Author: Stuart Crawford

What is Fluxion?

Fluxion is a new program that combines social engineering and technology to trick users into giving up their log-in and password information. This program is a step above Wifiphisher, which lacks the ability to verify WPA passwords. Fluxion takes all the work out of hacking using a variety of processes that quickly and easily convince users to provide their Wi-Fi password.

Hackers can acquire these passwords through a few simple taps on a keyboard. Fluxion is regarded as a success in making it easier than ever for cyber thieves to steal valuable information from users.

Fundamentally, or in terms of many aspects of its basic framework, it is similar to previous developments but uses a twin access point in combination with handshake capture and integrated jamming functions. These can work together so that aspects of hardware and software operations that normally take place in the standard functionality of the user account are overwhelmed.

What Recent Developments And Potentials Should I Be Concerned With?

The extent that Fluxion has developed in combination with its accessibility and ease of use online is the most concerning. A search of Google or other major internet search engines will reveal numerous instructional pages that can be downloaded. These instructions provide anyone with a little Internet skill to begin a new career as a cyber thief. These sites provide public access to a range of resources that make it possible for anyone to violate user privacy and accounts and steal login information.

The program initiated as an improvement over a successful attack and was rewritten, so both the structure and coding have been strategically optimized in addition to its user-friendliness and availability.

How Does Fluxion Work?

Fluxion uses what is known as a WPA handshake to affect the functionality of a login page as it attempts to gain receipt of user information. It can affect how the user’s entire script is controlled as the original network is jammed, and a clone is created with the same name, attempting to persuade the user into making an unsafe connection under the guise of a familiar one. It often requests that the user allow time for their router or firmware to reload or be updated. This is just a ploy; the real objective is to steal sensitive information.

Fluxion is an EvilAP attack tool, written with a combination of Bash and Python, that is used for MiTM attacks on WPA Wireless networks. Online sources report on Fluxion as a potentially beneficial tool while touting its features similar to how potential improvements in business functions could be experienced through software installation. Hack Insight claims that the use of Fluxion allows network scanning, handshake capture, web interface use, imitating original access points, the de-authentication of all users on a network, capturing and redirecting of all DNS requests, captive portal launching, password verification processes, and automatic program termination following the recording of a viable password. Technology and strategies applied include the launching of FakeAP instances for access point emulation, fake DNS server launching, and MDK3 process spawning.

What’s Been Happening In Research And Development?

Research and development (R&D) regarding Fluxion and related computer software security processes have involved multiple studies and patents in the past year. At the 12^th International Conference on Recent Innovations in Science, Engineering, and Management, researchers reported having developed a highly successful cracking system by using Fluxion as their foundation. They explained that the damage that can be done with new hacking software using Fluxion demands better software processes in addition to network strategies in currently maintained and improving systems, particularly those that handle network connections and passwords.

At the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Power, Control, Signals and Instrumentation Engineering (ICPCSI), researchers reported that a number of new security patents have been involved in safeguarding against new hacking techniques that are relevant to the processes used by Fluxion. Fluxion was projected to remain a target of ethical hackers in ongoing research and development, and a foundation of the more damaging tools developed and made accessible online.

What’s The Bottom Line?

• Accessibility and ease of use make Fluxion particularly dangerous
• Combines multiple processes for high potential effectiveness
• Foundation of new and more deadly cyber security attacks
• Warrants multiple security upgrades and ongoing R&D

You may have an EHR system, decision support systems, purchasing, payroll, laboratory, pharmacy, personnel, finance, planning, and a myriad of other systems running on hardware that’s getting very long in the tooth.

Many PCs are still running some older version of Windows. These issues can be a constant source of security headaches for the IT staff of today’s healthcare organization. From causing security breaches to all-out system failures, this type of trouble can cost your health organization money. In addition, your staff will not have the modern tools they need to do their jobs.

The cloud vendors see your suffering, and, as they are kind, they offer to take this all off your hands and move all your IT operations to the cloud. “For how much?” you ask. “Between $35 and $165 per seat per month,” they reply. You are taken aback. $35 per seat per month is about what you’re paying for Microsoft Office Enterprise, which, you dimly recall, sort of runs in the cloud, or at least it can. What a deal! Where do you sign?

What Was That You Said About Cost Again?

The first thing you realize is that cost is the actual cost of cloud operations once the migration has been completed. Nothing was said (yet) about the cost of moving to the cloud. Digging deeper, you note that the amount charged will vary by processor load, storage used, and “egress” – the cost of moving your data out of the cloud vendor’s data centers down to your PCs, smartphones, and tablets. You quickly discover that if all you want to do is store your data, the cloud is an incredible bargain. If you want to use your data, on the other hand, then this is a whole different story.

There are two choices when it comes to the Cloud: the private and the public cloud. In addition, there are two big vendors: Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft’s Azure.

So many choices to make and it’s important to make the right ones in order to get exactly what your healthcare organization needs without paying too much.

If your hospital is located in a rural area with practices spread far and wide, then your healthcare facility will need many different services than if you are a single large hospital in a big city. Keeping all of this info on a yellow legal pad may not be ideal. With so many different choices to make, it can be beneficial to work with a trusted IT consultant instead.

There are so many decisions to make and it’s important to find the right IT provider who will oversee everything from start to finish. If you run a busy healthcare facility, you probably don’t have the time or the skills to do all this work yourself. Once you find the right IT service provider, work very closely with them to develop a migration plan, an infrastructure plan, a schedule for moving services, backup storage, and security services.

So, What Are The Real Cloud Advantages?

Moving your operations to the cloud has four substantial advantages:

1. You no longer have to worry about back-end hardware. All that goes away, except for the servers that interface with the cloud.
2. You no longer have to worry about capacity, in terms of processor load, memory, or storage. Whatever you need, the cloud provides.
3. Your security worries will be, not eliminated, but drastically reduced.
4. You will be able to reduce your in-house IT staff, possibly substantially.

These benefits are arguably worth a tidy sum to most healthcare organizations. AWS, Azure, and a private cloud can provide all of them. So how do you choose?

How Do I Choose The Vendor?

The first thing you need to realize is that you will need a redundant, “failover” site that automatically comes online if the cloud provider’s main site for your applications is down. This does happen – Amazon ran into this issue with its own site on Prime Day 2018.

The cost of this is not automatically included, and it can be substantial. The second thing is that private clouds, where the vendor can treat you as a sole client, are much more configurable than the public cloud (AWS or Azure), which has to be configured to support all comers. Of course, if the situation demands it, you can run part of your operations in a private cloud, and the rest in the public cloud; setting up communication between them is relatively easy.

Should I Wade In Or Jump In?

McKinsey, the renowned consulting firm, has studied both failed and successful cloud migrations and recommends a phased approach. Of course, no solution is one-size-fits-all, but there is a good deal of thought and expertise behind their recommendations. In other words, they say wade in, don’t jump in.

Wading rather than jumping allows you to:

• Test the feasibility of cloud migrations
• Orient your IT staff to cloud operations
• Distribute costs over time
• End the project gracefully if it is proving infeasible

Wading will also give you a much more realistic appreciation of the costs and the benefits that are involved.

So, What’s The Bottom Live?

Unless the IT gods are smiling at your organization, you will not be running all your IT operations in the cloud for the $35 you pay for Microsoft Office Enterprise. When site redundancy, egress costs, and processor surge demands are considered, your total costs per seat per month are likely to be higher than this.

When you consider that cost versus a realistic assessment of your current costs (including hardware, software, staff costs, network costs, electricity, cooling, backup, and security), moving to the cloud may still be a bargain. It totally depends on your organization’s needs and the way it handles data. With most healthcare organizations growing by leaps and bounds and considering the high demands that doctors and patients place on the healthcare system, there’s every reason to believe that you will eventually have to make the switch.

What is CVE-2018-6177?

Today’s new releases of browser software are supposed to be improvements over past versions in terms of functionality, helpful features, security, and the speed of overall operation. However, these changes often involve new vulnerabilities which hackers can target and exploit. A recent release of Google Chrome is a good example. A vulnerability allowed hackers to access user information stored in major web platforms such as Facebook and Google. This vulnerability was identified as CVE-2018-6177. It was only recently addressed with the release of a patch known as Chrome 68.

How Have People Been Affected?

The Chrome vulnerability has caused people to hesitate about upgrading to the most current version of the browser. The previous release’s vulnerability has allowed hackers to have increased access to data stored on online databases, including Google and Facebook, leaving a full range of personal information exposed.

The vulnerability exploits a weakness in audio and video HTML tags used in the engine. It has been listed in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures database, a dot.org website dedicated to such issues. The National Vulnerability Database (NVD), a US government establishment also dedicated to this cause notes an entry about these issues that is incomplete.

The most severe attacks that a user can experience include identity theft, resources theft, and system damage through the execution of arbitrary code. Users could also experience common side effects of hacker attacks, including being locked out of their accounts, or having to address unauthorized messages or postings. Users may also be redirected to sites that could involve phishing attempts or some other damaging hacking effort. Denial-of-service and authorized network accounts are also possible for organizations or individuals becoming victims to hackers exploiting the vulnerability.

The Center for Internet Security reported that the most recent release of the browser will show unsecure designations on websites using HTTP rather than HTTPS (standard hyper-text transfer protocol rather than secured protocol of this type). This may make users assume that state, local, tribal, or territorial (SLTT) government websites are not secure. While users are recommended to follow federal and developer organization guidelines for security, the risk of the vulnerability remaining in the software is classified as high for multiple user types. More specifically, the range of vulnerability levels for user types are reported as being:

• ‘High’ for large and medium government and business entities
• ‘Medium’ for small government and business entities
• ‘Low’ for home or individual users

The vulnerability is also referred to as a cross-origin information leak specific to the internal Blink Engine, or web browsing database used as a foundational operating platform for the browser. The Center for Internet Security recommends that users:

• Apply the stable channel update available through Google
• Run software as a non-privileged or non-administrative user (to minimize impacts of successful attacks)
• Ensure non-trusted links are not browsed
• Inform all users of the vulnerability and its demands
• Apply a Principle of Least Privilege (maximizing security and minimizing accessibility amid organizational requirements) to all systems, users, and services

Reporting on potential instances of successful hacks through this vulnerability, The Hacker News described a scenario where a user with a Facebook account could potentially have their personal information accessed and misused.

A researcher with this source made several Facebook posts, using different combinations of audiences to categorize potential victim types by personal traits categorized by the service, and confirmed the nature of the vulnerability. When a website embeds multiple Facebook posts of this type on a webpage, it loads and displays only some of them, based on matching to individual profile information.

The vulnerability allows hackers to gain access to the personal information of visitors to such pages, and regardless of their privacy settings. The browser version does not have a direct way for administrators to determine if embedded posts were loaded for specific visitors, creating a security demand to check and address this.

Users can attempt to rely on Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS), a security feature within the browser that blocks websites from reading content from other sites without authorization. However, as the aforementioned audio and video HTML tags do not validate the types of content retrieved from other sources or block responses with invalid Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIMEs), hackers are able to use multiple hidden tags on websites to request Facebook post information.

While the approach does not generate Facebook posts, hackers can exploit the vulnerability while using JavaScript to gauge request numbers and read the sizes of cross-origin resources to determine which posts and information sets they can get from users. Since several scripts run simultaneously, hackers can effectively data mine once they are able to generate these responses.

Hackers can potentially design sites to return different response sizes dependent on the traits of the logged-in users, and then record information from all people observed through the connections.

The vulnerability is similar to another recent browser issue, a related difficulty involved in cross-origin requests that allowed hackers to read Gmail and Facebook messages. The previous issue was patched in June, and although the current issue was addressed in a patch included with Chrome 68, unpatched users remain vulnerable to the described exploitations.

What’s The Bottom Line?

• Chrome releases have been subject to audio and video HTML tag vulnerabilities.
• Facebook and Google messages, along with personal information are vulnerable.
• Chrome 68 has addressed the issue; users are recommended to replace their older version with the patched version immediately.

What’s smart about a smart home? Well, you can talk to it. You can tell your phone to tell the oven to turn itself down to 200 degrees. You can tell your thermostat to drop the nighttime temperature to 68. You can start the car from the upstairs guest bathroom. And so on.

What you may not realize is that the technology behind these simple tasks is staggering. All of them wholly or partially involve the transmission of data from the oven, the thermostat, and the car across the internet, and anything involving voice recognition is likely to invoke a mainframe running in the cloud to do the voice processing. All of that takes place in an amount of time short enough for you not to notice any lag between the command and the execution.

If that’s what a smart home looks like, what does a smart healthcare organization look like?

The answer to that question involves noting that we are moving from the first generation of cloud services into the second, while most healthcare organizations are only making partial use of the first generation. And we need to take note of what the renowned consulting firm McKinsey calls the “data culture,” one which most healthcare organizations have yet to adopt.

Is Your Hospital As Smart As Your Thermostat?

The Nest Learning Thermostat is capable of learning the temperature control patterns you use and going through them even when you are away. In addition, you can control it from anywhere in the world with your phone. Simply memorizing a pattern is not very advanced. What is advanced is discovering patterns that no human suspected were even there.

A famous example was Walmart’s discovery, made by an AI system, that there was a surge in sales of strawberry Pop-Tarts whenever a hurricane was forecast in South Florida. Not cinnamon and brown sugar Pop-Tarts. Not green apple Pop-Tarts. Strawberry Pop-Tarts. Hurricanes were forecast, so the Walmart trucks loaded up with strawberry Pop-Tarts and rolled towards South Florida. Walmart’s profits inched up a little bit. Of such small fragments are large corporate incomes made.

What Does The Strawberry Pop-Tarts Story Tell Us?

To make that profit-making discovery, Walmart’s systems needed to have data available – detailed sales records, broken down by ZIP code, inventory records are broken down by store, and weather data, all available to the same system. This is the first lesson. Data can no longer be siloed. If patterns are to be found, the data in which they exist must at least appear as one data set.

The second lesson is like the first: For analysis, old(er) data is fine. For action, data must be real-time. It does no good if the Nest thermostat is adjusting the in-home temperature based on the outside temperature readings from six months ago.

The third lesson, somewhat less obvious than the other two, is this: To be effective, the actions taken must make a difference. The difference here was in profit. In a health care organization, it might be patient load, room occupancy, revenue stream, patient satisfaction, physician satisfaction, nurse retention, or cost reduction.

The key is linking action to some parameter that is important. Analysis for the sake of analysis is likely to be fruitless, and organizations that engage in it will be disappointed and decide that AI is not for them. And if they decide that, they are almost certain to reduce their future competitiveness, and perhaps their very survival.

How Is Cloud Evolution Affecting AI?

The cloud is rapidly evolving from a place where data is simply stored to a place where the vast majority of an organization’s data is used to create a bigger bottom line.

The advantages of a cloud for health care organizations are increased security, decreased hardware and software expenses, decreased IT staff expenses, and lack of worries about capacity in terms of processors, memory, or storage.

The big worry for healthcare organizations is the loss of control. Cloud providers are becoming more sensitive to this issue and devoting more resources to collaborating with clients in health care to increase their comfort level.

Cloud providers are also very aware that their clients are interested in using AI and are moving to capture that market. One piece of advice is not to combine a migration to the cloud with a major rollout of AI unless you know the pitfalls in advance and have made contingency plans for when things don’t work. Having competent consultants can make the difference between success and failure.

What Is Needed For AI Success?

McKinsey refers to the part of organizational culture that thinks about and uses data as the “data culture.” Its research has discovered that there are wide differences in the data culture of organizations.

Key elements are:

• General employee awareness of data and its benefits
• An integrating of data into the organization’s day-to-day operations (as opposed to “cool stuff” that gets developed and never used)
• Executive and board buy-in
• The linkage of data with affirmative actions

This latter does not mean that you know what you will do with the results that AI produces before they happen. It does mean that the organization is “reality-based” and is committed to taking the actions that AI reveals as possibilities, provided they are linked to parameters that are important to the organization.

What Are The Key AI-Enabled Technologies Of Cloud 2.0?

Advanced analysis, deep learning, voice recognition, virtual agents (software that acts like humans for specific tasks), robotics, machine learning, image recognition and analysis, natural language programming, and more are all available today.

The key question is what hospitals can use them for. One obvious application is voice recognition and virtual agents for patients able to communicate, replacing the call bell in a hospital room. Instead of having an aide go to the room to answer the bell, then come back and tell the nurse what is needed, just put an Amazon Echo Dot in each room.

The hospital saves time and money while patient satisfaction improves. This is just one of a vast number of ways hospitals could use today’s advanced AI technologies to improve healthcare. The question is whether they’re ready to move into 21^st century technology.

 

Improvements in technology have led to increased connectivity with improvements in security, but have also involved unique vulnerabilities and potential for hackers to access a wide range of information. Particularly problematic to businesses is the potential for a phisher to represent a part of the organization, or a supplier with a business connection to it, as they request organizational information or even funding.

What Are Current Major Risks?

Business managers and employees run the risk of being phished from their work accounts while seemingly doing normal business, only to find that they inadvertently provided company funds or information that could be used to damage the company’s systems or even their reputation. This creates new demand for organizational and network security processes and defenses, with phishing, internet-of-things (IoT) security, and general WPA2 hacking being among the greatest current threats to major organizations, small businesses, and individuals alike.

Phishing internally can lead to thousands or even millions of dollars accidentally provided or outright stolen after the critical information is inadvertently provided. An individual can create an email using some phishing technique to hide, mask, or otherwise misrepresent their actual identity while claiming to be an active member, supplier, or some other legitimate affiliate of the organization. The recipient may receive a SharePoint document link that is hyperlinked to malware capable of hacking or damaging system software, and while being directed to a login screen or invoice to request funds or sensitive information to be further misused.

Hackers have the potential to work around even the most advanced anti-phishing filters, using tactics such as reducing the triggering text to a font size of zero to avoid detection. This allows them to pass the filters with how the data is read while displaying apparently legitimate communications and requests to an organizational manager or employee.

According to the Business Owner’s Guide to Technology, these instances have been common. The reporters cited two recent instances of tens of thousands of dollars being accidentally sent amid a phishing campaign. This campaign went beyond the fake login screen to record credentials in attempts to involve phony invoices as well. There have been cases where millions of dollars were lost through a similar approach.

Another major risk that organizations have, amid a false sense of security, is the size of their network in their maintained IoT. While it has become common for tablet devices, personal laptops, mobile phones, and other devices to be used within a business network for increased internet connectivity and email, it is also becoming more common for hackers to use their own devices to access information. This can potentially be done internally or externally, creating a demand for increased security or upgrading beyond vulnerabilities in the WPA2 security protocol. This issue follows along the lines of phishing potentials in terms of general security vulnerabilities that are the greatest threat to large businesses, small businesses, and individuals alike.

WPA2 hacking, in general, has become more effective, as the protocol itself has been upgraded and developed for security vulnerabilities realized to demand a completely new protocol, WPA3.

Inc. explained that hackers may very well have preferences for businesses, due to the probability that at least some bit of useable information can be recorded from the network. While managers and even network administrators may assume that the most recent mainstream releases of security software and protocol recommendations are enough to protect them, hackers continue to work against these, demanding that upgrades and software that have yet to become mainstream be implemented. This, therefore, demands ongoing research and dedication to optimizing network security.

What Other Specific Recommendations Are There For General Risks?

Beyond general best practices and the issues listed above, experts continue to make recommendations for the optimization of security. To optimize defenses against phishing, a combination of proactive awareness campaigns of recent threats and optimizing the use of available security features is all experts can recommend avoiding inadvertent user cooperation.

To optimize defenses against WPA2 hacking, if transfer to the now-available WPA3 is not possible or deemed sufficiently feasible, minimizing network accessibility to essential job functions or requirements only for all users, while maximizing all relevant security, is recommended. Multi-step user authentications can help against both phishing and hacking attempts.

Other issues are not as commonplace or severe, but are still regarded as important. Network owners are advised to watch out for privilege escalations, which hackers may use in an attempt to gain increasing access to information once they have breached the network to any extent. Maintaining control though rootkit detection is also recommended, as are methods to scan activities and ‘backdoors’ for forms of malware left by hackers who may have been able to remove their event logs before installing their own backdoor access.

As a final measure, taking extra steps to ensure that all employees are actually operating in compliance with security protocols is recommended, as many organizational managers may not even be aware of the extent of shortcuts or vulnerabilities they effectively allow for the sake of convenience. Purple Griffon is one online source that has compiled additional details regarding these potential threats and recommended protective actions.

What’s Most Important?

• Ensuring compliance and best practices against phishing
• Advanced anti-phishing protection (ATP) or related software
• Network security optimization or WPA3 integration
• Remaining current with news, research, and developments

 

As convenient as our interconnected world has become, it has also made us vulnerable to an attack from hackers wanting to make a quick buck. Internet pirates are targeting defenseless networks with the sole purpose of hijacking our personal devices for use in their criminal activity.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is changing how we live our day-to-day lives both in our personal lives at home and our professional time at work. From a doctor’s visit, installing a home security system, and paying our utility services, we have to adjust to this new way of functioning to make sure our information is safe from attack. A recent Gartner (the world’s leading research and advisory company), survey states that 20 percent of individuals and businesses have had one or more IoT-based attacks in the past three years.

What Exactly is the Internet of Things (IoT)?

The “Internet of things” (IoT) has quickly become a buzzword thrown around in the business world and independent of it. It has the potential to influence how we live at home and also how we operate in the workplace. Because of the complexities that surround the Internet of Things, let’s try to break it down to a simple understanding.

The Internet of Things is the concept of linking a device with the Internet or another device. What this means to you is that the IoT encompasses a lot of the stuff you already use each day: cell phones, TVs, laptops, microwaves, etc. Also, as each day passes by, we are encountering the IoT in the basic gadgets we have relied on for years: coffee makers, washing machines, headphones, and refrigerators. If you are flying on a passenger plane, the jet engine of an airplane is being operated and maintained through the use of the IoT. Gartner claims that by 2020 there will be an estimated 26 billion connected devices in use.

How Does the IoT Impact Me?

With so many devices connected to the internet, it’s easy to understand why the IoT is such a hot topic in our world today. With the IoT, security is an issue that is oftentimes immediately included in the conversation; and rightly so. With all these devices connected together and vulnerable to hackers, what can you do as a consumer to make sure that your information is safe? Will someone actually be able to hack into your microwave and obtain access to your whole network? The IoT also opens up homes and businesses to security threats unimagined even ten years ago.

Can My Smart Appliances Really Give Away My Information?

Kellyane Conway, former Trump spokesperson was quoted in an interview with the Bergen Record in 2017 that microwaves can be used as spy cameras by government agencies. She said this concerning allegations from President Trump that President Obama wiretapped the Trump campaign. Although microwaves don’t seem to have these spying capabilities yet, we do know that televisions do. In CIA documents released by Wikileaks, it came to light that some models of Samsung televisions were hacked by the CIA so that they could eavesdrop on conversations taking place in households the CIA deemed suspicious.

Television companies have also admitted that Smart TVs have the power to spy on the users watching habits as a way to help the manufacturer understand how to better reach their consumer base.

How Can I Protect Myself From Cyberattacks Launched Through The Internet Of Things?

What can you do to protect yourself when using all these new smart devices? Here are some strategies you can implement to keep your family and business safe:

• Do your due diligence in selecting trustworthy vendors when purchasing new smart devices. Purchasing something as simple as a baby monitor with smart technology, means ensuring the device is from a retailer that has a proven reputation. You are more likely to find that they have better security in place.
• When feasible, secure your devices. Also make sure your software is updated, and you are properly using filters and firewalls. Train your family members and employees on good internet habits and how to detect phishing scams on websites and through email. When possible, always use a second layer of password protection.
• Make sure the network you use is designed correctly so as not to send out data without your expressed consent. Keep your passwords protected and diverse to avoid hackers who look for patterns in your network.
• For an extra layer of protection, consider using a virtual private network (VPN) on your router which adds a firewall to inward traffic. A VPN prevent attacks that attempt to permeate your network.
• Employ Network Segregation in both your home and business. Network segregation splits one Network into two local networks (LANs) keeping the unsafe computers in one Network and moving the computers that you want to protect to a separate secured Network. Network segregation can be accomplished by using two Entry Level Cable/DSL Routers.