BU-CERT News

From cybersecurity-insiders.com

In today’s data-driven world, the importance of data security cannot be overstated. Businesses and organizations are constantly faced with the challenge of safeguarding their sensitive information against evolving cyber threats. Two primary approaches for data storage and management are traditional data centers and cloud environments. This article explores the differences in data security between these two options.

Traditional Data Centers: Traditional data centers have been the backbone of data storage for decades. They involve physical servers and infrastructure located on-premises or in off-site facilities. Here’s how data security in traditional data centers typically works:

1.Physical Access Control: Traditional data centers are physically secured, often requiring authorized personnel to pass through multiple layers of security, including bio-metric authentication, to access the servers.

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From bleepingcomputer.com

Signal has announced that it upgraded its end-to-end communication protocol to use quantum-resistant encryption keys to protect users from future attacks.

Quantum computers that use qubits (superpositions of 0 and 1) have the potential to be much more powerful and faster than current systems, allowing them to perform computations that would typically take years in a short time.

While Quantum computers are not a threat yet, large tech firms and other stakeholders are already preparing for their game-changing advent.

One of the threats this emerging technology poses is to weaken current encryption schemes, allowing protected data to be decrypted quickly and gaining access to encrypted secrets.

Predictions on when powerful enough quantum computers might emerge vary from 5 years to never. Nonetheless, we already face the risk of “harvest now, decrypt later,” making the adoption of quantum-resistant algorithms important.

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From securityweek.com

MGM Resorts brought to an end a 10-day computer shutdown prompted by efforts to shield from a cyberattack data including hotel reservations and credit card processing, the casino giant said Wednesday, as analysts and academics measured the effects of the event.

“We are pleased that all of our hotels and casinos are operating normally,” the Las Vegas-based company posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. It reported last week that the attack was detected Sept. 10.

Rival casino owner Caesars Entertainment also disclosed last week to federal regulators that it was hit by a cyberattack Sept. 7. It said that its casino and online operations were not disrupted but it could not guarantee that personal information about tens of millions of customers, including driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers of loyalty rewards members, had not been compromised.

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From zdnet.com

Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) face growing cybersecurity threats and might not have expandable resources, but with a smaller attack surface to safeguard, even basic security measures can go a long way to lowering their risks.

Like their counterparts around the world, SMBs in Singapore have to deal with an increasing volume of cyberattacks. In the first half of this year, 50 unique files that contained malware or unwanted software masked as business applications were distributed to Singapore SMBs, leading to 453 unique attacks detected. This volume was a three-fold increase from a year earlier, when 24 unique files were distributed with 112 unique attacks detected, according to research released Thursday by security vendor Kaspersky. 

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From blog.gitguardian.com

The world of cyber threats is continually evolving, and the range of targets is constantly expanding. Fortunately, cybersecurity is rapidly progressing as well. In August 2023, two different U.S. government organizations published new reports about what to expect moving ahead, suggesting regulations and standards: CISA’s Strategic Plan for FY24- FY26 and NIST SP 800-204D.

While these publications originate from two different U.S. agencies, both point to the same overarching path to securing our vital infrastructure and enterprise applications into the future. CISA lays out a broad vision with measurable goals we should be striving towards, whereas NIST provides actionable, tactical procedures. When read side by side, these publications suggest the next few years will bring a focus on hardening our defenses, improving our tooling for faster detection and remediation of threats, and transparent measurement with attestation.

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From techcrunch.com

Meta-owned Twitter rival Threads has finally added a way to switch between multiple accounts without logging out.

The social networking app announced Thursday that users can now swap accounts on its mobile apps by long pressing on the profile icon in the bottom right. Users can tap on the “Add profile” option after the long press to add a new profile.

This makes it easier for users to switch between work and personal profiles. Instagram head Adam Mosseri didn’t specify if there was a limit on the number of accounts you can add to the profile-switching feature.

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From bleepingcomputer.com

Apple released emergency security updates to patch three new zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in attacks targeting iPhone and Mac users, for a total of 16 zero-days fixed this year.

Two bugs were found in the WebKit browser engine (CVE-2023-41993) and the Security framework (CVE-2023-41991), enabling attackers to bypass signature validation using malicious apps or gain arbitrary code execution via maliciously crafted webpages.

The third one was found in the Kernel Framework, which provides APIs and support for kernel extensions and kernel-resident device drivers. Local attackers can exploit this flaw (CVE-2023-41992) to escalate privileges.

Apple fixed the three zero-day bugs in macOS 12.7/13.6, iOS 16.7/17.0.1, iPadOS 16.7/17.0.1, and watchOS 9.6.3/10.0.1 by addressing a certificate validation issue and through improved checks.

“Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS before iOS 16.7,” the company revealed in security advisories describing the security flaws.

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