Foundation of CyberFrat:
When CyberFrat was initially founded, Gaurav Batra – the mind behind what is now a constantly expanding fraternity, had no clue that it would witness such an incredible amount of success in such a short period of time. The idea that took off as a WhatsApp group of a bunch of friends coming from the Cyber Security and Tech field now boasts of a community of 25,000+ members globally with a presence in over 50 countries, 90 cities, and hundreds of Indian colleges. The basic building block of CyberFrat was a common platform for the purpose of sharing knowledge and networking among professionals from the Cyber Security domain. This idea was brought to life in 2016 chaired by Mr. Pradeep Batra as the Director.
Ever since its inception, CyberFrat provides a social networking platform for individuals from the Cyber Security domain, and additionally, it is also specialized in offering a plethora of services ranging from exclusive cyber trainings, career advancement programs, webinars, and workshops through programs like CFThursday, CFCXOConnect, and Fireside Chats for our members taken by Industry leaders and SMEs. The CyberFrat Thursday Series is a weekly webinar conducted every Thursday where a well-established speaker talks about relevant topics concluded by an interactive Q&A. The CXOConnect is a similar session where CXOs from diverse fields come over and talk about the latest trends and developments in Technology. Over the years, we have evolved our niche as a cyber security marketing services provider to B2B Brands. We help drive growth by understanding the needs of the client and the industry and incorporating those in our efforts. Our members get to enjoy these services while they learn, grow, and network, all at the same time. Now you may think about what sets CyberFrat apart from other organizations. We’re more than just a networking platform. We understand our members’ needs and work towards an enriching and fulfilling experience that they look forward to in every activity and event that we organize. Our members are not just members, they are a part of the family that is held together by the force of learning and growing.
About the Founder & CEO:
Gaurav is a Tech Entrepreneur, Risk Advisor, and Cybersecurity professional with 14+ years of direct experience. He Possesses Strong knowledge of IT-Business alignment, large-scale project deployment, and organization-wide security deployments.
Founder & CEO of CyberFrat and have experience of working with organizations i.e. Hewlett Packard Enterprise, MetLife, JP Morgan, Axis Bank, and Mondelēz international.
Has been awarded CISO of the year 2017 – 2020, Top 100 InfoSec maestros, Data security champion, India’s top 20 InfoSec influencers, and many more speakers and InfoSec level recognition including one from The Economic Times.
Specialities: Cyber Security Marketing, IT Strategy & Execution, Technology Integration, Mergers and Acquisition, IT Budgeting, Datacentre Migrations, Vendor Management, Risk Management, Security Deployment, information security Governance, Security Operations, Consulting, Controls, Audits, Fraud Analysis, Business Continuity Management, Vulnerability Assessment, Penetration testing, Budgeting and Resourcing within the BFSI, IT and FMCG sectors.
In this edition of CyberFrat Bytes we will look at major developments all around the globe. Many bold moves were done by established companies to combat the menace of fake news. Governments also took action to thwart malice by nation state actions on espionage / citizen privacy by banning apps and coordinating with social media platforms. The current Pandemic situation forces us all into a new normal Work from Home situation and as a result attackers have gone very creative with exploiting trust factor in people. Incidents of ransomeware too are on the rise.
Lets look over these aspects in some more details in this edition.
Security News
Microsoft has developed a tool to spot deep-fakes – computer-manipulated images in which one person’s likeness has been used to replace that of another. Read More
India bans PUBG, Baidu and more than 100 apps linked to China. Read More
Facebook Reality Labs (FRL) Research audio team is developing “Audio Presence,” which will recreate how sounds travel and bounce around in the real world for AR and VR. It would make audio like you’re actually listening to what’s happening around you instead of something that’s coming from a device. Read More
FBI warns Facebook and Twitter that the Russian group that interfered in the 2016 presidential election is at it again, using a network of fake accounts and a website set up to look like a left-wing news site. Read More
Zoox the automated vehicle technology startup that was acquired by Amazon this year, has been issued a permit from California regulators that will allow it to test driverless vehicles on public roads. Read More
Attacks / Breaches
Bugs in the multi-factor authentication system used by Microsoft’s cloud-based office productivity platform, Microsoft 365, opened the door for hackers to access cloud applications via a bypass of the security system. Read More
Atrium Health said it uses a popular company, Blackbaud, to manage its software, and that Blackbaud had a ransomware attack recently. Read More
The “BLURtooth” flaw allows attackers within wireless range to bypass authentication keys and snoop on devices utilizing implementations of Bluetooth 4.0 through 5.0. Read More
Cygilant is believed to be the latest victim of NetWalker, a ransomware-as-a-service group, which lets threat groups rent access to its infrastructure to launch their own attacks. Read More
The sudden spike in attacks happened after hackers discovered and started exploiting a zero- day vulnerability in “File Manager,” a popular WordPress plugin installed on more than 700,000 sites. Read More
Jai Daga joined Sony Pictures Network India as Vice president technology with key role to outline current and future vision enterprise architecture, including traceability from business and IT strategies to suggested technologies.
He has previously worked with companies like Viacom18 Media Pvt ltd wherein headed different portfolios in technology vertical. Also worked with organizations like Syntel, Oracle US, Satyam computers.
Jai is a technocrat with experience and expertise across supply chain of technology portfolio i.e. Enterprise applications, Digital Brand Services, IT Infra and Operations as well as Cyber security. Have over 19 years of progressive experience in areas of enterprise architect solution, consulting, heading delivery, leading business application, IT Infra and operations.
In the last couple of days, two friends from two different companies from two different cities reached out to me with a similar issue. Emails sent from their corporate accounts are getting bounced (rejected), or delivered to the spam/junk folder. The reason – there were many emails sent from these corporate email domains in the past and are identified as spam. But they claim no such emails were sent from their systems.
It seems there were a lot of spoof emails sent impersonating as these domains due to which the sender reputation of the domains took a hit. When the sender reputation of the domain is low, email providers who receive the emails from these domains deliver them to the junk folder or worse they are bounced or rejected as it is happening in one of the cases here.
These domains have DMARC enabled, but the policy is set to None. Which means even though the email providers who received the spoof emails knew they are impersonating as these domains, they had to deliver the emails due to the DMARC policy. Because of the large volume of spoof emails being received from these domains and delivered, email service providers reduced the reputation of the domain. They even started delivering genuine email received from these domains in spam/junk folders.
These companies did not monitor the DMARC reports and were not aware of the spoof email attack.
If the DMARC policy of these domains were set as Reject, the spoof emails would have been rejected keeping the sender reputation intact.
So, if you are thinking implementing DMARC does not bring any value to add to your organization, then think again. Not implementing can cripple your email communication.
Implementing DMARC is not a simple task. It is a journey. First, you need to set the DMARC policy as None to start getting the reports and then analyze them. There was this company which implemented DMARC with reject policy straightaway. Some emails sent from their third-party service provider began to bounce as they failed DMARC because the IP addresses were not present in the SPF record and the emails were not DKIM signed.
There are many organisations such as Rediff.com provide the DMARC Analysis dashboard for a subscription. These analysers parse the DMARC reports and show the IP addresses from where emails are sent on your behalf and if they are passing or failing SPF or DKIM or DMARC.
Then proper modifications can be made to the SPF and DKIM settings as needed. When all the email sent by you and your third-party on your behalf are passing DMARC, the policy can be changed to Quarantine and then Reject – the ultimate goal of DMARC journey.
Security News
1. Hour One develops technologies for creating high-quality digital characters based on real people. The upshot of this is that what appears to be a real human could talk about any product or subject at all, to the point of infinite scale. Read More.
2. Microsoft announced the availability of an out-of-band update that addresses the vulnerability in Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2. Read More
3. Most devices accessing the Internal Revenue Service’s internal network using wireless connections and virtual private networks weren’t authenticated, according to an audit. Read More
4. Facebook have discussed a “kill switch” to shut off political advertising after Election Day since the ads, which Facebook does not police for truthfulness, could be used to spread misinformation. Read More
5. Future Tesla cars may come with a built-in feature that can make sure no kids are inadvertently left behind in hot cars. The device uses millimeter-wave radar technology to detect movements within a vehicle and to classify its occupants. Read More
6. 67-year-old former CIA officer and FBI linguist was arrested Friday after allegedly selling U.S. government secrets to China for thousands of dollars spanning multiple years. Read More
7. YouTube banned a large number of Chinese accounts it said were engaging in “coordinated influence operations” on political issues. Read More
8. U.S. Department of State’s Rewards for Justice (RFJ) program will pay for info that can identify or locate someone working with or for a foreign government for the purpose of interfering with U.S. elections through certain illegal cyber activities. Read More
9. China AI chat robots can make 3,000 calls a day without getting tired or temperamental and even blocking their number won’t stop them. Read More
10. Apple accidentally approved one of the most popular Mac malware threats – OSX.Shlayer – as part of its security notarization process. Read More
Attacks / Breaches
1. Federal prosecutors have charged Uber’s former security chief, Joseph Sullivan, with obstruction of justice for attempting to hide the company’s 2016 data breach from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Read More
2. Experian has suffered a major breach of customers’ personal information, affecting an estimated 24 million South Africans and nearly 800,000 businesses. Read More
3. Credit card provider Capital One Financial Corp fined with $80 million over last year’s data breach that exposed the personal information of more than 100 million credit card applicants of Americans. Read More
4. Canon has suffered a ransomware attack that impacts numerous services, including Canon’s email, Microsoft Teams, USA website, and other internal applications. Read More
5. Ritz Hotel Data Breach Allowed Scammers to Make Expensive Purchases With Stolen Credit Card Information. Read More
6. A hacker has released the databases of Utah-based gun exchange, hunting, and kratom sites for free on a cybercrime forum. Read More
7. Havenly, a US-based interior design web site, has disclosed a data breach after a hacker posted a database containing 1.3 million user records for free on a hacker forum. Read More
8. The University of Utah was stung by cybercriminals for almost $500,000 in ransom following a July attack that gave the state’s flagship institution the choice of sacrificing private student and employee data, or paying up and hoping the information wasn’t compromised. Read More
9. Intel is investigating a security breach after earlier today 20 GB of internal documents, with some marked “confidential” or “restricted secret,” were uploaded online on file-sharing site MEGA. Read More
10. US corporate travel management firm Carlson Wagonlit Travel has suffered an intrusion, and it is believed the company paid a $4.5m ransom to get its data back. Read More
20 August 2020 | 07:00 PM – 08:30 PM IST | 01:30 PM – 03:00 PM GMT
When the global pandemic changed the way organizations did business overnight, companies had to adapt and pivot to address the new challenges being faced. CyberFrat in association with Netskope brings you a much-needed webinar on Mitigating the Risks and Challenges that lay in the cloud for remote workers.
Since COVID-19 crises are growing all over the world-wide all should take care of health and precautions against COVID-19. As the situation demands to work remotely for the employees and the organization. Work goes on sometimes smoothly sometimes with some problems but the privacy and security are harmed too much. We too need to take care of our security aspects in terms of the use of technology. Cyberfrat presents you with some issues of cybersecurity attacks and cybersecurity developments from the last fortnight you should be aware of.
(more…)CyberFrat CXO Connect
A few things shall allow you to freely interact with industry leaders in the cybersecurity scene. With CyberFrat CXO Connect, explore untapped knowledge domains including career enhancement and mentorship opportunities via monthly webinars delivered by risk leads of prominent organizations. The 90 minutes of interaction includes a vivid informative session followed by audience engagement.
Also you can post your questions on Twitter before and during the sessions which our speaker shall entertain with utmost pleasure. use hashtag #cfcxoconnect
We are pleased to announce the next session with Yogesh Dadke, APAC IT Leader, Adient Technologies LLC. He will be talking about Smart manufacturing opportunity and challenge and be yourself for 45m and he will take 45 QnA on digital, innovation, Cyber Security, Risk, or career guidance.
(more…)Operational risk summarizes the uncertainties and hazards a company faces when it attempts to do its day-to-day business activities within a given field or industry. With volatility in the business today, Operation risk is the most important thing someone should consider. Operational risk focuses on how things are accomplished within an organization and not necessarily what is produced or inherent within an industry.
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