Tag Archive for: joining

Finland sees fourfold spike in ransomware attacks since joining NATO, senior cyber official says

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Ransomware attacks targeting Finnish organizations have increased four-fold since the Nordic country began the process of joining NATO last year, according to a senior official.

In an interview with Recorded Future News on Thursday, Sauli Pahlman, the deputy director general for Finland’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), cautioned that “correlation doesn’t equal causality,” but said he believed the surge in cases was linked to geopolitics.

Finland, which had historically declared itself to be a non-aligned country – in part due to troubled relations with Russia, with whom it shares a 830-mile border – applied to join NATO following the invasion of Ukraine.

In June, the country expelled nine diplomats from the Russian embassy in Helsinki and accused them of undertaking intelligence missions in contravention of the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations.

The expulsion of alleged Russian intelligence officers throughout Europe prompted the head of Finnish Security Intelligence Service (SUPO) to warn last year that Russia would “turn to the cyber environment” for espionage due to challenges impacting its human intelligence work.

At the time, SUPO’s director Antti Pelttari said that the agency considered it “unlikely that any cyberattack will paralyze critical infrastructure [in Finland] in the near future.”

NCSC’s Pahlman echoed this position, telling Recorded Future News he didn’t “consider it very likely that we [will] really see a cyber incident in Finland that really closes down something that’s critical for society — food, electricity, water — on a wide scale.”

But the NCSC still issued a public alert last September, elevating the cyber threat level to encourage organizations and the public to be aware of the potential for disruptive incidents. The threat level “continues to be elevated as we speak, the situation hasn’t changed,” said Pahlman.

The number of cyber incidents which Pahlman said were clearly perpetrated by state-sponsored actors “has not, at least up to today, increased in a way that I could say that there has really been a step-up. [But] what we can certainly say is that the ransomware cases — which tend to have much…

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[Editorial] There Is No Privacy Without Stronger Security — That’s Why We’re Joining Forces With the Security Community To Keep You Safe

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▲ Seungwon Shin,1 VP and Head of Security Team at Mobile eXperience Business, Samsung Electronics

Dangerous Times

It’s hard to imagine a better time for cyber-criminals. The conditions are ideal right now for anyone with ill intentions and technical know-how.

 

A rise in remote workers means more reliance on unsecure public Wi-Fi. New frontiers like the blockchain leave confused customers ripe for scams. Cyber-attacks are on the rise. And not just where you expect them. Recent wars have started with digital attacks on critical infrastructure, months before physical incursion.

 

All this when we are putting more of our lives into our smartphones. They are our wallets, our house keys and our IDs. A single intrusion can be devastating, so now more than ever we need our devices to be secure. Let’s examine what truly makes a device safe — so that you can go out into the world and live freely, without worrying about your data getting into the wrong hands.

 

 

What Security Is… and What It Isn’t

By now you’re likely thinking you’re fine, because you’re sensible. But there are many common misconceptions about security. You don’t let apps share your name, email, or habits. You even disable app tracking permissions. Great, but that doesn’t mean your data’s safe. Please don’t confuse privacy for security. Closing your curtains will do no good if someone kicks your door down. You think you have chosen a safe mobile ecosystem, one akin to a walled garden. But hackers adapt to their targets. Unsecure Wi-Fi, social engineering scams — these are threats regardless of what ecosystem you use.

 

You don’t open suspicious attachments. Great, but there are ‘zero-click’ attacks, which compromise a device without user interaction. That happened with Pegasus, spyware that exploited a flaw in a popular messaging system. All it took was for users to receive a message, and the hackers got in. Feeling safer than you are leads to complacency — that’s what cyber-criminals are counting on.

 

It’s unsettling to think that there are so many threats and no safe harbor. But that’s what inspires our work on Samsung…

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Unknown, uninvited strangers joining online classrooms

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He said “robust and comprehensive steps” should be taken to protect children’s personal information.

Susan McLean, a leading cyber-safety expert with decades of experience, said teachers and students needed to be better trained in the respectful and responsible use of technology, including security settings as well as clear expectations for conduct.

“We don’t give someone the keys to the car and go, ‘here, hop in, off you go’, and hope for the best,” Ms McLean said. “Sadly, that is what I’m seeing in a lot of schools”.

When things went wrong, such as strangers joining online classrooms, she said, the department and schools should “respond promptly, proactively and honestly”, including alerting their community that a breach had occurred.

Ms McLean also flagged concerns around teachers taking screenshots of online classrooms with “50 little faces up on the screen” and sharing these images on social media.

Samantha Floreani, the program lead at Digital Rights Watch, said strangers accessing virtual learning environments was not the only threat to the privacy, security and safety of children and young people.

“Requiring students to sign up to third-party applications and provide their personal information, all which have varying collection, use and disclosure practices, can create security and privacy risks if those services do not meet adequate standards,” she said.

Ms Floreani echoed calls for teachers to be supported and trained in effectively using settings to “increase the security of online learning environments”.

Vanessa Teague, an expert in cyber security and privacy, said risks should be addressed with better password protection, using services with end-to-end encryption, and by making privacy education part of the curriculum.

“Children should be taught that the internet is a public place, and that they should never share any sensitive information online,” she said.

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However, children were often pressured in the opposite direction, Dr Teague said, “by normalising surveillance and making them feel that they’re not participating in their class if they’re not showing a video of their bedroom”.

“It’s up to all of us adults to…

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Boston joining other cities in again tightening restrictions

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BOSTON (AP) — Boston is joining several other cities including Arlington, Brockton, Lynn, Newton, Somerville, and Winthrop in again tightening restrictions in an effort to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, which has again surged in Massachusetts.

Starting Wednesday, Boston will return to what Mayor Marty Walsh described as a modified version of phase two of the state’s reopening plan.

Walsh said the steps were needed following a steady climb in COVID-19 cases in the weeks following Thanksgiving.

“Unfortunately, we are at the point where we need to take stronger action to control COVID-19 in Boston,” Walsh said.

Under the tighter restrictions, several kinds of businesses will have to close their doors for at least three weeks beginning Wednesday including: movie theaters; museums; aquariums; (backslash)indoor recreational and athletic facilities (exempting college and professional sports); sightseeing and tour buses including duck boats, harbor cruises and whale watching cruises; indoor historical sites; indoor and outdoor gaming arcades; bowling alleys; driving ranges; batting cages; and rock-climbing facilities.

Other industries may remain open in Boston with additional restrictions.

Offices can remain open at 40% capacity. Indoor dining in restaurants can stay open with restricted bar seating and with a 90-minute limit on meals strictly enforced. Activities such as pool tables, darts, trivia, etc. will be prohibited.

Outdoor event spaces used for gatherings and celebrations and outdoor theaters and outdoor performance venues may continue to operate with a 25-person capacity limit.

A look at other coronavirus-developments in Massachusetts:

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WWII VETERAN VACCINATED

A World War II veteran in Massachusetts was among the first VA patients in the country to receive a coronavirus vaccine on Monday.

VA Bedford Healthcare System said on Twitter that 96-year-old Margaret Klessens received the inoculation at around noon.

The former Somerville resident, who served in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, is currently a resident in the Community Living Center at the Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital in Bedford.

Klessens enlisted in 1943 when she was 19-years-old, The Boston…

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