Itc 596 - Threat Landscape

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(Cummings, 2012)

The increasing trend for this threat in all emerging areas places a concern on how to defend against this.

Information leakage is also difficult to defend against. With the improvements in wireless network speeds/ mobile devices and cloud storage, defence of internal systems from information leakage is a growing problem. There is a lot of money to make in stealing data from a corporation. With the steady increases in social data and their use, businesses have had to be more vigilant than ever.

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5) Identify and discuss the key Threat Agents. What could be done to minimize their impact on the system?

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Looking at the Threat Agents from ENISA, the following are determined as key Threat Agents due to the number of Threats.

- Cyber Criminals

- Cyber Fighters

- Cyber Terriorists

- Hactivists

- Nation States

- Corporations

These Threat Agents have the following attributes of threats that can impact an organisation:

- Malicious Code

- Web-Based Attacks

- Web Application Attacks

- DOS Attacks

- Phishing

- Data Breaches

- Physical Damage / Theft Loss

- Insider Threat

- Information Loss

- Identity Theft

To defend against these threats there are some common security implementations that can assist in defence:

- Application Whitelisting

- Patching of servers and workstations

- Limit of administrative privileges

- Educating employees of best practices.

The Australian Federal Governments Cyber Security Operations Centre has detailed 35 strategies to defend against this form of attack (Centre, 2014).

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6) Provide a brief summary (literature review) of Social Hacking issues.

The first document I would like to review is by PandaSecurity.com titled “Why do people hack Social Media accounts?”(PandaSecurity, 2014).

This document details why hackers want to obtain users personal information from their social websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.

What is intriguing about social media is the willingness of people to share personal details for other to share. The social applications available invite the user to reveal more than they normally would.

A social hacker that obtains enough personal information from a target has the potential to compromise financial accounts as well as impersonating the target.

This can lead to holding the target up for ransom (ransomware).

In April 2016 the US Federal Bureau of Investigation advised that ransomware was growing to be a $1 billion a year problem (Fitzpatrick & Griffin, 2016).

A growing trend for users is to have their social profile created by a professional, whether it be for a new job or to remain popular socially. Care must be taken when providing someone else with your details. The article advises to never use the same password for your email account as well as your social media account and then log into your social media account with your email details.

The summary of issues from this document are as follows:

- Ensure you use a different password for each social media account

- Don’t reveal personal information that can be used for phishing or ransomware.

- If you have to provide a professional your social account, ensure the password is changed to a unique password before you provide it, and change it immediately after receiving the final work completed.

- Ensure your virus protection is updated.

The second document I would like to review is by Ondrej Krehel titled “The rise of LinkedIn fraud”(Krehel & Ondrej, 2016)

The article describes how the author has been noticing an increasing number of LinkedIn requests by unknown fake profiles. The aim in this case is to become connected with the target and obtain key business details to be used against the target or the targets organisation.

Key information that can be obtained by a LinkedIn profile can include:

- Business Desk and Mobile Number

- Business Email address

- Business Place of Work

- Key Contractors associated with the target

- Photo of the target

- Job history of the target

- Possible listing of projects completed.

With this information, the hacker can approach key people within the organisation as well as key contractors to possibly send malware.

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7) Based on the data provided in Table 2, discuss the trends in threat probability.

Table 2 in ETL 2014 discuss the changes in threats from 2013 to 2014. They show the threats of 2013 and how they have changed during 2014.

The following threats have increased in ranking from 2013 to 2014:

- Malicious Code: Rank 2 to 1

- Botnets: Rank 5 to 4

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