The NSA Hack Proves that Much More Needs to Be Done to Protect Enterprise Data

In the hit USA Network series Mr. Robot, a rogue group of hacktivists target major corporations and the government. In a recent episode, the group enlisted the help of a malicious insider to hack the FBI. Sound far-fetched? Maybe not: Around the same time this episode aired, an anonymous group of hackers known only as the “Shadow Brokers” leaked 300 megabytes of information from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).

The NSA hack compromised highly sophisticated hacking tools used by the spy agency to conduct cyber espionage, including zero-day vulnerabilities that can be exploited to breach corporate firewalls. The Washington Post reports:

The file contained 300 megabytes of information, including several “exploits,” or tools for taking control of firewalls in order to control a network, and a number of implants that might, for instance, exfiltrate or modify information.

The exploits are not run-of-the-mill tools to target everyday individuals. They are expensive software used to take over firewalls, such as Cisco and Fortinet, that are used “in the largest and most critical commercial, educational and government agencies around the world,” said Blake Darche, another former TAO operator and now head of security research at Area 1 Security.

The NSA hack has rattled the nerves of cyber security professionals across the nation and around the globe. Not only was one of the most secure systems on the planet compromised, but the release of elite hacking tools and a list of existing vulnerabilities has put numerous private-sector corporations at risk – including at least two major cyber security providers.

It is widely believed that the Shadow Brokers are Russian nation-state hackers, but this theory has not been proven, nor does anyone know how they managed to get their hands on the NSA’s hacking toolbox. However, since nearly all data breaches result from the misuse of legitimate login credentials, the leak very well may have originated from within the NSA, either through a malicious insider (as portrayed in the Mr. Robot story arc) or through a careless or negligent employee clicking on a phishing link or sharing their password.

The NSA hack also has everyone asking, if a covert government spy agency’s data isn’t safe from hackers, what about everyone else’s? So far, 2016 has seen, among other major cyber security incidents:

• Numerous ransomware attacks on the healthcare industry, including the infamous Hollywood Presbyterian attack
• An epidemic of tax data spear phishing schemes, including one that compromised an NBA team
• The hijacking of the SWIFT Network bank messaging system by a team of international cyber bank robbers
• The Wendy’s POS data breach, which resulted in a class-action lawsuit against the fast-food chain
• A former St. Louis Cardinals employee being sentenced to prison for hacking the Houston Astros – using crude techniques to get past weak cyber security barriers
• Information security providers themselves being compromised due to the NSA hack

What’s next? It can be scary to think about. The hacks just keep coming, and both public and private sector organizations in all industries seem ill-prepared to defend against them.

However, now is not the time to panic. Instead, the NSA hack should be a wake-up call for organizations to reevaluate their information security procedures from top to bottom. A cyber security plan is never “finished.” It must be continuously reassessed and rewritten as new technologies and threats emerge. Further, a proactive approach is always better than reacting after a breach has happened. The NSA hack did not have to happen, and neither did any of the other hacks mentioned above. Proactive security measures, from employee training to network monitoring, could have prevented all of these hacks.

Today’s information systems are increasingly complex, and so are cyber attacks. Unless you are an expert in the industry, you’re probably struggling just to wrap your head around it, and you’re not alone. Many organizations simply do not have the resources to handle all of their cyber security needs in-house, and they find that attempting to do so leaves them with security vulnerabilities while taking away time and resources from their core competency.

The cyber security experts at Continuum GRC have deep knowledge of the cyber security field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting your organization from internal threats and external security breaches. Continuum GRC offers full-service and in-house risk assessment and risk management subscriptions, and we help companies all around the world sustain proactive cyber security programs.

Continuum GRC is proactive cyber security®. Call 1-888-896-6207 to discuss your organization’s cyber security needs and find out how we can help your organization secure its systems and keep hackers out.

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Baseball may be America’s favorite pastime, but from the Black Sox scandal to Pete Rose to the “Steroid Era,” cheating schemes have long tarnished the game. Sadly, it was only a matter of time before cheating went high-tech. Former St. Louis Cardinals executive Chris Correa has been sentenced to 46 months in prison for violating federal hacking laws after breaching the Houston Astros’ database and stealing proprietary information such as scouting reports and trade negotiation notes. Although the MLB claims that it appears Correa acted alone in the Houston Astros hack, it is launching an internal investigation into the Cardinals organization and may sanction the team.

How and Why the Houston Astros Hack Happened

Most data breaches are not the result of hackers finding “backdoors” into systems; they are due to hackers getting hold of stolen login credentials, obtained either through a phishing scheme or by taking advantage of employee carelessness, such as employees using weak passwords or writing login credentials on sticky notes and leaving them in plain sight. The Houston Astros hack was the fault of simple carelessness on the part of a new employee (identified only as “Victim A” in court documents) whose previous employer was the Cardinals organization.

When Victim A left the Cardinals to take a job with the Astros, he was told to return his work laptop, including its password information, to Correa. Correa got the idea to try to use this same password, and a few variations of it, to see if he could use it to access the Astros’ database, which was nicknamed “Ground Control.” Correa was right; the employee had chosen a nearly identical password for use in his new job, and Correa was able to use it to walk right in the front door of Ground Control.

Eventually, the Astros updated the Ground Control system, thus changing the login credentials, but that was only a bump in the road for Correa. The password still worked for the employee’s email account – and the Astros had emailed new default login information to all employees.

How Could the Astros Have Prevented the Breach?

The Houston Astros hack resulted from poor cyber security practices on very basic levels:

• Weak passwords chosen by the employee and used on multiple systems. No matter how many times people are told to use strong passwords, change them frequently, and not use the same passwords for multiple systems, most people simply don’t take this warning seriously. For this reason, organizations should not allow employees to choose their own passwords. They should be assigned strong passwords for each system, and the system should require that they be changed periodically.
• Not requiring multi-factor authentication to access sensitive data. A user name and strong password may be fine for an email account, but systems that contain sensitive information should require multi-factor authentication for access.
• Sending default login information through email. The Astros should not have sent employees new Ground Control login credentials through email; instead, the login credentials should have been given to employees in hard copy, and the system should have been set up to require that the credentials be changed as soon as the employee logged in for the first time.
• Not monitoring networks for anomalous activity. Correa was lurking around in Ground Control for well over a year before he was discovered, and that only happened because confidential trade information was leaked online. Had the Astros been monitoring their system, they may have noticed user activity that deviated from baseline norms, such as the user logging in from an unusual location.

Correa’s plea deal estimates that the Astros lost $1.7 million to this breach. Regardless of whether the MLB decides to take action against the Cardinals organization, the Astros need to take a hard look at their information security practices – and other organizations should learn from the Astros’ very expensive mistake. Proactive security measures that prevent cyber attacks are always cheaper than reactive cleanup after a breach has occurred.

The cyber security experts at Continuum GRC have deep knowledge of the cyber security field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting your organization from internal threats and external security breaches. Continuum GRC offers full-service and in-house risk assessment and risk management subscriptions, and we help companies all around the world sustain proactive cyber security programs.

Continuum GRC is proactive cyber security®. Call 1-888-896-6207 to discuss your organization’s cyber security needs and find out how we can help your organization.

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Over the past few months, an international group of cyber bank robbers, possibly funded by the North Korean government, have stolen nearly $100 million, thrown the integrity of a decades-old banking industry messaging system into question, and remain at large. Sound like the plot of the latest James Bond summer blockbuster? Unfortunately, these hacks, utilizing the SWIFT network messaging system, are all too real – and they’re probably far from over.

The SWIFT network: What is it, and what happened?

SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, is a secure messaging network used by financial institutions to transmit information and instructions to each other. In particular, it allows banks in different countries to easily communicate using a standardized system of codes. It was created in the early 1970s as an alternative to Telex messages, which were slower, less secure, and more prone to human error. The SWIFT network does not actually move or store money; it is simply the conduit that banks use to initiate money transfers.

The attacks began in February, when hackers used the Central Bank of Bangladesh’s SWIFT network login credentials to request nearly $1 billion in money transfers from the bank’s account at the New York Fed to accounts in Sri Lanka and the Philippines. The majority of the requests did not go through, having been flagged for review by U.S. officials, but five requests, for a total of $81 million, were sent. Following the Bangladeshi heist, a number of other banks, mostly in Southeast Asia, reported having been victimized by similar attacks that may have involved the SWIFT network. The hackers struck again in June, this time stealing $10 million from a bank in Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials allege that numerous other financial institutions in Ukraine and Russia have been hacked but do not wish to publicly identify themselves. So far, all of the targeted banks have been outside of the U.S., most of them located in developing countries with reporting requirements that are lax compared to U.S. standards. This means that no one has a handle on the true extent of the SWIFT network attacks, which makes banking executives all the more nervous.

As the SWIFT organization has maintained from the beginning, the SWIFT network itself was not actually breached; hackers were not able to break into the system or intercept legitimate messages. Instead, they accessed the network through the targeted banks’ systems, installing malware so they could access the banks’ SWIFT terminals and send the money transfer requests. However, because SWIFT was involved, it finds itself under fire. SWIFT’s CEO has gone on the defensive, insisting that the SWIFT network is secure, blaming the hacks on lax security procedures at member banks, and threatening to pull their access to the SWIFT network if they do not implement stronger cyber security practices.

However, at the same time, SWIFT has announced it would tighten its own security procedures, and experts in the industry are criticizing SWIFT for not being proactive about its cyber security, instead waiting for a breach to occur to address vulnerabilities that have long been an open secret in the banking industry. While SWIFT has a monopoly on its niche market in the short-term, if more banks are hacked, and especially if Western banks are victimized, the long-term future of the SWIFT network will be in question.

What All Organizations Can Learn from the SWIFT Network Attacks

The SWIFT attacks have rocked the banking world, but organizations in all industries can learn from the mistakes made by SWIFT and its member banks, specifically:

• An organization’s people are the weak link in any cyber security plan. The SWIFT network hackers got into the banks’ SWIFT terminals through keystroke-logging malware, possibly installed through a human hacking technique such as spear-phishing. As we have mentioned on this blog many times, enterprise cyber security begins with organizations having robust cyber security plans, including continuous employee training on cyber security awareness and best practices.
• “Security through obscurity” does not work in the Internet Age. Before the internet, proprietary niche networks such as SWIFT – which few people outside the banking industry have ever heard of – enjoyed what is known as “security through obscurity.” These networks were largely unknown outside their niche markets, and little public information was available about them. The internet changed all of that; information about these obscure networks is now widely available. Hackers, knowing that many niche networks built pre-internet have multiple security vulnerabilities, are seeking these networks out as easy targets.
• Appropriate security controls are needed for both users and transactions. After the Bangladeshi heist broke, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of England announced they were going to limit the number of employees with access to SWIFT terminals. Giving employees access only to those systems they need to perform their jobs is a sound practice, and access levels should be reviewed periodically. Different types of transactions also require different security levels. A user name and password may be sufficient for a billing employee to send an invoice or a customer to log in to their account, but sensitive transactions such as large money transfers should require multi-factor authentication and multiple levels of confirmation.

The cyber security experts at Continuum GRC have deep knowledge of the cyber security field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting your organization from internal threats and external security breaches.

Continuum GRC offers full-service and in-house risk assessment and risk management subscriptions, and we help companies all around the world sustain proactive cyber security programs. Continuum GRC is proactive cyber security®. Call 1-888-896-6207 to discuss your organization’s cyber security needs and find out how we can help your organization.

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