Recently, the Fraud Action Research Lab at RSA, released information pertaining to an impending cyber attack targeting 30 U.S. based banks. The orchestrators of the attack are actively recruiting upwards of 100 botmasters to help unleash their nefarious plot. In a nutshell, the intended attack will probably be large, with multiple coordinated and timed efforts from around the world. The attack is expected to occur sometime in the next 30 to 60 days. As of yet, RSA has not disclosed the potential targets. In reality, if your bank is not targeted today, it does not mean it will not be targeted tomorrow. But until we see “the list” you as the computer user and/or potential target do not have to live in fear.

One of the motivating theories behind the attack is to take advantage of the weak state of security surrounding banks, specifically U.S. banks. Solutionary highly recommends banks review authentication procedures for wire transfers. If not already in... read more >

Back in July, security firm F-Secure reported on their blog that a piece of malware targeting Iranian nuclear facilities had been discovered. This malware, following in the footsteps of Stuxnet, was purported to have shut down the automation network at 2 Iranian nuclear facilities.

While this is all interesting, the part of the attack that interested me most was another part of the payload. According to reports, the malware caused several infected workstations to play the AC/DC song “Thunderstruck”. This is sort of reminiscent of the U.S. Army’s use of the AC/DC song “Highway to Hell” to root out... read more >

The Internet Crime Complaint Center (iC3) has released a Fraud Alert detailing increased fraudulent wire transfer activity observed across the financial services sector. Although we urge close review of the report and its recommendations, the Solutionary Security Engineering Research Team (SERT) provides a brief summary below.

The alert is based on FBI reports of increased activity of fraudulent wire-transfers occurring just prior to large-scale Distributed Denial of... read more >

Salutations, pop culture and security lovers! So it appears the infamous hacking group that calls itself “Anonymous” is now targeting Facebook as its next victim. If you have not had a chance to check out their latest You Tube video, I will post it here for your “enjoyment”. Now, I have no real love for Facebook, but I detest the methods these “Hacktivist” groups use even more. Most of their attacks seem to be simple Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) type attacks. In the past, they have been successful at disrupting several high profile web sites including PayPal, Master Card, and Visa with similar attack techniques. I did find it interesting that recently they failed to take down Amazon’s web site. (Apparently Amazon has invested huge infrastructure to accommodate the holiday web traffic and was able to... read more >