The Australian Cyber Security Centre threat report 2015

Introduction: The number, type and sophistication of cyber security threats to Australia and Australians are increasing. Due to the varied nature of motivations for cyber adversaries targeting Australian organisations, organisations could be a target for malicious activities even if they do not think the information held on their networks is valuable, or that their business would be of interest to cyber adversaries. This first unclassified report by the ACSC describes the range of cyber adversaries targeting Australian networks, explains their motivations, the malicious activities they are conducting and their impact, and provides specific examples of activity targeting Australian networks during 2014. This report also offers mitigation advice on how organisations can defend against these activities. The ACSC’s ability to detect and defend against sophisticated cyber threats continues to improve. But cyber adversaries are constantly improving their tradecraft in their attempts to defeat our network defences and exploit the new technologies we embrace. There are gaps in our understanding of the extent and nature of malicious activity, particularly against the business sector. The ACSC is reaching out to industry to build partnerships to improve our collective understanding. Future iterations of the Threat Report will benefit from these partnerships and help to close gaps in our knowledge

Reaction to New Security Threat Class

Each new identified security threat class triggers new research and development efforts by the scientific and professional communities. In this study, we investigate the rate at which the scientific and professional communities react to new identified threat classes as it is reflected in the number of patents, scientific articles and professional publications over a long period of time. The following threat classes were studied: Phishing; SQL Injection; BotNet; Distributed Denial of Service; and Advanced Persistent Threat. Our findings suggest that in most cases it takes a year for the scientific community and more than two years for industry to react to a new threat class with patents. Since new products follow patents, it is reasonable to expect that there will be a window of approximately two to three years in which no effective product is available to cope with the new threat class

DDoS-Capable IoT Malwares: comparative analysis and Mirai Investigation

The Internet of Things (IoT) revolution has not only carried the astonishing promise to interconnect a whole generation of traditionally “dumb” devices, but also brought to the Internet the menace of billions of badly protected and easily hackable objects. Not surprisingly, this sudden flooding of fresh and insecure devices fueled older threats, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. In this paper, we first propose an updated and comprehensive taxonomy of DDoS attacks, together with a number of examples on how this classification maps to real-world attacks. Then, we outline the current situation of DDoS-enabled malwares in IoT networks, highlighting how recent data support our concerns about the growing in popularity of these malwares. Finally, we give a detailed analysis of the general framework and the operating principles of Mirai, the most disruptive DDoS-capable IoT malware seen so far

Assessing and augmenting SCADA cyber security: a survey of techniques

SCADA systems monitor and control critical infrastructures of national importance such as power generation and distribution, water supply, transportation networks, and manufacturing facilities. The pervasiveness, miniaturisations and declining costs of internet connectivity have transformed these systems from strictly isolated to highly interconnected networks. The connectivity provides immense benefits such as reliability, scalability and remote connectivity, but at the same time exposes an otherwise isolated and secure system, to global cyber security threats. This inevitable transformation to highly connected systems thus necessitates effective security safeguards to be in place as any compromise or downtime of SCADA systems can have severe economic, safety and security ramifications. One way to ensure vital asset protection is to adopt a viewpoint similar to an attacker to determine weaknesses and loopholes in defences. Such mind sets help to identify and fix potential breaches before their exploitation. This paper surveys tools and techniques to uncover SCADA system vulnerabilities. A comprehensive review of the selected approaches is provided along with their applicability