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Application SecurityAttack MitigationAttack Types & VectorsSecurity

10 Most Popular Blogs of 2018

December 27, 2018 — by Radware — 1

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Between large scale cyberattacks, the implementation of GDPR and increasing popularity of smart home technologies (and their associated vulnerabilities), we had a lot to write about this year. Of the hundreds of blogs we published in 2018, several floated to the top in terms of readership. Below, we recap the ten most popular blogs of 2018.

Consumer Sentiments About Cybersecurity and What It Means for Your Organization

Over the past six months, the data breaches against companies such as Panera Bread, Delta Airlines and Sears, and Saks have proven we live in an age where cyberattacks and data breaches are now commonplace. The result? Cybersecurity is no longer just the topic of conversation of tech gurus and IT personnel. It has transitioned into the mainstream conversation and has become a concern of the masses. Consumers are now concerned that the organizations they are conducting business with are proactive about safeguarding their information and how they will fix it if a breach does occur. Read more…

New Threat Landscape Gives Birth to New Way of Handling Cyber Security

With the growing online availability of attack tools and services, the pool of possible attacks is larger than ever. Let’s face it, getting ready for the next cyber-attack is the new normal! This ‘readiness’ is a new organizational tax on nearly every employed individual throughout the world. Amazingly enough, attackers have reached a level of maturity and efficiency – taking advantage of the increased value and vulnerability of online targets, and resulting in a dramatic increase in attack frequency, complexity and size. Read more…

The Evolution of IoT Attacks

IoT devices are nothing new, but the attacks against them are. They are evolving at a rapid rate as growth in connected devices continues to rise and shows no sign of letting up. One of the reasons why IoT devices have become so popular in recent years is because of the evolution of cloud and data processing which provides manufacturers cheaper solutions to create even more ‘things’. Before this evolution, there weren’t many options for manufacturers to cost-effectively store and process data from devices in a cloud or data center.  Older IoT devices would have to store and process data locally in some situations. Today, there are solutions for everyone and we continue to see more items that are always on and do not have to store or process data locally. Read more…

Are Your Applications Secure?

As we close out a year of headline-grabbing data breaches (British Airways, Under Armor, Panera Bread), the introduction of GDPR and the emergence of new application development architectures and frameworks, Radware examined the state of application security in its latest report. This global survey among executives and IT professionals yielded insights about threats, concerns and application security strategies. Read more…

Snapshot of the Most Important Worldwide Cybersecurity Laws, Regulations, Directives and Standards

Are you out of breath from the breakneck pace of cyberattacks since the start of 2018? Throughout the world, nearly daily news reports have been filed detailing the results of incredibly effective cyberattacks ranging from small companies to nation-states. The sum total of these attacks has permanently and dramatically changed the information security threat landscape.  This change hasn’t gone unnoticed with the regulators and now, depending on where your business operates, you have accrued even more work to demonstrate your diligence to these threats. Read more…

Credential Stuffing Campaign Targets Financial Services

Over the last few weeks, Radware has been tracking a significant Credential Stuffing Campaign targeting the financial industry in the United States and Europe. Credential Stuffing is an emerging threat in 2018 that continues to accelerate as more breaches occur. Today, a breach doesn’t just impact the compromised organization and its users, but it also affects every other website that the users may use. Read more…

Is My Smart Home Telling People What I Do Every Day?

The overall smart home market is expected to grow to over $50 billion by 2022.  Already 1 in 4 U.S. households has some kind of smart device in their home.  With all the smart thermostats, smart fridges, smart light bulbs, smart doors and windows, personal assistants, and smart home surveillance, internet-connected home devices are rapidly stacking up in U.S. households. These devices are adding convenience and efficiency, but are they safe? Read more…

Machine Learning Algorithms for Zero Time to Mitigation

Effective DDoS protection combines machine-learning algorithms with negative and positive protection models, as well as rate limiting. The combination of these techniques ensures zero time to mitigation and requires little human intervention. Read more…

Cybersecurity & The Customer Experience: The Perfect Combination

Organizations have long embraced the customer experience and declared it a competitive differentiator. Many executives are quick to focus on the benefits of a loyal-centric strategy and companies now go to great lengths to communicate their organization’s customer centricity to retain existing customers and attract new ones. But where is cybersecurity in this discussion? Read more…

Nigelthorn Malware Abuses Chrome Extensions to Cryptomine and Steal Data

On May 3, 2018, Radware’s cloud malware protection service detected a zero-day malware threat at one of its customers, a global manufacturing firm, by using machine-learning algorithms. This malware campaign is propagating via socially-engineered links on Facebook and is infecting users by abusing a Google Chrome extension (the ‘Nigelify’ application) that performs credential theft, cryptomining, click fraud and more. Read more…

Read the “2018 C-Suite Perspectives: Trends in the Cyberattack Landscape, Security Threats and Business Impacts” to learn more.

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Application SecurityAttack MitigationDDoS AttacksSecurity

2018 In Review: Healthcare Under Attack

December 12, 2018 — by Daniel Smith — 0

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Radware’s ERT and Threat Research Center monitored an immense number of events over the last year, giving us a chance to review and analyze attack patterns to gain further insight into today’s trends and changes in the attack landscape. Here are some insights into what we have observed over the last year.

Healthcare Under Attack

Over the last decade there has been a dramatic digital transformation within healthcare; more facilities are relying on electronic forms and online processes to help improve and streamline the patient experience. As a result, the medical industry has new responsibilities and priorities to ensure client data is kept secure and available–which unfortunately aren’t always kept up with.

This year, the healthcare industry dominated news with an ever-growing list of breaches and attacks. Aetna, CarePlus, Partners Healthcare, BJC Healthcare, St. Peter’s Surgery and Endoscopy Center, ATI Physical Therapy, Inogen, UnityPoint Health, Nuance Communication, LifeBridge Health, Aultman Health Foundation, Med Associates and more recently Nashville Metro Public Health, UMC Physicians, and LabCorp Diagnostics have all disclosed or settled major breaches.

[You may also like: 2019 Predictions: Will Cyber Serenity Soon Be a Thing of the Past?]

Generally speaking, the risk of falling prey to data breaches is high, due to password sharing, outdated and unpatched software, or exposed and vulnerable servers. When you look at medical facilities in particular, other risks begin to appear, like those surrounding the number of hospital employees who have full or partial access to your health records during your stay there. The possibilities for a malicious insider or abuse of access is also very high, as is the risk of third party breaches. For example, it was recently disclosed that NHS patient records may have been exposed when passwords were stolen from Embrace Learning, a training business used by healthcare workers to learn about data protection.

Profiting From Medical Data

These recent cyber-attacks targeting the healthcare industry underscore the growing threat to hospitals, medical institutions and insurance companies around the world. So, what’s driving the trend? Profit. Personal data, specifically healthcare records, are in demand and quite valuable on today’s black market, often fetching more money per record than your financial records, and are a crucial part of today’s Fullz packages sold by cyber criminals.

Not only are criminals exfiltrating patient data and selling it for a profit, but others have opted to encrypt medical records with ransomware or hold the data hostage until their extortion demand is met. Often hospitals are quick to pay an extortionist because backups are non-existent, or it may take too long to restore services. Because of this, cyber-criminals have a focus on this industry.

[You may also like: How Secure is Your Medical Data?]

Most of the attacks targeting the medical industry are ransomware attacks, often delivered via phishing campaigns. There have also been cases where ransomware and malware have been delivered via drive-by downloads and comprised third party vendors. We have also seen criminals use SQL injections to steal data from medical applications as well as flooding those networks with DDoS attacks. More recently, we have seen large scale scanning and exploitation of internet connected devices for the purpose of crypto mining, some of which have been located inside medical networks. In addition to causing outages and encrypting data, these attacks have resulted in canceling elective cases, diverting incoming patients and rescheduling surgeries.

For-profit hackers will target and launch a number of different attacks against medical networks designed to obtain and steal your personal information from vulnerable or exposed databases. They are looking for a complete or partial set of information such as name, date of birth, Social Security numbers, diagnosis or treatment information, Medicare or Medicaid identification number, medical record number, billing/claims information, health insurance information, disability code, birth or marriage certificate information, Employer Identification Number, driver’s license numbers, passport information, banking or financial account numbers, and usernames and passwords so they can resell that information for a profit.

[You may also like: Fraud on the Darknet: How to Own Over 1 Million Usernames and Passwords]

Sometimes the data obtained by the criminal is incomplete, but that data can be leveraged as a stepping stone to gather additional information. Criminals can use partial information to create a spear-phishing kit designed to gain your trust by citing a piece of personal information as bait. And they’ll move very quickly once they gain access to PHI or payment information. Criminals will normally sell the information obtained, even if incomplete, in bulk or in packages on private forums to other criminals who have the ability to complete the Fullz package or quickly cash the accounts out. Stolen data will also find its way to public auctions and marketplaces on the dark net, where sellers try to get the highest price possible for data or gain attention and notoriety for the hack.

Don’t let healthcare data slip through the cracks; be prepared.

Read “Radware’s 2018 Web Application Security Report” to learn more.

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Application SecurityAttack MitigationDDoS AttacksSecurityWAF

Protecting Applications in a Serverless Architecture

November 8, 2018 — by Ben Zilberman — 1

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Serverless architectures are revolutionizing the way organizations procure and use enterprise technology. Until recently, information security architecture was relatively simple; you built a fortress around a server containing sensitive data, and deployed security solutions to control the flow of users accessing and leaving that server.

But how do you secure a server-less environment?

The Basics of Serverless Architecture

Serverless architecture is an emerging trend in cloud-hosted environments and refers to applications that significantly depend on third-party services (known as Backend-as-a-Service or “BaaS”) or on custom code that’s run in ephemeral containers (known as Function-as-a-Service or “FaaS”). And it is significantly more cost effective than buying or renting servers.

The rapid adoption of micro-efficiency-based pricing models (a.k.a PPU, or pay-per-use) pushes public cloud providers to introduce a business model that meets this requirement. Serverless computing helps providers optimize that model by dynamically managing the allocation of machine resources. As a result, organizations pay based on the actual amount of resources their applications consume, rather than ponying up for pre-purchased units of workload capacity (which is usually higher than what they utilize in reality).

What’s more, going serverless also frees developers and operators from the burdens of provisioning the cloud workload and infrastructure. There is no need to deploy operating systems and patch them, no need to install and configure web servers, and no need to set up or tune auto-scaling policies and systems.

[You may also like: Application Delivery and Application Security Should be Combined]

Security Implications of Going Serverless

The new serverless model coerces a complete change in architecture – nano services of a lot of software ‘particles.’ The operational unit is set of function containers that execute REST API functions, which are invoked upon a relevant client-side event. These function instances are created, run and then terminated. During their run time, they receive, modify and send information that organizations want to monitor and protect. The protection should be dynamic and swift:

  • There is no perimeter or OS to secure
  • Agents and a persistent footprint become redundant.
  • To optimize the business model, the solution must be scalable and ephemeral automation is the key to success

If we break down our application into components that run in a serverless model, the server that runs the APIs uses different layers of code to parse the requests, essentially enlarging the attack surface. However, this isn’t an enterprise problem anymore; it’s the cloud provider’s. Unfortunately, even they sometimes lag in patch management and hardening workloads. Will your DevOps read all of the cloud provider documentation in details?  Most likely, they’ll go with generic permissions. If you want to do something right, you better do it yourself.

Serverless computing doesn’t eradicate all traditional security concerns. Application-level vulnerabilities can still be exploited—with attacks carried out by human hackers or bots—whether they are inherent in the FaaS infrastructure or in the developer function code.

When using a FaaS model, the lack of local persistent storage encourages data transfer between the function and the different persistent storage services (e.g., S3 and DynamoDB by AWS) instead. Additionally, each function eventually processes data received from storage, the client application or from a different function. Every time it’s moved, it becomes vulnerable to leakage or tampering.

In such an environment, it is impossible to track all potential and actual security events. One can’t follow each function’s operation to prevent it from accessing wrong resources. Visibility and forensics must be automated and perform real time contextual analysis. But the question is not whether to use serverless or not because it is more in/secure. Rather, the question is how to do it when your organization goes there.

[You may also like: Web Application Security in a Digitally Connected World]

A New Approach

Simply put, going serverless requires a completely different security approach—one that is dynamic, elastic, and real-time. The security components must be able to move around at the same pace as the applications, functions and data they protect.

First thing’s first: To help avoid code exploitation (which is what attacks boil down to), use encryption and monitor the function’s activity and data access so it has, by default, minimum permissions. Abnormal function behavior, such as expected access to data or non-reasonable traffic flow, must be analyzed.

Next, consider additional measures, like a web application firewall (WAF), to secure your APIs. While an API gateway can manage authentication and enforce JSON and XML validity checks, not all API gateways support schema and structure validation, nor do they provide full coverage of OWASP top 10 vulnerabilities like a WAF does. WAFs apply dozens of protection measures on both inbound and outbound traffic, which is parsed to detect protocol manipulations. Client-side inputs are validated and thousands of rules are applied to detect various injections attacks, XSS attacks, remote file inclusion, direct object references and many more.

[You may also like: Taking Stock of Application-Layer Security Threats]

In addition to detecting known attacks, for the purposes of zero-day attack protection and comprehensive application security, a high-end WAF allows strict policy enforcement where each function can have its own parameters white listed—the recommended approach when deploying a function processing sensitive data or mission-critical business logic.

And—this is critical—continue to mitigate for DDoS attacks. Going serverless does not eliminate the potential for falling susceptible to these attacks, which have changed dramatically over the past few years. Make no mistake: With the growing online availability of attack tools and services, the pool of possible attacks is larger than ever.

Read “Radware’s 2018 Web Application Security Report” to learn more.

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Attack MitigationHacksSecurity

Growing Your Business: Security as an Expectation

November 7, 2018 — by Mike O'Malley — 0

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Who is responsible for my device and application security? This is a critical question in today’s growing threat landscape, and one without a clear answer. Despite increases in demands for mobile app and connected device security features, no key players—device manufacturers, consumers, mobile carriers or organizations that consumers do business with via devices—will take responsibility.

While this is certainly problematic, it also represents an opportunity to differentiate your business from competitors by baking security into your platform. Over 70% of C-suite executives report being greatly concerned about data privacy and 66% admit that their network is vulnerable to hacking. In light of this, security must be recognized and acknowledged beyond an add-on or premium feature; it must be treated as an integral feature for any business owner.

The True Cost of Data Insecurity

When security is included as a core component of a business, it strengthens customers’ perceptions of your company. In fact, security itself can be a key selling point that sways customers from competitors. Startups that especially integrate security as part of its foundational architecture have a competitive advantage over companies of all sizes that gloss over security or utilize it as an unsupported, unplanned add-on.

[You may also like: The Million-Dollar Question of Cyber-Risk: Invest Now or Pay Later?]

Indeed, security as an afterthought is a major, and potentially fatal, flaw during a company’s decision-making process. The average cost of a data breach is $3.9 million – an amount enough to put myriad companies in bankruptcy. But costs can be even higher. For example, Yahoo agreed to a settlement of $50 million following its 2013 data breach and had to pay an additional $37.5 million for attorney fees and expenses.  And it didn’t end there; the original $4.83 billion deal to sell Yahoo’s digital services to Verizon was also discounted by $350 million as an added penalty for decreased brand value and to amend for other potential related costs. The true cost of a data breach? Far more than the current visible numbers.

Potential Growth Areas

Instead of approaching security as an extra, optional cost, business owners would do well to view security as a core capability for revenue; the growth potential for security as an integrated core strategy is enormous. Need proof? Just look at the numerous security vulnerabilities that accompany the constant onslaught of innovative hacking threats. Commonplace attacks, like IoT botnets, mobile APIs and malware, show no evidence of going away anytime soon and companies that are prone to system vulnerabilities are at risk. Even threats from a decade ago, such as Trojan malwares, and exploitation of vulnerabilities are still utilized as attacks, either in their original form or through modifications like malware botnet Mirai.

[You may also like: Defending Against the Mirai Botnet]

This is why companies shouldn’t wait for the “perfect” security product; delaying an investment in security only increases a company’s risk factor for being attacked and potentially dooms one to a constant game of catch up—and enormous costs. Conversely, by adding new applications within a secure business framework from the start, businesses can ensure optimal protection without any extreme added costs.

The sooner a business incorporates security as a core piece of the business puzzle, the better they’ll be at protecting and mitigating threats, and capturing new revenue opportunities. 

Don’t let data seep through the cracks. Secure the customer experience now.

Read the “2018 C-Suite Perspectives: Trends in the Cyberattack Landscape, Security Threats and Business Impacts” to learn more.

Download Now

Attack MitigationDDoS AttacksSecurity

The Delta Airlines Security Breach: A Case Study in How to Respond to a Data Breach

October 24, 2018 — by Anna Convery-Pelletier — 1

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Recent data breaches against Panera Bread, Delta Airlines, Sears, Saks, and Lord & Taylor highlight a lot: the need for improved web application and internet security processes, better accountability, and why cybersecurity is critical to securing the loyalty of an organization’s most valued customers.

But perhaps most importantly, it highlights how an organization should react if they do suffer a data breach and the significance of a response plan. If there was ever an example of the importance of honesty and transparency, communicating effectively with consumers after your organization has been breached is a critical one.

Take Delta Airlines as an example. In April 2018, the company announced it was informed that some of its customer’s credit card information had been compromised during online chat support provided by a third party software company called [24]7.ai. In response, Delta launched a custom webpage providing a complete overview of the breach (including a timeline and FAQ section), executed a customer communication plan that included education and mitigation best practices, and worked with partners and law enforcement to identify how/when the breach occurred.

Delta’s handling of the breach underscores some of the key best practices that organizations should act upon once they identify a data breach has occurred.

  • Communication is key to both internal (employees, partners, suppliers, etc.) and external (customers) audiences, including direct mailing to clients, an official media release/statement, and if necessary, interviews in the appropriate press
  • Be open and sincere and admit what happened and accept responsibility
  • Provide details and explain how the breach occurred
  • Mitigate. Provide solutions for impacted users, and if possible, prepare a special offer for the affected audience
  • Educate by providing best practices on how to prevent similar issues in the future
  • Invite open dialogue by involving clients, industry experts, and even the general public

All too often, consumers discover that their personal information was compromised long after the breach occurred when suspicious activity on financial accounts, e-commerce sites, etc., is noticed. This is often the result of one of two reasons. The first is because an organization doesn’t realize its sensitive data has been breached. According to various sources, it can take a company nearly 200 days to realize there’s been a data breach.[1]

The second and far too common reason is that organizations seeking to avoid the negative connotation of being a data breach victim avoid directly or immediately announcing that a breach has occurred. However, as research suggests, the consequences of such surreptitious communication tactics can be far worse than the direct impacts of a data breach.

According to the report Consumer Sentiments: Cybersecurity, Personal Data and The Impact on Customer Loyalty, the vast majority of consumers must be convinced that the security issue has been addressed and any damage has been rectified before continuing to do business with the brand.[2]

[You might also like: Consumer Sentiments About Cybersecurity and What It Means for Your Organization]

The impact on businesses is twofold. Whereby companies were once reticent about speaking publically about cybersecurity because it would cause consumers to question their business’s fragility, organizations must now embrace and communicate their ability to safeguard customer data. Forward-thinking organizations have the opportunity to use security and due diligence as a competitive differentiator to build trust and loyalty with customers in the face of an increasingly insecure world.

Per the aforementioned points, companies must clearly communicate that a breach has occurred, those likely impacted and planned remediation actions to address the issue. Organizations that don’t admit to compromised consumer records until long after the breach took place to suffer the greatest wrath from consumers.

In addition to increased customer attrition rates and lost revenue, that wrath increasingly includes lawsuits. Forty-one percent of executives report that customers have taken legal action against their companies following a data breach. Given the string of high-profile data breaches in recent years, consumers are becoming increasingly empowered by regional government regulations that are forcing the hands of organizations to act accordingly following a data breach. The best example of this is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that went into effect throughout the European Union in May 2018. Broadly speaking, the GDPR provides individuals with a right to an effective judicial remedy and/or compensation and liability, especially if the holder of the PII has not acted accordingly to the regulations.

Ultimately, an organization’s ability to successfully respond to a data breach is linked to its ability to view cybersecurity, not as an afterthought, but rather a strategic initiative that mitigates business risk across all mission-critical departments within the organization, not just IT. When an organization is breached, it’s not just impacting the CIO. It affects the CFO, CMO and the COO, in addition to the CEO.

In an increasingly insecure world where customer loyalty to a particular brand is tied directly to that brand’s ability to safeguard the customer’s data, the entire C-suite must be held responsible when a breach occurs to reaffirm the trust and loyalty of consumers and to mitigate the broader, more cataclysmic impact that could result if they don’t.

Read “Consumer Sentiments: Cybersecurity, Personal Data and The Impact on Customer Loyalty” to learn more.

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Attack MitigationSecurity

Consolidation in Consumer Products: Could it Solve the IoT Security Issues?

October 9, 2018 — by David Hobbs — 1

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In 2003, I went to Zermatt, Switzerland to go snowboarding under the Matterhorn. We had an eclectic group of people from all over the world. Some of us were enthusiasts, some ski patrol or medics, and a few were backcountry avalanche trained. Because of this, we had a lot of different gear with us, including ice saws, shovels, probes, avalanche beacons, radios, etc. In addition to the gear we carried, we also brought cameras, cell phones, MP3 players and of course, large battery charger bays with international inverters/adapters to keep everything going. I had a backpack with all the avalanche and snow testing gear. In my jacket, I carried an avalanche beacon,  digital camera,  flip cell phone,  family radio with a long external mic, GPS, and an MP3 player with headphones. I felt like I was Batman with all the gear crammed all over the place. I told one of my friends on the trip that one day all of this technology would be consolidated into one device – radio, phone, camera, MP3 player, and avalanche beacon. My friends thought I was crazy and that it would never happen. Fast forward to the smartphone where we now have it all, with the exception of Avalanche beacon, in one device.

To think that many of us had these “point solutions” in our personal tech and now it’s all consolidated into one makes me wonder when will we consolidate at home?

The future of the smart home

I have a Zigbee bridge for my lights, a Zigbee bridge for my blinds, 5 smart speakers, solar panels on the blinds (to charge them and get heat/sunlight measures), smart smoke detectors, smart locks, IP cameras, smart watering system for the plants, smart lights, smart alarm, UTM firewall, WiFi mesh, etc. These are all point solutions. Some of them are really neat and probably should stay point solution based, but what if the technology companies today were to start thinking about consolidating and adding security into the mix?

[You might also like: Cities Paying Ransom: What Does It Mean for Taxpayers?]

I’ve started to look at upgrading my home WiFi network as my smart TV and smart streaming box are now struggling to play streaming movies. After looking at some of the new consumer level WiFi mesh solutions, they show a lot of promise. One of the vendors I’m considering offers not only an easy to set up mesh WiFi, but they also provide automatic channel changing for WiFi radio frequencies to find the fastest radio, as well as automatically move devices around to access points. One of them offers VPN services as well as anti-virus and content filtering, (keeping you safe from malicious websites) and giving out tokens for guests and keeping them on their own network. This all looks great, but I started to think back to Zermatt, Switzerland.

What if the smart home speaker manufacturers wanted to really capture the market? What if you could get a smart speaker that had both a WiFi Mesh Access Point, Zigbee/Zwave access point (for lights, controllers, etc), and cloud-based security features in it? If I could drop a new smart speaker in any room and set it up in 3-5 minutes and have it join my wireless mesh network, it could cover a lot of territories quickly. Now, if one of them were the base unit that plugged into the internet router, it could be the main interface for security. Take all the device groups and help suggest security policies to keep them from talking to things they shouldn’t (like the cameras should never talk to the smart watering controller). What if it could look for IoT threats that spread internally as well as connections to malware Command and Control servers?

Security should be a priority

In terms of the security that could easily be offered and bundled across this platform could be things like VPN (both to and from the home network). This could allow you to browse safely while using public WiFi. You could also access any home devices that may not be very secure from the manufacturers like IP cameras and DVR’s without having to expose them to the world. Cloud-based security offerings could do things like look for malware infections and requests to malware botnet controllers. Then, layers like intrusion prevention and active WiFi defense layers could help detect if hackers were aiming at getting onto the network and doing harm. And finally, putting all of these offerings into a single pane of glass for visibility would definitely be attractive to end customers.

Granted, I know this could put the point solution providers in a position where their WiFi solutions and home routers become less valuable to the mainstream. But what if we got better antivirus and IOT protection? I can only dream of the day that we as consumers are able to consolidate all of our home networks to a real smart home-based solution. I know in the enterprise IT market; we have gained the popularity of Unified Threat Management platforms. Firewalls that do Intrusion Prevention, Wireless Intrusion Prevention, Inline Antivirus, Content Filtering, Guest and networks. I think the next logical step is to see all of these features consolidated into the next generation smart home speakers. How long will it take to see this reality? I don’t know. Will people think this idea is crazy? Probably.

Update: At the time of writing this, there has been an announcement from one of the smart home speaker manufacturers for a new smart home speaker. This new line will actually include a smart home hub in the speaker.  Nothing has been said as to whether it provides any security features.

Read “Radware’s 2018 Web Application Security Report” to learn more.

Download Now

Application SecurityAttack MitigationSecurityWeb Application Firewall

Are Your Applications Secure?

October 3, 2018 — by Ben Zilberman — 7

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Executives express mixed feelings and a surprisingly high level of confidence in Radware’s 2018 Web Application Security Report. 

As we close out a year of headline-grabbing data breaches (British Airways, Under Armor, Panera Bread), the introduction of GDPR and the emergence of new application development architectures and frameworks, Radware examined the state of application security in its latest report. This global survey among executives and IT professionals yielded insights about threats, concerns and application security strategies.

The common trend among a variety of application security challenges including data breaches, bot management, DDoS mitigation, API security and DevSecOps, was the high level of confidence reported by those surveyed. 90% of all respondents across regions reported confidence that their security model is effective at mitigating web application attacks.

Attacks against applications are at a record high and sensitive data is shared more than ever. So how can execs and IT pros have such confidence in the security of their applications?

To get a better understanding, we researched the current threat landscape and application protection strategies organizations currently take. Contradicting evidence stood out immediately:

  • 90% suffered attacks against their applications
  • One in three shared sensitive data with third parties
  • 33% allowed third parties to create/modify/delete data via APIs
  • 67% believed a hacker can penetrate their network
  • 89% saw web-scraping as a significant threat to their IP
  • 83% run bug bounty programs to find vulnerabilities they miss

There were quite a few threats to application services that were not properly addressed, challenging traditional security approaches. In parallel, the adoption of emerging frameworks and architectures, which rely on numerous integrations with multiple services, adds more complexity and increases the attack surface.

[You may also like: Threats on APIs and Mobile Applications]

Current Threat Landscape

Last November, OWASP released a new list of top 10 vulnerabilities in web applications. Hackers continue to use injections, XSS, and a few old techniques such as CSRF, RFI/LFI and session hijacking to exploit these vulnerabilities and gain unauthorized access to sensitive information. Protection is becoming more complex as attacks come through trusted sources such as a CDN, encrypted traffic, or APIs of systems and services we integrate with. Bots behave like real users and bypass challenges such as CAPTCHA, IP-based detection and others, making it even harder to secure and optimize the user experience.

[You might also like: WAFs Should Do A  Lot More Against Current Threats Than Covering OWASP Top 10]

Web application security solutions must be smarter and address a broad spectrum of vulnerability exploitation scenarios. On top of protecting the application from these common vulnerabilities, it has to protect APIs and mitigate DoS attacks, manage bot traffic and make a distinction between legitimate bots (search engines for instance) and bad ones like botnets, web-scrapers and more.

DDoS Attacks

63% suffered a denial of service attack against their application. DoS attacks render applications inoperable by exhausting the application resources. Buffer overflow and HTTP floods were the most common types of DoS attacks, and this form of attack is more common in APAC. 36% find HTTP/Layer-7 DDoS as the most difficult attack to mitigate. Half of the organizations take rate-based approaches (such as limiting the number of request from a certain source or simply buying a rate-based DDoS protection solution) which are ineffective once the threshold is exceeded and real users can’t connect.

API Attacks

APIs simplify the architecture and delivery of application services and make digital interactions possible. Unfortunately, they also introduce a wide range of risks and vulnerabilities as a backdoor for hackers to break into networks. Through APIs, data is exchanged in HTTP where both parties receive, process and share information. A third party is theoretically able to insert, modify, delete and retrieve content from applications. This is nothing but an invitation to attack:

  • 62% of respondents did not encrypt data sent via API
  • 70% of respondents did not require authentication
  • 33% allowed third parties to perform actions (GET/ POST / PUT/ DELETE)

Attacks against APIs:

[You may also like: How to Prevent Real-Time API Abuse]

  • 39% Access violations
  • 32% Brute-force
  • 29% Irregular JSON/XML expressions
  • 38% Protocol attacks
  • 31% Denial of service
  • 29% Injections

Bot Attacks

The amount of both good and bad bot traffic is growing. Organizations are forced to increase network capacity and need to be able to precisely tell a friend from a foe so both customer experience and security are maintained. Surprisingly, 98% claimed they can make such a distinction. However, a similar amount sees web-scraping as a significant threat. 87% were impacted by such an attack over the past 12 months, despite a variety of methods companies use to overcome the challenge – CAPTCHA, in-session termination, IP-based detection or even buying a dedicated anti-bot solution.

Impact of Web-scraping:

  • 50% gathered pricing information
  • 43% copied website
  • 42% theft of intellectual property
  • 37% inventory queued/being held by bots
  • 34% inventory held
  • 26% inventory bought out

[You may also like: 5 Simple Bot Management Techniques]

Data Breaches

Multinational organizations keep close tabs on what kinds of data they collect and share. However, almost every other business (46%) reports having suffered a breach. On average an organization suffers 16.5 breach attempts every year. Most (85%) take between hours and days to discover. Data breaches are the most difficult attack to detect, as well as mitigate, in the eyes of our survey respondents.

How do organizations discover data breaches?

  • 69% Anomaly detection tools/SIEM
  • 51% Darknet monitoring service
  • 45% Information was leaked publicly
  • 27% Ransom demand

IMPACT OF ATTACKS

Negative consequences such as loss of reputation, customer compensation, legal action (more common in EMEA), churn (more common in APAC), stock price drops (more common in AMER) and executives who lose their jobs are quick to follow a successful attack, while the process of repairing the damage of a company’s reputation is long and not always successful. About half admitted having encountered such consequences.

Securing Emerging Application Development Frameworks

The rapidly growing amount of applications and their distribution across multiple environments requires adjustments that lead to variations once a change to the application is needed. It is nearly impossible to deploy and maintain the same security policy efficiently across all environments. Our research shows that ~60% of all applications undergo changes on a weekly basis. How can the security team keep up?

While 93% of organizations use a web application firewall (WAF), only three in ten use a WAF that combines both positive and negative security models for effective application protection.

Technologies Used By DevOps

  • 63% – DevOps and Automation Tools
  • 48% – Containers (3 in 5 use Orchestration)
  • 44% – Serverless / FaaS
  • 37% – Microservers

Among the respondents that used micro-services, one-half rated data protection as the biggest challenge, followed by availability assurance, policy enforcement, authentication, and visibility.

Summary

Is there a notion that organizations are confident? Yes. Is that a false sense of security? Yes. Attacks are constantly evolving and security measures are not foolproof. Having application security tools and processes in place may provide a sense of control but they are likely to be breached or bypassed sooner or later. Another question we are left with is whether senior management is fully aware of the day to day incidents. Rightfully so, they look to their internal teams tasked with application security to manage the issue, but there seems to be a disconnect between their perceptions of the effectiveness of their organizations’ application security strategies and the actual exposure to risk.

Read “Radware’s 2018 Web Application Security Report” to learn more.

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Attack MitigationAttack Types & VectorsSecurity

Top Cryptomining Malware. Top Ransomware.

August 21, 2018 — by Fabio Palozza — 2

cryptocurrencies_malware_cryptomining_ransomware-960x640.jpg

In 2018, cryptominers have emerged as the leading attack vector used by cybercriminals to gain access into others systems. Cryptominers are getting advanced makeovers by cybercriminals doing their best to develop innovative cryptominers with ground-breaking capabilities. The recently-discovered cryptominers are not only known for their advanced features, but also for their capabilities to attack a wide range of systems including cloud-based platforms, mobile devices, industrial IT-infrastructure, and servers.

It’s not surprising that cybercriminals have started targeting cloud infrastructures which are based on rich classes of strong computing resources and companies that use cloud platforms to store confidential information. Two of the most striking data breaches that we witnessed this past year were the Monero-miner attack on Tesla’s cloud servers and the data-leak incident that affected FedEx customers.

[You Might Also Like: Malicious Cryptocurrency Mining: The Road Ahead]

Top Cryptomining Malware That Is Dominating the Cybercrime Scene in 2018

The most popular web-based Monero currency miner, Coinhive, undoubtedly occupies the first spot regionally and globally with 25 percent of the companies being affected. With the introduction of Coinhive’s JavaScript mining code in September 2017, the code has been incorporated into thousands of websites allowing cybercriminals to capitalize on visitors’ computing resources. Additionally, the code can be used as substitutes for online advertisements that cybercriminals use to lure visitors to click malicious links. In 2018, threat actors have delivered Coinhive in innovative ways through Google’s DoubleClick service and Facebook Messenger, with code embedded in websites or by hiding code inside YouTube ads. Along with Coinhive, other miners, including Jesscoin and Cryptoloot, have been dominating the malicious cryptomining landscape this year, affecting almost 40 percent of businesses and consumers across the globe.

[You Might Also Like: Raising the Bar for Ethical Cryptocurrency Mining]

RIG Exploit Kit is increasingly being used by cybercriminals to capitalize on system vulnerabilities both regionally and globally. RIG Exploit kits typically work by redirecting people to a landing page that features an embedded JavaScript, the main purpose of which is to identify security flaws in the browser. Cybercriminals use RIG kits to deliver exploits for Internet Explorer, Java, Flash, and Silverlight.  RIG Exploit kits ruled the cybercrime scene in the first half of 2018, moving payloads such as cryptominers and Smoke Loader down the ranking.

XMRig, which is an open-source application for CPU-mining, occupies the third spot across all regions in the United States. The XMrig mining code, which gained popularity in early 2018, has been widely used by a number of crypto-strains, including RubyMiner which is specifically designed to target unpatched Linus servers and Windows. According to Check Point, cybercriminals targeted 30 percent of all business networks to utilize server capacities to support their mining operations.

When it comes to ransomware, Locky, which was first introduced in 2016, occupies the first spot in regional and global lists. Wannacry, which came into the scene in 2017 and made its way to thousands of systems continues to hold a high rank this year.

Read “Consumer Sentiments: Cybersecurity, Personal Data and The Impact on Customer Loyalty” to learn more.

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Attack MitigationDDoS AttacksSecurity

Obama’s Cyber-Security Proposals: Does this Safe Platform Translate to a Safer Network?

January 21, 2015 — by Ben Desjardins — 0

President Obama’s mention of cyber-security in last night’s State of the Union Address came as no surprise.  The Obama camp implemented a novel approach this year of “previewing” the President’s main agenda items through a series of speeches in the week preceding the SOTU. But even without the preview, the comments on cyber-security were rather predictable (and brief).

Attack MitigationSecurity

Read this List and Check it Twice — How to Protect Your Retail Business From Cyber-Attacks This Shopping Season

November 25, 2014 — by Shira Sagiv — 1

As consumers are getting their shopping lists ready for the biggest shopping days of the year, businesses should get ready as well.  Cyber-attacks, and most notably DDoS attacks, are more likely to occur on high traffic days – in fact, according to a 2013 eCommerce Cyber Crime Report conducted by the Ponemon Institute, 64% of respondents say "their organizations have seen an increase in Internet fraud and/or website attacks on high traffic days such as Cyber Monday." 

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