CYBR332 Blog

This week, I read an article that talks about a type of cyberattack called Credential stuffing as described by OWASP. Credential stuffing is a type of cyber attack where hackers use stolen usernames and passwords from one data breach and they try logging into other accounts using those same credentials. This is quite an effective strategy because if we are being honest with ourselves, a lot of people reuse passwords, including myself. According to OWASP, attackers are able to automate this process as well, they achieve this by using bots to test thousands of login attempts on popular sites. If even a small percentage of those reused credentials work again on other accounts, attackers are able to gain access to sensitive accounts, whether that is emails, banking information, addresses, the list goes on. It is scary how dangerous reusing passwords can be, and what shocked me the most is how common and successful this type of attack is. We see how dangerous it is, but we must also underst...

 We see, as we browse online, how everything companies and individuals do involves the cloud. That is from saving photos to running entire businesses on the cloud. The question is, how safe is the cloud really? We see many people using it, are they right to trust their apps and businesses to cloud security? To answer this question, I read an article by CrowdStrike, which talks about how cloud security is all about protecting data, apps, and servers that live on the internet instead of on your local computer. Cloud providers have strong protections that were made for users, but security will always be a shared job between the provider and the user. Leaving storage open to the public and weak access controls are something that comes from the user, and the provider cannot do much if that's how attackers access the Cloud. However, tools like encryption, multi-factor authentication, and constant monitoring all work together in order to ensure that cloud environments are secure. It goes ...

 With many devices today being connected to wifi, devices ranging from smart doorbells, thermostats, even refrigerators, IoT or the Internet of Things, have made life extremely simple. Although we would have loved for it to be just convenient to have IoT devices, it also opens up a whole other door for security risks. The article I read this week was by Fortinet, and they explained that IoT devices often lack proper security updates, strong passwords, encryption, and the list goes on. Not having these protocols makes it easier for attackers to target these devices. Once an attacker is able to get into one of these devices, they can sometimes use it to access the entire network that the IoT device is connected to, which is mindblowing. What is scarier than that is the fact that many people, including me before reading this article, are not aware of the fact that IoT devices need the same security care as their laptops and phones. I found this point interesting because it shows that ...

 The article I read this week talked about ransomware and how ransomware has become one of the most disruptive and expensive cyber threats today. You may be surprised by the use of the word "expensive" in this scenario, but it all makes sense when you understand the meaning of ransomware and how attackers do these types of attacks. According to CrowdStrike, Ransomware is a type of malware that encrypts your files and locks the owner of those files out of it entirely until you pay a sum of money. Which seems insane, not being able to access your own files is a scary thing. These sums of money are mostly paid in cryptocurrency since it is hard to trace. One might assume that there are no risks other than the fact that they are unable to access their files, but most of the time, these attackers will dump all the data collected in the ransomware attack on leak sites and get paid for it. It is also different when an individual is affected and when a major organization is attacked....

 Zero Trust is one of the newer ways of thinking in cybersecurity, and in all honesty, reasonably so. Instead of assuming everything inside a network is safe, the idea of Zero Trust is that you should never automatically trust anything. Whether that be the users, the devices connected to the network, or even the applications you use. The article I read today, and learned this information from, is called CrowdStrike, and they break it down well by explaining that implementing this model comes with a lot of perks. Implementing this mindset means constantly checking systems, stricting access control, and implementing the least privilege principle to keep systems secure. Now that many companies are switching to working remotely and having data in the cloud, relying on just firewalls to be the last barrier to your data is not enough anymore. Implementing Zero Trust ensures that when working with systems, to never trust the system and always verify instead of trusting the system, but sti...