Page 5 - Threat Intelligence 10-18-2019

Security News

A new Google tool will tell you if your passwords have been hacked. Google on Wednesday announced new
tools meant to enhance user privacy across its products, such as Google Maps incognito mode, YouTube
history deletion, and privacy management via Google Assistant. But Google also announced a feature that
should enhance your security online by telling you which passwords may have been compromised during
security breaches targeting various sites, and advising immediate action. In addition to informing you about
breaches, the password manager will also prevent you from using bad passwords, like “password,” or
“123456,” which is something that people are still doing.
Source: https://bgr.com/2019/10/02/google-password-checkup-tool-tells-you-if-your-passwords-
were-hacked/

Wipers Disguised as Ransomware Have Become a New Weapon for Cybercriminals. Lately, security
researchers had discovered a new malware strain called Ordinypt that includes both wiper and ransomware
capabilities. The malware was used to infect German-speaking users, thereby leaving them with no options to
retrieve their files. Ordinypt simply overwrites the data, rendering it permanently irrecoverable. This
destructive nature of malware indicates that there’s no incentive for victims to pay the ransomware’s actors. A
report from IBM X-Force highlights that there has been a 200% increase in such destructive malware cases
between the second half of 2018 and the first half of 2019. While many ransomware attacks include a wiper
component, the wiper is typically used for extortion.

Source: https://cyware.com/news/wipers-disguised-as-ransomware-have-become-a-new-weapon-for-
cybercriminals-d9e2187f/

No one could prevent another ‘WannaCry-style’ attack, says DHS official. The U.S. government may not be
able to prevent another global cyberattack like WannaCry, a senior cybersecurity official has said. Jeanette
Manfra, the assistant director for cybersecurity for Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure
Security Agency (CISA), said onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF that the 2017 WannaCry cyberattack, which saw
hundreds of thousands of computers around the world infected with ransomware, was uniquely challenging
because it spread so quickly. “Updating your patches would have prevented a fair amount of people from from
being a victim,” said Manfra. Yet data shows that two years after the attacks, more than a million computers
remained vulnerable to the ransomware.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/06/government-prevent-wannacry-style-dhs/

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