Tag Archives: Cyber Security

Joint Strike Fighter plans stolen in Australia cyber attack

Two Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 stealth fighter jets fly to the Avalon Airshow in Victoria, Australia, March 3, 2017. Australian Defence Force/Handout via REUTERS

By Tom Westbrook

SYDNEY (Reuters) – A hacker stole non-classified information about Australia’s Joint Strike Fighter program and other military hardware last year after breaching the network of a defense contractor, the defense industry minister said on Thursday.

About 30 gigabytes of data was stolen in the cyber attack, including details of the Joint Strike Fighter warplane and P-8 Poseidon surveillance plane, according to a presentation on the hack by a government official.

“Fortunately the data that has been taken is commercial data, not military data … it’s not classified information,” Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne told Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Radio.

“I don’t know who did it.”

In a presentation to a conference in Sydney, an official from the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) intelligence agency said technical information on smart bombs, the Joint Strike Fighter, the Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft and several naval vessels was stolen.

“The compromise was extensive and extreme,” said the official, Mitchell Clarke, in an audio recording made by a ZDNet journalist and broadcast by the ABC.

Clarke said the attacker accessed the small contractor’s systems for five months in 2016, and the “methodical, slow and deliberate,” choice of target suggested a nation-state actor could be behind the raid.

Australia has agreed to buy 72 Lockheed Martin Corp Joint Strike Fighter planes.

A spokesman for the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), a government agency, said the government would not release further details about the cyber attack.

The ACSC said in a report on Monday that it responded to 734 cyber attacks on “systems of national interest” for the year ended June 30, and the defense industry was a major target.

The attack on the defense contractor was carried out by a “malicious cyber adversary”, it said.

In 2016 the agency said it responded to 1,095 cyber attacks over an 18-month period, including an intrusion from a foreign intelligence service on the weather bureau.

(Reporting by Tom Westbrook; Editing by Stephen Coates)

U.S. governors, hackers, academics team up to secure elections

FILE PHOTO: A man types into a keyboard during the Def Con hacker convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. on July 29, 2017. REUTERS/Steve Marcus

By Jim Finkle

(Reuters) – Hackers are joining forces with U.S. governors and academics in a new group aimed at preventing the manipulation of voter machines and computer systems to sway the outcome of future U.S. elections, a source familiar with the project said on Monday.

The anti-hacking coalition’s members include organizers of last summer’s Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas, the National Governors Association and the Center for Internet Security, said the source, who asked not to be identified ahead of a formal announcement due to be made on Tuesday.

The Washington-based Atlantic Council think tank and several universities are also part of the project, the source said.

The coalition will be unveiled as Def Con organizers release a report describing vulnerabilities in voting machines and related technology that were uncovered in July.

Hackers pulled apart voting machines and election computers at the three-day event, uncovering security bugs that organizers said could be exploited by people trying to manipulate election results.

People at the Las Vegas conference learned to hack voting machines within minutes or just a few hours, according to a copy of the organizers’ report due for release on Tuesday and seen ahead of time by Reuters.

Concerns about election hacking have surged in the United States since late last year, when news surfaced that top U.S. intelligence agencies had determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered computer hacks of Democratic Party emails to help Republican Donald Trump win the Nov. 8 election.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has said that Russian hackers targeted 21 U.S. state election systems in the 2016 presidential race and a small number were breached, although some states have disputed they were hacked. There was no evidence that any votes had been manipulated.

Several congressional committees are investigating and special counsel Robert Mueller is leading a separate probe into the Russia matter, including whether the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow.

Russia has denied the accusations.

As one possible counter-measure, organizers of the Def Con hacking conference have recommended that U.S. states reduce the amount of non-American parts and software used in their voting machines, according to the group’s report.

“Via a supply chain originating overseas, voting equipment and software can be compromised at the earliest of stages in manufacturing process,” the report says.

Further details on the members of the anti-hacking coalition were not immediately available.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle in Toronto; Additional reporting by David Ingram in San Francisco; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Tom Brown)

Exclusive: SEC’s corporate filing system vulnerable to denial of service attacks – memo

FILE PHOTO: The seal of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission hangs on the wall at SEC headquarters in Washington, DC, U.S. on June 24, 2011. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo

By Sarah N. Lynch and Jim Finkle

(Reuters) – The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Wall Street’s top regulator, has discovered a vulnerability in its corporate filing database that could cause the system to collapse, according to an internal document seen by Reuters.

The SEC’s September 22 memo reveals that its EDGAR database, containing financial reports from U.S. public companies and mutual funds, could be at risk of “denial of service” attacks, a type of cyber intrusion that floods a network, overwhelming it and forcing it to close.

The discovery came when the SEC was testing EDGAR’s ability to absorb monthly and annual financial filings that will be required under new rules adopted last year for the $18 trillion mutual fund industry.

The memo shows that even an unintentional error by a company, and not just hackers with malicious intentions, could bring the system down. Even the submission of a large “invalid” form could overwhelm the system’s memory.

The defect comes after the SEC’s admission last month that hackers breached the EDGAR database in 2016.

The discovery will likely add to concerns about the vulnerability of the SEC’s network and whether the agency has been adequately addressing cyber threats.

The mutual fund industry has long had concerns that market-sensitive data required in the new rules could be exploited if it got into the wrong hands.

The industry has since redoubled its calls for SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to delay the data-reporting rules, set to go into effect in June next year, until it is reassured the information will be secure.

“Clearly, the SEC should postpone implementation of its data reporting rule until the security of those systems is thoroughly tested and assessed by independent third parties,” said Mike McNamee, chief public communications officer of The Investment Company Institute (ICI), whose members manage $20 trillion worth of assets in the United States.

“We are confident Chairman Clayton will live up to his pledge that the SEC will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure the security of its systems and the data it collects.”

An SEC spokesman declined to comment.

The rules adopted last year requiring asset managers to file monthly and annual reports about their portfolio holdings were designed to protect them in the event of a market crisis by showing the SEC and investors that they have enough liquidity to cover a rush of redemptions.

During a Congressional hearing on Wednesday, Clayton testified that the agency was considering whether to delay the rules in light of the cyber concerns. He did not, however, mention anything about the denial of service attack vulnerability.

VIRTUAL VOMIT

EDGAR is the repository for corporate America, housing millions of filings ranging from quarterly earnings to statements on acquisitions.

It is a virtual treasure trove for cyber criminals who could trade on any information gleaned before it is publicly released.

In the hack disclosed last month involving EDGAR, the SEC has said it now believes the criminals may have stolen non-public data for illicit trading.

The vulnerability revealed in the September memo shows that even an invalid form could jam up EDGAR.

The system did not immediately reject the form, the memo says. Rather, “it was being validated for hours before failing due to an invalid form type.”

That conclusion could spell trouble for the SEC’s EDGAR database because it means that if hackers wanted to, they could “basically take down the whole EDGAR system” by submitting a malicious data file, said one cyber security expert with experience securing networks of financial regulators who reviewed the letter for Reuters.

“The system would consume the data and essentially throw up on itself,” the person added.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch in Washington and Jim Finkle in Toronto; Editing by Carmel Crimmins)

German companies see threefold rise in cyber attacks, study finds

A man types into a keyboard during the Def Con hacker convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. on July 29, 2017. REUTERS/Steve Marcus

BERLIN (Reuters) – The number of German companies targeted by cyber attacks in the past three years has tripled compared with the three years to 2015 and the figure is growing steadily, a study showed on Thursday.

From the 450 German companies surveyed by the audit and consulting company EY, 44 percent said they had been spied on. But Bodo Meseke, an expert at EY, said many companies did not notice attacks.

The study found that 67 percent of managers at larger enterprises – those with a turnover of more than one billion euros ($1.17 billion) – expect a significant increase in the number of attacks on their businesses.

Managers see the biggest danger coming from Russia, followed by China, and the United States.

“Recently, the threat increased rapidly again and it comes from different sides. In addition to intelligence services and (business) competitors, organized crime is increasingly becoming an adversary,” Meseke said.

A separate study by the Allensbach polling institute for Deloitte also published on Thursday showed that 27 percent of executives in medium and large companies said their businesses were exposed to IT attacks every day.

Four years ago, 12 percent suffered daily attacks.

The Allensbach study, based on interviews with politicians and companies, found that 97 percent of respondents saw a large-scale hacker attack to be “at least” or “very” probable.

Three-quarters of those questioned perceive a major cyber attack risk that would target infrastructure facilities such as electricity grids or hospitals and just as many contamination by computer viruses.

(Reporting By Riham Alkousaa, editing by David Evans)

U.S. financial regulator must beef up cyber security: inspector

A man poses inside a server room at an IT company in this June 19, 2017 illustration photo. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha/Illustration

By Lisa Lambert

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), one of Wall Street’s top regulators, must strengthen its protections against hacking, according to a report the agency’s internal inspector released on Wednesday as the financial sector reels from recent revelations of two major data breaches.

The former head of the Equifax <EFX.N> credit bureau is testifying before Congress this week about the company’s disclosure that personal information for millions of individuals had been stolen from its systems.

At the same time, the Securities and Exchange Commission – the country’s lead securities regulator – is facing lawmakers’ questions about information stolen last year from its filing system that may have been used for illicit trades.

The CFPB, which gathers sensitive information on individuals, banks, credit card companies and other financial firms as the government’s consumer finance watchdog, could suffer similar intrusions that might undermine public trust or limit its ability to carry out its mission, its inspector general said in a report dated Sept. 27 and released on Wednesday.

The agency “has not fully implemented processes, such as data loss prevention technologies, within its internal network that would enable the agency to detect and better protect against unauthorized access to and disclosure of its sensitive information,” the report said.

It also needs to run automated feeds through security checks and move away from manually tracking system security by putting alerts and continuous monitoring tools in place, the inspector general found.

In the five years since it was established, the CFPB has had to quickly erect sound information systems that can repel cyber attacks. All federal agencies are struggling to keep up with a steady rise in the number and sophistication of attempted intrusions, as criminal demand for stolen Social Security numbers and other personally identifiable information swells.

The inspector general also said the CFPB will soon implement a job succession plan to try to close possible staffing and skill gaps, hopefully clarifying what the future holds after Richard Cordray, the CFPB’s first director, leaves the agency.

Cordray, whose term expires in July, was appointed by President Barack Obama after the agency was created under the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

Many expect him to depart earlier, however, and there is no precedent for replacing him.

President Donald Trump will likely appoint a successor who cuts back on the agency’s reach, raising questions about the direction of open CFPB investigations and rulemakings.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert, editing by G Crosse)

Rising hacker threat will trigger boom in cyber crime insurance, Tryg says

People pose in front of a display showing the word 'cyber' in binary code, in this picture illustration taken in Zenica December 27, 2014. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Insurer Tryg <TRYG.CO> expects 90 percent of its corporate customers to buy cyber crime insurance within five years as the threat from hackers and viruses to crucial data and IT systems grows.

Tryg, Denmark’s biggest insurer, has sold 5,000 cyber crime insurance policies since the turn of the year when it launched a new product providing assistance in restoring data and getting systems up and running if a firm is hit by a cyber attack.

“There are no corporate clients today that don’t have insurance on their buildings or cars, but I think that within a very few years it will be just as evident that you should insure against cyber crime,” chief executive Morten Hubbe told Reuters on Wednesday.

The initial rise in demand for cyber insurance was prompted by the ransomware attack, named “Wannacry”, that infected more than 300,000 computers worldwide in May.

He estimated that around 50 percent of the firm’s corporate clients would buy such an insurance by 2020 and from that point it would only take “a couple of years” to reach 90 percent.

Tryg’s two business segments for small and medium size businesses and larger corporate customers accounts for 44 percent of the group’s total premium income.

“The biggest risk to us is that significantly more customers get hit than we believe and that it gives us a huge economic loss,” said Hubbe.

While the firm has good insight into how often a house burns down or a bicycle is stolen on average, the frequency and extent of cyber crimes is hard to predict.

Tryg will also offer extensions to the basic insurance that cover consequential losses, back-up of data and a so-called DNS box aimed at blocking web pages known to contain viruses and malware.

For the big industrial players, Tryg would look to cooperate with global reinsurers to spread the risk when big companies lose revenues in connection with cyber attacks.

The world’s biggest container shipping firm Maersk Line <MAERSKb.CO> saw a $2-300 million bill from a June cyber attack that disrupted its operations for weeks.

(Reporting by Stine Jacobsen; editing by Ken Ferris)

Yahoo says all three billion accounts hacked in 2013 data theft

Yahoo says all three billion accounts hacked in 2013 data theft

By Jonathan Stempel and Jim Finkle

(Reuters) – Yahoo on Tuesday said that all 3 billion of its accounts were hacked in a 2013 data theft, tripling its earlier estimate of the size of the largest breach in history, in a disclosure that attorneys said sharply increased the legal exposure of its new owner, Verizon Communications Inc <VZ.N>.

The news expands the likely number and claims of class action lawsuits by shareholders and Yahoo account holders, they said. Yahoo, the early face of the internet for many in the world, already faced at least 41 consumer class-action lawsuits in U.S. federal and state courts, according to company securities filing in May.

John Yanchunis, a lawyer representing some of the affected Yahoo users, said a federal judge who allowed the case to go forward still had asked for more information to justify his clients’ claims.

“I think we have those facts now,” he said. “It’s really mind-numbing when you think about it.”

Yahoo said last December that data from more than 1 billion accounts was compromised in 2013, the largest of a series of thefts that forced Yahoo to cut the price of its assets in a sale to Verizon.

Yahoo on Tuesday said “recently obtained new intelligence” showed all user accounts had been affected. The company said the investigation indicated that the stolen information did not include passwords in clear text, payment card data, or bank account information.

But the information was protected with outdated, easy-to-crack encryption, according to academic experts. It also included security questions and backup email addresses, which could make it easier to break into other accounts held by the users.

Many Yahoo users have multiple accounts, so far fewer than 3 billion were affected, but the theft ranks as the largest to date, and a costly one for the internet pioneer.

Verizon in February lowered its original offer by $350 million for Yahoo assets in the wake of two massive cyber attacks at the internet company.

Some lawyers asked whether Verizon would look for a new opportunity to address the price.

“This is a bombshell,” said Mark Molumphy, lead counsel in a shareholder derivative lawsuit against Yahoo’s former leaders over disclosures about the hacks.

Verizon did not respond to a request for comment about any possible lawsuit over the deal.

Verizon, the likely main target of legal actions, also could be challenged as it launches a new brand, Oath, to link its Yahoo, AOL and Huffington Post internet properties.

In August in the separate lawsuit brought by Yahoo’s users, U.S. Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, ruled Yahoo must face nationwide litigation brought on behalf of owners accounts who said their personal information was compromised in the three breaches. Yanchunis, the lawyer for the users, said his team planned to use the new information later this month to expanding its allegations.

Also on Tuesday, Senator John Thune, chairman of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, said he plans to hold a hearing later this month over massive data breaches at Equifax Inc <EFX.N> and Yahoo. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission already had been probing Yahoo over the hacks.

The closing of the Verizon deal, which was first announced in July, had been delayed as the companies assessed the fallout from two data breaches that Yahoo disclosed last year. The company paid $4.48 billion for Yahoo’s core business.

A Yahoo official emphasized Tuesday that the 3 billion figure included many accounts that were opened but that were never, or only briefly, used.

The company said it was sending email notifications to additional affected user accounts.

The new revelation follows months of scrutiny by Yahoo, Verizon, cybersecurity firms and law enforcement that failed to identify the full scope of the 2013 hack.

The investigation underscores how difficult it was for companies to get ahead of hackers, even when they know their networks had been compromised, said David Kennedy, chief executive of cybersecurity firm TrustedSEC LLC.

Companies often do not have systems in place to gather up and store all the network activity that investigators could use to follow the hackers’ tracks.

“This is a real wake up call,” Kennedy said. “In most guesses, it is just guessing what they had access to.”

(Reporting by Munsif Vengattil, Jim Finkle, Jim Christie, Jon Stempel, and David Shepardson; writing by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Andrew Hay and Lisa Shumaker)

Former Equifax chief will face questions from U.S. Congress over hack

FILE PHOTO: Credit reporting company Equifax Inc. corporate offices are pictured in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Tami Chappell/File Photo

By John McCrank and David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers are due to question the former head of Equifax Inc <EFX.N> at a Tuesday hearing that could shed light on how hackers accessed the personal data of more than 140 million consumers.

Richard Smith retired last week but the 57-year-old executive will answer for the breach that the credit bureau acknowledged in early September.

Late Monday, Equifax said an independent review had boosted the number of potentially affected U.S. consumers by 2.5 million to 145.5 million.

In March, the U.S. Homeland Security Department alerted Equifax to an online gap in security but the company did nothing, said Smith.

“The vulnerability remained in an Equifax web application much longer than it should have,” Smith said in remarks prepared for delivery on Tuesday. “I am here today to apologize to the American people myself.”

Smith will face the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday but there will be three more such hearings this week.

Equifax keeps a trove of consumer data for banks and other creditors who want to know whether a customer is likely to default.

The cyber-hack has been a calamity for Equifax which has lost roughly a quarter of its stock market value and seen several top executives step down alongside Smith.

Smith’s replacement, Paulino do Rego Barros Jr., has also apologized for the hack and said the company will help customers freeze their credit records and monitor any misuse.

There has been a public outcry about the breech but no more than 3.0 percent of consumers have frozen their credit reports, according to research firm Gartner, Inc.

Smith said hackers tapped sensitive information between mid-May and late-July.

Security personnel noticed suspicious activity on July 29 and disabled web application a day later, ending the hacking, Smith said. He said he was alerted the following day, but was not aware of the scope of the stolen data.

On Aug. 2, the company alerted the FBI and retained a law firm and consulting firm to provide advice. Smith notified the board’s lead director on Aug. 22.

(Patrick Rucker contributed from Washington; editing by Clive McKeef.)

Security firm finds some Macs vulnerable to ‘firmware’ attacks

FILE PHOTO: Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks under a graphic of the new MacBook Pro during an Apple media event in Cupertino, California, U.S. October 27, 2016. REUTERS/Beck Diefenbach

By Stephen Nellis

(Reuters) – Since 2015, Apple Inc <AAPL.O> has tried to protect its Mac line of computers from a form of hacking that is extremely hard to detect, but it has not been entirely successful in getting the fixes to its customers, according to research released on Friday by Duo Security.

Duo examined what is known as firmware in the Mac computers. Firmware is an in-built kind of software that is even more basic than an operating system like Microsoft Windows or macOS.

When a computer is first powered on — before the operating system has even booted up — firmware checks to make sure that basic components like a hard disk and processor are present and tells them what to do. That makes malicious code hiding in it hard to spot.

In most cases, firmware is a hassle to update with the latest security patches. Updates have to be carried out separately from the operating system updates that are more commonplace.

In 2015, Apple started bundling firmware updates along with operating system updates for Mac machines in an effort to ensure firmware on them stayed up to date.

But Duo surveyed 73,000 Mac computers operating in the real world and found that 4.2 percent of them were not running the firmware they should have been based on their operating system. In some models – such as the 21.5-inch iMac released in late 2015 – 43 percent of machines had out-of-date firmware.

That left many Macs open to hacks like the “Thunderstrike” attack, where hackers can control a Mac after plugging an Ethernet adapter into the machine’s so-called thunderbolt port.

Paradoxically, it was only possible to find the potentially vulnerable machines because Apple is the only computer maker that has sought to make firmware updates part of its regular software updates, making it both more trackable and the best in the industry for firmware updates, Rich Smith, director of research and development at Duo, told Reuters in an interview.

Duo said that it had informed Apple of its findings before making them public on Friday. In a statement, Apple said it was aware of the issue and is moving to address it.

“Apple continues to work diligently in the area of firmware security, and we’re always exploring ways to make our systems even more secure,” the company said in a statement. “In order to provide a safer and more secure experience in this area, macOS High Sierra automatically validates Mac firmware weekly.”

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Equifax apologizes as U.S. watchdog calls for more oversight

FILE PHOTO: Credit reporting company Equifax Inc. corporate offices are pictured in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Tami Chappell/File Photo

By John McCrank

(Reuters) – Equifax Inc promised to make it easier for consumers to control access to their credit records in the wake of the company’s massive breach after the top U.S. consumer financial watchdog called on the industry to introduce such a system.

Equifax’s interim chief executive officer, Paulino do Rego Barros Jr., vowed to introduce a free service by Jan. 31 that will let consumers control access to their own credit records.

Barros, who was named interim CEO on Tuesday as Richard Smith stepped down from the post amid mounting criticism over the handling of the cyber attack, also apologized for providing inadequate support to consumers seeking information after the breach was disclosed on Sept. 7. He promised to add call-center representatives and bolster a breach-response website.

“I have heard the frustration and fear. I know we have to do a better job of helping you,” Barros said in a statement published in The Wall Street Journal.

Equifax announced the free credit freeze service after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) director, Richard Cordray, told CNBC earlier in the day that the agency would beef up oversight of Equifax and its rivals.

“The old days of just doing what they want and being subject to lawsuits now and then are over,” Cordray said.

He also called for implementing a scheme of preventive credit monitoring.

“They are going to have to accept that. They are going to have to welcome it. They are going to have to be very forthcoming,” Cordray said.

The Equifax hack compromised sensitive data of up to 143 million Americans and prompted investigations by lawmakers and regulators, including the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS), which issued a subpoena to Equifax demanding more information about the breach.

Federal laws give the CFPB the power to supervise and examine large credit-reporting firms to ensure the quality of information they provide. In January, the CFPB fined TransUnion and Equifax $5.5 million in total for deceiving customers about the usefulness and cost of their credit scores.

Cordray called for expanded powers to cover data security to prevent breaches and suggested placing monitors inside credit reporting firms, borrowing a tactic from the regulatory regime for banks.

The CFPB is working with the Federal Trade Commission and New York’s DFS on a new regulatory framework, Cordray said. He also called for Congress to tighten oversight of the industry.

TransUnion said in a statement that it had “long been subject to regulatory oversight from state and federal regulators including the CFPB.”

Experian did not respond to requests for comment.

(Reporting by John McCrank in New York; Additional reporting by Lisa Lambert in Washington and Jim Finkle in Toronto; Writing by Michelle Price; Editing by Tom Brown and Leslie Adler)