Morphisec Cyber Security Blog

Morphisec officially opened its new corporate headquarters in the Gav-Yam Negev Advanced Technologies Park in Beer Sheva, Israel. Known as Israel’s leading cybersecurity technology center of innovation, the park is a collaborative endeavor of Ben Gurion University, the city of Beer-Sheva, and real estate developer KUD International. It brings together academia, advanced research, local government, business entrepreneurship and the global technology industry.

Morphisec is pleased to announce the 2018 winners of the Morphisec Women in Cybersecurity Scholarship. The program offers three scholarships for female students enrolled in cybersecurity-related studies to support and encourage young women exploring a career in this field. In addition to the cash awards, the first place winner receives a personal mentoring session.

A new highly sophisticated botnet incorporating numerous malicious, evasive techniques is quickly spreading its tentacles. Dubbed MyloBot, the botnet uses an usually complex chain attack and combines multiple anti-analysis techniques to make it more difficult to detect the payload and harder to analyze by security researchers. Initial research published by Deep Instinct points out that everything on the victim’s end takes place in memory, while the main business logic of the botnet is executed in an external process using code injection. This makes it even harder to detect and trace.

Adobe disclosed that a Flash zero-day was being exploited in targeted attacks against Windows users. The critical vulnerability was discovered and independently reported by several security firms. Successful exploitation of the vulnerability allows arbitrary code execution which can ultimately lead to an attacker assuming full system control.

So far, 2018 has turned out to be anything but business as usual, at least on the cybersecurity front. The revelation about CPU vulnerabilities Meltdown and Spectre (and all the offshoots); the explosion in cryptojacking – which is likely even more widespread than current estimates; the lightning speed at which the newest sophisticated attack technology is adopted by mass market criminals.

We all wish we were smarter. And I believe that the vast majority of people, in some way, strive to GET smarter.

As someone who has been involved in the cybersecurity industry for years, and watched it evolve, I see countless companies in this market using the aspect of intelligence to position themselves as being smarter than others. But if you have to proclaim your intelligence, are you actually smart? Or even smarter than me? Or than the next company?

In April, researchers at Qihoo 360 Core Security Division discovered a VBScript vulnerability actively exploited in targeted attacks. Since then, it has appeared in additional attack campaigns. The vulnerability, CVE-2018-8174, dubbed "Double Kill",  is significant on several counts.

If you’ve stayed at any large hotel chain in the past year, there’s a good chance your personal details have been compromised. According to Verizon’s 2018 Data Breach Investigations Report, the accommodation industry had one of the highest number of breaches, second only to healthcare. 

Morphisec is honored to have received awards in three out of six categories at this year's Midmarket CIO Spring Forum. The annual Vendor Excellence and Midmarket CIO Awards recognize leaders in technology collaboration. 

Over 77% of all cyber crimes target small and midsize enterprises. According to the 2017 State of Cybersecurity in Small & Medium-Sized Businesses (SMB) report by the Ponemon Institute, cyberattacks cost small and medium-sized businesses an average of $2,235,000.

Although I’m excited to be at the RSA Conference with my Morphisec colleagues, it reminds me of the impetus for starting our Women in Cybersecurity Scholarship. Of 28 keynote speakers at RSAC, only seven are women, and six of these were added at the last minute following a string of scathing tweets and articles. This 25% figure seems to be the average percentage in the general sessions as well. I attended several that were one woman in a panel of four, a few that had only male speakers and a single session that had a majority female panel. If I had to guess the overall attendee and exhibitor gender split I’d say it fell along the same lines, but that percent is skewed by the number of women simply scanning badges.