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US companies hit by 'colossal' cyber-attack

bbc.com

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Re: US companies hit by 'colossal' cyber-attack

#491

Post by jart »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #422
jart wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep reading over and over again indignant comments about "cost centers" on Hacker News and I think it's not a good term to use because I looked up the definitions and the only logical consensus I could find is that everything which isn't shareholder profit is a cost center. It's just rhetoric.

I always recommend that engineers who aspire to manage at the executive or "C" level take some classes or read up on how business school teaches business leaders to analyze the health of their company. Those are the classes where 'gross profit margin', 'marginal costs', and 'operational efficiency' are discussed and explained. If you are looking at US curriculum, my experience is that you will see the discussion in t…

Thanks for explaining it to me!

Re: US companies hit by 'colossal' cyber-attack

#492

Post by rixed »

petra wrote: post #427
cheese_van wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>These people can tell you so much about the theory of security by heart that it will make you dizzy but then won't actually understand the underlying problems. I've thought greatest failure of many professionals in this field is in the "protect the network" perspective rather than "protect the data". While many of them fess up to "we can make it difficult but not impossible" to breach the network, that is not evince…

>> Actual resting data protection would allow a "I don't care if I'm hacked," posture. That's quite interesting. Where can I read more about that ?

https://cloud.google.com/beyondcorp

Re: US companies hit by 'colossal' cyber-attack

#493

Post by [deleted] »

sschueller wrote: post #237
kickling wrote: post #198

One of Sweden's biggest grocery stores / supermarkets, Coop [1], is keeping all their 800 physical stores closed today, since their payment system is not working because of an IT-attack somewhere in their supply chain [2]. Connected to this attack? [1] https://www.coop.se/ [2] https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/coop-butiker-haller-stangt-...

A cashless society is scary. Cash should always be an option and the inventory system should be disconnected from the internet.

[deleted]

Re: US companies hit by 'colossal' cyber-attack

#494

Post by rixed »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #107
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #14

Honestly, I think this should be the death knell of these "remote monitoring and management" tools that have extreme low-level access to networks and systems, but just like the SolarWinds attack, it feels like these are run by companies with extremely poor security culture. I mean, I'd be willing to trust security to Microsoft or Apple (I mean, at some level, you've got to trust the OS). But giving the keys to the ca…

RMM is absolutely vital to securing systems. This is as ridiculous as suggesting we should just get rid of firewalls because there are vulnerabilities found in them. RMMs are how enterprise scale networks close off every other security hole on a network. That being said, RMM tools have plenty of examples that they need to beef up their security practices or get replaced.

Actually, I think that the rapid blossoming of firewalls everywhere in the late 90s was the first big step toward security theatre that I noticed in my career, and illustrate how we have a cultural problem. Blocking access according to port number is no substitute for lack of control and visibility over what services are spawned where.

Re: US companies hit by 'colossal' cyber-attack

#496

Post by syshum »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #14

Honestly, I think this should be the death knell of these "remote monitoring and management" tools that have extreme low-level access to networks and systems, but just like the SolarWinds attack, it feels like these are run by companies with extremely poor security culture. I mean, I'd be willing to trust security to Microsoft or Apple (I mean, at some level, you've got to trust the OS). But giving the keys to the ca…

You know it is ironic to say you trust MS when they are in the middle of a major security incident themselves i.e "PrinterNightmare" for which they still have not patched

Re: US companies hit by 'colossal' cyber-attack

#497

Post by syshum »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #467
sgt101 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is - I think it's cultural and organisational. The CFO and Finance in general see businesses as capital flows, they don't see value being added - just opportunities for leverage and cash management. The description of a cost center is a labelling denoting a target for removal and reduction - the destruction of value that occurs (typically 12 -24 months after the exercise) is seen as disconnected and…

But everything is a cost center , even product development and sales. A salesperson is a cost center except for the singular moments when they sign a deal.

It comes down to the balance

Fake Numbers: sales "generates" 100,000,000 in revenue and "costs" 1,000,000 however IT "generates" 0 in revenue and "costs" 2,000,000

So to an bean counter, clearly the "investment" in sales is better because they make money for the company, where IT just costs money...

Thus IT is often treated like a utility service, say something like custodial services, where they want to find the cheapest way to keep the bathrooms not disgusting... not clean mind you, just not disgusting

Re: US companies hit by 'colossal' cyber-attack

#498

Post by [deleted] »

jiggawatts wrote: post #4

I never quite understood why these ransom-ware attackers restrict themselves to a small subset of the MSP's clients. E.g.: The SolarWinds attack affected only something like 1% of their customers, when it could easily have been 50% or more! If you're evil and out for money, wouldn't you want to cast the widest net possible? Similarly, by encrypting a huge number of corporations concurrently, you'd "exhaust" the abili…

[deleted]

Re: US companies hit by 'colossal' cyber-attack

#499

Post by natmaka »

cheese_van wrote: post #303
rjzzleep wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of these companies are actually huge enterprises with dozens if not hundred(s) of cybersecurity consultants and engineers. All of them are CISSPs and GICSPs(I do put my CISSP in the signature when working in those places too though). I go through security reviews all the time with them, they have so many security processes that you get dizzy and on paper everything looks fine. They create security zones with ma…

>These people can tell you so much about the theory of security by heart that it will make you dizzy but then won't actually understand the underlying problems. I've thought greatest failure of many professionals in this field is in the "protect the network" perspective rather than "protect the data". While many of them fess up to "we can make it difficult but not impossible" to breach the network, that is not evince…

In many cases you don't want to let an hostile party read confidential data, and if he takes control of the machine aren't all bets off?

Moreover what if a hostile party constantly hammers-disrupts your IT, letting you teams "rebuild and reload" 24 hours/day (in other words you don't have any information system anymore)?

Re: US companies hit by 'colossal' cyber-attack

#500

Post by tgragnato »

NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #384
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #14

Honestly, I think this should be the death knell of these "remote monitoring and management" tools that have extreme low-level access to networks and systems, but just like the SolarWinds attack, it feels like these are run by companies with extremely poor security culture. I mean, I'd be willing to trust security to Microsoft or Apple (I mean, at some level, you've got to trust the OS). But giving the keys to the ca…

You do not have to "trust" the OS at some level. Use Linux or BSD, demand open hardware. You only feel like you "have to trust" shitty closed-source OSes because the orgs behind those OSes have been able to abuse market-dominant positions to stifle competition. Security by obscurity is laughable nonsense. We should all be demanding transparency in hardware and software from our vendors. I'd pay handsomely for it.

I think that in this context the meaning of the term trust is different.

Any code executing in privileged mode can bypass security, and is therefore inherently part of a system's trusted computing base (TCB). (Linux is a monolithic kernel running in ring 0)

Most companies are not Linux contributors, they are trusting the kernel developers to write bug free, secure code.

Minimizing the TCB and opting for an auditable open source TCB are really useful concepts in security.

But the cause of these breaches is much more trivial than what you are worrying about: these companies are basically installing whichever piece of software can decrease their costs without thinking about what they’re doing.

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