CyberScout shares key cybersecurity predictions for 2020; predicts persistent threats in areas of privacy and cybersecurity

As 2019 comes to an end, cybersecurity experts are preparing for a new year—and a new decade—and all the cyber scams, breaches, attacks and privacy concerns that threaten consumers and businesses. CyberScout continues to strengthen defenses against the constantly evolving cyber threats that will shape the 2020 security landscape, encouraging consumers and business owners to stay informed and aware. 

"While consumers and business leaders are more aware of cybersecurity and privacy than ever before, cybercriminals continue to innovate," said CyberScout founder and chairman Adam Levin. "As defenses improve, the attack vectors become more nuanced and technically impressive. You are your best guardian when it comes to your privacy and personal cybersecurity."  

Levin's has listed the following 20 cybersecurity predictions for 2020:

1. Cybersecurity workforce shortages. There will be a shortage of experts, adding pressure on CISO's charged with tackling an increasing issue environment. With the demand for cybersecurity professionals far exceeding supply, the market will have to start filling openings with less qualified people. 

2. The disinformation blob will grow. With the success of weaponized misinformation campaigns in the 2016 and 2018 U.S. elections, expect to see more of them in the private sector, with businesses adopting troll farm tricks to hurt the competition. 

3. Ransomware will continue to thrive. Phishing attacks will continue to lead to ransomware infecting more and more networks. Businesses, municipalities and other organizations will continue to pay whatever they must in order to regain control of their data and systems, and will also see better backup practices that will help minimize or neutralize the threat of these attacks.  

4. IoT botnets will make dystopian paranoia seem normal. IoT will continue to grow exponentially. In 2020, there will be somewhere around 20 billion IoT devices in use around the world. Unfortunately, many are not secure because they are protected by nothing more than manufacturer default passwords readily available online. They will be weaponized (like in years' past), but with increasing skill and computing power.
   
   
   

5. The integrity of the U.S. elections will be questioned—for good reason. There are still voting machines in use that are far from secure and would not pass the simplest of audits. Some states continue to use machines that leave no paper trail. Look forward to questions regarding election security all year.  

6. Cryptocurrency miners will continue to get rich off stolen electricity. Related to the botnet craze, we will see an increase in computing power theft used to mine cryptocurrency. With bots becoming exponentially more effective as the result of AI and cloud computing, a renaissance of Wild West behavior in the global blockchain digital ledger can be expected. 

  

7. Zero-trust environments will be talked about. A few may exist. The assumption that one can trust the home team—people within one's organization—has been replaced with zero-trust policies. Zero-trust simply means that no one can be trusted, in or outside the organization. With this assumption foremost, new systems make breaches and compromises harder to happen. 

8. More people will know what "protect surface" means. Protect surface is part of the zero-trust environment. An organization's attackable surface includes every error-prone human in its employ as well as the mistakes in configuration they may have committed along the way and any number of other issues. The protective surface is much smaller and must be kept out of harm's way. The more the subjects is spoken about, the stronger its cybersecurity is expected to be. 

9. Cars will be frozen. Driverless cars are going to hit things as well as get hit by hackers. Cars that talk to satellites are toast. It's going to happen. (Or not. But it totally could.) 

10.  5G will make the cyber smash grab a thing.  5G is going to make everything move fast, as will the new generation USB4 devices. With quicker speed, it will take much less time to transfer data. Coincidentally, criminals appreciate this as much as the rest of us.  

11. Social media will no longer need to be private. Social media companies will probably become a bit more responsible when it comes to the way they gather, store, crunch, analyze and sell our data to marketing companies and small to medium sized businesses looking to connect directly with consumers. 
    
    
    

12.  State-sponsored traffic jams will be a thing. Hackers are going to target operational systems with an array of tactics that include ransomware and more DDoS attacks that will snarl things up in ways we've not yet seen. The targets will be financial institutions, the power grid, elections, proprietary business information, city services and infrastructure like traffic lights and much more that can wreak havoc on our day to day lives.

13.  You're going to have personal cyber insurance. Insurance companies will be writing more comprehensive cyber liability policies for businesses and offering innovative personal cyber coverage for consumers. 

14.  HR will save money by spending some. More employers will offer their employees identity protection products and services as part of their paid or voluntary benefits programs. An employee who has their identity stolen is not very productive and if, as part of that identity theft, their user ID or passwords are exposed, a thief might have what he or she needs to access an employer's network and sensitive databases. 

15.  The cloud will leak. The parade of stories about misconfigured cloud clients and data stored without any password protection on cloud services will continue apace, perhaps in part because of the CISO and cybersecurity workforce shortage discussed in the first prediction.  

16.  AI will gladly take one’s job. AI is here and it's willing to work. The CISO shortage as well as many of the innovations discussed in this list of predictions will be increasingly addressed and powered by Artificial Intelligence. 

"Disinformation efforts, election security and continued attacks on local governments and major metropolitan hubs are escalating concerns of how disruptive and dangerous cybercrimes are becoming," continued Levin. "2020 promises to be an interesting ride. Be smart and stay safe by staying informed and seeking cyber insurance protection for you, your family and your business."  

Veritone, Evolphin team to provide advanced, AI-driven media asset management offering for Inter Milan football club

Veritone and Evolphin Software announced that the Football Club Internazionale Milano (Inter Milan) is leveraging a robust, AI-driven media asset management system based on Veritone aiWARE and the Evolphin Zoom MAM platform. 

The combination of aiWARE and Evolphin Zoom gives Inter Milan a next-generation solution for indexing, managing, and monetizing its massive library of archived and current content. As a result, Inter Milan is able to give its stakeholders around the globe faster and more efficient access to tailored content.

The Evolphin Zoom MAM ingests and transcodes the content from Inter Milan, and sends media for analysis to Veritone’s aiWARE platform. Veritone’s aiWARE uses advanced AI techniques to generate descriptive information about the content, such as spoken words, faces, logos, or advertiser names mentioned, making the content indexed and searchable.

In this manner, aiWARE helps Inter Milan tag and identify key assets within the library, enabling video editors, journalists, and designers to find particular content they need quickly and deliver their work faster than ever.

Once aiWARE has analyzed the team’s assets and generated the necessary metadata, the information is programmatically sent back to the Evolphin Zoom MAM platform. Zoom acts as the orchestrator of Inter Milan’s new digital content production pipeline, providing out-of-the-box media management capabilities, including enterprise-grade security and versioning of assets, rich plugins to Adobe apps, powerful tagging and searching, and automated distribution of content to any destination. 

 “At Evolphin, we are proud to begin this journey with Inter Milan and Veritone,” said Brian Ahearn, CEO of Evolphin. “The technologies we are applying here are incredibly innovative and unlike anything available on the market today.”

“In partnership with Evolphin, we look forward to helping Inter Milan leverage our aiWARE platform to get maximum benefit out of its tremendously valuable content library and better serve all of its key stakeholders, from fans and viewers to sponsors and editors,” said Veritone president Ryan Steelberg.

Baidu and Samsung release AI chip, designed based on Samsung’s 14nm process and I-Cube package technology

Chinese-language Internet search provider Baidu and Samsung Electronics announced that Baidu’s first cloud-to-edge AI accelerator, Baidu KUNLUN, has completed its development and will be mass-produced early next year.

Baidu KUNLUN chip is built on the company’s advanced XPU, a home-grown neural processor architecture for cloud, edge, and AI, as well as Samsung’s 14-nanometer (nm) process technology with its I-Cube (Interposer-Cube) package solution.

The chip offers 512 gigabytes per second (GBps) memory bandwidth and supplies up to 260 Tera operations per second (TOPS) at 150 watts. In addition, the new chip allows Ernie, a pre-training model for natural language processing, to infer three times faster than the conventional GPU/FPGA-accelerating model.

Leveraging the chip’s limit-pushing computing power and power efficiency, Baidu can support a variety of functions including large-scale AI workloads, such as search ranking, speech recognition, image processing, natural language processing, autonomous driving, and deep learning platforms like PaddlePaddle.

Through the first foundry cooperation between the two companies, Baidu will provide advanced AI platforms for maximizing AI performance, and Samsung will expand its foundry business into high performance computing (HPC) chips that are designed for cloud and edge computing.

As higher performance is required in diverse applications such as AI and HPC, chip integration technology is becoming more and more important. Samsung’s I-Cube technology, which connects a logic chip and high bandwidth memory (HBM) 2 with an interposer, provides higher density/ bandwidth on minimum size by utilizing Samsung’s differentiated solutions.

Compared to previous technology, these solutions maximize product performance with more than 50 percent improved power/signal integrity. It is anticipated that I-Cube technology will mark a new epoch in the heterogeneous computing market. Samsung is also developing more advanced packaging technologies, such as redistribution layers (RDL) interposer and 4x, 8x HBM integrated package.

“We are excited to lead the HPC industry together with Samsung Foundry,” said OuYang Jian, distinguished architect of Baidu. “Baidu KUNLUN is a very challenging project since it requires not only a high level of reliability and performance at the same time, but is also a compilation of the most advanced technologies in the semiconductor industry. Thanks to Samsung’s state of the art process technologies and competent foundry services, we were able to meet and surpass our goal to offer superior AI user experience. ”

“We are excited to start a new foundry service for Baidu using our 14nm process technology,” said Ryan Lee, vice president of Foundry Marketing at Samsung Electronics. “Baidu KUNLUN is an important milestone for Samsung Foundry as we’re expanding our business area beyond mobile to datacenter applications by developing and mass-producing AI chips. Samsung will provide comprehensive foundry solutions from design support to cutting-edge manufacturing technologies, such as 5LPE, 4LPE, as well as 2.5D packaging.”

Microsoft and Oracle expand interoperability partnership to Canada to help joint customers run their mission-critical workloads

Oracle announced this week continued expansion of its cloud interoperability partnership with Microsoft to help joint customers worldwide run their mission-critical workloads across Oracle Cloud and Microsoft Azure. Its new interconnect location means enterprises can now build workloads that seamlessly interoperate between Microsoft and Oracle cloud regions in Canada. This interconnect builds on an existing partnership announced in June of 2019.

The partnership has received a huge amount of interest, as 80 percent of enterprises use a combination of Microsoft and Oracle software to run their businesses. 

As cloud computing becomes ubiquitous, and businesses rely on multiple cloud providers, the partnership makes managing companies’ most important cloud workloads significantly easier. These workloads include financial planning, inventory, sales applications – and their underlying databases.

The expansion will give more customers direct, fast and highly reliable network connectivity between Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud, while providing first-class customer service and support that enterprises have come to expect from the two companies. This multi-cloud solution delivers the performance, easy integration, rigorous service level agreements, and collaborative enterprise support that they need to simplify their operations. 

Simply put, the Oracle-Microsoft partnership means cloud services run by the two providers will interoperate as if they were part of a single cloud, making it easier for customers to run their mission-critical workloads across the two clouds.

“The global demand for running applications and databases in multi-cloud environments continues to accelerate,” said Clay Magouyrk, senior vice president of engineering, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.  “With the new interconnect, our Canadian customers can now take advantage of a nearly seamless cloud integration between the world's largest enterprise cloud providers, Microsoft and Oracle.”

The two companies are putting customers first by enabling them to run full-stack applications side-by-side across clouds, or one part of a workload within Azure and another part of the same workload within Oracle Cloud. 

For example, using the interconnect makes it possible to connect Azure services like analytics and AI to Oracle Cloud services like Autonomous Database. Together, Azure and Oracle Cloud offer customers a one-stop shop for all the cloud services and applications they need to run their entire business.

From a technical perspective, the interconnect means less latency or delay, which enables better data transfer and application interaction between clouds. It also supports a broader spectrum of workloads, using resources available on both sides. Accenture recently performed testing on the performance of the interconnect and confirmed that the solution offers customers low latency and high ease of use.

Microsoft and Oracle plan to make the direct interconnect available in additional regions, including on the US West Coast, in a US Government specific region, in Asia, and in the European Union. Earlier this year, Oracle and Microsoft created an interconnect in Ashburn (North America), Azure US East, and in London (United Kingdom).

Anomali, Trend Micro identify credential harvesting campaign targeting government procurement sites

Multiple government procurement services were targeted by a credential harvesting campaign that uses bogus pages to steal login credentials. Cybersecurity company Anomali uncovered a campaign that used 62 domains and around 122 phishing sites in its operations and targeted 12 countries, including the United States, Canada, Japan, and Poland.

The Anomali Threat Research Team identified a credential harvesting campaign designed to steal login details from multiple government procurement services. The procurement services are used by many public and private sector organisations to match buyers and suppliers. 

In this campaign, attackers spoofed sites for multiple international government departments, email services and two courier services. Lure documents sent via phishing emails were found to contain links to spoof phishing sites masquerading as legitimate login pages relevant to the spoofed government agencies. Victims duped into following the phishing email link would then be invited to login. Anyone who fell victim to the adversaries would have provided them with their credentials.

This credential harvesting campaign has been primarily targeting government bidding and procurement services. The focus on these services suggests the threat actor(s) are interested in potential contractor(s) and/or supplier(s) for those governments targeted. The purpose of this insight could be a financial incentive to out compete a rival bidder, or more long term insight regarding the trust relationship between the potential supplier and the government in question. 

Campaigns like these are difficult to protect against because unless the domains hosting the phishing pages are known as malicious, an organisations firewall will not know to block it. Legitimate sites were also hosting the phishing pages, and were likely compromised as part of the campaign. At the time of writing none of the sites in this campaign were active, Anomali researchers consider it likely that the actors will continue to target these services in the future.

The use of bogus login pages continues to be a popular method for credential harvesting campaigns. The Trend Micro Cloud App Security solution blocked 2.4 million attacks of this type in the first half of this year — a 59 percent increase from 1.5 million in the second half of last year.

Organizations should look into adopting advanced technologies such as the Trend Micro Cloud App Security solution. It combines artificial intelligence (AI) and computer vision in order to help detect and block attempts at credential harvesting in real time. 

After suspected phishing emails go through sender, content, and URL reputation analyses, computer vision technology and AI will examine the remaining URLs to check if a legitimate login page’s branded elements, login form, and other website components are being spoofed.

For this campaign, threat actors used phishing emails carrying documents written in the language of the country being targeted. The phishing emails were also found with URLs to fake but legitimate-looking login pages. If the recipient of the phishing email clicks on the malicious URL, they will be redirected to a login page that is an imitation of a legitimate website the campaign is spoofing. A login attempt will then lead to the theft of the user’s credentials.

Aside from the websites of international government departments, those belonging to email services and two courier services were also spoofed by the threat actors. The U.S. Department of Energy, Canada’s Government eProcurement service, China’s SF-Express courier service, and Australia’s Government eProcurement Portal were some of the target organizations.

Email users should always be aware of the latest phishing tactics in order to avoid falling victim to credential harvesting attacks. After all, such attacks are becoming highly deceptive; in fact, it has become relatively easy for cybercriminals to obtain a .gov domain that they can use to further disguise their schemes.

To minimize the chance of becoming a victim, users can be cautious of emails from individuals or organizations that ask for personal information. Most companies will not ask for sensitive data from its customers, especially with stricter data privacy laws; look out for grammatical errors and spelling mistakes in suspicious emails. Emails from legitimate companies are often proofread to ensure that the materials they send out are error-free. 

Emails that call on a sense of urgency or have an alarmist tone should not be hastily acted on. If in doubt, recipients should verify the status of their accounts with their company’s system administrator or service provider.

Optiv Security expects election hacking, ‘hybrid threat actors’ to top the list of 2020 cyber threats

Optiv Security announced its cybersecurity industry predictions for 2020 and beyond. A focus on privacy, evolving threat actors, pervasive deepfake videos, and increased election interference are among the issues Optiv sees taking on greater importance in the New Year.

Optiv expects the most common issues that the industry may face in 2020 include hybrid threat actors may become more commonplace. Optiv’s 2019 Cyber Threat Intelligence Estimate (CTIE) found a growing number of “hybrid threat actors.” These are attackers who impersonate one type of adversary to disguise their true intentions (for example, a nation state imitating a generic hacker targeting a customer database, when its true aim is to steal intellectual property). 

Optiv believes a possible increase in the number of adversaries to adopt this technique and launch “imposter” attacks to obfuscate their true intentions, adding yet another layer of complexity to threat hunting and incident response.

Apple’s “privacy as a human right” campaign should cause others to follow. As the world’s foremost technology organization going all-in on privacy will shift the competitive landscape, security and privacy could become a competitive differentiator for companies that follow Apple’s lead and grab “first mover” status in their markets. Laggards may risk meeting the unseemly fate of past organizations that failed to embrace important technology paradigms such as internet, cloud, and mobile computing.

Election misinformation campaigns could proliferate. The effectiveness of the Russian misinformation campaign of 2016 increases the possibility of increased copycat attacks for the 2020 election. These attacks could come from nation states as well as domestic groups supporting rival U.S. politicians. This activity threatens to trigger a major public/private response to the online misinformation problem.

Optive expects to see the first cases of deepfakes used to manipulate stock prices. There has been much publicity around the potential to impact elections using deepfakes (AI-doctored videos that enable individuals to make it appear people said things they never said). However, not enough attention has been paid to how cybercriminals can make money using deepfakes against businesses. 

This might change in 2020, as it’s possible we will see the first deepfake attacks designed to impact stock prices, by having CEOs, financial analysts, Federal Reserve leaders or other powerful economic figures make phony statements that will cause stock market movements. Cybercriminals would use these videos to make quick fortunes in the market.

There should be widespread realignment of IT and security organizations. As boards view cybersecurity as a peer-level risk to traditional enterprise risks, such as lawsuits and product recalls, more CISOs should become peers of CIOs and other executives, rather than direct or indirect reports. This would cause a realignment of the IT and security organizations to eliminate conflicts and encourage collaboration. 

The most critical of these will be the continued expansion of DevSecOps, in which security is fully integrated into the application development process; and patch management, which will move from being divided between security and IT (security finds vulnerabilities, IT patches them), to becoming a unified process with a single point of accountability.

Cybersecurity basics may continue to vex consumers and enterprise organizations.Whether insufficient passwords, lack of education and training around phising attacks, or simple upkeep and compliance, the tiny details of cybersecurity will continue to be the cause of a vast portion of compromises if left unaccounted for. Simple passwords (those without special characters or are extremely obvious, such as “password123”) only take minutes to crack by professional hackers and can be done inexpensively.

“As we look beyond 2019 and into 2020, we have a solid idea of what threats the industry is facing, and not just ransomware and phishing attacks, but new, hard-to-combat threats,” said Anthony Diaz, Division Vice President, Emerging Services at Optiv. “As is always the case, us ‘good guys’ are forced to play catch up with bad actors, who constantly remain a step ahead. There is much IT and business leaders must be aware of when it comes to cybersecurity, as the pace of change is quite high. That is why we recommend cybersecurity programs focus on proactive risk mitigation and build out from there. This ensures your organization is actively looking for, combating, and identifying threats before they can cause damage.”