Hackers Can Now Use Fake Voices To Steal Money

You've almost certainly been seeing stories on the internet this year about the growing trend of Deep Fakes.

They are videos that are expertly engineered to give the appearance of some prominent figure or another saying something that he or she never actually said.

It's a clever, computer generated ruse.

The reason it's been making headlines is that Deep Fakes tend to be really good, which makes them notoriously difficult to spot. Their recent appearance, unfortunately, is negatively impacting the national dialogue on important issues.  After all, when you're looking at what appears to be evidence of a prominent figure saying something shocking, of course you're going to be inclined to believe your own eyes.

Naturally, it did not take the hackers of the world long to figure out a way to use this relatively new technology to their benefit.  Recently, a UK energy company's CEO was tricked into wiring more than $220,000 USD to a Hungarian supplier.  He believed that he had received verbal instructions from his boss to do exactly that, and merely complied with the order.

The only problem?  His boss issued no such order.  It actually came from a hacker using deep fake software to precisely mimic the voice of the executive demanding that his underling pays the supplier within the hour.

A spokesman for the company's insurance firm had this to say about the matter:

"The software was able to imitate the voice, and not only the voice:  the tonality, the punctuation, the German accent."

Energy company employees caught onto the ruse when the hacker made a similar demand a short time later that same day.  The second time though, the energy firm CEO called his boss personally, only to discover that he was simultaneously dealing with his fake boss and the real one.

There's no way to know how many times this has happened before, or how frequently it's happening now. Even worse, our ability to create deep fakes presently far outstrips our ability to detect them.  That should give business owners everywhere pause.

Protect your business from online threats such as deep fakes. Let SpartanTec, Inc. in Fayetteville set up security measures that will protect your company from such malicious software.

SpartanTec, Inc.
517 Owen Dr
Fayetteville, NC 28304
(910) 745-7776
http://manageditservicesfayetteville.com

Cities Served:
Fayetteville, Spring Lake, Hope Mills, Dunn, Aberdeen, Southern Pines, Pinehurst, Sanford, Clinto

New Ransomware Targets Network Attached Storage Devices

Yet another new ransomware family has been found in the wild, discovered independently by researchers at two separate security firms, Anomail and Intezer.  The new strain has been dubbed "QNPCrypt" by Intezer and eCh0raix" by Anomail and is written in the Go programming language.  When it encrypts files, it chances the file extension to ".encrypt" via AES encryption.

The fact that the strain was written using Go is interesting. What makes it truly unique, though, is that it primarily targets Linux-based NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices made by a specific company.  It only seems to impact devices made by Taiwan-based QNAP Systems.

Worst of all though, is that the devices targeted by this new malware strain seldom have anti-virus programs on them. Even if they did, there are only a handful of products currently capable of even detecting the strain.  By the time you know it's there, it's already too late to matter.

The good news though, is that the security researchers found a flaw in the code. Like most ransomware, after it encrypts your files, it demands payment in Bitcoin in exchange for un-encrypting them.  The authors of the malware designed the software to connect to a command and control server prior to the encryption step in order to receive a unique Bitcoin wallet address.  It relays this address information to the victim after their files are encrypted in order to facilitate payment, but there's a catch.

The server only had a finite number of wallet addresses available, and if there are no wallet addresses, then the encryption step never occurs.  The researchers created many "fake victims" and simply ran the command and control server out of unique Bitcoin wallet addresses.  It's a temporary fix, to be sure, but it buys time.

Researchers from both companies offered the same advice in terms of minimizing your risks:

• Never unnecessarily connect your NAS devices directly to the internet
• Always enable automatic updates to keep firmware up to date
• Use strong, unique passwords to secure your devices
• Make frequent backups just in case.

Those are all good pieces of advice generally.  If you make a habit of all four, you'll be miles ahead of the game.

Call SpartanTec, Inc. for more information on how you can keep your company safe against ransomware and other common online threats. 

SpartanTec, Inc.
517 Owen Dr
Fayetteville, NC 28304
(910) 745-7776
http://manageditservicesfayetteville.com

Cities Served:
Fayetteville, Spring Lake, Hope Mills, Dunn, Aberdeen, Southern Pines, Pinehurst, Sanford, Clinto