Morphisec Cyber Security Blog

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.

After more than four years with no weaponized exploits for Adobe Acrobat Reader, researchers at ESET identified a weaponized PDF that allows attackers to execute arbitrary code on the targeted machine and eventually assume full system control. The PDF exploits two previously unknown vulnerabilities, Acrobat Reader vulnerability CVE-2018-4990 and a privilege escalation vulnerability in Microsoft Windows, CVE-2018-8120.

Adobe Reader has a built-in sandbox feature that usually makes exploitation difficult. By combining vulnerabilities, this attack achieves code execution and then bypasses the sandbox protection to fully compromise the targeted system.

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?

After less than two years in the market, Morphisec has deployed its Endpoint Threat Prevention platform to over one million endpoints worldwide, making it the fastest subscription-based B2B cybersecurity company to reach this milestone.

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 Moving Target Defense verified as Citrix Ready to enhance protection with Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop

CISOs face an escalating battle on two fronts: externally from ever-more sophisticated attackers and internally in managing all the threat protection and additional security layers they put in to stop them. And they are losing. Despite added technology complexity and operational overhead, cyber criminals still manage to get past defenses.

According to a a new report from analyst firm ESG, 72% of organizations believe that security operations are more difficult today than they were two years ago yet 54% still suffered at least one security incident.

Register for our webinar Dynamic Endpoint Protection for Virtual Environments on March 21, 2018.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) offers many advantages but it is not attack proof and highly advanced cyberattacks present an ever growing threat. IT and Security teams need to rethink the fabric, the costs and the risks inherent within virtual environments. Endpoint protection for VDIs has always been problematic as they are extremely sensitive to the performance impact of security products. The wrong security tools will consume resources, slow system boot up and impede productivity.

When we founded Morphisec in 2014, it arose from the observation that too many endpoint protection solutions followed the same old paradigm, even if they were using more technologically sophisticated methods. We believed a fundamentally new approach was needed, one that looked from the point of view of the attacker.

We also firmly believed that cybersecurity should enable business, not hinder operations or interfere with business goals.

The recent Meltdown and Spectre CPU vulnerabilities took almost everyone by surprise.  Widespread panic was staved off only by the promise of a nearly-ready OS patching fix, which it turned out, excluded a large swath of systems and created its own set of problems. 

Users are still scrambling to patch systems with an extremely complex mixture of OS, firmware and application updates. Organizations are encountering slowdowns, blue screens and reboot problems in their rush to avoid security problems. The entire stack of Spectre and Meltdown fixes has not yet been properly tested and will take time to reach anything resembling stability.