What I'm Reading 2/19/2020 - Ransomware Attacks Against Critical Infrastructure and API Attacks Everywhere Else

Books -

The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States: A Speculative Novel -

“The skies over the Korean Peninsula on March 21, 2020, were clear and blue.” So begins this sobering report on the findings of the Commission on the Nuclear Attacks against the United States, established by law by Congress and President Donald J. Trump to investigate the horrific events of the next three days. An independent, bipartisan panel led by nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis, the commission was charged with finding and reporting the relevant facts, investigating how the nuclear war began, and determining whether our government was adequately prepared for combating a nuclear adversary and safeguarding U.S. citizens. Did President Trump and his advisers understand North Korean views about nuclear weapons? Did they appreciate the dangers of provoking the country’s ruler with social media posts and military exercises? Did the tragic milestones of that fateful month—North Korea's accidental shoot-down of Air Busan flight 411, the retaliatory strike by South Korea, and the tweet that triggered vastly more carnage—inevitably lead to war? Or did America’s leaders have the opportunity to avert the greatest calamity in the history of our nation?

 Network Forensics: Tracking Hackers through Cyberspace  -

Learn to recognize hackers’ tracks and uncover network-based evidence in Network Forensics: Tracking Hackers through Cyberspace. Carve suspicious email attachments from packet captures. Use flow records to track an intruder as he pivots through the network. Analyze a real-world wireless encryption-cracking attack (and then crack the key yourself). Reconstruct a suspect’s web surfing history–and cached web pages, too–from a web proxy. Uncover DNS-tunneled traffic. Dissect the Operation Aurora exploit, caught on the wire.

 News / Blogs -

BBC - Soros calls for Zuckerberg and Sandberg to leave Facebook -

In his short letter to the FT, Democratic party donor George Soros writes: "Mr Zuckerberg appears to be engaged in some kind of mutual assistance arrangement with Donald Trump that will help him to get re-elected.

"Facebook does not need to wait for government regulations to stop accepting any political advertising in 2020 until after the elections on 4 November.

"I repeat my proposal, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg should be removed from control of Facebook."

Reuters - Dell to Sell RSA for $2.08B

Reuters - Facebook faces tax court trial over Ireland offshore deal -

The IRS argues that Facebook understated the value of the intellectual property it sold to an Irish subsidiary in 2010 while building out global operations, a move common among U.S. multinationals. Ireland has lower corporate tax rates than the United States, so the move reduced the company’s tax bill.

Cyberscoop -  DHS’s cyber wing responds to ransomware attack on pipeline operator -

The Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency recently responded to a ransomware attack on a natural gas compression facility that led the organization to shut down its operations for two days, the agency said Tuesday.

The hackers were able to encrypt data on the organization’s IT and “operational technology” network, a broad term for a network that oversees industrial processes. No longer able to read data coming from across its enterprise, the facility shut down its various assets, including its pipelines, for two days.

Endgadget -  ‘Frontline’ documentary tackles Jeff Bezos and the ‘Amazon Empire’ -

The film covers issues spanning Amazon's entire history, including prominent incidents from the last couple of months. For one thing, it looks at Amazon's tussle with the government over a major cloud computing deal. Amazon claimed that President Donald Trump's "personal vendetta" against it and Bezos (supposedly stemming from critical coverage of him in Bezos' Washington Post) cost it a $10 billion Department of Defense contract. Footage from a House antitrust hearing held last month is included as well. 

Techdirt - Mark Zuckerberg Suggests Getting Rid Of Section 230; Maybe People Should Stop Pretending It's A Gift To Facebook - 

Well, we can add Mark Zuckerberg to the list of folks willing to toss Section 230 liability protections out the window -- contrary to the claims of many that Facebook is the leading supporter of that law. He's now making it clear that he's open to a big modification of the law.

Techdirt -  Ron Wyden: Modifying Section 230 Will Give More Censorship Power To Trump; And Lock In Facebook's Dominance -

Some have argued that repealing Section 230 would punish Facebook and Google for their failures. That’s simply not true. The biggest tech companies have enough lawyers and lobbyists to survive virtually any regulation Congress can concoct. It’s the start-ups seeking to displace Big Tech that would be hammered by the constant threat of lawsuits. 

The Register - Hard Disk Dri, er, Connive: Two sales execs accused by Uncle Sam of bumping up HDD component prices - 

Two former sales executives at NHK Spring Ltd, Hitoshi Hashimoto and Hiroyuki Tamura, were indicted in America last week for alleged participation in a worldwide conspiracy to fix the prices of hard disk components.

Reuters -  EU bets on industrial data, new rules to catch up in global tech -

It is hoping that tapping into the trove of industrial data held by companies such as Germany’s Siemens and France’s Alstom could push Europe to forefront of the next wave of innovation.

“We will create a single market for data in the EU and we want to trigger investments of 4-6 billion euros in EU data spaces and cloud infrastructures,” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told a news conference. 

Benjojo - How 1500 bytes became the MTU of the internet -

The problem is, PLL’s were not so great back in 1988 [when people were deploying 10BASE5] and so you could not go on for too long after a training signal without the clock signal from desynchronizing from what it was trained on at the beginning. If the recipient did desynchronize, then the packet would have to be retransmitted, causing more time usage on the shared line between all the computers on the segment.

The engineers at the time picked 1500 bytes, or around 12000 bits as the best “safe” value.

The Hacker News - US Govt Warns Critical Industries After Ransomware Hits Gas Pipeline Facility -

The advisory comes in response to a cyberattack targeting an unnamed natural gas compression facility that employed spear-phishing to deliver ransomware to the company's internal network, encrypting critical data and knocking servers out of operation for almost two days.

"A cyber threat actor used a spear-phishing link to obtain initial access to the organization's information technology network before pivoting to its operational technology network. The threat actor then deployed commodity ransomware to encrypt data for impact on both networks," CISA noted in its alert.

The Verge - To expose sexism at Uber, Susan Fowler blew up her life - 

When I ask if there have been real changes to Silicon Valley’s larger culture since her blog post and the #MeToo revelations that followed, she is quiet for a moment, choosing her words. Not all companies are Uber, she tells me. Uber is the obvious bad example of what happens when certain things that are entrenched in Silicon Valley culture go all the way. What drove it to be so harmful was an extreme version of the disruptor mentality — a total lack of accountability and a sense that the laws simply didn’t apply. “I think that attitude has changed a little bit [in Silicon Valley],” she says. “A big part of it is the renewed scrutiny that has come toward the technology companies.”

CSO - APIs are becoming a major target for credential stuffing attacks -

New data from security and content delivery company Akamai shows that one in every five attempts to gain unauthorized access to user accounts is now done through application programming interfaces (APIs) instead of user-facing login pages. This trend is even more pronounced in the financial services industry where the use of APIs is widespread and in part fueled by regulatory requirements.

Security Boulevard - Now Is the Time to Focus on API Security - 

As we move forward into 2020, we believe that APIs are the most vulnerable attack vector for large-scale data breaches. Security teams need to be able to automate and analyze security behind their apps. Here is a list of what DevOps and IT security teams to consider:

 CNN - Who's responsible for what you buy on Amazon? A court is about to decide -

On Wednesday, the case "Oberdorf v. Amazon" will undergo a rare hearing in Philadelphia by all the federal judges on the US Third Circuit Court of Appeals. The closely-watched case hinges on the question of whether Amazon can be held liable for damages caused by goods sold in its third-party marketplace, where outside sellers sell their products alongside Amazon's own offerings.

The decision, which is subject to appeal, could influence numerous other cases and, ultimately, the way Amazon (AMZN) runs its business.