Malware Archives - IT Jungle

GenAI Is Now Creating Malware Delivery Vehicles

September 25, 2024 Alex Woodie

As if the threat posed by human bad actors wasn’t enough to admins up at night, security professionals are now tasked with preparing defenses for AI actors, including malware created by generative AI. That’s the takeaway from a new report published this month by HP that documents GenAI-generated malware. IBM i security professionals should take note.

The September 2024 edition of the HP Wolf Security Threat Insights Report brought some concerning news around GenAI. While the HP Wolf Security team had seen convincing phishing lures created by GenAI, it hadn’t seen any actual malicious code written by GenAI before.

But …
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A Decade of Data Breaches: Some Things Never Change

August 9, 2023 Alex Woodie

Why did Willie Sutton rob banks? “Because that’s where the money is,” he told a reporter. Fast forward to 2023, and data is the new currency, so it’s not surprising that bad guys are doing their best to steal it. While some techniques have changed, many aspects of data theft have remained the same over the years, according to the Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report.

It was 2003 when the telecommunications company Verizon set up the Verizon Threat Research Advisory Center (VTRAC) to study emerging cyber threats. A year later, VTRAC investigators assisted in publishing the first Verizon Data Breach …
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Midsummer Security Indicators: Hot and Gloomy

August 2, 2023 Alex Woodie

The hot summer heat is smothering Americans like a tight polyester jacket these days. Also having big impacts on Americans are hackers, security vulnerabilities, spam, and malicious emails, which seem to be peaking with the seasonal fry.

Security software company Securin scanned 8 million addressable IPs among US state government systems, and discovered 119,000 instances of high-risk services that could be easily exploited, according to a report released yesterday, dubbed “The State of Cybersecurity in America.”

All told, Securin found 3,700 exposed databases (Db2 among them), 3,400 exposed Secure Shell (SSH) endpoints, 2,780 exposed File Transfer Protocol (FTP) systems, and …
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Groundhog Day For Malware

May 11, 2022 Steve Pitcher

Say it with me: IBM i is NOT immune to malware.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a piece called The Real Effects of Malware on IBM i. I thought it laid out a pretty fun, yet frighteningly serious, story of having an argument with a gentleman on Facebook regarding what’s IBM i fact vs fiction regarding malware and how myself and my iTech Solutions colleague Nathan Williams proved it out with some homemade malware and hosed a test system in the process. It really just says everything it needs to.

So a few weeks ago I’m on …
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Ransomware Attacks Hit Closer To Home

July 12, 2021 Alex Woodie

Fifteen hundred organizations around the world had their data locked up in the latest ransomware attack, including grocery store chains and schools. It’s unclear if any IBM i shops were included in the attack, which a Russian hacking group claimed credit for. But it’s clear that ransomware is a growing threat to all organizations, including IBM i shops.

On July 2, as hundreds of millions of Americans hunkered down for the long Independence Day holiday weekend, hackers using the REvil were just getting started. The Russian-affiliated hacking group had already done the hard work of exploiting a five-year-old security flaw …
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Malware Threats and Cyber-Recovery on IBM i

May 26, 2021 Brian Barth

Cyber threats have evolved from the traditional vectors of theft and direct attacks to more financial driven cyber destruction and extortion, especially via ransomware. Hospitals, manufacturers, universities and financial institutions have all been attacked in the last year, and the rate of attacks is increasing as networks become more accessible to support remote workers. The Colonial Pipeline attack has demonstrated that even the critical infrastructure that supports our supply chains is not invulnerable.

In 2021, more than three quarters of attacks are financially motivated, and over half of those attacks are ransomware – an attack in which files are typically …
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Locking Down Exit Point And IFS Vulnerabilities On IBM i

March 24, 2021 Pauline Brazil Ayala

It’s true that the IBM i server is among the most securable servers on the planet. But all too often, customers do not take the time to secure their environments properly. This is particularly true for two of the most oft-neglected components of the IBM i environment: exit points and the IFS.

IBM introduced exit points with the launch of OS/400 V3R1 way back in 1994. We remember that version well here at Trinity Guard, because soon after that, we developed the industry’s first exit point monitoring software for the AS/400 at PentaSafe, the spiritual predecessor of our company. …
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Security Vulnerability In VIOS, AIX, And Maybe IBM i

November 23, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

IBM i shops that use the Virtual I/O Server, which is a cut-down version of the AIX implementation of Unix created by Big Blue, have to be aware that there is a security vulnerability that affects recent releases of AIX and VIOS.

The vulnerability, announced in Security Vulnerability CVE-2020-4788, affects Power9 machinery running VIOS 3.1 or AIX 7.1 and AIX 7.2, and under what are called “extenuating circumstances” the vulnerability could allow a local user on the system to obtain sensitive information stored on the L1 cache on the Power9 cores.

The vulnerability was reported on November 18, and …
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Connecting IBM i Into A Broader Security Web

April 19, 2017 Alex Woodie

In the on-going war between cybercriminals and everybody else, there’s no place for lone wolfs. The strength of any individual company’s security is largely dependent on the collective posture of multiple groups of actors. Luckily for IBM i shops, there are defined paths to plug into the broader shield that’s constantly evolving to keep us safe.

The idea of collective security is nothing new. Every anti-virus engine you’ve ever owned for the past 25 years is kept up-to-date by groups of security researchers who constantly stay on the lookout for new pieces of malware and new forms of attacks.

But …
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Top 11 Ways to Protect Your IBM i from Insider Threats

February 22, 2017 Alex Woodie

Hackers get a lot of attention when it comes to cyber security, and for good reason: external cyber threats are growing in volume and sophistication. But one shouldn’t overlook the harm that insiders can—and do—wreak on companies on a daily basis. Security expert Carol Woodbury recently shared 11 ways IBM i pros can protect the server from the very real threat posed by insiders.

Woodbury, who is the vice president of global security services at HelpSystems and formerly was IBM‘s chief security architect for the AS/400, says IBM i shops unknowingly leave themselves open to internal attacks through a …
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