A Review of the Best News of the Week on Cyber Threats & Defense

Taking Advantage of Network Segmentation in 2019 (Infosec Island, Jan 16 2019)
Here’s how organizations can get started with network segmentation – including some potential issues to plan for and successfully avoid.

Windows 10 October 2018 Update is at last being pushed automatically (Ars Technica, Jan 17 2019)
The update is still rolling out at a snail’s pace.

43% of businesses are still running Windows 7, security threats remain (Help Net Security, Jan 15 2019)
With one year to go until Microsoft ends support for its ten-year-old operating system Windows 7, as many as 43% of enterprises are still running the outdated platform. Kollective’s research found that nearly a fifth (17%) of IT departments don’t know when the end of support deadline is, while 6% are aware of the end of support but are yet to start planning for their migration away from Windows 7.


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Simulating Lateral Attacks Through Email (Dark Reading, Jan 17 2019)
A skilled attacker can get inside your company by abusing common email applications. Here are three strategies to block them.

Cryptomining Continues to Be Top Malware Threat (Dark Reading, Jan 14 2019)
Tools for illegally mining Coinhive, Monero, and other cryptocurrency dominate list of most prevalent malware in December 2018.

Mining malware evades agent-based cloud security solutions (Help Net Security, Jan 18 2019)
One of the approaches, employed by a threat group dubbed Rocke, is to uninstall agent-based cloud security products before downloading the mining malware and starting the mining process.

A new taxonomy for SCADA attacks (Help Net Security, Jan 15 2019)
“The current lack of a single taxonomy to analyze security incidents leads to difficulties in understanding the threat landscape in an unbiased way,” he opines.

SmokeLoader malware downloader enters list of most wanted malware (Help Net Security, Jan 15 2019)
Check Point has published its latest Global Threat Index for December 2018. The index reveals that SmokeLoader, a second-stage downloader known to researchers since 2011, rose 11 places in December to enter the Index’s top 10 at ninth place.

Researchers develop proof-of-concept malware for attacking Building Automation Systems (SC Magazine, Jan 15 2019)
Researchers have developed proof-of-concept malware capable of compromising Building Automation Systems after discovering two critical bugs in a BAS programmable logic controller (PLC).

MS Word Documents Spreading .Net RAT Malware (Infosecurity Magazine, Jan 16 2019)
Auto-execution VBA code is able to perform several malicious actions, says FortGuard Labs.

Six Steps to Segmentation in a Perimeterless World (SecurityWeek, Jan 17 2019)
…you need a holistic approach that covers the campus, data center and cloud – anywhere an endpoint connects. Otherwise, you risk ending up with multiple segmentation strategies that compound complexity and may negatively impact security and user experience.

New Attacks Target Recent PHP Framework Vulnerability (Dark Reading, Jan 17 2019)
Multiple threat actors are using relatively simple techniques to take advantage of the vulnerability, launching cryptominers, skimmers, and other malware payloads.

Attackers Leverage Open Source in New BYOB Attack (Infosecurity Magazine, Jan 17 2019)
Plug-and-play hacking kits give rise to botnet attacks.