Page 3 - Threat Intelligence 8-21-2019

Perspective:

State of the

Marketplace

Twenty-three local Texas governments were infected with ransomware
in a coordinated attack. This continues the recent trend of attacking

cities and school districts, holding their data and services for ransom.
The pattern is similar to the attacks on Hospitals and health care centers
18 months ago: bad actors uncover “soft targets” and rapidly try to
exploit them, knowing that they may not have the resources available to
properly defend themselves. This is an excellent justification for threat

intelligence: a well informed management team would have seen this
coming and ensured that their defenses are primed against these types
of attacks.

Research at Google and the University of Florida has been exploring
how the brain works in conjunction with phishing and other forms of

deception. One of the useful areas of research is around how people
fail to detect deception, depending on factors like emotional
intelligence, cognitive motivation, mood, hormones, and even the

victim’s personality. Because users are the weakest link to the security
of an organization, this quick read may shed a little additional insight on
how to help keep users on point.

While we’re on the subject of deception, an article from Vice outlines
exactly why you should never trust anything. A hacker has created the

O.MG Cable, which is a modified lightning cable that has implanted
circuitry that allows a hacker to remotely connect to the computer it is
attached to. "It looks like a legitimate cable and works just like one. Not
even your computer will notice a difference. Until I, as an attacker,
wirelessly take control of the cable,“ MG. One idea is to take this

malicious tool, dubbed O.MG Cable, and swap it for a target's legitimate
one. MG suggested you may even give the malicious version as a gift to
the target—the cables even come with some of the correct little pieces

of packaging holding them together. Trust. Nobody. 3
~Stay Secure

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