Cybersecurity the Agile Architecture Way

Identity theft, password breaches, viruses and worms, phishing attacks, Stuxnet—the more we rely upon technology in our increasingly connected world, the greater the risk that we’ll be hacked. Even worse, it seems that the rate at which hacking stories come across the wire is actually increasing, in spite of all the hard work at all the various security organizations, both commercial and governmental. The frightening truth is, perhaps the hackers are actually winning.

The root cause of our vulnerability, of course, is the Internet itself. When the essential elements of the Internet first rolled out—TCP/IP, HTTP, and DNS, to name the most flagrant offenders—no one had any idea how important security would become or just how flawed these enabling technologies were when it came to protecting ourselves from increasingly dedicated and persistent malefactors. Today, that horse has long since left the barn. Maybe we can close the door, sure, but it might not matter anymore.........

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Flame Virus Offers Bark to Stuxnet's Bite

The recently discovered virus known as Flame has revived the fears sparked by the now-infamous Stuxnet virus uncovered in 2010. Despite all the hoopla, however, the effects of the two viruses may end up being very different.

Some comparisons between the two “super viruses” are undoubtedly appropriate: Both seemed to be aimed at Iran and its neighbors; both had the fingerprints of Western governments; both could be spread to computers by removable devices; and both caught the media’s attention in a huge way.............

Still, by virtue of its apparent target in Iran; its potential links to governments; and its hold on the headlines, Flame will play a role in the policy debate over how to better secure the Internet and computer networks.

Stuxnet rocked the cybersecurity world for one very basic reason: The damage it did to Iranian nuclear facilities was the first relatively concrete example of a computer attack causing physical damage.........

If Stuxnet was a cyberwarrior, Flame is a cyberspy. From a technical standpoint, Flame may be unprecedentedly sophisticated, far-reaching, and even state-sponsored, but at this point cyberspies are not a game-changer....................

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2012 Threat Predictions: A Report by McAfee Labs

In the past few months we have witnessed enormous changes in cyber threats like mobile related threats, hacktivism, client-side exploitation, social-media exploitation, and targeted attacks.

As per 2012 Threat Predictions report by McAfee Labs,  more changes are expected in coming year in even the most established threat vectors as follow:

• Industrial threats will mature and segment
• Embedded hardware attacks will widen and deepen
• Hacktivism and Anonymous will reboot and evolve

• Virtual currency systems will experience broader and more frequent attacks
• This will be the “Year for (not “of”) Cyberwar”
• DNSSEC will drive new network threat vectors
• Traditional spam will go “legit,” while spearphishing will evolve into the targeted messaging attack

• Mobile botnets and rootkits will mature and converge

• Rogue certificates and rogue certificate authorities will undermine users’ confidence
• Advances in operating systems and security will drive next-generation botnets and rootkits

This report has also mentioned that "It’s time for extensive Penetration Testing and Emergency Response Planning that includes cyber components and networking with law enforcement at all levels."

2012 Threat Predictions report by McAfee Labs can be downloaded from here: http://www.mcafee.com/us/resources/reports/rp-threat-predictions-2012.pdf?eid=NAMWPGSCSC011

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Flame could be the most powerful virus ever

With cyber crime spreading across the globe, Russian security firm Kaspersky Lab, has just uncovered a massive cyber attack codenamed ‘Flame.’ The malicious program was detected as Worm.Win32.Flame and is believed to have been operational since 2010.........

On infecting a system, Flame begins with its set of complex operations, which is inclusive of sniffing the network traffic, taking screenshots, recording audio conversations, intercepting the keyboard, and even monitoring the display. The information is then sent to a network of command-and-control servers located in many different parts of the world.The first instance of the malware's activities was detected in Iran and the other countries affected by it are Israel, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt........

Flame is said to be the most advanced and complete attack-toolkits ever discovered. It has hit more than 600 targets ranging from individuals to businesses and government systems.............

Earlier we saw the Stuxnet computer virus that wreaked havoc on Iran's nuclear program and later the country detected the Duqu computer virus, which claimed to be based on Stuxnet. However, the new malware code is said to be 20 times larger than Stuxnet and the Flame package of modules is reportedly huge at 20 MB when completely deployed....................


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