Category: Threat Actors

Threat Actors are people who are acting counter to you or your organization’s interest. They are a threat to yourself, your family, your community, your organization (company), your society, and your nation. They cannot be taken for granted. You can classify the world in the four key threat actor categories:

  • Cyber-Criminal Threats – Cyber-Crime is an International  Legal problem that has no short term resolution. There will always be someplace in the world that is a harbor for cyber-criminal activity.
  • Nation State Threats – Post-Snowden, the secret world of nation-state security is now all in the open. Your network is a valid “Battle Space” for any Cyber-War.
  • Political, Patriotic, Protestors (P3) – There are always going to be someone, somewhere, who is upset with society – with the ability to make their anxiety know through any network – anywhere.
  • Corporate Threats (New!) – The dialog between US & China will accelerate the corporate on corporate threat vector.

Threat Actors

Weekend Read - Lessons from Heartbleed

Weekend Read – Lessons from Heartbleed

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Every vulnerability is a security lesson that will either be repeated or used to improve the organization. Lessons from Heartbleed is no different.  IMHO “The Matter of Heartbleed” is a mandatory paper for all security professionals! It points out the dynamics of a critical Internet vulnerability and how organizations respond. As a minimum, read the Read More

Security Questions to ask Vendors

Security Questions to ask Vendors

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What security questions are you asking your vendors? The Bloomberg article, “How Russian Hackers Stole the Nasdaq,” is a sobering insight into today’s risk. It should be a wake-up call for all organizations in all parts of the world to understand that even the best security teams are facing an overwhelming threat. The focused expertise used by Read More

Beware! DNS Changer IP Blocks are re-allocated and advertised!

Beware! DNS Changer IP Blocks are re-allocated and advertised!

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DNS Changer Update As of Friday morning (August 10, 2012), the IP address blocks used by the DNS Changer –  Rove Digital criminal operations have been re-allocated by RIPE-NCC and advertised to the Internet: http://www.ris.ripe.net/cgi-bin/lg/index.cgi?rrc=RRC001&query=1&arg=85.255.112.0%2F20 http://www.ris.ripe.net/dashboard/85.255.112.0/20 As a reminder, the Rove Digital/DNS Changer Crew used the following IP address blocks for their nefarious activities: 85.255.112.0/20 Read More

DNSChanger - New tool to clean up the infection

DNSChanger – New tool to clean up the infection

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DNS Changer (see http://www.dcwg.org/) has been a “thick” piece of malware to remediate. At the start of the take down we have ~600K violated computers. Today we’re at ~400K computers. Not an impressive clean-up record. Why? The operational security community has no effective tools that an average user can use to start cleaning up their Read More

Private-to-Private Collaboration with Public Participation

Private-to-Private Collaboration with Public Participation

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The Cybersecurity Act of 2012 has now been posted. The dialog of representative government as started with enlightenment on what is important to a different interest. Coincidentally, this act is directly applicable to the principle of aggressive private-to-private collaboration with public participation. The act ‘could’ significantly help our cyber-security capabilities OR it could dramatically hurt Read More

2012 - A year of Cyber-Security Optimism

2012 – A year of Cyber-Security Optimism

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2012 can be a year of Cyber-Security Optimism. The wave of annual cyber-security predictions of doom is coming to a close. Every year security experts would talk about how malware infections are spreading, botnets are going to cause catastrophic damage, the evil “Chinese peril” are stealing everything online, and the next Cyber “Perl Harbor” is Read More