← Cybersecurity Headlines
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- [00:00]
Lauren Verno
From the CISO series. It's Cybersecurity Headlines these are the cybersecurity headlines for Tuesday, December 31, 2024. I'm Lauren Verno. Cisco Confirms Data Leak It's a data leak that's been speculated, but now Cisco has confirmed the authenticity of a second 4 gigabyte data leak linked to its public facing Dev Hub environment, which provides developer resources. The hacker intel broker known for targeting major organizations like AMD and T Mobile claims to have obtained sensitive data, including source code, credentials and confidential documents, though Cisco asserts no breach of its internal systems or enterprise environments occurred while public access to the Dev Hub has been disabled as a precaution. Cisco says they will continue to investigate the incident and has not identified any evidence of compromised sensitive personal or financial information. Microsoft Announces Urgent NET Domain Transition Microsoft is urging. NET developers to update their applications and pipelines to replace references to Azure Edge.net domains with build.net.Microsoft.com as the former will soon be retired due to CDN provider edgeo's bankruptcy. This sudden transition, happening over the holidays, could disrupt projects using. Net installers, GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps pipelines tied to the old domains with firewall updates also necessary for the new CDN. LOC 2024 Security Lessons According to Dark Reading, there are some key lessons to take away as we head into the new year. The threat landscape in 2024 underscored the rise of zero day exploits, nation state alliances with cybercriminals and increasing attacks on critical infrastructure, exposing sustainability, systemic vulnerabilities in both IT and OT systems. High profile incidents including ransomware disruptions to supply chains and espionage targeting telecom networks highlighted the need for stronger defenses, proactive patch management and cross sector collaboration. Thanks to Today's episode sponsor ThreatLocker. Do zero day exploits and supply chain attacks keep you up at night? Worry no more. You can harden your security with ThreatLocker. ThreatLocker helps you take a proactive default deny approach to cybersecurity and provides a full audit of every action allowed or blocked for risk management and compliance. Onboarding and operation are fully supported by their US based support team. To learn more about how ThreatLocker can help keep your organization running efficiently and protected from ransomware, visit threatlocker.com that's T H R E A T L O C K E R Can you believe it? We've made it to the last Headlines episode of the year, so we figured we'd change things up a bit with these final few stories. Throughout the year, cybersecurity Headline reporters Sean Kelly, Rich Stroffolino, Steve Prentiss and myself scour the top stories of the day to pass along to you. And as we wrap up this year, the team wanted to share a story that stood out to them, whether for notability, the sheer impact of the story, or one that simply stuck out. I'll go first with the persistent threat of small scale ransomware attacks. My story, or rather stories of the year, is the weekly ransomware attacks on local governments, regional infrastructure or other under resourced industries that impact our daily lives. Hear me out. There has not been one week this year where I wasn't able to find a ransomware attack impacting a relatively small agency, county or business. But because they don't carry the massive change healthcare ransom of $22 million or involve a well known branded name, these attacks are often noted and then quickly overshadowed by a new small town experiencing a similar attack the following week. Pittsburgh Regional Transit, Costa Rica State Energy, Texas County, Ohio's capital city, even my own local beach town, Jacksonville Beach City hall was a victim. I could go on and on and those were just attacks we've reported on in the last two months of the year. While I can only assume why these criminals are going after these lesser known targets, there was a definite trend this year that I'm fairly confident in saying will likely not change in the new year. Steve, you're up.
- [05:43]
Steve Prentiss
I'm Steve Prentiss. My story of the year has to be the $25 million Hong Kong deepfake heist which occurred in February. It was at the time, and probably remains one of the most sophisticated deepfake attacks to date involving Arup, the British design and engineering company famous for building the Sydney Opera House. One of its Hong Kong based employees was duped into attending a video call with people he believed were the chief financial Officer and other members of the staff, but all of whom turned out to be deepfake recreations. This resulted in the transfer of $25 million to the cybercriminals. The story was not only intriguing in its audacity, but also reflected that the employee did everything right, refusing the initial request to transfer the money and therefore practicing proactive cybersecurity. It was only after the criminals upped the stakes by creating the deepfake video meeting that the employee was convinced of the validity of the transaction. So this story to me is a salute to employees doing what they are trained to do in terms of staying vigilant, while at the same time serves as a reminder of the endless creativity of threat actors.
- [06:51]
Rich Stroffolino
Rich Stroffelino here. The story I keep thinking about this year is the status of NIST's National Vulnerability Database, or NVD. NIST has had a problem enriching items added to NVD and came out in April saying that there was a significant backlog to kind of solve this. In May, it announced that it hired a contractor to help clear up that backlog, and they were hoping to have it done by the end of September, their fiscal year. That estimate proved optimistic, with NIST admitting in November that it made significant progress but was still working on it. But what's got me thinking is what long term solutions NIST will use to keep this backlog from just going out of control as vulnerability inevitably keep growing and becoming more complex. NIST threw out ideas of starting a consortium with industry and government stakeholders, but we've heard nothing about that for months, basically since they said they were thinking about it in May. And so what I'm thinking about is will the idea of the NVD as a single source of vulnerability truth become just a quaint anachronism? It's my big unresolved question going into the new year.
- [07:59]
Sean Kelly
Hi, I'm Sean Kelly. The team and I have covered a number of game changing stories this year, including the crowdstrike and change health incidents, the evolving threat of AI and deepfakes, and cyber crime ring takedowns. But the story that resonated with me most this year was one that I reported in our September 16th cybersecurity headlines. A report from the Wall Street Journal highlighted that just 22.6% of tech roles are occupied by women, and that number had only risen about a half a percent in 17 years. Coincidentally, a new documentary called Do We Belong Here? Had been premiered by Cyber Florida at the University of Southern Florida. The documentary highlights stories of perseverance and success shared by women and other underrepresented groups in cyber. The documentary is inspiring and extremely well done, but it's not just a feel good story, it's a call to action for all of us. So regardless of your sex, race or background, please watch the documentary and share it with others. You can also get involved with organizations like WIS and Cyversity who are always looking for allies and partners to help fulfill their mission. Thanks to our listeners for their support and wishing you all a happy New Year.
- [09:05]
Lauren Verno
And from all of us here at the CISO Series, thank you for listening to CyberSecurity headlines in 2024. Now, if you're a regular listener, tell a friend to check it out in the new year. From the whole team over here at the CISO Series, here's wishing you and yours a Happy and safe 2025. For the last time of the year, I'm Lauren Verno reporting for the CISO series. Cybersecurity headlines are available every weekday. Head to CISoseries.com for the full stories behind the headline.