Cybercrime – SWITCH Security-Blog

The May/June 2021 issue of our SWITCH Security Report is available!

Dear Reader!

A new issue of our bi-monthly SWITCH Security Report is available!

The topics covered in this report are:

Back and forth in the pipeline: hacking and rehacking the US fuel firm Colonial Pipeline with Ransomware as a Service
Meat and greed – the world’s largest meat processing company pays a hefty USD 11 million ransom after a ransomware attack
When Android devices catch the flu: FluBot, the banking trojan, spreads to Android devices
Russian cyber spies attack government and NGO networks

The Security Report is available in both English and German.

»» Download the English report. »» Download the German report.

The March/April 2021 issue of our SWITCH Security Report is available!

Dear Reader!

A new issue of our bi-monthly SWITCH Security Report is available!

The topics covered in this report are:

Exploit on Exchange – vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange servers trigger a red alert
Learning by doing – data leaks discovered in the Swiss Army’s cyber training school
Rocky start(up) at Verkada – 150,000 surveillance cameras hacked
Refunds from the remorseful Ziggy ransomware gang
Data scraping on Facebook and LinkedIn: big data brings big damage

The Security Report is available in both English and German.

»» Download the English report. »» Download the German report.

The January/February 2021 issue of our SWITCH Security Report is available!

Dear Reader!

A new issue of our bi-monthly SWITCH Security Report is available!

The topics covered in this report are:

Dependency confusion – when trust is too good to be true
Water hacking – not a new trendy sport, but a serious threat
Emotet: the king is dead – let there be no successor!
Rumours of its death are greatly exaggerated: how phishing mailers trick cutting-edge security filters with good old Morse code

The Security Report is available in both English and German.

»» Download the English report. »» Download the German report.

The November/December 2020 issue of our SWITCH Security Report is available!

Dear Reader!

A new issue of our bi-monthly SWITCH Security Report is available!

The topics covered in this report are:

Choose your team carefully – hackers use fake MS Teams updates to attack networks, especially those of educational institutions
Audacious coronavirus relief phishing delivers an extra malware ‘bonus’ on request and creates a challenge for BEC
Stopping the attempt to stop online hate speech?
Close the gates before it’s too late: what Sneakers and the Internet of Things have in common

The Security Report is available in both English and German.

»» Download the English report. »» Download the German report.

The September/October 2020 issue of our SWITCH Security Report is available!

Dear Reader!

A new issue of our bi-monthly SWITCH Security Report is available!

The topics covered in this report are:

Ransomware – the new normal of digital extortion
A murky supply chain – how hackers profited from Cumulus data
Smisherman’s Friends – a new wave of smishing attacks is washing over Europe and Switzerland

The Security Report is available in both English and German.

»» Download the English report. »» Download the German report.

The July/August 2020 issue of our SWITCH Security Report is available!

Dear Reader!

A new issue of our bi-monthly SWITCH Security Report is available!

The topics covered in this report are:

Aimless navigation – Garmin scrambling to regain its bearings after hacking incident
Hacking with a heavy hand: German intelligence is making a push to install hardware directly with internet providers and reroute internet traffic
A protection shield minus the protection – ECJ declares Privacy Shield unlawful
A night(mare) of celebrities – The ‘biggest Twitter hack of all times’ raises questions about the security of the network

The Security Report is available in both English and German.

»» Download the English report. »» Download the German report.

The Mai/June 2020 issue of our SWITCH Security Report is available!

Dear Reader!

A new issue of our bi-monthly SWITCH Security Report is available!

The topics covered in this report are:

The coronavirus: a blessing for some, a curse for others – where is IT security at with contactless payment?
You’ve got mail (and malware too) – serious security gap in Apple’s Mail app on iPads and iPhones now closed
Everything must go – ‘Shade’ hackers ‘shut down’ and publish hundreds of thousands of decryption keys
Swiss users targeted by cybercriminals
Elite targets – ETH supercomputers Euler and Leonhard (and more) hacked

The Security Report is available in both English and German.

»» Download the English report. »» Download the German report.

The March/April 2020 issue of our SWITCH Security Report is available!

Dear Reader!

A new issue of our bi-monthly SWITCH Security Report is available!

The topics covered in this report are:

The coronavirus has company – a pandemic of computer viruses
The ten most important rules for working securely from home
Online meetings – how secure are Cisco Webex and Zoom?
For real? Ransomware gangs develop a ‘code of honour’ in the coronavirus pandemic

The Security Report is available in both English and German.

»» Download the English report. »» Download the German report.

The Jan/Feb 2020 issue of our SWITCH Security Report is available!

Dear Reader!

A new issue of our bi-monthly SWITCH Security Report is available!

The topics covered in this report are:

When backdoors become trapdoors: ‘Crypto Leaks’ hits Switzerland, Crypto Valley – and the entire ecosystem
I, Robot, ZigBee and IoT
Sure, it’s secure! Are you sure?
A different kind of virus: China launches its Close Contact Detector app for smartphones

The Security Report is available in both English and German.

»» Download the English report. »» Download the German report.

A new issue of our SWITCH Security Report is available!

Dear Reader!

A new issue of our bi-monthly SWITCH Security Report is available!

The topics covered in this report are:

Plenty of tears as WannaCry encrypts unpatched systems
WannaCry’s siblings from the NSA toolbox
Keyloggers fitted as standard – HP notebooks snooping on users
Hakuna Metadata – the browsing goldmine
Unboxed and hacked – new Samsung Galaxy S8 iris scanner

The Security Report is available in both English and German.

»» Download the english report. »» Download the german report.

Did you miss our previous Security Report? Click here to go to the archive.

Get ready for “cybercrime as a service”!

In our new SWITCH Story our security expert Serge Droz discusses cybercrime in 2015.

“Various reports and studies have shown that .ch is among the most secure top-level domains in the world. […] SWITCH wants to step up its activities to combat the misuse of domains.”

“In general, however, we can say that cybercriminals are driven by money, and they’ll keep seeking out new strategies to get their hands on it. They won’t stop taking us by surprise.”

Read the full story here!

CSIRTs – Sharing to Win

Einbrüche in Datenbanken, gestohlene persönliche Daten, manipulierte Transaktionen im E-Banking, Eingriffe von staatlichen Akteuren in die Kommunikation im Internet und Angriffe auf die Verfügbarkeit von Diensten: Fast täglich wird mittlerweile über diese Sicherheitsvorfälle in den Medien berichtet.

Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) sind mit die Ersten, die auf solche Vorfälle reagieren und versuchen, Gegenmassnahmen zu treffen. Im Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) sind weltweit rund 240 dieser Teams aus der Industrie, von Regierungen und Akademischen Institutionen zusammengeschlossen, das SWITCH-CERT ist eines davon.

Continue reading “CSIRTs – Sharing to Win”

IT-Security-Links #15

Pwn2Own: The results from the annual Pwn2Own hacking contest held at the CanSecWest Security conference in Vancouver are in.
Evernote hacked: The company is now officially a member of the recently attacked. Hackers gained access to user details including email addresses, usernames and encrypted passwords (with salt). Evernote wisely decided to carry out a password reset for all users. But as an Evernote user you should check if you use the same userid and password elsewhere.
You don’t worry about computer viruses because you’re using a Mac? Then I recommend this Network World article about Java and Flash vulnerabilities.
How to install malware on your system with a signed JAR file? A lesson about certificate revocation lists.

German:

Das SWITCH-CERT war diese Woche im Schweizer Fernsehen: Rundschau vom 6. März auf SRF (Bericht ab 20’40”)
Unser monatlich erscheinender SWITCH-CERT Security- und Privacy-Report (PDF) ist neu in der Ausgabe Februar 2013 verfügbar!
Am 25.3. gibt es abends einen SWITCH-CERT Vortrag zum Thema IPv6-Security und -Hacking in Zürich. Anmeldung hier.

IT-Security-Links #8

‘Red October’ is the Security buzzword this week. Kaspersky published a report about a large scale cyber-espionage network on monday. And they called it ‘Red October’ (after famous novel ‘The Hunt For The Red October’).
Interesting reading from the Citizen Lab Internet research group about the downside of network security and optimization products: “Planet Blue Coat: Mapping Global Censorship and Surveillance Tools“. And a corresponding article in the New York Times.
“Cybercrime and the Underground Market” is a quite detailed article about Cyber-attacks, malware, identity theft, phishing and spam – in the Infosec-Institute Blog by Pierluigi Paganini.
Also after the recent Java patch: A new exploit suggests to keep Java disabled.

German:

“Hacking macht Spass.” – Die NZZ berichtet über die israelische Hackerin Keren Elazari.
Staatstrojaner 2.0: netzpolitik.org und heise.de berichten über die neuesten Gerüchte.