CyberWire Daily - The CyberWire 12.21.15

Episode Date: December 21, 2015

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I'm Dave Bittner in Baltimore with your CyberWire summary for Monday, December 21, 2015. Anonymous looks at Dash and sees Turkey. The hacktivist collective claims responsibility for a large distributed denial-of-service attack on Turkish servers. Anonymous's declared motive is Turkey's alleged, according to Anonymous, support for ISIS. NATO assesses ISIS-Daesh threats to its networks as low, but other challenges are tougher. Most concerns internationally focus on Daesh online recruitment and inspiration, with secondary worries about ISIS' use of the Internet for command and control of terrorist attacks against soft targets. The United Nations Security Council promises a move against ISIS in cyberspace,

and U.S. authorities work on their own information operations responses to Daesh's online presence. For what ISIS opponents are up against in this regard, see the recent New York Times piece on how the group attracts recruits. The Wall Street Journal reports that Iran gained access to the controls of a small downstate New York dam in 2013. In itself not serious, the incursion was seen as an alarming bellwether. Cyber-rioting in the caucuses flares as Armenian hackers release sensitive information taken

from the Azerbaijani ministerial servers. The now-patched Juniper firewall's vulnerability is seen as having national security implications. It's also regarded as an object lesson in the risks of installing backdoors. The FBI is said to be investigating. A now-fired staffer in Senator Sanders' U.S. presidential campaign improperly accessed rival Clinton campaign data on the Democratic National Committee servers. The DNC had barred Sanders from its resources, but over the weekend the Sanders team threatened to sue the DNC,

and access was restored before Saturday night's televised Democratic debate. Xbox and PlayStation may be in the crossfire of a skid civil war between Lizard Squad and Phantom Squad adherents. President Obama signed cybersecurity legislation over the weekend. Observers' reactions seem to turn upon whether they prefer more liability protection as opposed to more privacy guarantees. Do you know the status of your compliance controls right now? Like, right now. We know that real-time visibility is critical for security,

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Thank you. worldwide. ThreatLocker is a full suite of solutions designed to give you total control, stopping unauthorized applications, securing sensitive data, and ensuring your organization runs smoothly and securely. Visit ThreatLocker.com today to see how a default deny approach can keep your company safe and compliant. Joining me is John Petrick, editor of the Cyber Wire. John, ransomware appears regularly in our news, and it seems to be getting more sophisticated. So let's start at the beginning. What is ransomware and how do I protect myself from it? Ransomware is a kind of malware and it can end up on your system in the same way that any other kind of malware might end up there. You might be phished. You might click on a vicious link in some email you receive. You might visit a contaminated website in a waterhole attack. But ransomware is a particular kind of malware that what it does is it encrypts

your files. So all of your documents, all of your emails, all your family photographs, whatever you've got on your device can be encrypted. And as long as they're encrypted and you don't have the key and you won't have the key because the criminals have got the key, you're not going to be able to use or do anything with those files. They become useless to you. What they're going to do is they're going to try to encrypt your files, and they're going to send you a ransom message, that if you pay me $100, $200, however much they're asking, and the evidence seems to be that the asks are not much higher than that in most retail hacking.

If you pay them their ransom, they promise to send you the key. Now, suppose I have backups. Is that going to protect me from ransomware? Can I restore the files that I've backed up somewhere? Or does the ransomware root those out and encrypt those as well? No. Backing up your files is the best single protection you can take against ransomware. If you've got your files well and completely backed up,

you're probably going to be safe from the effects of ransomware. It's going to be a nuisance, but you're not going to lose your data. And do the ransomers have overall integrity? If I pay the ransom in general, do you get your files back? You know, that's a funny thing. They appear to. It's, you know, we hesitate to give any credit to any criminal. It's, you know, we hesitate to give any credit to any criminal,

but there are even some figures in law enforcement who have suggested that if you're hit with ransomware, the best thing you could do is pay the ransom. That's a controversial position, but the fact that it's been said by some people in the FBI and elsewhere indicates that it's not exactly a crazy solution. John Petrick, editor of the Cyber Wire. Thanks for joining us. We'll talk again soon. And now a message from Black Cloak. Did you know the easiest way for cyber criminals to bypass your company's defenses is by targeting your executives and their families at home. Black Cloak's award-winning digital executive protection

platform secures their personal devices, home networks, and connected lives. Because when executives are compromised at home, your company is at risk. In fact, over one-third of new members discover they've already been breached. Protect your executives and their families 24-7, 365, with Black Cloak. Learn more at blackcloak.io. And that's The Cyber Wire. We are proudly produced in Maryland by our talented team of editors and producers. I'm Dave Bittner. Thanks for listening. Your business needs AI solutions that are not only ambitious, but also practical and adaptable. That's where Domo's AI and data products platform comes in.

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