Virtualization

• When it comes to ransomware, every second hurts

  Fortinet seeks to make EDR easy for non-specialists
  John E Dunn Wed 20 Oct 2021 // 07:30 UTC

  Sponsored For the longest time it seemed that modern endpoint detection and response (EDR) was getting on top of the worst malware, only for that certainty to evaporate in a single day in June 2017 thanks to a strange malware event remembered as the NotPetya attack.

  A lot of virtual ink has flowed on the origins of NotPetya but the most important aspect of its behaviour for anyone involved in endpoint defence EDR was the stunning speed with which it turned entire networks of computers into boxes uselessly pushing warm air. The word ‘fast’ gets bandied around a lot in malware incidents but for once this was no hyperbole, reportedly downing an entire Ukrainian bank in 45 seconds and a network running part of the country’s transit system in a third of that time.

  That means the infection unfolded in roughly 15 seconds to less than a minute. As with the equally swift WannaCry infection which had encrypted at least 200,000 computers in 150 countries only weeks earlier, this was far faster than EDR systems of the time - and the teams fielding the alerts generated by them - could possibly react. Security Operations Centre (SoC) teams couldn’t even ask employees to turn their computers off.

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• Facebook may soon reveal new name – we're sure Reg readers will be more creative than Zuck's marketroids

  We've kicked things off with the most splendidly evil fictional corporations, feel free to share your ideas
  Simon Sharwood and Matthew JC. Powell Wed 20 Oct 2021 // 07:01 UTC 14

  POLL Consumer tech outlet The Verge today reports that Facebook may soon reveal a new name.

  Apparently Zuck wants to create an umbrella brand – a bit like Google did when it created Alphabet as its parent company. The Social Network™ is also keen to reflect its shift to "the metaverse", as signalled by its plan to hire 10,000 new workers to build some version of shared virtual reality.

  Facebook has clammed up about its plans.

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• Sir Clive Sinclair inspired me and 'whole load of others' at Arm, says CEO Simon Segars

  But of course chief exec's first computer was an Acorn
  Agam Shah Wed 20 Oct 2021 // 06:20 UTC

  Like so many of us in tech, Arm CEO Simon Segars has his own computing origins story, which he shared during a speech on Tuesday at the Arm DevSummit developer conference.

  British-born Segars' interest in computing started at age 14, when he'd go to a shop that had a Sinclair ZX81 computer on display, on which he wrote simple programs, learning about concepts like variables and loops.

  "It was expensive at £70, we weren't about to buy one … and [it was] primitive by today's standards. It had a 3Mhz, 8-bit microprocessor and a whole 1KB of memory," Segars said.

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• Crims target telcos' Linux and Solaris boxes, which don't get enough infosec love

  CrowdStrike says 'LightBasin' gang avoids Windows, and knows that telco networks run on badly-secured *nix
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Wed 20 Oct 2021 // 05:40 UTC 2

  A mysterious criminal gang is targeting telcos' Linux and Solaris boxes, because it perceives they aren't being watched by infosec teams that have focussed their efforts on securing Windows.

  Security vendor CrowdStrike claims it's spotted the group and that it "has been consistently targeting the telecommunications sector at a global scale since at least 2016 … to retrieve highly specific information from mobile communication infrastructure, such as subscriber information and call metadata." The gang appears to understand telco operations well enough to surf the carrier-to-carrier links that enable mobile roaming, across borders and between carriers, to spread its payloads.

  CrowdStrike principal consultant Jamie Harries and senior security researcher Dan Mayer named the group "LightBasin", but it also goes by the handle "UNC1945".

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• Acer servers cracked in India and Taiwan – including systems with customer data

  Gang says it grabbed internal info, could do the same to Acer elsewhere
  Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Wed 20 Oct 2021 // 04:45 UTC 1

  Taiwanese PC maker Acer has not only admitted servers it operates in India and and Taiwan were compromised but that only those systems in India contained customer data.

  The miscreants who claimed to be behind the network breaches boasted they stole gigabytes of information from the servers, and suggested other Acer operations around the world are also vulnerable to information theft.

  Acer issued the following statement this week about the affair:

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• India's big four services giants wrestle with staff attrition amid COVID-19 pandemic

  With high enough vax rates, HCL, Infosys and Wipro say hybrid work environment is the way of the future, while TCS is going to want you to come right on in.
  Laura Dobberstein Wed 20 Oct 2021 // 03:04 UTC

  India's big four IT services providers – HCL, Infosys, Tata Consulting Services, and Wipro – have all highlighted increasing staff attrition rates in their most recently completed quarters.

  Wipro had the highest attrition rate at 20.5 per cent – up from 15.5 per cent in Q1. Next highest was Infosys, which reached "voluntary" 12-month attrition of 20.1 per cent. This reflects an ongoing situation, as in April 2021 the company reported that its workers had started to believe the COVID-19 pandemic had ebbed to a point at which they felt comfortable looking for a new gig.

  HCL reported an all-time high attrition rate of 15.7 per cent – up from 11.8 per cent in Q1. TCS claimed to have the lowest attrition in the industry – 11.9 per cent in the last twelve months – chalking it up to "industry-wide churn".

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• You've heard of HTTPS. Now get a load of HTTPA: Web services in verified remote trusted environments?

  Intel duo propose fresh use of, yes, SGX but also Arm's TrustZone and similar TEEs
  Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Wed 20 Oct 2021 // 01:25 UTC 4

  Two Intel staffers believe web services can be made more secure by not only carrying out computations in remote trusted execution environments, or TEEs, but by also verifying for clients that this was done so.

  Software engineer Gordon King and Hans Wang, a research scientist at Intel Labs, proposed the protocol to make that possible. In a paper distributed this month through ArXiv, they describe a HTTP protocol called HTTPS Attestable (HTTPA) to enhance online security with remote attestation – a way for apps to obtain an assurance that data will be handled by trusted software in secure execution environments.

  Essentially, it's hoped that applications can verify through certificates and cryptography that code running in a server-side TEE is precisely the code expected to be run, unmodified by a rogue administrator, hijacked OS or hypervisor, network intruder, or malware. Ideally, the TEE should prevent or detect miscreants from snooping on or altering the code and data.

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• Allegations of favoring visa holders over US workers for jobs cost Facebook just 4 hours of annual profit

  And that $14.25m is supposed to be some kind of record
  Katyanna Quach Tue 19 Oct 2021 // 23:20 UTC 2

  Facebook will hand over $14.25m to the US government and American workers to settle allegations of discriminatory hiring practices.

  The Justice Dept last year sued the internet giant accusing it of unfairly favoring job candidates who had temporary working papers, such as H-1B visas, over US citizens and permanent residents.

  Between January 2018 and September 2019, foreigners whose pending green cards were being sponsored by Facebook were slotted into 2,600 roles at the social network in the United States with an average annual salary of $156,000, according to the DoJ in its lawsuit.

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• Google Pixel 6, 6 Pro Android 12 smartphone launch marred by shopping cart crashes

  Chocolate Factory talks up Tensor mobile SoC, Titan M2 security ... for those who can get them
  Thomas Claburn in San Francisco Tue 19 Oct 2021 // 21:31 UTC 10

  Google held a virtual event on Tuesday to introduce its latest Android phones, the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro, which are based on a Google-designed Tensor system-on-a-chip (SoC).

  "We're getting the most out of leading edge hardware and software, and AI," said Rick Osterloh, SVP of devices and services at Google. "The brains of our new Pixel lineup is Google Tensor, a mobile system on a chip that we designed specifically around our ambient computing vision and Google's work in AI."

  This latest Tensor SoC has dual Arm Cortex-X1 CPU cores running at 2.8GHz to handle application threads that need a lot of oomph, two Cortex-A76 cores at 2.25GHz for more modest workloads, and four 1.8GHz workhorse Cortex-A55 cores for lighter, less-energy-intensive tasks.

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• BlackMatter ransomware gang will target agriculture for its next harvest – Uncle Sam

  What was that about hackable tractors?
  Gareth Corfield Tue 19 Oct 2021 // 20:14 UTC

  The US CISA cybersecurity agency has warned that the Darkside ransomware gang, aka BlackMatter, has been targeting American food and agriculture businesses – and urges security pros to be on the lookout for indicators of compromise.

  Well known in Western infosec circles for causing the shutdown of the US Colonial Pipeline, Darkside's apparent rebranding as BlackMatter after promising to go away for good in the wake of the pipeline hack hasn't slowed their criminal extortion down at all.

  "Ransomware attacks against critical infrastructure entities could directly affect consumer access to critical infrastructure services; therefore, CISA, the FBI, and NSA urge all organizations, including critical infrastructure organizations, to implement the recommendations listed in the Mitigations section of this joint advisory," said the agencies in an alert published on the CISA website.

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• It's heeere: Node.js 17 is out – but not for production use, says dev team

  EcmaScript 6 modules will not stop growing use of Node, claims chair of Technical Steering Committee
  Tim Anderson Tue 19 Oct 2021 // 19:31 UTC 1

  Node.js 17 is out, loaded with OpenSSL 3 and other new features, but it is not intended for use in production – and the promotion for Node.js 16 to an LTS release, expected soon, may be more important to most developers.

  The release cycle is based on six-monthly major versions, with only the even numbers becoming LTS (long term support) editions. The rule is that a new even-numbered release becomes LTS six months later. All releases get six months of support. This means that Node.js 17 is primarily for testing and experimentation, but also that Node.js 16 (released in April) is about to become LTS. New features in 16 included version 9.0 of the V8 JavaScript engine and prebuilt Apple silicon binaries.

  "We put together the LTS release process almost five years ago, it works quite well in that we're balancing [the fact] that some people want the latest, others prefer to have things be stable… when we go LTS," Red Hat's Michael Dawson, chair of the Node.js Technical Steering Committee, told The Register.

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