On July 15, the Twitter accounts of several other high-level people, adding Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Elon Musk, were hacked as a component of a Bitcoin scam, resulting in the movement of approximately $120,000 in bitcoin after fake tweets posted in verified. user accounts.
The next day, the Communications Security Establishment of Canada, in collaboration with intelligence agencies in the United Kingdom and the United States, announced that a Russian hacker organization had actively conducted cyberattacks, COVID-19-related vaccine studies in all 3 countries. .
Both occasions are indications of the accumulation of cyberattacks, and the desire to improve cybersecurity, after COVID-19, said Alexis Kerr, a lawyer at Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP’s Vancouver office, whose practice includes knowledge protection, confidentiality and cybersecurity.
“Ultimately, cyberattacks are a crime of opportunity and [COVID-19] a new opportunity to exploit people’s vulnerability,” kerr says.
A controller has taken a step forward and highlighted spaces of risk.
“In March, … there was a very immediate transition from a more classic pictorial environment to painters leaving the house,” he says. “Not all organizations have been configured to do this, and we’ve noticed immediate adjustments to cloud responses and virtual network paintings. Array… No rapid expansion has been made with due diligence for such implementation, which has left vulnerabilities … that can then be exploited.
Computers containing sensitive information and without proper security patches have been brought home, and more, making them more vulnerable to attacks.
“Another example would be the other solutions that individual workers have discovered to download apps. We all start with the video conferencing software … With Zoom, there was an immediate and extensive adoption across many companies, and then the security issues that were highly publicized. »
Zoom was quick in those problems, but under pressure that due diligence wasn’t there in the first place, he added. “There was ‘look before jumping’.
Kerr expects the accumulation of cyberattacks to continue as COVID-19 continues and risk actors infiltrate the systems, “especially where there is a huge price in encrypting data, benefits or treatment with vaccines; the confidential data that many organizations generated lately is at a heavy price. Since most of these attacks tend to be economically motivated, they will pass where the price is.
One type of attack plays with people’s concern and desire to get data on COVID-19. Users are encouraged to click on links to fraudulent Internet sites that contain false government notices about the Canadian emergency response benefit, for which the user must provide non-public data. Other websites offer fake protective devices or mimic World Health Organization or The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sites. The CSE and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service recently issued a bulletin on one in particular, Kerr says: a phishing email posing as Canada’s Medical Director, Dr. Theresa Tam, which aims to provide vital updates on COVID-19.
“As soon as the attachment is opened, malware or malware payloads are sent,” he says.
While there’s nothing new about those attacks, COVID-19 is an opportunity to bring those attacks to light in another way, but with a nice aspect of the things of human nature he’s done, Kerr says: greed or fear.
“The sophistication of attacks is expanding and they are increasingly difficult to detect.”
Kerr advises following the most productive practices, adding software patch implementation in a timely manner. In 2017, he says, the WannaCry malware shut down 200,000 computers worldwide and charged billions of dollars in damage because organizations had not installed a Microsoft patch that had been available for some time.
“It’s imperative to make sure patches are controlled on a normal basis,” he says. “Similarly, it is also imperative to make sure to update antivirus and antimalware software on a daily basis. These things are replaced every hour. Your antivirus and antimalware responses are as effective as updates based on the other permutations used through risky players ».
The exercise of employee protection is also essential; “Your workers are your weakest link and one of your most productive defenses. Therefore, it is imperative to exercise them to recognize and respond when those messages from risk actors pass to their devices,” Kerr says.
“You have to exercise them and review them several times. When you review and you’re a victim, you want to comply; a click through a worker can generate a chain of occasions that can necessarily lead you to a business activity.”