Cybersecurity Saturday

David Ermer–Cybersecurity, Generative AI–

From the cybersecurity policy front,

  • Cybersecurity Dive lets us know,
    • “Legislators slammed UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty over the cyberattack on subsidiary Change Healthcare at two Congressional hearings on Wednesday, raising concerns about the technology firm’s lack of cybersecurity and the potentially huge breach of Americans’ health data.”
  • The American Hospital News reports
    • “The Biden Administration April 30 released a memo announcing updated critical infrastructure protection requirements, which include the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency acting as the National Coordinator for Security and Resilience, and heightening the importance of minimum security and resilience requirements within health care and other critical infrastructure sectors, consistent with the National Cybersecurity Strategy.”  
  • and
    • “The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency May 3 extended the comment period to July 3 for the April 4 proposed rule that would implement cyber incident and ransom payment reporting requirements under the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act of 2022. The rule would require critical infrastructure organizations, including hospitals and health systems, to report a covered cyber incident to the federal government within 72 hours and ransom payments within 24 hours, among other requirements.”
  • Cyberscoop adds.
    • “A draft rule for cyber incident reporting asks far too much of critical infrastructure entities and of the agency tasked with carrying out the law, trade groups representing the electric, telecommunications and finance sectors said during a House hearing Wednesday.
    • “The cyber incident reporting mandate is one of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s biggest forays into a regulatory role — and it is proving to be a thorny one. The 447-page draft rule, released in March, would require select critical infrastructure companies to report significant cyber incidents within 72 hours and any ransomware payments within 24 hours. The rule was established largely for the government to better understand the cyber landscape after multiple major cyberattacks — such as the SolarWinds espionage campaign — highlighted the fact that many attacks go unnoticed.
    • “Witnesses before the House Homeland Security’s cybersecurity subcommittee were largely in agreement that the rule is an important step for broader cyber awareness but also too broad, increasing the likelihood of CISA becoming overwhelmed by reports. Meanwhile, front-line defenders — particularly smaller organizations — could be hampered by trying to both file reports and deal with an attack. CISA will not be able to keep up with the amount of data due to the broad definition of cyber incidents and who should report, the witnesses argued.”
  • Health IT Security informs us,
    • “The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) finalized updates to its Health Breach Notification Rule (HBNR) with the goal of clarifying the rule’s applicability to health apps and other technologies that fall outside HIPAA’s purview.
    • “The FTC issued the HBNR more than a decade ago, when health apps were not as embedded into the US healthcare landscape as they are now. The HBNR requires vendors of personal health records (PHRs), PHR-related entities, and third-party service providers that are not subject to HIPAA to notify the FTC and impacted individuals in the event of a health data breach.”

From the cybersecurity vulnerabilities and breaches front,

  • Cybersecurity Dive tells us,
    • “A ransomware group accessed Change Healthcare’s systems with compromised credentials, UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty said in written testimony prepared for a Wednesday hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. 
    • “On Feb. 12, the AlphV ransomware group used those compromised credentials to “remotely access a Change Healthcare Citrix portal, an application used to enable remote access to desktops,” Witty said in his prepared remarks. “The portal did not have multifactor authentication.” 
    • “Once the threat actor gained access, they moved laterally within the systems in more sophisticated ways and exfiltrated data. Ransomware was deployed nine days later,” Witty said.”
  • and
    • “The exploitation of vulnerabilities almost tripled as an initial access vector in 2023, fueled in part by the MOVEit breach, Verizon said in its Data Breach Investigations Report released Wednesday.
    • “Ransomware actors increasingly targeted zero-day vulnerabilities in IT systems, Verizon found. About a third of all breaches in 2023 included some type of extortion, and MOVEit involved Clop ransomware exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities in the file-transfer service.
    • T”he report shows 15% of breaches involved a third party, which includes data custodians, software vulnerabilities and direct or indirect supply chain issues, according to the report. This figure represented a 68% increase from the prior year, Verizon said.”
  • and
    • “Pro-Russia hacktivists are targeting operational technology systems in the water, energy and agricultural sectors by exploiting poor cyber hygiene techniques, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned Wednesday. CISA issued a joint fact sheet with the FBI, National Security Agency and multiple international agencies.”Pro-Russia hacktivists are targeting operational technology systems in the water, energy and agricultural sectors by exploiting poor cyber hygiene techniques, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned Wednesday. CISA issued a joint fact sheet with the FBI, National Security Agency and multiple international agencies.
    • “Threat groups are looking to compromise industrial control systems at small-scale operations in North America and Europe that are exposed to the internet and use default passwords or lack multifactor authentication, officials warned.
    • “The targeting thus far has involved unsophisticated techniques that target components like human-machine interfaces. The agencies urged providers to immediately change to more complex passwords and implement multifactor authentication.” 
  • SC Media offers five takeaways from the Verizon report.
  • Bleeping Computer tells us,
    • “The NSA and FBI warned that the APT43 North Korea-linked hacking group exploits weak email Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) policies to mask spearphishing attacks.
    • “Together with the U.S. State Department, the two agencies cautioned that the attackers abuse misconfigured DMARC policies to send spoofed emails which appear to come from credible sources such as journalists, academics, and other experts in East Asian affairs.”
    • “The DPRK leverages these spearphishing campaigns to collect intelligence on geopolitical events, adversary foreign policy strategies, and any information affecting DPRK interests by gaining illicit access to targets’ private documents, research, and communications,” the NSA said.”
  • CISA added the following known exploited vulnerabilities to its catalog this week.
    • On April 30, CVE-2024-29988 Microsoft SmartScreen Prompt Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability, and
    • On May 1, CVE-2023-7028 GitLab Community and Enterprise Editions Improper Access Control Vulnerability.
  • Tech Republic adds, “Researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found that OpenAI’s GPT-4 is able to exploit 87% of a list of vulnerabilities when provided with their NIST descriptions.”

From the cybersecurity defenses front.

  • Here is a link to Dark Reading’s CISO Corner.
  • Security Week reports, “In the wake of a scathing US government report that condemned Microsoft’s weak cybersecurity practices and lax corporate culture, security chief Charlie Bell is pledging significant reforms and a strategic shift to prioritize security above all other product features.”
  • ISACA released its 2023 annual report. “Access ISACA’s annual report here.”
  • Mercer Consulting considers how to modernize HR data strategy to address cybersecurity risks.