Posts Tagged “Cybersecurity”
My recent article, “Internet Apocalypse?” lays out the three most vulnerable points of attack that could potentially shut down the entire Internet, and how any such catastrophe would likely not be global but rather localized to a city or region, which is not to say that such a containment would not still be a total failure. What follows is an excerpt from a recent story published by NoCamels.com with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu setting the stage.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the robotic voice said, “this conference has just been hacked. Ironic, isn’t it? A conference dedicated to cybersecurity being hacked.”
“We are based in a country not far from Israel. That’s all you need to know for now. The bank accounts of everyone sitting in this hall have just been frozen. The intellectual property of your companies is in our hands, so are your private conversations. This information is being sent to your competition and your enemies,” it went on.
It was the fourth day of the 8th annual 2018 Cyber Week conference at Tel Aviv University, a global event gathering leading cybersecurity researchers, entrepreneurs, and insiders, began with a threat.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a main speaker at the five-day event, took to the stage on Wednesday and aired an audio clip announcing a large-scale hack to an audience of some 8,000 attendees from 85 countries.
The threat was not real; Netanyahu was simply trying to drive home a point. “This is not far-fetched,” he said, warning that hackers and state-backed actors “can do everything that you heard here and much more.”
“Hackers can cripple our most sensitive systems. They can even take over, literally take over, some of those vital systems. And it is not something that is theoretical in the future. It’s already happening in the present, as you well know. You wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t have companies. There wouldn’t be this thriving business if there wasn’t this amazing threat to our banks, our airplanes, even our weapons,” Netanyahu said.
“This is a supreme test for our civilization. It is going to be tested not only by criminal organizations, by terrorists, but by other states,” he said. “This is why we’re holding this cyber conference here. It is to protect the present and ensure the future, no less than that.”
Netanyahu also praised the cybersecurity ecosystem in Israel, saying the country is “punching at 200 times above our weight here.”
Portions of the content below was originally published by NoCamels.com
New York City said it will partner with Tel Aviv startup network SOSA and Israeli VC Jerusalem Venture Partners to help lead the efforts, alongside Cornell Tech, the joint venture between Cornell University and Israel’s Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Columbia University, The City University of New York, New York University, iQ4, Fullstack Academy, and LaGuardia Community College.
The initiative, dubbed Cyber NYC, will “grow the cybersecurity sector, will leverage a roster of world-renowned partners to launch a Global Cyber Center, an innovation hub for startups, initiatives to fuel commercialization and research, and new talent pipelines to train the cyber workforce of the future,” NYCEDC said in a statement.
“New royal line town has to be formidable regarding cybersecurity as a result of our future depends on that. Cyber NYC can fuel the following generation of cybersecurity innovation and talent, investing one in every of the world’s greatest threats to make a serious economic anchor and up to ten,000 quality bourgeois jobs,” same NYCEDC President and corporate executive James Patchett.
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“We’ve convened a foremost list of partners to assist us on this essential set up, which is able to facilitate defend the industries and other people that build this town the economic powerhouse that it’s these days,” he added.
SOSA, the worldwide innovation platform connecting Israeli startups, can establish the worldwide Cyber Center within the Chelsea neighborhood as an area for NYC’s growing cybersecurity scheme. The 15,000 square-foot center, at 17th Street and 7th avenue, can foster collaboration and innovation with companies, investors, startups, and talent from around the world. the middle will provide trade events, still as a co-working house for startups and a virtual region to run simulations.
SOSA corporate executive Uzi Scheffer says the worldwide Cyber Center can “serve as a middle of gravity for the whole cybersecurity industry” and can “connect the best talent from New York City, the States, Israel, and our entire world network.”
The global platform, with hubs in city and New York, was supported in 2014 by distinguished Israeli investors and entrepreneurs to make an area for technical school innovation whereas additionally promoting joint commercial activity for its members. SOSA’s current network presently provides access to regarding eight,5000 startups, a hundred and fifty investors, capital funds, and international companies.
“SOSA incorporates a long history of shaping sturdy partnerships by conveyance along entrepreneurs and technologies to drive solutions, we tend to|and that we} foresee to doing the identical for the cyber community as we grow our own presence,” Scheffer same. “We can see partnerships fashioned, the pilot comes launched and strategic investments created that may absolutely impact NYC and also the world.”
Jerusalem Venture Partners, the international capital firm, was chosen to ascertain the city’s initial international cybersecurity investment and innovation hub within the SoHo neighborhood to “create the following billion-dollar chance.” Hub.NYC, housed during a fifty,000 square-foot house, can support growth-stage startups, with access to purchasers, business support, and investment. The goal is to grow the startups into major cybersecurity corporations within the town.
“We’re convinced that NYC, the planet capital of finance and media, can shortly emerge because of the new world hub for cybersecurity,” same JVP founder and chairman Erel Margalit. “If the West Coast is that the U.S. technology hub, New York City will become the international technology hub in shut partnership with Israel and also the international community to create the following generation of cybersecurity corporations to counter the new threats.”
The known capital firm supported by Margalit in 1993 has raised over $1.3 billion and supported over a hundred thirty corporations in Israel, Europe, Asia, and the US. JVP has invested in twenty cybersecurity corporations since 1999 and contend a task during a range of company exits, IPOs, and M&As. As well as PayPal’s acquisition of prognostic cybersecurity company CyActive and Huawei’s acquisition of info security supplier Hexatier.
NYCEDC additionally selected Columbia to “connect tutorial inventors of proprietary cybersecurity technologies with full-fledged entrepreneurial talent to launch new cybersecurity startups, fast innovation, and commercialization” through their Columbia Technology Ventures program, that helps the university give mentorships, coaching, and capital to assist early-stage tutorial startups.
City University of New York (CUNY), New York University, Columbia, Cornell technical school, and iQ4 can be part of the initiative to coach cyber specialists through new certifications and degree programs for brand new Yorkers, the statement same. Fullstack Academy, a package development college will lead the Cyber cantonment, which is able to place over one,000 students in jobs with a beginning earnings of $65,000. there’ll even be a six-week preparatory course at CUNY’s LaGuardia junior college (LAGCC) wherever adults will learn the fundamentals of cyber trade package and nomenclature before the cantonment.
The Cyber NYC initiative is “expected to change state the expansion of ten,000 good-paying cybersecurity jobs over the following Diamond Stateside and could be a key part of politician de Blasio’s New York Works set up,” the NYCEDC statement same. it’ll be oil-fired by a $30 million investment, which is able to leverage a further $70 million from personal funding.
Industry leaders can aggroup as partners of the initiative, as well as MasterCard, which is able to use the Cyber cantonment to rent graduates of the program and Facebook, that plans to develop a brand new master’s program with CUNY.
Diane Israel is a Chicago native and long-time supporter and advocate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She is also famous for her culinary recipes. Diane can be reached at Diane@IsraelOnIsrael.com
In June, reports from Norway prompt a hacker might have taken healthcare data from 1/2 the country’s population.
“Medical knowledge is incredibly wealthy with PII (personal placeable information),” says Leon Lerman, the chief executive officer of Cynerio, AN Israeli cyber outfit protective hospitals in Israel and also the North American country from cyber threats. “Unlike credit cards, medical knowledge can’t be canceled and thus have an extended lifespan for hackers to use the info for fraud and medical fraud.”
Indeed, medical knowledge is deemed a high-value product – prime for fraud and insurance fraud – on darknet forums and there’s a rising demand for such knowledge.
According to a 2017 Sixgill Threat Report, health care breaches were the second highest of any business, right when the business, however conjointly logged the largest increase from year to year — thirty.7 % of the info breaches in 2017 versus twenty two.6 % in 2016.
See related article on cybersecurity.
Medical devices tempt hackers
From MRI machines to pacemakers, hypoglycemic agent pumps to X-rays, healthcare administration systems to practice files square measure all rife with personal info that’s simple to access.
“The drawback is that the total health care business isn’t aware enough of the hazards. Medical devices and systems square measure simply hackable and hackers, hacktivists, and threat actors square measure a lot of and a lot of inquisitive about the know-how of the way to clean up medical devices, the way to hack hospitals and medical centers,” Israeli tells NoCamels.
The health care system remains slow on addressing better-known vulnerabilities, change the code, stopping arcanum sharing. In different words, the remissness in securing connected devices and systems makes health care the proper target.
“You will see medical devices with the best user and password: admin and admin. this can be the alphabet of what to not kill today’s cybersecurity atmosphere. I wouldn’t be stunned if within the close to future we’ll see a lot of and a lot of knowledge breaches of medical records,” says Israeli.
Indeed, international knowledge breaches happen daily. However, the healthcare business is especially in danger attributable to the Brobdingnagian variety of devices wanting to be secured.
Earlier this year, Malware science laboratory researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Desert incontestible the relative easy exploiting unpatched medical devices, love CT and MRI machines, that don’t continually receive in progress security updates.
The researchers showed however AN wrongdoer will compromise the pc that controls the CT device inflicting the CT to emit high rates of radiation, which might damage the patient and cause severe harm. They conjointly aforesaid attackers will block access to medical imaging devices (MID) or disable them all together as a part of a random attack, that has already occurred worldwide.
“CTs and MRI systems don’t seem to be well-designed to thwart attacks,” Dr. Nir Nissim, head of the Malware science laboratory at BGU’s Cyber Security research facility, aforesaid during a statement. “The middle development method, from thought to plug, takes 3 to seven years. Cyber threats will modification considerably over that amount, that leaves medical imaging devices extremely vulnerable.” But it’s not all doom and gloom. Cybersecurity outfits square measure tweaking their algorithms to stay the health sector safe from hackers.
In Israel, city Sourasky eye ANd Rambam healthcare field recently declared an agreement with Cynerio to shield its medical device system from knowledge breaches and different cyber threats. whereas each medical facilities already had cybersecurity in situ for hospital networks, the new agreement specifically safeguards medical devices.
“The hospital became aware that there’s an outsized and growing variety of connected medical devices in its system that may become susceptible to cyberattacks, that was a priority thanks to the sensitive and valuable patient knowledge it handles. Most of the devices employed in healthcare’s clinical atmosphere square measure outside the scope and capability of ancient IT security technologies, that elevated the problem to a essential threat. The hospital wanted a technology that would show what’s happening within the medical device system, what number devices might be affected and conjointly facilitate to shield them,” Eyal Kellner, CTO of Rambam Hospital, aforesaid during a press statement.
“We square measure operating with most of the hospitals in Israel and leading North American country health systems, to secure their weakest link – the connected medical device which might be used as a hidden entree by hackers to the patient knowledge,” Cynerio’s Lerman tells NoCamels.
“Protecting medical devices is vital however it’s simply a part of the challenge. there’s a complete system supporting these devices which incorporates gateways love medical imaging image archiving and communication systems, nurses stations, clinical servers, DICOM printers, and middleware, that’s conjointly vulnerable and desires protection,” says Lerman.
“When it involves hospitals or medical practices or health care corporations, ransomware may be a superb thanks to clean up medical services that square measure in some cases rescue. Ransomware may be a great way to form simple cash as a result of once it involves rescue infrastructure and medical devices, they recognize they’ll be able to fire cash during a faster approach and recognize they’ll apprehend quicker,” says Israeli.
Morals and ethics aren’t robust on the dark net. This under-the-radar marketplace may be a haven for cybercriminals to set up ANd execute their crimes and since it’s an anonymous platform wherever society’s regular rules don’t apply, Israeli says, the mix of sensible folks, unhealthy guys, and well-paying customers tends to guide to shrewder crimes.
“We do see folks talking concerning morals on the dark net however they don’t very go farther into it. within the short term, they give the impression of being for the profit and name,” says Israeli.
The current threat to international health care is Orangeworm. Symantec knew this new attack cluster earlier this year and showed however it’s targeting the health care sector and connected industries.
While Israeli health care hasn’t suffered Orangeworm’s attacks, however, Lerman and Israeli say that even with prime cybersecurity measures in situ, each country may be a seeming target.
“Many of those attacks square measure targeting previous and unpatched systems which each and every hospital has, with Israeli hospitals being no exception thereto. As happened with WannaCry – that conjointly affected some Israeli medical facilities,” says Lerman.
“It is safe to mention that as a lot of threat-actors develop their skills of harming the healthcare sector, Israel can face a better chance of experiencing a cyber attack against its medical establishments throughout international hacktivist events love OpIsrael,” says Israeli.
And whereas the consolation is that a lot of cybersecurity corporations square measure that specializes in the healthcare sector, says Israeli, the image remains rather bleak.
“Hacking medical devices and motility down medical systems may be a terribly simple approach for terrorists to require action,” says Israeli. “In the long run, I will see terrorists or the other hacktivists that don’t very care concerning people’s lives, take it into action, as a result of this can be what they require. they require to clean up medical establishments so as to damage communities.”