Yesterday the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE) released its 2021 exam priorities. In the letter the SEC highlighted that their focus remains the same from prior years with a slight shift in priorities and adjustment of focus. The SEC stated that they will review whether firms have
On January 13, 2021, the Market Participant Division (MPD) of the CFTC sent an email to registrants informing them about an alert that was issued by the DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). In the alert CISA highlighted post compromise activity related to the SolarWinds Breach. More specifically, the alert highlighted that threat actors
Fireye detected that Solarwinds Orion is being used by attackers to steal sensitive company data. Fireye’s threat research division found that a highly sophisticated and evasive attacker compromised the Solarwind’s Orion IT monitoring and management platform to deliver a backdoor trojan. It is suspected that the campaign has started as early as April 2020 and
A Cayman Islands investment firm's backups stored in a Microsoft Azure Blob Storage was not secured properly thus resulting in a potential leak of personal banking information, individual passport data, and other sensitive information. A researcher discovered the gaping hole left open by the firm’s Hong Kong based IT provider via a special search engine
Yesterday The Office and Compliance Inspections and Examinations ("OCIE") issued an alert about safeguarding client accounts against credential compromise that highlighted the issue of "credential stuffing attacks". Credential stuffing is a type of cyber attack where many compromised user credentials are tried against systems to gain unauthorized access, using automated means. Over the past few
A service provider of SEI Investments Co., affected by a ransomware attack. SEI Investments Co., a fund administrator for several high-profile asset management firms experienced a breach, exposing the personal information of investors for approximately 100 clients. SEI stated that the breach occurred through one of their service providers that faced a ransomware attack. M.J.
Critical Wormable Vulnerability Affecting Windows DNS Servers On July 14, 2020 Microsoft publicly disclosed a critical vulnerability affecting Windows DNS Server. https://portal.msrc.microsoft.com/en-US/security-guidance/advisory/CVE-2020-1350 As a reminder DNS (Domain Naming System) servers are used primarily to resolve IP addresses. DNS is used for locating and identifying computer services and devices on the internet, such as email servers,
Today the OCIE issued a Ransomware Alert, highlighting an uptick in sophisticated social engineering and other cyber campaigns, designed to infiltrate the networks of financial institutions to access sensitive information and/or to deploy ransomware. As a reminder, ransomware actors typically demand monetary payment for the return of data. We can spend time regurgitating what was
On June 29, 2020 Palo Alto Networks published a notice about a critical vulnerability affecting their devices. https://security.paloaltonetworks.com/CVE-2020-2021. The vulnerability, which is listed as an issue affecting the way SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) authentication happens, can be exploited by remote attackers to gain access to the device. Dissecting this vulnerability, Palo Alto states that
