As a child I often felt like the foundation of my existence was on shaky ground. Dictated by forces and adults too gigantic to wrestle with. Chances are, you did too, or perhaps, you were one of the lucky ones.
On Friday, March 11, 2011, a record 8.9 magnitude earthquake hit Japan. On its heel was a massive tsunami that decimated its northeastern coast just minutes later. The death toll has reached into the tens of thousands according to recent reports sending ripples through every level of humanity with the tech industry at the forefront.
I feel like a child again; more like an ant actually. But at least now I understand. I can reason.
According to the World English dictionary, the geology of the word “tectonic,” denotes the distortion of the earth’s crust due to forces within it, a structural deformation. It is unlikely that anyone would argue that distortions exist on every level of life, but rarely do we attribute it to the shifting of the earth’s crust. I am sure we do now.
The Tech industry certainly does. The hackers’ parade is in full swing, proudly waving indigenous flags.
“We knew scams were coming, but they started appearing in record-breaking time, less than three hours after the earthquake,” says one respondent in an article published by Computerworld.
According to the Internet Storm Center (ISC), 1.7 million poisoned web pages touted ‘earthquake’ and ‘tsunami,’ a number beyond even Google’s ability to rapidly delete . Their primary goal–to profit from the disaster.
“Beyond Google’s ability?”
Two weeks ago I promised that we would explore how each of the seven types of malicious hackers practice their stalk. Shall we start now?
Malicious hacker No. 1, the Cyber criminals. These are the professionals. They comprise the biggest group of malicious hackers, using malware and exploits to steal money. It doesn’t matter how they do it, whether they are manipulating your bank account, faking antivirus programs, or stealing your identity or passwords. Their motivation is fast, big financial gain.
As a reminder, the layered approach to security is an absolute necessity. We have vetted Web Defend to address Internet traffic. It is our Web Application Firewall. The only one of it’s kind with benefits that include but is not limited to the following:
- Comprehensive Security to protect you against OWASP Top 10 attacks – including SQL Injections, Cross-site Scripting, OS Command Execution.
- Remote Code Inclusion, Buffer Overflow We will detect violations of HTTP protocol and locally defined used policies; Detect Bots, Crawlers, Scanners and other malicious activity; Block sensitive outbound data and detect Trojan Horse activity.
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Ease of Deployment Two options – Appliance that works as an out of line device or in-line Bridge that can be installed set up and protecting in less than 1 hour
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Virtual Patching Create On-the-Fly Patches for Critical Vulnerabilities; Here is an real world example… Oracle announces a buffer overflow vulnerability for iSQL*Plus web application that allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a long USERID parameter in the isqlplus URL. There is no workaround to address the potential security vulnerability, leaving your organization vulnerable. We can act as a virtual patch with our WAF.
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Immediate Protection using positive and negative security models. Product meets PCI DSS Compliance.
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Session Management Protection to track and monitor user sessions to protect against session hijacking.
Next, we will wrestle with malicious hacker #2, Spammers and Adware Spreaders, because these truly are Techtonic Times.
Or, perhaps, you will be one of the lucky ones?
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