NASA sees an "exponential" jump in malware attacks as personnel work from home:
NASA has experienced an exponential increase in malware attacks and a doubling of agency devices trying to access malicious sites in the past few days as personnel work from home, the space agency's Office of the Chief Information Officer said on Monday.
"A new wave of cyber-attacks is targeting Federal Agency Personnel, required to telework from home, during the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak," officials wrote in a memo. The wave over the past few days includes a(n):
- Doubling of email phishing attempts
- Exponential increase in malware attacks on NASA systems
- Double the number of mitigation-blocking of NASA systems trying to access malicious sites (often unknowingly) due to users accessing the Internet
The last item is particularly concerning because it suggests that NASA employees and contractors are clicking on malicious links sent in email and text messages at twice the rate as normal. Tricking people into clicking on malicious links or opening malicious email attachments remains one of the easiest ways to gain entry into enterprise networks and individual computers users alike.
[...] The risk to all types of attacks is only heightened by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has sent millions of people working from home almost overnight, with little time for IT departments to formalize procedures for maintaining the security of organization networks.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2020, @01:05PM (1 child)
Have you noticed, in ads, on products, and just about everywhere, they love to turn the letter A into a pyramid:
So instead of 'A', you get /\
Do THEY enjoy throwing it in our faces? C'mon, NASA, just do it, follow the herd, make it:
N/\S/\
Maybe make the letter 'S' into a serpent, too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2020, @03:17PM
There is a reason:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_insignia [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Thursday April 09 2020, @01:25PM (1 child)
No need to link to crap like Condé Nast's Ars Technica. Look further upstream. There has been a statement from the NASA CIO on Cyber Threats Significantly Increasing During Coronavirus Pandemic [spaceref.com]. What they expect is a doubling in phishing attacks, exponential increase of malware attacks in general, and a doubling of need to block access to known malicious sites. The question is what percent of those various attacks actually succeed. The answer to that is largely determined by how low they have gone as far as permitted desktop and notebook operating systems. Some systems can be called out as, for all practical purposes, designed to acquire and spread malware.
However, even on more robust operating systems both of today's web browsers are train wrecks. The browser situation is even worse when considering that each javascript is basically a bit of foreign, unauthenticated code injected from the outside as scripts pull in other scripts, sometimes two dozen layers deep. WebASM looks to make that problem several orders of magnitude worse. With both, you lose control over your computer as others make choices about what to load and run and whether or not they pay even lip service to security or privacy.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday April 09 2020, @03:21PM
Is WebASM any worse than obfuscated javascript? Hell, I can't make heads or tails of most unobfuscated javascript, it's all one big spaghetti mess.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2020, @01:56PM (2 children)
The man [preview.redd.it], the legend, the dream [preview.redd.it].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2020, @04:09PM (1 child)
more insightful than the OP story, IMHO.
but no, we're now being scolded for using "M$" instead of "MS", and now we are trained to think of this piece of shit as a hero.
https://www.reddit.com/r/bill_gates_is_evil [reddit.com]
fuck him and his ID2020 bullshit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2020, @08:50PM
we have to write software to make technocrats and government-by-force obsolete.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2020, @03:03PM
N/\S/\ computers are getting zoomed. All their data is being zoomed up to Zoom's sniffing snooping servers, with copies to Facebook, the Chinese Army and anyone else who wants a peek.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2020, @08:54PM
nasa should train every employee to use linux and basic computer stuffs.
(Score: 2) by corey on Thursday April 09 2020, @11:03PM
Yeah makes a lot of sense and was really predictable a couple of weeks ago before social distancing started. With everyone working at home, there's millions of open targets accessible through the open internet, rather than behind corporate firewalls. On my work laptop, I've got to manually connect to the VPN to get in but prior to that, I've got Outlook trying to connect to the mail server, chat apps etc all reaching out.
China's and North Korea's cyber armies are going mental right now I bet, busiest time ever probably.