Cyware Weekly Threat Intelligence - April 01–05

Weekly Threat Briefing • Apr 5, 2019
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Weekly Threat Briefing • Apr 5, 2019
The Good
We’re back with the most interesting threat intel of the week. Before we get into cybersecurity incidents and new threats, let’s first acknowledge all the positive events that happened over the past week. DHS has announced that it is planning to roll out its new risk scoring algorithm ‘AWARE’ in October 2019. GSA has expanded its cybersecurity service offerings to help federals agencies and state governments protect their valuable data. Meanwhile, Singapore has introduced a bill that aims at preventing the spread of fake news on online platforms.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is planning to roll out its new risk scoring algorithm ‘Agency-Wide Adaptive Risk Enumeration’ (AWARE) in October 2019. AWARE will help agencies prioritize mitigation activities and improve their basic cybersecurity hygiene.
Singapore has set up a committee to review data security practices in the public sector. However, the government remains firm on its decision to exclude such organizations from Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA)
The General Services Administration (GSA) has expanded its cybersecurity service offerings to help federal agencies and state governments to protect their valuable data. This will help agencies secure high-value assets on mission-critical systems.
Singapore has introduced a bill ‘Protection From Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Bill’ that aims at preventing the spread of fake news in online platforms. The bill promises to punish disseminators of fake news, with fines of up to SG$100,000 or imprisonment of up to 10 years, or both.
The Australian government's 2019-20 Budget provides funding for the country’s ‘cyber uplift’ which includes the creation of ‘cyber sprint teams’ under the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) as well as a Cyber Security Response Fund.
The Bad
Over the past week, several data breaches and massive cyber attacks have come to light. Toyota suffered a data breach compromising sales information of almost 3.1 million customers. Albany, the capital of the US state of New York was hit by a ransomware attack. Last but not least, Facebook has been hit by a data breach caused by third-party companies that exposed almost 540 million user records.
Hackers breached Toyota’s IT systems and gained unauthorized access to servers that contained sales information of almost 3.1 million customers. The data belonged to several sales subsidiaries such as Toyota Tokyo Sales Holdings, Tokyo Tokyo Motor, Tokyo Toyopet, Toyota Tokyo Corolla, Nets Toyota Tokyo, Lexus Koishikawa Sales, Jamil Shoji (Lexus Nerima), and Toyota West Tokyo Corolla.
Albany, the capital of the US state of New York was hit by a ransomware attack. The ransomware attack infected the network of the City of Albany crippling some of the City Court Services such as birth certificates, death certificates, or marriage certificates. The ransomware attack also impacted computers in the patrol cars which had incident and accident reports.
Georgia Tech suffered a data breach exposing personal information of over 1.3 million individuals after a third-party gained unauthorized access to its web application. The impacted individuals include some current and former faculty, students, staff, and student applications.
Bithumb cryptocurrency exchange platform suffered a cyber attack compromising 3 million EOS worth $13.4 million and 20 million Ripple coins (XRP) worth $6 million. An internal inspection revealed that the incident is an ‘accident involving insiders’.
Attackers planted malicious software on certain Earl Enterprises’ restaurants’ POS systems, as a result of which payment card details**** of guests who dined at Earl Enterprises’ restaurants were compromised. The impacted restaurants include Buca di Beppo, Earl of Sandwich, Planet Hollywood, Chicken Guy!, Mixology and Tequila Taqueria.
A security researcher detected an unprotected database belonging to the Department of Medical, Health and Family Welfare of a state in northern India that exposed medical records of almost 12.5 million pregnant women who underwent an ultrasound scan, genetic testing, or sex determination testing of their unborn child.
Researchers detected a phishing page that was hosted on the Nigerian National Assembly (NASS) site for almost two weeks. This phishing page was found stealing DHL account credentials. The fake DHL page was shoddily designed and displayed a “Norton Secured” picture next to the DHL logo.
A researcher detected almost 13,500 unprotected iSCSI storage clusters that could allow attackers to plant ransomware on companies’ networks, steal sensitive data stored on the devices, or drop backdoors inside backup archives.
Arizona Beverages was hit by a ransomware attack infecting almost 200 servers and computers that were connected to the network. The ransomware attack led to shutting down its sales operations for almost two weeks. The company’s back-end servers were running an outdated Windows operating systems, therefore, they were unable to restore its systems and retrieve the data for days.
Researchers uncovered two misconfigured Amazon cloud servers belonging to third-party companies ‘Cultura Colectiva’ and ‘At the Pool game’ that contained over 540 million Facebook user records. The exposed user records include account names, Facebook IDs, comments, likes, list of Facebook friends, photos, groups, checkins, and user preferences like movies, music, books, and interests.
Several HR companies in China have exposed over 590 million resumes in the past 3 months due to unprotected databases. This indicates that Chinese HR firms are not taking the security of their servers seriously. While some of these misconfigured databases have been secured, there are few that are still leaking data on the internet.
Researchers observed tax-themed phishing campaigns in the US that either attempts to drop malware, downloaders, or banking trojan onto victim’s systems or lure victims into submitting their financial information.
New Threats
Several vulnerabilities and malware strains emerged over the past week. A security researcher uncovered new ransomware dubbed ‘vxCrypter’ that deletes duplicate files apart from encrypting files in an infected computer. Researchers spotted a new malware dubbed ‘Xwo’ which is capable of scanning for credentials and exposed services. Meanwhile, Aite Group tested 30 Android financial apps and found several vulnerabilities in the apps.