Risk Radar Free Cyber Newsletter – May 30, 2017

Emergent threats, trends, and news annotated by some of the most well known and respected experts in the industry.

Microsoft Issues Out-of-Band Security Update
Microsoft is issuing an out-of-band security update to fix eight critical vulnerabilities in its Malware Protection Engine. Five of the exploits are denial of service and the other three are remote code execution. The exploits are triggered when the Malware Protection Engines scans a specially crafted file. Just another reason to make sure all yours PC are patched and up to date.

Forgotten Conficker worm resurfaces to infect systems with WannaCry
The Conficker work came out in 2008. It has been seen as not very important to fix, many infected systems were never recovered and patched correctly. Attackers targeted unpatched Conficker machines to spread WannaCry. The conficker worm was not used to spread WannaCry, it just showed which PCs were vulnerable.

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Malware Network Communication Provides Better Early Warning Signal
Researchers are stating that analyzing network communications is more effective in malware detection than dynamic malware analysis. Looking back at network traffic the researchers discovered signs of the malware before malware samples were sent in for analysis. If this is effective malware detection could be weeks to months earlier.

Revised ‘Hack Back’ bill encourages ‘active-defense’ techniques, sets parameters
A revised hack back bill is being look in the US government. The revised version has added more checks to how the victim can hack back. It also puts limits on what a victim could do to hack back. Some in the security industry are not sold on the active defense techniques and state that implementing known basic security procedures would be more effective than the hack back approach.

Cloud Environments Suffer Widespread Lack of Security Best Practices
Cloud services are becoming more popular. There are many pros to using cloud services. There are cons also, many of these cons are related to security. Many of the known security best practices are not followed in cloud services. The different environment of the cloud makes it harder to implement known security practices. Cloud service security is a work in progress.

Google Elevates Security in Android O
The next version of Android is making some nice improvements is security. Google Play Protect can help Android phones not on Android O. Other changes in Android O will be specific, like changing the way developer write apps for Android 0. Security is a weak spot for Android, hopefully these changes will make some big improvements in overall Android security.