Author: Dr. Philip Cao

If there’s one lesson to be gained from all the security breaches and revelations of major bugs in security protocols in 2014, it’s that attackers are upping their game and finding more opportunities. That’s only reinforced by several new studies.

German security company G Data, for example, reported a huge increase in the number of new malware strains in the second half of the year — on average, a new type was discovered every 3.75 seconds! For the year as a whole, just under six million new malware strains were seen in the wild, some 77 percent more than 2013’s total.

Not all kinds of malware saw an increase. Those using backdoor vulnerabilities in software fell, for example, and worms and spyware remained relatively flat. But rootkits, while still a very small percentage of the overall number of malware, jumped more than ten-fold in the second half of the year.

Rootkits are software included in malware that help to embed the malicious part of the package in a system and ensure the persistence of additional attacks by helping the malware evade the scanners and monitors now used to detect it.

Not surprisingly, malware developers are mainly targeting the ubiquitous Microsoft platforms, with malware programmed as .NET applications continuing to rise. Overall, new variants for Windows platforms made up 99.9 percent of the new malware variants.

More problems could arise with Microsoft’s withdrawal of support for Windows XP in April last year, G Data said, because systems still using this operating system are “unprotected against attacks on existing or newly discovered security holes going forward.”

Akamai Technologies’ most recent State of the Internet survey similarly reported more than double the number of distributed denial of service attacks in the first quarter of 2015 compared to first quarter 2014, and over 35 percent the number in the final quarter.

DDoS attacks may not be such a big deal for the public sector, which gets only around two percent of the total. But Akamai noted a potentially dangerous trend in the 2015 attacks, with peak DDoS attacks of 100 Gbps making up a significantly bigger part of the total. That suggests attackers have been developing better ways to maximize the impact of their work.

At the rate attacks are progressing, Akamai said, security researchers are concerned about what attackers may be able to accomplish by this time next year. Add to that the fact that employing current attacks techniques “has not required much skill,” and even relatively inexperienced attackers could be capable of creating major damage as more potent tools enter the picture and attack bandwidth increases.

And what, then, to make of the recent news that the Defense Department is going to take a “no holds barred” approach with users who threaten security with sloppy cyber habits? Bad cyber hygiene “is just eating our shorts,” according to David Cotton, deputy CIO for Information Enterprise at the Pentagon.

Users will be given a very short time to comply with DOD password-security policies or to change behavior that invites phishing attacks while using  third-party social media accounts. The Pentagon is also pushing vendors to come up with more timely patches for security vulnerabilities, though recent research also points to the need to make sure patches are updated on all hosts at the same time.

The DOD, along with the intelligence agencies, is considered to be better at security than most other parts of the government, so it’s a little startling to read that the Pentagon’s crackdown as aimed at giving department leadership “a consolidated view of basic network vulnerabilities.”

Isn’t this supposed to be the very first thing organizations do when assessing security needs? And if the DOD doesn’t even have this bit of the puzzle sorted out, how is it ever going to successfully defend against the threats indicated by the G Data and Akamai reports?

Perhaps it’s finally time for government organizations to give up on security that is user focused. The Cloud Security Alliance’s “Dark Cloud” project could be one way of doing that.

Posted by Brian Robinson

[GCN]

The general public deserves less hyperbole and more straight talk

I must admit that I’ve grown increasingly weary over the constant harangue in the popular press about the ever-increasing volume and severity of “cyber attacks” worldwide. The apocalyptic language, the fear mongering, and the dearth of clear and simple explanatory language obscures an already complex topic. The general public deserves less hyperbole and more straight talk.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not downplaying the threats we are facing. Advanced persistent threat actors are homesteading on sensitive federal agency and corporate networks. Cyber threats to industrial control systems (ICS) threaten to hold critical facilities and economic sectors at risk. Denial-of-service attacks, financial compromises, and intellectual property theft disrupt our economy and sow distrust in our banking and commercial sectors.

As analysts, we must better frame this public discussion. We can start by doing what we do best – defining and explaining the nature of the problem we confront. Commentators often lump together a wide range of malicious network activity as “attacks,” disregarding the fact that we can distinguish activity by type, intent, and degree. These differentiations matter; they speak to the nature and intent of the threat actors, which ultimately is what we should be most concerned about.

Espionage & Attack
Traditionally, we differentiate between espionage and attack, and we should do the same with network activity. When the Justice Department indicts a Robert Hanssen, or arrests a group of Russian “illegals” living in the United States, we do not characterize their espionage as “attacks.” Nor should we label the reported intrusions into the White House and State Department networks as “attacks,” lest we conjure up images of combat and destruction that are inappropriate to the event. Perhaps labeling every cyber incident as an “attack” advances some political or corporate purposes. As analysts with a professional commitment to critical thinking, we must play stronger roles in structuring this conversation in ways that advance our collective understanding.

Real network attack modifies the function of a network or a physical system that the network controls. We now witness first-generation network attack capabilities taking the field: industrial control system attacks in Iran (2010) andGermany (2014); and corporate network attacks in Saudi Arabia and Qatar(2012), South Korea (2013) and the United States (2014). Federal agencies and security firms continue to identify industrial control attack tools (some of which had gone unrecognized for years) that may reside on any number of sensitive control systems worldwide. Global proliferation of increasingly destructive network attack capabilities warrants serious attention and should be properly differentiated from espionage.

A Chinese hacker stealing intellectual property from a US defense contractor is qualitatively different from a BlackEnergy implant in a natural gas pipeline control system. Both are malicious activities, but differ substantially in intent and degree of potential impact.

Sometimes clear differentiation eludes us. Espionage and attack often employ similar means of ingress, exploitation, and persistent presence. Some operations—such as the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack—combined elements of both. These challenges should compel us to explore new ways to clearly identify and characterize cyber threats.

A way forward
As analysts with a dedication to tradecraft, we must seek out approaches that better differentiate malicious activity by type and intent. We must move the conversation past malware and digital forensics, which surely play a vital role in cyber intelligence but often offer limited explanatory power for key audiences. Most importantly, we must develop tradecraft that anticipates future threat environments, rather than simply describe and characterize present (or past) ones.

We should resist taking the bait that the popular press offers: to lump together all threat activities under one moniker of “attack.” Failing to offer at least some degree of activity differentiation only contributes to the malaise that strangles our general discussion on the nature of cyber threat.

Do not dismiss the general public as incapable of understanding the technical nuances of cyber threat activity. Our audiences are savvier than we give them credit for; to condescend to them or even write them off altogether is simply high-tech hubris. Even more important, popular understanding matters. An informed public discourse—the cornerstone of any democratic society—forms the basis for developing sound public policy. In our role as analysts, we owe this process the best of our tradecraft, our intellectual rigor, and simple clarity.

Michael McMahon is Director, Cyber Strategy and Analysis at Innovative Analytics & Training, LLC, a Washington, DC-based research consultancy and professional services firm. Mike is a 25-year veteran of the US intelligence community, serving most recently on the National Intelligence Council. He holds Master’s degrees from George Washington University and the National War College, and also serves as an adjunct lecturer in the Liberal Studies program at Georgetown University.

Mike brings his background in political science and international relations theory to the emerging discourse on role of cyber capabilities as an instrument of statecraft. He’ll be glad to get in your face on the problems of deterrence and the security dilemma in cyberspace, or how social contract theory can help us anticipate developments in global network governance, but don’t ask him how to fix your hard drive.

[DarkReading]