Tag Archive for: decrease

Engineering faculty-researcher awarded grant to decrease computer chip vulnerabilities

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Michael Zuzak, a faculty-researcher at Rochester Institute of Technology, is one of a growing field of engineers looking to improve computer chip security during manufacturing. Current solutions focus on securing specific regions of the chip design. This leaves the larger architecture vulnerable to compromise. Zuzak’s work to secure the entire chip could prevent piracy and help protect intellectual property.

“To get chips fabricated, you have to send the entire design to the manufacturer. Ultimately what we want to protect is what the company considers high value. We want to allocate security to more sensitive, unique parts of the system. The hope is that we will have the ability to prevent intellectual property theft during the entire semiconductor fabrication,” said Zuzak, an assistant professor of computer engineering in RIT’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering.

Zuzak received a two-year National Science Foundation grant to use the developmental practice of logic obfuscation to enable system-wide security during the manufacturing and testing of integrated circuits, also referred to as computer chips.

Global manufacturing companies mass produce integrated circuits. For fabrication, these companies are given extensive design files that can be counterfeited, pirated, or modified. This threatens “high-trust” applications such as healthcare and defense. Logic obfuscation was developed to mitigate threats. The proposed project will develop a design space modeling framework to automatically identify obfuscation configurations capable of system-wide security.

Zuzak is an expert in hardware security and methods to design and manufacture secure and reliable electronic systems. Hiding functionality during the production process is a way to ensure that the design cannot be modified or counterfeited.

“We’ve gotten very good at locking specific parts of the chip. What I am looking at is how we distribute obfuscation optimally throughout the full system to secure it as a whole rather than just specific modules within the chip,” said Zuzak, who is developing AI-driven algorithms to perform security assessments of the physical design that are resistant to…

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Decrease in malware volume, but surge in encrypted malware 

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There has been a reduction in overall malware detections from the peaks seen in the first half of 2021, an increase in threats for Chrome and Microsoft Office, the ongoing Emotet botnet resurgence, and much more, according to a new report. 

WatchGuard Technologies has announced findings from its most recent Internet Security Report, which details the top malware trends and network security threats analysed by WatchGuard Threat Lab researchers in Q2 2022. 

“While overall malware attacks in Q2 fell off from the all-time highs seen in previous quarters, over 81% of detections came via TLS encrypted connections, continuing a worrisome upward trend,” says Corey Nachreiner, Chief Security Officer at WatchGuard. 

“This could reflect threat actors shifting their tactics to rely on more elusive malware.”

The Q2 Internet Security Report found office exploits continue to spread more than any other category of malware.

In fact, the quarter’s top incident was the Follina Office exploit (CVE-2022-30190), which was first reported in April and not patched until late May. Delivered via a malicious document, Follina was able to circumvent Windows Protected View and Windows Defender and has been actively exploited by threat actors, including nation states. Three other Office exploits (CVE-2018-0802, RTF-ObfsObjDat.Gen, and CVE-2017-11882) were widely detected in Germany and Greece.

According the report, endpoint detections of malware were down overall, but not equally. 

Despite a 20% decrease in total endpoint malware detections, malware exploiting browsers collectively increased by 23%, with Chrome seeing a 50% surge. One potential reason for the increase in Chrome detections is the persistence of various zero day exploits. Scripts continued to account for the lions share of endpoint detections (87%) in Q2.

The top 10 signatures accounted for more than 75% of network attack detections, the report shows. This quarter saw increased targeting of ICS and SCADA systems that control industrial equipment and processes, including new signatures (WEB Directory Traversal -7 and WEB Directory Traversal -8). The two signatures are very similar; the first exploits a vulnerability first…

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Ransomware attacks decrease, operators started rebranding

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Positive Technologies experts have analyzed the Q3 2021 cybersecurity threatscape and found a decrease in the number of unique cyberattacks. However, there’s been an increase in the share of attacks against individuals, and also a rise in attacks involving remote access malware.

ransomware attacks decrease

The number of attacks in Q3 decreased by 4.8% compared to the previous quarter—the first time since the end of 2018 that Positive Technologies has recorded a negative trend. The researchers believe one key reason for the change is the decrease in ransomware attacks and the fact that some major players have quit the stage. This is also why the share of attacks aimed at compromising corporate computers, servers, and network equipment has fallen, from 87% to 75%.

“This year we saw the peak of ransomware attacks in April when 120 attacks were recorded. There were 45 attacks in September, down 63% from the peak in April. The reason is that several large ransomware gangs stopped their operation, and law enforcement agencies started paying more attention to the problem of ransomware attacks (due to recent high-profile attacks),” said Ekaterina Kilyusheva, Head of Research and Analytics, Positive Technologies.

Researchers also noted a trend toward the rebranding of existing ransomware gangs: Some operators are rethinking their preference for the Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) scheme, which carries certain risks from unreliable partners.

Kilyusheva explains: In Q2, we predicted that one of the possible scenarios of ransomware transformation would be that groups abandon the RaaS model in its current form. It is much safer for ransomware operators to hire people who will deliver malware and search for vulnerabilities as permanent ‘employees.’ It will be safer for both parties, as more organized and efficient all-in-one forms of cooperation can be created. In Q3, we saw the first steps in this direction. An additional boost for this transformation is the development of the market of initial access.”

The research shows that although the share of malware attacks on organizations decreased by 22%, the attackers’ appetite for data also led to an increase in the use of remote access trojans. In…

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BRIEF: Phishing attacks decrease on Azerbaijani Internet market – TMCnet

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May 23, 2011 (Trend News Agency – McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) — BAKU, Azerbaijan — There were only there phishing incidents on the AzNET segment from April 11 to May 10, the Netcraft research company reported. The analysis is based …
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