How do we solve the need for lots of strong passwords?
Author: SE Labs Team
Trump’s Cybersecurity Policy
What does a Trump presidency mean for global cybersecurity? Does Trump’s Cybersecurity Policy exist? Or will it?
Washington is nervous. No one knows if President Trump understands cybersecurity, or whether he’ll listen to those who do.
Impending drama
Some pundits are already suggesting that his first 100 days in office will include a cyber emergency.
How he responds is crucial, but his comments so far have instilled little confidence.
“Cyber is becoming so big today, it’s becoming something that a number of years ago, a short number of years ago wasn’t even a word.”
“We have to get very, very tough on cyber and cyber warfare. It is — it is a huge problem. I have a son. He’s 10 years old. He has computers. He is so good with these computers, it’s unbelievable. The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe it’s hardly doable.”
Trump’s Cybersecurity Policy
To be fair, Trump’s campaign site does say that he’ll order a review of “all U.S. cyber defences and vulnerabilities” by a specially assembled Cyber Review Team formed from “the military, law enforcement and the private sector”.
But Washington needs to know if he will implement or even believe the Cyber Review Team’s recommendations. After all, this is the man who, when experts discovered Russian-backed groups attacking the Democratic National Committee, said:
“I don’t think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC. She’s saying Russia, Russia, Russia, but I don’t — maybe it was. I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, OK?”
Dread
According to The Washington Post, a sense of dread is descending on the US intelligence community. Former CIA director Michael Hayden summed up the mood:
“I cannot remember another president-elect who has been so dismissive of intelligence received during a campaign or so suspicious of the quality and honesty of the intelligence he was about to receive.”
Anti-China-Hacker
Trump’s policy also places an onus on deterring attacks by state and non-state actors, and he has a has a particular thing about China’s hackers. He seems openly irritated by the country’s refusal to observe intellectual property law. His plan here is to:
“Enforce stronger protections against Chinese hackers … and our responses to Chinese theft will be swift, robust, and unequivocal.”
By this logic, it’s apparently difficult to attribute an attack when it’s Russia, but not when it’s China. This kind of thinking will need to change or it could damage superpower relationships at a uniquely dangerous point in world history.
Part of the danger is that a sufficiently irked President could order a pre-emptive cyber-strike against China to show everyone who’s boss. How will he pick the right target if he doesn’t listen to his advisors? China’s a very big place, and what looks like state-sponsored hacking to some might in fact turn out to be private enterprise. Such actions could be taken as an act of war, and even a limited cyberwar could leave swathes of the internet useless until rebuilt.
Slip of the tongue
Trump also famously likes to abandon the script and simply ad lib during speeches, but national security depends on secrecy. Will he blurt out something in a speech that gives an enemy state a clue about America’s capabilities or, even worse, her vulnerabilities?
Torture works

Trump’s view that “torture works” could also irreparably damage the relationship between GCHQ and the NSA. Torture is a no-no for the UK. The Cheltenham Doughnut is expressly forbidden from sharing intelligence with countries that openly engage in torture.
A change in policy by the US would further compromise the flow of intelligence already put at risk by Brexit. The Open Rights Group also believes that Trump will exert a great deal of influence over the UK’s intelligence community.
Retaining skilled infosec talent from abroad is also about to become more of a problem for US companies, because Trump plans a crackdown on H-1B work visas. Taking up the slack means boosting cybersecurity degree courses, but any increase in trained manpower will take time to trickle through. In the meantime, who will fill the skills gap?
Listen
Ultimately, Trump is going to have to stop threatening and promising things he can’t deliver, and start listening to his advisors. To do so, he must leave his preconceptions at the door to the Oval Office and think calmly and clearly before acting. Whether that will happen is anyone’s guess, but it’s not hyperbole to suggest that a huge amount depends on it.
Does your anti-malware stop hacking attacks?
An attack rarely ends when the malware runs. That’s just the beginning…
Latest reports now online.
Testing security software is a challenging task and it’s tempting to take clever shortcuts. However, while doing so might save the tester time and other resources, it doesn’t always produce useful results. And if the results aren’t accurate then the test becomes less valuable to you when you’re choosing which product to use.
Can anti-malware stop hacking?
We are big supporters of the idea of full product testing. This means installing the security product the way it was intended to be used, on systems commonly used in the real world and ensuring that every component of that product has a chance to defend the system.
In practice this means that we installed the anti-malware products tested in this report on regular PCs that are connected to a simple network that has unfiltered internet access. We visit malicious websites directly, where possible, and use a special replay system when the bad guys start to interfere with our activities.
Since the beginning of this year we started including targeted attacks in our testing. These types of attacks try to compromise the target using infected documents and browser exploits. Once an exploit has succeeded we then continue ‘hacking’ the target. This step is crucial because in many cases it is these post-exploitation hacking activities that can trigger an alert.
Full product testing doesn’t just mean turning on (or leaving enabled) all of a product’s features. It also means running a full attack as realistically as possible. Testers should not make assumptions about how a product works. You need to act like a real bad guy to understand how these products protect the system. Can anti-malware stop hacking? Test like a hacker and find out. And read our results!
These reports, for enterprises, small businesses and home users are now available for free from our website.
Malicious Connections monitoring with CurrPorts
Uncover dodgy and malicious connections on your network with this handy, free utility.
If you’ve ever downloaded an unknown executable or suspect something may have subverted your defences, you need to know of any malicious connections.
Written and maintained by Nir Sofer, CurrPorts gives you a clear, interactive view of all TCP and UDP connections being made by your Windows computer.
Continue reading “Malicious Connections monitoring with CurrPorts”Interview With The Bank Manager (online fraud)
Pundits pontificating about online fraud is all well and good, but what do the banks think, and how do they protect us?
To find the truth, we talked candidly to a branch manager from UK bank NatWest.
SE: First of all, what’s the scale of the online fraud problem from the bank’s perspective?
I won’t lie. It’s massive. We’re always being told about phishing emails, and you can report them to us online. Scam phone calls pretending to be the bank and asking for your account details and passwords are also huge. Just to be sure, we never ask for passwords. No one does Well, no one legitimate anyway.
SE: If you’re scammed can you get your money back?
It all depends. The basic thing is if it’s not a transaction you’ve made, its fraud and we can help. If it’s something you’ve done yourself that’s it, the money’s gone. Where it gets tricky is when you think you’re signing up to a one-off payment but the small print says it’s every month and you don’t realise. It might be cleverly worded, but it’s up to you to read what it is you’re buying. If there’s any doubt, don’t do it or bring it in for us to check.
SE: How do you protect people’s money in general?
The monitoring systems now are really good. They put blocks on cards when something suspicious happens, and block dodgy transactions while we find out if they’re legitimate. Tell us you’re going to France for the week and we’ll know not to block your cards if we see a cash withdrawal from Paris. If you tell us you usually go to France about now then we can keep the card active for you. It’s just when we see things out of the ordinary that the system will react. A lot of the time people get their cards blocked on holiday because they forgot to tell us. It’s a pain for them, but if you tell us what you’re doing it’s usually fine.
We see a lot of “Make $2000 a month from home”-style spam. What’s the scam there?
It’s usually money laundering. A foreign gang wants your bank details to put money into your account, then you send it on to someone either at home or abroad but keep an agreed percentage as commission. It’s an old one, that. Sometimes, they want you to physically receive and send on stolen bank cards as well, or ones that have been obtained fraudulently. But you’re being used. Basically, if you’re caught acting as a money mule, then you’re as guilty as the bloke who gave you the money to carry. We have a legal obligation to report anything over a certain amount transferred from abroad into people’s accounts. Again, it’s one of the things the system looks for that’s out of the ordinary.
Can the banks stop people being duped into sending money to scammers abroad?
You mean like rich Nigerian princes and lottery wins that need a processing fee? At the end of the day, it’s their money. We can only advise. We can say: look, we think this looks like a scam. But if they want to send it abroad then we have to do it for them. If it’s a large amount, we’ll ask them in to sit down and think is this really what they want. [We try to] find out how well they understand what they’re doing and where they’re sending it. We have had cases where people have lost considerable amounts because they’re convinced the online fraud is real.
What’s the most outrageous thing you’ve seen?
I was asked to look at the cash machine outside the branch I was managing once, and there was a piece of wire hanging out of the card slot. That’s all it was. But it prevented the card from being returned, so people walk off thinking the machine’s swallowed it. You pull on the wire and the card pops out. It’s called a Lebanese Loop. Simple and easy. Once you’ve got the card you’ve got the expiry date and the CVV number on the back and you can go shopping.
What’s your personal message to customers?
Basically, it’s always a scam. If it looks like something where you think you can get one over on the sender, it’s still a scam. These people aren’t stupid. No one wants to give you free money. You haven’t won a foreign lottery, either. There’s no pot of gold. They may only want a small processing fee, but if they get a lot of fees, it’s very profitable for them. Start with the idea that everything’s a scam, ask us to confirm anything you get that you don’t understand and you’ll be alright.
What other guidance is there for people?
There’s lots about but it’s a bit scattered. Barclays did a good TV advert about phone scams. We’ve published a really comprehensive leaflet about online scams in conjunction with the police that covers all the different frauds. You can download that, and we have a web site for reporting scams. But if you have any questions the best thing is to just call the bank or walk into a branch and ask. That’s the best thing to tackle online fraud.
Security for the internet of things
IoT security is a mess, but who’s to blame? The tech industry must improve security for the internet of things.
The internet of things is quickly becoming every cybercriminal’s wet dream, especially given the release of the Mirai botnet source code. The cause is shockingly insecure devices, but can shaming manufacturers avert the coming chaos?
Continue reading “Security for the internet of things”A Very Sophisticated Hack…
If you search for the phrase “very sophisticated hack” and do a little digging, you’ll soon discover that what are initially claimed to be diabolical plots by fiendish cybercriminals often turn out to be nothing more than incompetence or naivety on the part of the victims. They only appear sophisticated to the average Joe.
Banks, casinos, hospitals, health insurers, dating sites, even telecoms providers have all fallen in the past year. Digging reveals SQL injections (I’m looking at you, TalkTalk) to second hand switches with no firewalls protecting the SWIFT network in Bangladesh.
While these issues are bread and butter to security testing and code review companies, there is one piece of the IT security puzzle that can never be truly secured, no matter how hard you try. It weighs about 1.3Kg (about 3lbs in old money) and it sits in front of every endpoint, every BYOD, every spam email, everything, wondering whether to click that link, install that program, insert the flash drive it found, or type in its credentials.
Sophisticated attacks
It’s been said that your brain starts working the moment you wake, and doesn’t stop until you get to work. Many incidents reported as “sophisticated” confirm this truism, along with the one about not being able to make anything idiot proof because idiots are so ingenious. Fooling someone into doing or telling you something they shouldn’t is the oldest hack in the book, but it’s no less potent for its age. For that reason, the unwitting symbiosis of naive user and cybercriminal is virtually unbeatable.
Part of my work involves maintaining the company spam honeypot network. By the time you’ve seen your 100th identical, badly-spelt phishing email whizz by in the logs, you can’t believe anyone would fall for them. But they do, especially spear phishing attacks. There’s a ransomware epidemic, and it’s making millions a day.
I’m left concluding that people don’t approach their inboxes with a high enough degree of
cynicism. Would HR really summon you to a disciplinary meeting by sending you an email demanding you click a link to an external web site and enter your corporate username and password to prove it’s you?
Catching threats
Like suspiciously quiet toddlers, the human element will always be the unpredictable elephant in the cybersecurity room. At SE Labs, we test the endpoint protection that keeps users safe from themselves. To do so, we use fresh threats caught painstakingly in the wild on a daily basis. We can always help build better protection, but cybercriminals will always strive to make better toddlers out of users.
But users are not toddlers; they’re responsible, busy adults. To them, cybersecurity is just a very dull art practised by dull people in IT, and their equally friends who come in with laptops every so often to check everything.
This point leads me to one final truism: get them laughing, get them learning. All the user security training in the world will fail to change behaviours if it’s dull. People best remember what they enjoy. Make cyber security fun for users, and you may just get them to apply a healthy dose of cynicism to their inboxes.
Went The Day Well?
Could localised pattern recognition solve the password crisis?
Getting answers nearly right could be a way to detect unauthorised access. Security shibboleths can detect the right, and wrong people.
In The Great Escape, a Gestapo officer wishes Gordon Jackson’s character “good luck” in English as he attempts to board a bus. In A Book About a Thousand Things, George Stimpson says that during WWII, US guards used the word “lollapalooza” to spot Japanese spies amongst Filipino allies.
Continue reading “Went The Day Well?”The Great Anti-Virus Conspiracy

Anti-Virus Conspiracy
Detection issues
John McAfee, virus author?
“There were at the time thousands of computer viruses,“ he said. “We could barely keep up with the viruses that were out there, so we certainly had no time to build new ones. It would just be a senseless thing to do. So I can categorically say, and you can talk to any of the McAfee employees that were there are the time, that thought never crossed anyone’s mind.“

Trust no-one
All Your File…
Block malicious scripts from running on your computer
Back in the salad days of early summer, JavaScript was usually employed to download ransomware payloads. Now, however, JavaScript is the ransomware.
The reason is the direct nature of the attack. There’s no connection to a suspicious subdomain, no payload to download and no relying on the user to run a suspicious “upgrade“ to a Windows component.
Simply open the email attachment promising unexpected riches and, to misquote the 1980s game Zero Wing, “All your file are belong to us“.
Block malicious scripts
It’s little wonder that ransomware gangs are setting up customer helplines for bemused punters queuing up to get their files back.