Secure environment (IoT)

Asking the most intelligent people I know, and basing our scenario on APT attacks because they traditionally show the most innovation when it comes to breaking security, here are our main ‘predictions’ of what might happen in the next few months.

These statistics are based on detection verdicts of Kaspersky Lab products received from users who consented to provide statistical data. Q3 figures According to Kaspersky Security Network: Kaspersky Lab solutions blocked 947,027,517 attacks launched from online resources located in 203 countries. 246,695,333 unique URLs were recognized as malicious by Web Anti-Virus components. Attempted infections by

LuckyMouse, mobile Trojan Asacub, BusyGasper, KeyPass ransomware and other notable targeted attacks and malware stories of Q3 2018.

The third quarter 2018 turned out relatively quiet in terms of DDoS attacks. “Relatively” because there were not very many high-level multi-day DDoS onslaughts on major resources. However, the capacities employed by cybercriminals keep growing year after year, while the total number of attacks shows no signs of decline.

To better understand the potential future threat landscape facing memory implants, researchers from Kaspersky Lab and the University of Oxford Functional Neurosurgery Group have undertaken a practical and theoretical threat review of existing neurostimulators and their supporting infrastructure.

Yesterday, Microsoft published their security bulletin, which patches CVE-2018-8453, among others. It is a vulnerability in win32k.sys discovered by Kaspersky Lab in August. Microsoft confirmed the vulnerability and designated it CVE-2018-8453.

While conducting audits, penetration tests and incident investigations, we have often come across legitimate remote administration tools (RAT) for PCs installed on operational technology (OT) networks of industrial enterprises. In a number of incidents that we have investigated, threat actors had used RATs to attack industrial organizations.

Cybercriminals’ interest in IoT devices continues to grow: in H1 2018 we picked up three times as many malware samples attacking smart devices as in the whole of 2017. And in 2017 there were ten times more than in 2016. That doesn’t bode well for the years ahead.

Every day we intercept numerous file-download commands sent to bots of various types and families. Here we present the results of our botnet activity analysis for H2 2017 and H1 2018.

In Q2 2018, attempted infections by malware designed to steal money via online access to bank accounts were logged on the computers of 215,762 users, ransomware attacks were registered on the computers of 158,921 unique users.

The growing popularity of car sharing services has led some experts to predict an end to private car ownership in big cities. But information security specialists have started raising some pertinent questions: how are the users of these services protected and what potential risks do they face in the event of unauthorized access to their accounts?

These summaries are a representative snapshot of what has been discussed in greater detail in our private reports during Q2 2018. They aim to highlight the significant events and findings that we feel people should be aware of.

At Kaspersky Lab we analyze the technologies available on cybersecurity market and this time we decided to look at what OS developers are offering for embedded systems (or, in other words, the internet of things). Our primary interest is how and to what degree these OSs can solve cybersecurity-related issues.

We continue to research how proliferation of IoT devices affects the daily lives of users and their information security. In our previous study, we touched upon ways of intercepting authentication data using single-board microcomputers. This time, we turned out attention to wearable devices: smartwatches and fitness trackers. Or more precisely, the accelerometers and gyroscopes inside them.

Our colleagues from Cisco Talos published their excellent analysis of VPNFilter, an IoT / router malware which exhibits some worrying characteristics. We’ve decided to look a bit into the C&C mechanism for the persistent malware payload.