Millions Downloaded Malware Infected Chrome And Edge Extensions

Avast are the makers of popular antivirus software. Their researchers, recently found a total of twenty-eight different Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge extensions that were laced with malware.

Worse, they found the extensions have been downloaded by more than 3 million users around the world. All of the extensions were designed to help facilitate the download of pictures and video from platforms like Spotify, Vimeo, Instagram and Facebook.

According to the researchers, the malware is JavaScript-based and is designed to display ads or direct users to phishing sites where their personal information may be collected for later use.

Avast's research team had this to say about their findings:

"Users have also reported that these extensions are manipulating their Internet experience and redirecting them to other websites. Any time a user clicks on a link, the extensions send information about the click to the attacker's control server, which can optionally send a command to redirect the victim from the real link target to a new hijacked URL before later redirecting them to the actual website they wanted to visit. User's privacy is compromised by this procedure since a log of all clicks is being sent to these third-party intermediary websites."

As malware goes, that's certainly not the worst thing we've seen, but it is a genuine threat that puts your privacy, and potentially your personal information at risk.

If you rely on a number of browser extensions, especially those that facilitate easier and more convenient downloading of images and videos, and you use either Edge or Explorer, it pays to purge your existing collection of extensions and reinstall clean copies. This is especially true if you've been noticing aberrant behavior in your browser.

Unfortunately, many users tend to download and forget about extensions, so it may not be obvious at first glance that the two (your extensions and the malware) are connected. In light of that, it pays to conduct a thorough review of your system.

Keeping up with the latest internet and software updates can be daunting. Stay protected from hackers by utilizing the IT Services of SpartanTec Inc.  We have a plan to fit any size business.

SpartanTec Inc.
Fayetteville, NC 28304
910) 745-777
http://manageditservicesfayetteville.com

Pentagon, DHS, State Dept., 18,000 others possibly hacked by Russia

 Around 18,000 organizations and individuals who use SolarWinds software are believed to have been hacked along with multiple U.S. companies and government agencies for months. The full extent of those affected in the hack is not known, but the Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the State Department are among known SolarWinds users.

The hack was first reported on Sunday, and SolarWinds has since determined the widespread hacks were carried out after hackers “inserted a vulnerability” into the company’s Orion line of software products.

The U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) also issued a report estimating the full range of users compromised by the hack. The SEC report noted SolarWinds has over 300,000 customers, but only about 33,000 users of the Orion product line that was targeted by hackers. SolarWinds notified all 33,000 of its Orion users, but the SEC said the insertion of malicious software into the Orion product line took place between March and June of this year. Based on that timeline and its list of potentially affected products, SolarWinds believes the actual number of customers who updated their Orion products with the malicious software was less than 18,000 users.

 

 

SolarWinds said the list of its Orion products that could have been affected during the hacking period include:

• Application Centric Monitor (ACM)
• Database Performance Analyzer Integration Module* (DPAIM*)
• Enterprise Operations Console (EOC)
• High Availability (HA)
• IP Address Manager (IPAM)
• Log Analyzer (LA)
• Network Automation Manager (NAM)
• Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
• Network Operations Manager (NOM)
• Network Performance Monitor (NPM)
• NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)
• Server & Application Monitor (SAM)
• Server Configuration Monitor (SCM)
• Storage Resource Monitor (SRM)
• User Device Tracker (UDT)
• Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
• VoIP & Network Quality Manager (VNQM)
• Web Performance Monitor (WPM)

U.S. authorities have not determined definitively who was responsible for the hacking Fayetteville NC, but it suspected to be the work of a foreign government-backed hacking group and the New York Times reported the hackers may have been sponsored by the Russian government.

While targets of the SolarWinds hack included the U.S. Treasury Department and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), there is no complete list of the government departments and agencies and U.S. companies compromised in the hack.

Bloomberg reported U.S. government departments targeted included the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the State Department, the National Institute of Health (NIH) as well as some parts of the Department of Defense were targeted in the hack. The New York Times reported SolarWinds products are used throughout nearly all Fortune 500 companies, including the New York Times itself. The New York Times also reported SolarWinds is used by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which designs nuclear weapons, and by Boeing, a major U.S. defense contractor.

Following the hack, the Verge reported SolarWinds deleted a list of high profile clients from its website, though an archived copy of the client page states 425 of the Fortune 500 companies use their products, as well as all branches of the U.S. military, the National Security Agency (NSA), and even the Office of the President of the United States. The company’s software is also used by all of the top five U.S. accounting firms and hundreds of colleges and universities around the world. It is not immediately clear if these SolarWinds clients specifically used the affected products listed.

 

Reposted from https://americanmilitarynews.com/2020/12/pentagon-dhs-state-dept-18000-others-possibly-hacked-by-russia-reports-say/

 

Call SpartanTec, Inc. now and let our team of IT experts help secure your business against potential online threats.

 

SpartanTec, Inc.
Myrtle Beach, SC 29577
(843) 420-9760
https://www.spartantec.com/

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

Serving: Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Columbia, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Florence

Email Security Trends You Need To Watch Out For In 2021

 Now is the time to predict the email security threats that can be expected in 2021. Here are some insights as provided by IT professionals.

Threat Hijacking Will Be On The Rise

Threat hijacking is threat to email security that will become more prominent in 2021. This technique involves using current email conversations with current victims so they can spread it to other victims. Cybercriminals will use various tools like Outlook Scraper to get email threats on computers that they have infected.

Threat hijacking is successful because the infected email will come from a reliable sender who doesn’t know that his email is infected, and the content of the mail can lower the guard of the targets. There will be an increase in the techniques utilized in Emotet campaigns.

Remote Image Based Threats Will Test The Limits of Email Securiy Filters

Cybercriminals will store their infected textural content in remote images. Unlike those that are imbedded in emails, remote image based threats need to be fetched over a network. It is a time consuming, complex, and cannot be performed real time.

 

 

Compromised Accounts Will Give Hackers New Opportunities

Threat hijacking focuses on compromised accounts during this year’s attacks, which were carried out through Emotet. But they can also be exploited through other means such as massive spam waves. This method can send as many as 300,000 spam emails. It allows hackers to bypass the email filters and without any post remediation capability, it is extremely difficult to block.

Business Email Compromise Will Be A Global Problem

The growth in BEC or Business Email Compromise as well as the difficulty in detecting this problem has resulted into new advancements in the content analysis through artificial intelligence. But most algorithms find it difficult to detect BEC especially when it is in a foreign language.

The BEC typologies will grow too. In the past, BEC scams focused on W2 harvesting, gift card scams, and CEO fraud. But other typologies will become more prominent such as banking fraud, lawyer, and payroll.

Vendor Impersonation

Users trust emails, links, or attachments sent through Microsoft as well as other Microsoft services. Even if the email look suspicious, people’s curiosity will push them to check the attachment. Because of that, they become more at risk to vendor impersonation.

Hackers Will Get Personal

Social tensions, elections, wildfires, and pandemic fatigue. These global events cause stress and anxiety, which take a toll on the citizens all over the globe. Hackers exploited this fact this year and they will continue in 2021. More cybercriminals will use psychological tricks on different subjects to leverage the emotional fragility of internet users.

Hackers are not the only people who see the value of the human behaviour when it comes to cybersecurity. Although people are thought of as the weakest link when it comes to email security, if a vendor isn’t capable of blocking the attempt, then people will be the final line of defence. That’s why vendors will focus more on human centric cybersecurity strategies in 2021.

 

Call SpartanTec, Inc. now and let our team of IT experts prepare your company for 2021. We will help boost your cybersecurity  and email security Fayetteville NC so your business is protected against online threats.

 

SpartanTec, Inc.
Myrtle Beach, SC 29577
(843) 420-9760
https://www.spartantec.com/

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

Serving: Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Columbia, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Florence

People Pay Ransomware Attackers In Large Numbers In 2020

 Hackers have increasingly gravitated to ransomware attacks in 2020, as being one of the best and most reliable paths to a payday.

That brings to mind an interesting question though. Naturally, the viability of this type of attack comes down to what percentage of victims are willing to actually pay the ransom, and what is that number as of right now?

Crowdstrike recently took a deep dive into the best available data to find out. They discovered that slightly more than one in four (27 percent) of companies that fall victim to a ransomware attack wind up paying the toll, rather than restoring from backup, and the average ransom demanded is now slightly higher than $1 million USD.

Given the steady rise in popularity of this type of attack, and how easy it is to avoid paying the ransom, one might wonder why such a high percentage of business owners opt to pay up. There are two parts to the explanation.

 

 

First, although it does seem that on the surface of things, it's easy to set the conditions that would make it easy to recover from such an attack (have regular backups). However, unfortunately in practice, that's easier said than done. Few companies back up their entire network from end to end, so even if they've got current backups, there's going to be lost data and it's going to take quite some time to restore full functionality, figure out what's missing, try and recreate that data, etc. Always remember, you can always hire IT services Fayetteville NC for expert assistance.

The other issue is that in a surprising number of cases, a company's backup and recovery plan isn't as robust or as complete as they imagined it was. We've seen instances where the company's CEO thought they were doing backups on a weekly basis, only to discover that the last good backup they had available was from six months before.

When you suffer from a ransomware attack and then find out your last backup is six months old, you don't really have any other moves to make. You pay up and hope the hackers deliver on their promise to unlock your files.

Given the prevalence of ransomware attacks, if you're not preparing for one, you should be. When was your company's last backup taken? How sure about that are you?

 

SpartanTec Inc’s IT Services in Fayetteville NC can help to prevent your company’s data from being the victim of a ransomware attacked. Call us today for a free analysis of your current network firewall and backup procedures.

 

SpartanTec, Inc.
Myrtle Beach, SC 29577
(843) 420-9760
https://www.spartantec.com/

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

Serving: Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Columbia, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Florence

Tips For Improving SD-WAN Security

Today’s workforce has become increasingly mobile and companies have branched out as they grow their business, SD-WAN or software defined wide area networks are now very popular when it comes to networking’s evolution. By including the benefits of SDN to conventional networks that are hardware based and router centric, SD-WAN provides companies with improved agility, performance, scalability, and flexibility.

But, with all of the benefits SD-WAN can provide, it also paves the way for another list of security problems. Here you’ll learn how to avoid those threats and how to make the most out of your SD-WAN.

SD-WAN Security Issues

SD-WAN allows users who are in branch offices to connect to the network of the company remotely using a large web of devices that are connected online, which adds another level of complexity to the network security. Even if just one entry point is left unsecured, this could lead to a security breach.

 

 

Although most SD-WAN Fayetteville NC services are offered with unique security features, they must not be used as a single solution for network security. To know what security features should be added to your network, you have to know what’s included in the SD-WAN solution you got. If you don’t what safe and what’s not, it’ll be very easy to leave your network and your security exposed.

SD-WAN Security Features

The majority of SD-WAN only provide a few features that could give a base for your network security. Although they do not account for an in-depth comprehensive security, they are important when it comes to mitigating risks.

VPNs and Traffic Encryption

With so many users and devices connected in a company network, the possible attack surface of a certain data that is being transmitted is increased. A lot of software defined network solutions are integrated with a 128 and 256 bit AES encryption as well as an IPsec or Internet Protocol Safety VPN. These prevent any unauthorized access to your network and guarantee compliance.

Microsegmentation

SD-WAN microsegmentation lets admins segment traffic based on application characteristics as well as network policies. Segmenting virtual networks within the overlay of the SD-WAN will prevent traffic coming from a less safe location from compromising segments that have more confidential information.

Threat Intelligence

A lot of SD-WAN service providers provide access to services such as threat intelligence that could immediately identify and get rid of a few security threats. A few of these services have now added artificial intelligence in their products in order to tell possible breaches to security by pinpointing suspicious patterns in the network traffic.

How Improve SD-WAN Security?

Basic SD-WAN security offers protection however companies have to take extra precaution to make sure that the threats could be identified and eliminated properly. When you know what security solutions come with your SD-WAN product, the next thing you need to do is determine what security tools you need to cover the gaps. A few of the solutions you require to optimize the security of your network that’s software defined. These include SSL inspection, next generation firewall, regular patches and system updates.

Call SpartanTec, Inc. now to know more about SD-WAN and our managed IT services.

SpartanTec, Inc.
Myrtle Beach, SC 29577
(843) 420-9760
https://www.spartantec.com/

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

Serving: Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Columbia, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Florence

What are the Benefits Of Outsourcing IT Through Managed Services?

Here are the benefits of IT outsourcing.

1. Control your IT costs.

Outsourcing IT through managed services helps you budget effectively since your fixed IT costs will be converted into variable costs. This mean you only have to pay for the services you use whenever required.

2. Minimize Your Labor Costs

Hiring and training staff for your IT team can be costly and in many instances, these employees don’t meet your expectations. IT outsourcing Fayetteville NC allows you to concentrate your human resources in areas that need them most.

 

 

3. Certified, Qualified, Experienced, Trained

How do you know what an employee is qualified if you are not IT trained yourself? Experience is as important as certifications such as Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer.

4. Qualified Doesn’t Mean Experienced

There are only a few things that IT service companies aren’t familiar with. In most cases, they’re dealing with IT issues that they’ve already handled several times. Meanwhile, an in-house IT employee will continue to have an isolated existence regardless of how much they train.

5. Boost Efficiency and Effectiveness

Companies that try to come up with an in-house IT department that covers all IT services can be very costly. These expense will then be passed on the clients by increasing the price of the product or service you offer. You don’t have to deal with this if you outsource your IT services.

6. Implement New Technology Immediately

A reliable outsourced IT service company will have the needed resources to implement new projects immediately. Handling the same project with an in-house IT team may require you weeks or months before you can hire the right people. Plus, you have to train them and give them the support they need. This won’t be a problem with IT outsourcing. SpartanTec, Inc. already has a team of IT experts who are experienced, licensed, and certified, which means you’ll get to save money and time.

7. Focus On Your Core Business

Your company most likely have limited resources and each manager has limited resources and time. IT outsourcing will help your company concentrate on your core business. You can just leave complex IT decisions at the hands of experts.

8. Reduce Risks

Every investment comes with a certain level of risk. Government regulations, competition, markets, technologies, and financial conditions evolve fast. IT outsourcing companies assume as well as manage most of these risks for you, which certain industry knowledge, like compliance and security issues.

9. Level The Playing Field

Small businesses cannot afford to match their in-house support with the IT department of a larger company. IT outsourcing helps level the playing field when it comes to IT services. SpartanTec, Inc. can provide your business with the competitive advantage it needs.

10. Security and Compliance

Is your firewall updated? Did you install a DMZ? Do you conduct a regular audit of your servers and workstations? Has your business implemented the PCI security standards? IT outsourcing will take care of all these.

 

Call SpartanTec, Inc. now and let our team of IT experts help minimize the risks of facing a cybersecurity breach linked with sensitive data, credit card numbers, and your business in general.

 

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

Serving: Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Columbia, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Florence

Cybersecurity Tips For Your Work From Home Employees

Nowadays, a growing number of people have started to work from home. Several studies have shown that employees that work from home, stay productive because they no longer have to commute and there are less distractions. Although the ability to let staff to telework when required offers better flexibility to businesses, working from home also has its own set of cybersecurity risks. Remote workers will not just risk their own privacy but also cause the cybersecurity breach in their company’s network.

Letting some of your staff to work remotely for a certain period is something many firms can take care of before these last few months. But when there’s a natural disaster, few enterprises are prepared to allow a large part of their workforce to work from home.

These companies don’t have the infrastructure to handle a lot of employees working remotely, and they also don’t have the security to protect their sensitive data. For many firms, their underlying support, software, and hardware structures can only support a small part of their employee population telecommuting.

 

 

Here are few things that your company needs to make sure that your employees are secured when they work from home.

1. VPN – your work from home employees have to use a VPN. A lot of people know that using a VPN would bypass geographic restriction when accessing location specific content like Netflix. Aside from that, a VPN functions by encrypting your internet traffic, which means it will be unreadable to anybody who tries to intercept it.
2. Wi-Fi Connections – the majority of Wi-Fi connections at residential properties these days are secure. But when you’re not at home, you should be careful about using public Wi-Fi networks. This goes the same for your employees whom you’ve allowed to work from home.
3. Home Routers – A lot of people do not change their router password at home after it was first installed. This leaves their home network vulnerable to cybercriminals. It is important to tell your employees to boost their cybersecurity at home by changing the password in their home router. This will help prevent cybercriminals from access their devices and confidential information.
4. Passwords – all of your accounts have to be protected by strong passwords. Using the same passwords for multiple accounts is not advisable. It will just take one hacker to take control of their accounts
5. Two Factor Authentication – There’s more you can do than just have strong passwords. It’s better to another layer of protection using two-factor authentication. This could be through a text message or email, or even a fingerprint scan or facial recognition.
6. Backups – your files have to be backed up on a regular basis. Your employees may fall victim to ransomware. And when that happens, you won’t have to worry about the files because you have a backup.
7. Firewalls – Firewalls serve as another line of defense to stop threats from getting access to the company’s system. They make a barrier between the internet and the devices of your employees by closing up the ports to communication.
8. Antivirus Software – Install an antivirus software in the computer of your employees. Even though a firewall can help, threats will eventually get through. An advanced and good antivirus software could serve as another layer of defense by identifying and blocking common malware. Even when malware gets access to the device of your employees, an antivirus software might be able to prevent it.
9. Encryption – When your employees have to communicate confidential information to your other staff, their devices must have an updated end to end encryption.
10. Locking Devices – remind your employees to secure their device when they work in a public space to avoid data breach.
11. Phishing – you should train your employees on how to identify and deal with phishing attacks as well as other types of social engineering that involves remote devices as well as remote access to the information systems of your company. Your staff should be cautious of any suspicious email from unfamiliar people, especially when they are being asked to open a file or click on a link.
12. Contact for Reporting Issues – you should provide a phone number or email address that employees can contact to get in touch with your firm’s Incident Response Team in case they encounter potential cybersecurity Fayetteville NC problems when they are working at home.

 

Call SpartanTec, Inc. now if you need help in boosting your company’s cybersecurity especially for your employees who are working from home.

 

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

Serving: Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Columbia, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Florence