into the goods they make and sell.

The lack of security and the complete absence of any type of security has made the Internet of Things the new “low hanging fruit” of the internet, and hackers have been happy to take advantage of the incredibly easy access.

Kaspersky Lab has recently given us hard numbers to provide a sense of the scope and scale of the problem.

Last year, the company detected a total of 32,615 malware infections on IoT devices. In just the first six months of this year, the company has spotted 121,588 infections on IoT devices, representing a staggering 273 percent increase.

Far and away, the most commonly compromised devices were routers. Behind them were a whole raft of other IoT devices including smart TVs, refrigerators, DVRs, printers, washing machines and more.

Things have gotten so bad that earlier this year, the FBI issued a public service announcement in a bid to warn users of the dangers of unsecured devices.

These can be slaved by hackers to create enormous botnets like the one that brought down the internet on the entire eastern seaboard earlier this year. However, if they are connected to your home or office network, they provide a perfect launchpad for attacks against other network connected devices.

Sadly, manufacturers to this point have shown little interest in beefing up the security of the devices they sell, so the problem is likely to get much worse before it starts getting better.

Joseph Martin

SmartHome Users Aren’t Keeping Up With Security Updates

September 24, 2018 by Joseph Martin

The Internet on devices continues to be a major problem when it comes to security. Unfortunately, a big part of the reason why comes down to end users. Recently, Bitdefender released a new report entitled “The IoT Threat Landscape And Top Smart Home Vulnerabilities in 2018,” and it paints a grim picture indeed.

The average home now contains twenty smart devices, and most of them contain security vulnerabilities. 95 percent of those vulnerabilities reside in the firmware.

While the majority of smart device users (60 percent ) claim to be “worried” or “very worried” about identity theft, most are utterly failing to adequately protect their IoT devices. In fact, sixty percent indicated that they had never performed a firmware update on their router, and 55 percent reported that they had never updated their smart TVs.

It gets worse. 40 percent of users surveyed indicated that they use the same password for each of their devices, and half of all smart TV owners said they had literally never updated their password.

Thirty percent of users claim that they’re worried about the prospect of a hacker accessing a smart camera to spy on them, but paradoxically, fully 70 percent have at least one camera connected to a vulnerable router.

To provide a sense of scope and scale, the company reported that its BOX product blocked nearly half a million threats (461,718) in just a 30-day period, with 76 percent of those being malicious websites.

Analyst Bogdan Botezatu stressed that while weak passwords are a big part of the problem, it’s not only users who are to blame.

He added:

“Smart device manufacturers share responsibility for the current state of IoT security because most of them are overlooking the security aspect. In their rush to launch the product ahead of the competition, they are leaving attack avenues wide open to attackers interested in user sensitive data.”

If you have one or more smart devices in your home, and you probably do, it’s time to get serious about securing them.

Joseph Martin

Microsoft Outlook is Rolling Out New Design Changes

September 21, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Microsoft is making some long overdue and welcome changes to Outlook to include the Windows and the Web-based version.

People who use either one will now see a “Coming Soon” option that allows users to toggle between the version they’ve got now, and the new and improved version with the changes.

As to those changes, they fall broadly into three groups:

Better Organization – The improved Outlook offers intelligent technology, specialized icons, visual changes and a “highlights” feature that are all designed to help you manage your time better and provide a greater level of focus on your daily and weekly activities.

Improved Speed and Efficiency – The redesign is sleeker and faster. Using it will allow you to schedule meetings, read and act on emails and write new emails much more quickly than the old version.

More Customization – Hotmail users know only too well that Outlook on the web has lagged behind its competitors in terms of customization, and the redesign seeks to change that. Microsoft is playing a bit of catch up here, but any improvements on this front are welcome indeed. Among other things, you can now apply additional themes, personalize your inbox and simplify the ribbon.

There’s no word yet on how long the new features will be offered as an opt-in option, but of course, at some point, the company will mandate the change.

On balance, these are good changes. Perhaps more modest than long-time users would like to have seen, but again, any changes to one of the oldest email systems still around have to be counted as a positive.

Kudos to Microsoft for keeping Outlook reasonably up to date, and here’s hoping that the user base embraces them. which we hope hope will encourage the company to make additional improvements.

Joseph Martin

Another Chrome Extension Is Stealing Passwords

September 19, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Do you use the Chrome browser extension for the MEGA file storage service? If you do, please read this article carefully. The official extension for that service has been compromised. It has been replaced with a malware version that has the capability to steal user login data for a number of popular websites, including Github, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and more.

The extension was compromised on September 4th, when an unknown attacker breached MEGA’s Chrome Web Store account and uploaded the poisoned version of the extension. Any user who installs it is at risk of having their other login credentials stolen.

It gets worse. If you allow auto-updates, then the poisoned version of the extension would have automatically “updated” on your PC or smartphone when the malware was uploaded. Note that when the extension attempted to update, it would have asked users for elevated permissions. Those elevated permissions would allow the extension access to personal information, which is the mechanism by which the credentials are stolen.

The poisoned file was in place for a total of four hours before it was found, eradicated and replaced by a clean version (version 3.39.5).

According to MEGA:

“You are only affected if you had the MEGA Chrome extension installed at the time of the incident, auto update enabled, and you accepted the additional permission, or if you freshly installed version 3.39.4.”

If you think there’s even a chance you were impacted by this event, your best bet would be an across-the-board change of all your passwords, as there’s no way to be sure which ones may have been compromised.

Two things to note here: The Firefox extension was not impacted. This applies only to chrome users who have the MEGA extension installed. Also, you should check your extension version number immediately to be sure you’re not running version 3.39.4. If you are, uninstall it immediately and grab the clean version referenced above.

Joseph Martin

How Long Before You Experience A Cyber Attack?

Firefox Adds Data Breach Monitoring Service

Windows 10 Adoption Continues To Grow

Government Payment Processor Exposes Data On Millions Of Americans

Google’s Emergency Location Service Improves 911 Response

Android May Be Coming To More New Cars Soon

Malware Reports Continue To Rise

SmartHome Users Aren’t Keeping Up With Security Updates

Microsoft Outlook is Rolling Out New Design Changes

Another Chrome Extension Is Stealing Passwords

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