Week 3 - Challenges and new cyber threats

Week 3 update:
As usual, I am starting sharing my experience with the world how my classes are going. So far great but I have to admit CYBR 515 class is challenging and highly technical. I with some other classes were like this one. Assessments are not about just writing papers but also encryption and decryption using the double transposition cipher method. The second-week assignment made me feel like "If you don't get it, you don't get it" like the Washington Post commercial. My Internet research helped me figure out how to decrypt a message using double transposition. It reminded my college math class where I had to learn 4 X 4 matrix. Hope coming weeks, we get similar technical assignments. There is a possibility that this class can be my two feature class after Ethical Hacking class.

Article 1:

Most Apple products users think Apple is less vulnerable and secure which is true when we compare with Windows products. I read an article, and it explains how Apple is becoming vulnerable as the number of users is growing worldwide. According to the article "Apple released security patches for its MacOS and MacOS Server, iOS, watchOS, tvOS, Safari, and Pages, to address over 200 vulnerabilities." The affected OS was mostly recent products which believed to be less vulnerable which isn't the case anymore after finding the vulnerabilities.
In MacOS, some of the flaws include memory corruption, user interface issues, access and validation issues, buffer overflow, profile uninstallation problem, etc. Reading this sounds like Apple got more flaws than Windows to me. I never heard or experienced profile uninstallation problem in my Windows OS even though I am a MAC user also.

According the researchers "An application that passes a malicious certificate to the certificate validation agent could trigger this vulnerability. Possible scenarios where this could be exploited include users connecting to a web site which serves a malicious certificate to the client, Mail.app connecting to a mail server that provides a malicious certificate, or opening a malicious certificate file to import into the keychain,". This is why it is critical not to click on suspicious links or open unknown websites. Reviewing all the Apple OS, it seems to they got some work to do if they want to have their customer's trust like before.

Here is the direct link if you interested reading the full article.
http://www.securityweek.com/apple-patches-hundreds-vulnerabilities-across-product-lines

Article 2:

I read another article this week which was posted to the Nationalinretest.org website. The title of the
article says it all "Why the Pentagon Needs to Leverage National Guard Cyber Skills." However, I disagree with the writer because National Guard is a part of the military and they support every federal and state mission based on the need of the country. It shouldn't matter whether it's a cyber mission or natural disaster mission. Next, the article talks about the consequences of the cyber attacks. Imagine if they could shut down a power grid or water system, railway systems. I think it's coming and it just the matter of time we will see all these disasters if we don't do enough to protect ourselves. It is surprising that we are trying to come up with a cyber team when enemies are already attacking government systems. We could have prepared well and ready to fight in the cyber domain if there is an attack. Especially the Air National Guard is trying to come up with a cyber team and support the federal/state mission. Now the National Guard has over 32 units focussing to the cyber mission.

According to Senator Ernst, “Cyber warfare is an emerging and ever-evolving battlefield, and we must use all available tools to protect our nation’s security, including those that already exist in our National Guard units.” I think most of us agree with Senator Ernst about his views about the threats and cyber being a new battlefield.
Overall this was a great article and explains well about the current activities of National Guard regarding the cyber mission.


http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/why-the-pentagon-needs-leverage-national-guard-cyber-skills-19920

Week 2 - Cyber trends

Week 2 update:
It has been a very challenging week. This term I am taking two classes, and there are some tools that I had never used before. Visio seems to be easy to use a tool but coming up with a plan to write about a threat model process was challenging. Time will tell how I did after the assignment grading. I can already tell this CYBR 650 is a challenging class than any other any other classes I have taken. It is understandable that this class supposed to be difficult since it is a capstone class. I like the two weeks format since it gives students more time to work on a project. So far classes assignments are going well with some challenges. Currently I am talking CYBR 515 where we had a assignment to decrypt a message using given code (double transposition cipher). This assignment drove me crazy but I think I finally solved it. There isn't much information about the double transposition cipher in the Internet which made it difficult. I had to put some time and thought process to solve it and hopefully I solved it correctly.

Article 1:

I read an article this week titled "How online hate infiltrates social media and politics" written by Adam G. Klein. It is a known fact that social media has become a part of life for those users who have internet access. Many don't have access to the digital platform. Many groups around the world have been using the social media for their interest, and it has a significant impact on the politics. Some users make a decision based on what they see or read on the news or social media. We can take a recent US election where social media played a significant role in sending messages to the general people. Many leaders around the world use social media as their news sharing platform. Many hate groups are spreading fake messages to the world users. This article provides an example news commentary website which received 2.8 million monthly visitors for just one article. The article was titled "Jews Destroy Another One of Their Graveyards to Blame Trump." The scariest part of this story is that it is not even true. All these articles are floating around the web, and some people start believing which makes a significant impact on the communities. Hate rhetoric has been going on for a long time but nowadays with the access of social media and digital platform, it has become easy to spread rumors and propaganda news. Overall the cyber domain is becoming a big pile of digital information where some are good and bad. Readers and followers need to be smarter and make their decision. All the news are not news anymore because they are biased to particular party or religion or believes. They don’t give any fair news, and it becomes challenging to the normal people to understand what's going on.      

http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20170317-how-online-hate-infiltrates-social-media-and-politics

Article 2:

I don’t even know if I can trust major news organization like CNN, Fox News, etc. I read another news this week which is talking about how US Air Force is planning to fight against the cyber-attacks. This news caught me since I am coming from the military background. The writer warns that hackers could potentially disable weapon systems, power grids, chemical plants, etc. What is exactly the government doing to prevent this from happening? I agree with the author on this. Cyber domain war is going on, and it can be catastrophic if not handled quickly. The air force has been training new cyber operators, and new cyber careers have been added. But I wonder why, so we waited so long to train and prepare for the cyber war. I think we failed to predict the cyber threats. Now we are trying to prepare for the fight when hackers are destroying our systems. The article talks about how Air Force is preparing for cyber domain fight. It also talks about different types of cyber-attacks and US Army also increasing the number of cyber warriors. Overall this article was good to read about how the military is working to prepare cyber operators.

Another reason why this news caught my eyes how it was mentioning about the Air Force training cyber warriors. Being in the military, I always wanted to get into the real cyber career field (1BXXX). I had an interview like four months before with the cyber squadron in my unit and finally received an email saying that I was accepted. There is a lot of unknown of this career field, but I am excited to be a part of the cyber warriors. Hopefully, my college education helps me to get through the Air Force long technical school and OJT.
     
https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/local/the-war-you-can-see-wright-patt-trained-cyber-warriors-protect-from-daily-attacks/2kYpgKyutTmXvPg1QUhLPP/

Finally, I want to talk about some of the websites which talk about current threats, vulnerabilities, security updates, and news in general. There are many websites related to cyber news. The good thing is that these news sites are not biased like the major news organizations. Here are some sites I usually visit and read the cyber-related news.

1. https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/threat-encyclopedia/vulnerability
This website posts security news about new cyber threats. For example, Operation Pawn Storm Uses New Adobe Flash Zero Day in Latest Attacks was the topic of a new attack.
2. https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/current-activity
This is a good place to read news about government security issues and what is being done to prevent new cyber threats.
3. http://www.securityweek.com/virus-threats/vulnerabilities
This website updates security report on weekly basis and contains new vulnerabilities
4. http://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-threats.asp
This is not a dark website as it sounds. It is also similar to other news organization focussing on the Internet and new threats.

Many other websites post cyber-related news. All the sites contain similar updates; however, there are some go deeper and try to find the actual cause behind the attacks or threats. Mostly I will use these websites to read the news and continue my blog posting. 

Week 1 Post - Introduction

Hello world,

My name is Dipak Acharya, pursuing a master's degree in Cyber Security from Bellevue University. It's about that time I go back to search my CYBR 608 class blog and learn about blogging. Luckily I found it. I am close to finishing up with my Masters in cyber security, and this is my final semester if everything goes as planned. I am using the same blog for my last class CYBR 650. It feels amazing when you realize you had a dream and wanted to accomplish so bad and finally dream coming true. Some of the classes were challenging especially the ethical hacking course, but other than that I had fun learning about cyber. Hopefully, I can utilize Master’s Degree to get to the cyber career field and continue to improve myself. Once I finish my degree, I am planning to work on certification like CISSP and CEH. I hear a lot of things about how it can help in your IT field and potentially help to land a job in a cyber-career field.

All the classes I took at Bellevue University were very helpful as far as knowledge wise, and I am sure it will help me to strengthen my knowledge in the overall cyber field further. The best part of the online college is an opportunity you get to read other students perspective on the similar topic and adding your ideas to it. I was never a fan of the online student until I joined Bellevue University. It helps to become an independent researcher. All the professors I had were very helpful and would respond promptly. Now, I think back, and I can never think of going back to traditional schools. Thanks to Bellevue University.

I think writing a blog is an excellent idea to share knowledge and experience. Also, it encourages to research and increases knowledge on a particular topic. Also, it helps to raise awareness about the new threats, trending cyber news and prevention methods. Hackers have gotten so sophisticated that sometimes it seems they are outsmarting government agencies and cyber-related companies. We have seen many incidents of cyber threats where hackers can cause grave damage to national security, especially to the United States. The United States has been a big target for cyber criminals. The virtual world makes it harder to find those criminals, so the best options we have are to secure our systems and use the best security methods applicable. The examples of cyber incidents were SONY hack and OPM cyber breach. It is pretty common that as soon as significant incident happen, the government most likely to blame other countries like China/Russia/IRAN. I always thought of why we can’t do better than this. I believe we should be able to identify the exact location and individuals responsible for those attacks. With the growing number of cyber professionals in the United States will contribute to protecting the critical infrastructure better. I think we are little behind the pace of training and protecting computer systems; otherwise, hackers should not be able to attack from the government to banking systems. For example: In my eight years of experience working as a federal contractor, I have seen many systems or application that is outdated, missing patching and very vulnerable to the overall systems. Many tools and services have been used for many months. This is where hackers take advantage of our weaknesses. The government should audit every IT infrastructure and remove the ones that are not being used for extended time. This will help to decrease cost, labor and increase security effectiveness. Again, this is just my opinion, and I could be wrong.

That is all for today. Please visit my blog often and comment. Thanks.

Update: Wow I just read news about the recent Yahoo hack. Finally, government agencies like FBI and DOJ coming with concret actions aginst the hackers and hopefully they can bring to the justice. It is pretty alarming when you see Russian diplomat and Russian government officials directly involved in the hacking activities. Events like this will definitely help to decrease the cyber incident in some cases but time will tell how two countries react each other.         

here is the news link if you are interested reading.
             

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/14/politics/justice-yahoo-hack-russia/index.html