Predicting Drive Failures | TechSNAP 136

chris

9 years ago

Preventing data at rest from rotting, Microsoft puts out the warning signal on RC4, and the International Space Station gets infected by malware.

Plus a fantastic batch of your questions, our answers, and much much more!

Thanks to:

“The independent blind survey of 200 security professionals dealing with malware analysis within U.S. enterprises was conducted by Opinion Matters on behalf of ThreatTrack Security in October 2013”
“These results indicate that known data breaches may be significantly underreported and are putting customers and partners at risk”
“according the survey, companies with more than 500 employees are even more likely to have had an unreported breach”
A device used by a member of senior management is most likely to be infected by:
Clicking on a malicious link in a phishing email (56%)
Allowing a family member to use a company-owned device (45%)
Visiting a pornographic website (40%)
Installing a malicious mobile app (33%)
“When asked to identify the most difficult aspects of defending their companies\’ networks from advanced malware, 67% said the complexity of malware is a chief factor; 67% said the volume of malware attacks; and 58% cited the ineffectiveness of anti-malware solutions.”

They also recommend against using SHA-1, and will stop recognizing the validity of SHA-1 based certificates after 2016
“Since 2005 there have been known collision attacks (where multiple inputs can produce the same output), meaning that SHA-1 no longer meets the security standards for a producing a cryptographically secure message digest”
Additional Coverage
Jacob Appelbaum: RC4 is broken in real time by the #NSA – stop using it.

The Malware came aboard on a USB stick carried by a Russian Astronaut
“Kaspersky revealed that Russian astronauts carried a removable device into space which infected systems on the space station. He did not elaborate on the impact of the infection on operations of the International Space Station (ISS).”
“Kaspersky said he had been told that from time to time there were \”virus epidemics\” on the station.”
Until recently, the dozens of laptops on the ISS all ran Windows XP
Kaspersky also revealed that an unnamed Russian nuclear facility, which is also cut off from the public internet, was infected with the infamous Stuxnet malware.
“Russian security expert Eugene Kaspersky has also told journalists that the infamous Stuxnet had infected an unnamed Russian nuclear plant and that in terms of cyber-espionage \”all the data is stolen globally… at least twice.\””
Additional Coverage