The Cyber Skim: Top Monthly Articles for April 2020

by Dawn Dunkerley
Contributing Editor

NASA warns of a significant increase in cyberattacks during Coronavirus outbreak – Security Affairs

• NASA sent out a memo to its personnel warning of a significant increase in cyberattacks on the agency while its employees are teleworking due to the Coronavirus outbreak.

• NASA experts believe that the attacks will continue during the pandemic.  The good news is that the SOC of the agency doubled the number of blocked attempts to access malicious websites.

Editor’s note: As personnel have moved to telework, many have forgotten the best practices they were trained on. It only gets worse when official business is being conducted on personal equipment that is shared with family or guests. The list of NASA recommendations is sound and worth noting – these are the same things we should have been doing all along!

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COVID-19: Hackers Begin Exploiting Zoom’s Overnight Success to Spread Malware – The Hacker News

• As people increasingly work from home and online communication platforms such as Zoom explode in popularity in the wake of coronavirus outbreak, cybercriminals are taking advantage of the spike in usage by registering new fake “Zoom” domains and malicious “Zoom” executable files in an attempt to trick people into downloading malware on their devices.

• With over 74,000 customers and 13 million monthly active users, Zoom is one of the most popular cloud-based enterprise communication platforms that offers chat, video and audio conferencing, and options to host webinars and virtual meetings online.

Editor’s note: I would be remiss to have a monthly roundup without mentioning Zoom. Sadly, many of the current issues with Zoom are just examples of poor configuration put into place in a hurry to meet a business requirement. Tactically, some simple settings will reduce much of the risk, but more strategically, we need to be planning for these contingencies much, much earlier.

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Let’s Stop the 5G Hysteria: Understanding Hoaxes and Disinformation Campaigns – Troy Hunts Blog

• By all means, read through the responses if you want to get a sense of how people responded, but let’s avoid the discussion of “does 5G present a danger to our health” and instead talk about how to identify false or misleading information spread by social media.
• I’ve seen a massive uptick of people sharing information about the emerging cellular standard over the last week or so, enough that it prompted me to ask what’s going on via Twitter.

Editor’s note: Misinformation abounds in a time of crisis. This is a fascinating article discussing how these campaigns spread, and how to combat your own biases. 

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Global Cybersecurity League Formed to Fight Hospital Ransomware – Cointelegraph

• A crack team of cybersecurity experts in 65 countries has come together to combat ransomware attacks on hospitals during the coronavirus crisis.

• Cointelegraphreported on March 30 that Ryuk ransomware continues to target hospitals and healthcare providers based in the United States.

Editor’s note: I wanted to end on a positive note – there still is light in the dark. Kudos to these professionals coming together to save lives in the way they know how: protecting hospitals from cyberattacks.

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