US Task Force Reports Retailer-Focused Cyberattacks Not Coordinated

A newly-released government report found that the recent cyberattacks against US retailers were not coordinated. According to the report by the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force—an alliance of US law enforcement agencies such as the FBI, Secret Service, and Department of Homeland Security—the attacks were not a concerted attempt to harm the US economy. The task force is continuing to track attacks on retailers that use malware that targets payment systems. The report, which didn’t name victims, said retailers could have blocked malware that attacked vulnerable remote network-management software. “It sounds like they’re saying that Target didn’t segment their network properly,” Avivah Litan, a cybersecurity analyst at market-research firm Gartner Inc. told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s very difficult to manage all these remote access accounts. It’s very reasonable that Target thought it was properly protected.” (The Associated Press)(Wall Street Journal) 

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Whitelisting Prevents Cyberattacks

With the recent increase in the number of virulent cyberattacks, some security experts are calling for organizations to readily embrace whitelisting as a defense, saying conventional approaches such as intrusion detection aren’t working. Whitelisting lets computers run only files and system components listed as trusted. The practice, according to Forbes magazine, is “not going to sound too sexy to the average end user” but does eliminate many security problems. (SlashDot)(Forbes)

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