Skip to main content

Microsoft Issues Its First Ever ‘Targeted’ Warning ; Saving VPN Servers of Hospitals


Following a recent disclosure about Iranian hackers targeting on vulnerabilities in VPN servers like the Pulse Secure, Palo Alto Systems, Fortinet, and Citrix, Microsoft gave its first-ever 'targeted' warning to a few dozen hospitals, informing them of the vulnerabilities in their own virtual private network (VPN) appliances.

With the organizations depending all the more heavily on the VPN servers as the lockdowns are in full swing of the unfortunate outbreak of the Corona Virus. They had no other option except to fall back to this means to help telecommuters but that in the end has made that specific part of the system a weakness i.e a soft spot for ransomware attackers to target – specifically at hospitals with already stressed assets.

The Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (DHS CISA) a month ago cautioned all organizations to fix VPN services, however, Microsoft is especially worried about hospitals' vulnerability to human-operated ransomware due to unpatched VPN servers.

One group the Microsoft team has been following is the REvil, otherwise known as Sodinokibi, ransomware gang, which is known for setting monstrous ransom demands for businesses and government agencies.

While the ransomware gang hasn't yet developed new attack techniques but instead has repurposed strategies from state-sponsored attacks for new campaigns that exploit the heightened requirement for information in the current coronavirus crisis.

The Microsoft Threat Protection Intelligence Team uncovered in a new post, "Through Microsoft's vast network of threat intelligence sources, and we identified several dozens of hospitals with vulnerable gateway and VPN appliances in their infrastructure."

"To help these hospitals, many already inundated with patients, we sent out a first-of-its-kind targeted notification with important information about the vulnerabilities," it added later.

When mentioning these new ransomware gangs the Microsoft team noted, “We haven't seen technical innovations in these new attacks, only social engineering tactics tailored to prey on people's fears and the urgent need for information."

And so the Multinational Technology's recommendation to hospitals and various other organizations is to follow three key steps to shield their VPN services from attacks:

  • Apply all available security updates for VPN and firewall configurations. 
  • Monitor and pay special attention to your remote access infrastructure. 
  •  Turn on attack surface reduction rules, including rules that block credential theft and ransomware activity. 

Apart from these, there are a few more published by Microsoft to further help mitigate these attacks.



source https://www.ehackingnews.com/2020/04/microsoft-issues-its-first-ever.html
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Provider Volia reported to the cyber police about the intense cyberattacks on the server

Cable provider Volia appealed to the Cyber Police on the fact of fixing a DDoS attack on the Kharkov servers of the company, which has been ongoing since May 31. "For three days, from May 31 to today, the Volia infrastructure in Kharkov is subjected to cyberattacks. At first, they were carried out only on subscriber subsystems, later they switched to telecommunications infrastructure. As a result, more than 100,000 subscribers experienced problems using the Internet, IPTV, multi-screen platform, and digital TV," said the company. In total, the complete lack of access to Volia's services, according to the provider, lasted 12 minutes on May 31, 45 minutes on June 1. There was also an attack on the website volia.com, but it was managed to neutralize. "DDoS attacks were massive and well-organized. The type of attack is UDP flood and channel capacity overflow with the traffic of more than 200 GB. UDP is a protocol used for online streaming services - streaming, te...
Post a Comment
Read more

Information security experts have warned Russians about bonus card fraud schemes.

Fraudsters several thousand times tried to illegally take advantage of discount bonuses of Russians in 2019. Some attackers gained access to customers' personal accounts, and then bought the products using bonuses, said Alexey Sizov, head of the anti-fraud department of the Application Security Systems Center at Jet Infosystems. According to him, a fraudster can register a personal account on a card that was issued to another person. The victim will accumulate points without knowing about the existence of his profile, and the attacker will write off bonuses, said Sizov. The expert added that this is mainly done by novice scammers. According to him, loyalty programs are poorly protected, unlike banking operations. He said that they are estimated at 50 billion rubles ($760 milliard) for the 30 largest retailers. Alexey Fedorov, Chairman of the Business Russia Trade Committee, said that in 2019, the number of bonus and discount thefts "increased significantly." ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Apple Plans to Expand Cloud-Based Services, Enters Cloud Computing Space

Apple is planning to invest more in streamlines and increasing its cloud-based and software services like iCloud, Newsplus, and Apple Music. The expansion will go along with devices like iPads, MacBooks, and iPhones. To be entirely sure about the reliability of the cloud-based service on all the Apple devices, the company has decided to rely on AWS (Amazon Web Services) and the cloud division. AWS, as you might know, is a subunit of Amazon that offers cloud-space solutions. According to CNBC's findings, Apple is said to pay Amazon $30 Million monthly for its cloud-based services. It also means that Apple is one of the biggest customers of AWS. Nevertheless, Apple hasn't confirmed whether it uses Amazon's cloud services besides its iCloud. According to experts, Apple also has some of its cloud services on Google. Amazon transformed the management of the data center and hosting of the applications when it brought the AWS. Being the first one to offer services like these,...
Post a Comment
Read more