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TWiC | U.S. House Data Leak, ICS Attacks, FortiOS Vulnerability, Cyber Insurance

FBI Investigating Data Breach Affecting U.S. House of Representatives Members and Staff

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating a data breach affecting members and staff of the U.S. House of Representatives. The breach saw account and sensitive personal information belonging to them and their families stolen from the servers of DC Health Link, which administers their health care plans.

While US House Chief Administrative Officer Catherine L. Szpindor has said, “it was unclear how many people had been affected by the breach.” A sample of the data reportedly posted on a hacking forum showed details of around 170,000 people. The information included names, dates of birth, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, and Social Security numbers. At least one threat actor has reportedly put the data up for sale.

nGuard’s MECC (Managed Event Collection and Correlation) can help protect against malicious attacks by collecting and analyzing log data from various sources. MECC can then alert security teams to potential threats and provide them with the information they need to investigate and respond to an ongoing or potential attack. Should your organization fall victim to an attack like this, call nGuard to help with our Cyber Security Incident Response services.

New FortiOS and FortiProxy Critical Vulnerabilities

Fortinet has released patches to address 15 security flaws, including one critical vulnerability in FortiOS and FortiProxy that could allow an attacker to take control of affected systems. The buffer underwrite flaw (CVE-2023-25610) is rated 9.3 out of 10 for severity and was discovered by Fortinet’s internal security teams. The vulnerability could enable a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code on the device or cause a denial-of-service attack. Fortinet has not yet seen any malicious exploitation attempts against the flaw, but users are urged to apply the patches quickly, as prior flaws in software have been actively abused in the wild. Workarounds include disabling the HTTP/HTTPS administrative interface or limiting IP addresses that can reach it. Just last week, nGuard wrote about another Fortinet critical vulnerability that was actively being exploited. As this continues to develop, nGuard has a number of solutions that can help your organization stay ahead of the curve, including internal penetration testing and vulnerability management.

Over 40% of Industrial Control Systems (ICS) Were Attacked in 2022

Over 40% of industrial control systems (ICS) computers globally experienced malicious attacks in 2022, according to Kaspersky research into telemetry statistics. The report highlighted growth in Russia, which saw a 9% increase in malicious activity in 2022, but Ethiopia was the top target overall with 59% of its ICS footprint seeing malicious activity.

Kaspersky noted that blocked malicious scripts and phishing pages targeting ICS were particularly common threats, seeing an 11% rise from 2021. The percentage of ICS computers experiencing malicious activity varied from 40.1% in Africa and Central Asia to 14.2% and 14.3% respectively in Western and Northern Europe. nGuard has been helping protect Industrial control systems, SCADA networks, and critical infrastructure for over 20 years with security assessments, penetration testing, incident response, and managed SIEM services.

Low-coverage Cyber Insurance Plans Help Meet Compliance and Contractual Requirements

As the cyber insurance market experiences a surge in claims for ransomware attacks, insurance carriers and brokers have started imposing tighter rules on the companies that can qualify for coverage, raising prices and reducing the amount of coverage offered per policy. nGuard recently wrote about requirements needed to obtain cyber insurance. Policy coverages have significantly dropped in recent times, with some as low as $5m, and some companies cannot purchase as much insurance as they would like. However, some contracts and compliance regulations require that a company have a cyber insurance policy, which can pose a problem for those that lose coverage. Basic policies are now available for more organizations to obtain affordable coverage, allowing them to avoid a breach of compliance and fulfill contractual obligations.

TWiC | Fortinet PoC, US Airport Sites Go Offline, CISA Warns of Industrial Appliance Flaws, & Windows 11 Phishing Protection

Over the past few weeks there have been several hot topics and time sensitive advisories released. In this edition of This Week in Cybersecurity, nGuard will highlight the Fortinet proof-of-concept (PoC) that was released; Russian-speaking hackers taking down US Airport websites; Windows 11 offering automatic phishing protection; and CISA warning of critical flaws in some industrial appliances.

Fortinet PoC Released
A proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code has been made available for the recently disclosed critical security flaw affecting Fortinet FortiOS, FortiProxy, and FortiSwitchManager. A successful exploitation of the shortcoming is tantamount to granting complete access “to do just about anything” on the affected system. Fortinet issued an advisory urging customers to upgrade affected appliances to the latest version as soon as possible and CISA added this to their Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog. 12 unique IP addresses have accounted for most responsibility in weaponizing CVE-2022-40684 as of October 13, 2022. A majority of them are located in Germany, followed by the U.S., Brazil, China and France. nGuard covered this in more detail in a Security Advisory last week. Conducting ongoing penetration testing and vulnerability management can alert you to these types of vulnerabilities being present in your environment.

US Airport Sites Taken Down by Russian-Speaking Attackers
On Monday October 10th, more than a dozen public-facing airport websites, including those for some of the nation’s largest airports, appeared inaccessible, and Russian-speaking hackers claimed responsibility. The attack was carried out by a group known as Killnet, who support the Kremlin but are not thought to be government hackers. Killnet favors a type of attack known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS). Two of the sites that were affected by this attack were Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and the Los Angeles International Airport websites. Fortunately, there did not seem to be an impact to air travel itself but may have caused inconveniences for individuals traveling during the time access to those sites was attempted.

Windows 11 Offers Automatic Phishing Protection
Enhanced phishing protection now comes prebuilt into the Windows 11 operating system. This protection can automatically detect when users type their password into any app or site that is known to be dangerous. Admins can know exactly when a password has been stolen and can be equipped to better protect against such attacks. According to Microsoft, “When Windows 11 protects against one phishing attack, that threat intelligence cascades to protect other Windows users interacting with other apps and sites that are experiencing the same attack.” A blocking dialog warning is displayed prompting users to change their password if they type it into a phishing site in any Chromium browser or into an application connecting to a phishing site. If users try to store their password locally, like in Notepad or in any Microsoft 365 app, Windows 11 warns them that this is an unsafe practice and urges them to delete it from the file. To help train and test your employees on their security awareness, nGuard offers custom, tailored Security Awareness Training and social engineering.

CISA Publishes Two Advisories Regarding Industrial Appliances
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has published two Industrial Control Systems advisories pertaining to severe flaws in Advantech R-SeeNet and Hitachi Energy APM Edge appliances. The list of issues, which affect R-SeeNet Versions 2.4.17 and prior are:

Patches have been made available in version R-SeeNet version 2.4.21 released on September 30, 2022.

These alerts come less than a week after CISA published 25 ICS advisories on October 13, 2022, spanning several vulnerabilities across devices from Siemens, Hitachi Energy, and Mitsubishi Electric.

nGuard has a wide array of experience assessing critical infrastructure, SCADA, and Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and can help you secure yours. Conducting annual penetration testing, having a proper Incident Response Plan, and ensuring you have the proper logging, alerting, and correlation can help you stay ahead of the attackers.