Lessons Learned From N.Y. Times Hack Attack
It seems now that every time you look online or at the news, a major website or corporation has been hacked. With current events and politics heating up, the hackers aren't slowing down. However, every news article reporting a Twitter takeover or a successful phishing campaign refers to one thing in the end about preventing attacks - educate your employees. Take a look below at this article from InformationWeek about the recent New York Times hack and what can be learned from it.
Lessons Learned From N.Y. Times Hack Attack
The disruptions began after the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), a group of hackers that back Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country's civil war, hacked into the systems of the world's sixth largest domain name system (DNS) registrar, Melbourne IT, and altered DNS settings for nine sites.
Twitter quickly restored service, but by Thursday afternoon, people were still reporting difficulties accessing the Times website. "If you're still having issues, it's likely the result of your ISP not yet restoring proper DNS records," Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy tweeted Wednesday.
While those cleanup efforts continue, here's how other businesses can help themselves avoid a similar fate:
1. Beware Spear-Phishing Attacks
According to Melbourne IT chief executive Theo Hnarakis, the SEA was able to hack the affected sites' DNS settings after launching a successful spear-phishing attack against one of Melbourne IT's U.S. resellers, which he declined to name. The phishing attack allowed the hackers to access employees' email, from which they retrieved log-in credentials for both the Times and Twitter DNS configuration pages.
"This activist group used a very, very sophisticated spear phishing attack," Hnarakis told the Associated Press (AP). " They sent very dubious emails to staff of one of our resellers whose area of expertise is looking after the domain names for major corporates including the New York Times."
"Unfortunately, a couple of the staff members of the reseller responded by giving their email log-in details; the group were able to search their emails for sensitive information that included the username and password for The New York Times, and from there it all cascades," he said.
2. Train Users To Spot Phishing Attacks
What could Melbourne IT's reseller have done differently? For starters, it might have better educated employees to recognize and resist phishing attacks. "Humans [are] once again the weakest link," tweeted Brian Honan, CEO of the Irish Reporting and Information Security Service, which is Ireland's CERT, about the hack. "Malware and attackers no longer target the operating systems but the [users] instead."
Unfortunately, attackers only need one phishing attack to be successful, and the odds are on their side. According to a phishing study conducted at North Carolina State University, 89% of participants claimed to be proficient at recognizing malicious emails. But when assessing whether an email was malicious or legitimate, 92% of study participants incorrectly classified at least some emails.