Tag Archive for: increased

Biden’s National Security Strategy Reinforces Tech Decoupling and Increased Regulatory Focus

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November 18, 2022

Originally published in The Hill

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The recently released National Security Strategy sets forth the Biden administration’s approach to a changing world at an inflection point providing a roadmap for the administration and for Congress. The administration’s national security priorities largely echo those of past administrations, but they diverge with their focus on a “modern industrial and innovation strategy” that promises deep use of industrial and economic tools to create a bulwark against autocracies like Russia and China. The resulting message is clear: The administration’s national security goals are inherently tied to, and will necessarily impact, a broad swath of American companies.

Five areas of the strategy stand-out for their potential impact on companies.

First, increased investment scrutiny will ensure the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), with its expansive authority to review foreign investments, continues to be a prominent national security tool. The strategy also contemplates new outbound investment restrictions, which have been gaining congressional momentum as well. Should “reverse-CFIUS” come into effect, companies will need to transform their outbound investment strategies, planning for increased investment timelines, heightened scrutiny for investments in certain sectors and in certain countries, and potentially restrictions on certain outbound investments deemed to pose national security risk. Further, increased export controls will require companies to reinforce compliance programs and reevaluate offshoring operations. As the Commerce Department’s recent semiconductor restrictions demonstrate, new regulations can quickly reverberate across an industry, in some cases having a material impact.

Second, foreign policy and domestic policy lines blur with the focus on making strategic public investments in strategic sectors and supply chains, especially critical and emerging technologies. New laws, including the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, illustrate the administration’s commitment — and congressional support —…

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Botnets, Trojans, DDoS From Ukraine and Russia Have Increased Since Invasion

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Activity from IP addresses in Ukraine and Russia has shown a substantial spike in malware, helping botnets spread since February 2022.

The data comes from security researchers at Top10VPN, who shared a report about the findings with Infosecurity ahead of publication.

In particular, Trojan malware with more significant increases in activity from Ukraine and Russia IP addresses since February 2022 included Citadel Trojan, CoreBOT Trojan, Wauchos Trojan and Nivdort Trojan.

“Some of the biggest sustained increases in malware activity since the war began were in Ukraine [and] have related to trojans, several of which can be used to create botnets,” wrote Simon Migliano, head of research at Top10VPN.

“This suggests that bad actors may have been targeting Ukraine, where cybersecurity has naturally been a lower priority for much of the population, in order to expand their botnets.”

Further, the report suggested an increase in the Avalanche malware families using Russian and Ukraine IP addresses despite the shutdown of the crime syndicate in 2016. In this regard, Top10VPN observed individual daily surges of as much as 1500% compared to before February.

“Despite the dismantling of major botnets Avalanche and Andromeda/Gamarue several years ago, some of the key malware families that were hosted on the now-defunct networks have been particularly resurgent in Ukraine and Russia in recent months,” Migliano added.

“While this is not to suggest that these networks have somehow been resurrected, it’s concerning to observe increases in the threat posed by this malware localized to countries directly involved in a major conflict.”

The report also noted that distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks originating from Ukraine increased 363% in March compared to the average before February.

“These distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks became relentless once Russia’s military invaded Ukraine on February 24, as the Kremlin sought to weaken its enemy by knocking offline critical networked infrastructure,” Migliano explained.

Further, while the most significant increases in malware activity have come from Ukraine IP addresses, Top10VPN noted that there have…

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Phishing Emails Increased by 88% Month Over Month, Here’s Why That Should Worry You / Digital Information World

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The variety of malicious activities that can result in you losing private data or access to online accounts has widened over the years, and VadeSecure just released a report that sheds some light on the true extent of these attacks. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that email continues to be the most popular mechanism for delivering malware or initiating any other kind of cyber attack based on this research.

While emails containing malware were declining, they have increased by 29% month over month. This has resulted in 22.4 million malware containing emails being sent out over the course of a single month. Meanwhile, phishing attacks conducted through emails have increased by a massive 88% month over month. That is the highest increase in phishing emails that has been seen thus far, and it indicates that the problem might get worse over the next few months.

Many types of malware that were on the decline after 2021 have seen a huge resurgence with all things having been considered and taken into account. For example, a malware known as Emotet that was thought to be neutralized back in 2021 has seen a 44% increase in attack volume with these attacks mainly focusing on users on the European mainland.

In spite of the fact that this is the case, Emotet attacks continue to decline in North America which highlights the region specific nature of such attacks. In India, over 9,000 users were targeted by emails that contained spyware. These emails disguised themselves as tax communiqués because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up making users more likely to click on any links they contain and fill out information without questioning it.

Massive corporations like Maersk are being frequently impersonated by threat actors, with over 8,00 New Zealand based users being impacted by attacks that used Maersk’s name in the email subject line. Users need to remain on guard lest the problem continues to spiral out of control.

Read next: This Research Reveals the Massive Problem of Password Fatigue

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Cyberattacks Increased by 60% In Tourism Sector This Year

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The global average number of attacks against organisations in the tourism and leisure sector has increased by 60 per cent this year compared to the first half of June 2021, according to Check Point Research’s Threat Intelligence Report.

Considering that the pandemic has brought the country to a standstill, not allowing people to travel, many hackers and cybercriminals are taking advantage of these people who are eager to travel again, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.

The recent report by Check Point Research also revealed that the global average number of weekly attacks against travel and leisure organisations increased by 60 per cent in June 2022 compared to the first half of June 2021.

In addition, according to a report provided by Portugal’s Diário de Notícias, despite airport delays and growing congestion, international travel is expected to increase by 11 percent, which means it will reach pre-pandemic levels.

“For many of us, this may be the first time we have travelled abroad since the pandemic, and as such, there may be certain elements of our travel routines that we may have forgotten, including our cybersecurity hygiene habits, which is music to the ears of opportunistic hackers looking to take advantage of relaxed attitudes and unprotected devices,” Rui Duro, Country Manager at Check Point Software Technologies in Portugal pointed out in this regard.

Sometimes computer attacks can go unnoticed. However, businesses are among the most vulnerable throughout the year.

In this case, it should also be mentioned the ransomware attack on the Kaseya network on July 4, 2021, by the Russian-speaking criminal group REvil, affected over 1000 organisations worldwide.

Russian ransomware threat group Revil launched this attack against technology provider Kaseya by compromising and distributing malware through Kaseya’s remote VSA software and patch management tool. REvil initially requested $70 million but later lowered it to $50 million – for a universal decryptor, as well as rewards for victims of individual organisations from $50,000 to $5 million, based on the size of the organisation.

However, Check Point highlighted some tips that should be taken care of for summer…

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