The US Department of Homeland Security has outlined plans to enhance cyber security through the Maritime Transport System (MTS).The department’s aim is to protect the system and infrastructure used to ensure safe and free navigation of US waterways.
Ports are a vital part of the US economy, contributing $649 to GDP and generating 13 million jobs. The request for information will be used to help develop research to test the vulnerabilities of the port infrastructure. The study will help to develop a virtual ‘testbed’ which researchers will use to test the functionality of the port and determine any exploitable gaps in the systems. By identifying the weaknesses, the MTS aims to mitigate and close vulnerabilities.
Read more…
Source: TechRadar News
Related:
- Ransomware attack cripples Vancouver public transportation agency
December 4, 2020
A ransomware attack has crippled the operations of TransLink, the public transportation agency for the city of Vancouver, Canada. The attack took place this week, on December 1, and has left Vancouver residents unable to use their Compass metro cards or pay for new tickets via the agency’s Compass ticketing kiosks. TransLink initially passed the incident as ...
- Adventures in MQTT Part II: Identifying MQTT Brokers in the Wild
November 18, 2020
The use of publicly accessible MQTT brokers is prevalent across numerous verticals and technology fields. I was able to identify systems related to energy production, hospitality, finance, healthcare, pharmaceutical manufacturing, building management, surveillance, workplace safety, vehicle fleet management, shipping, construction, natural resource management, agriculture, smart homes and far more. Hackers have been sounding alarms about this ...
- xHunt Campaign: Newly Discovered Backdoors Using Deleted Email Drafts and DNS Tunnelling for C2
November 9, 2020
The xHunt campaign has been active since at least July 2018 and we have seen this group target Kuwait government and shipping and transportation organizations. Recently, we observed evidence that the threat actors compromised a Microsoft Exchange Server at an organization in Kuwait. We do not have visibility into how the actors gained access to ...
- When Threat Actors Fly Under the Radar: Vatet, PyXie and Defray777
November 6, 2020
As security practitioners, Palo Alto Unit 42 researchers spend a lot of time focusing on the threat actors and malware families that leverage the most impactful exploits or affect the highest number of victims. But what happens when a threat actor goes “low and slow” to fly under the radar? One could argue that, in ...
- Montreal’s STM public transport system hit by ransomware attack
October 21, 2020
Montreal’s Société de transport de Montréal (STM) public transport system was hit with a RansomExx ransomware attack that has impacted services and online systems. On October 19th, STM suffered an outage that affected its IT systems, website, and customer support. While these outages did not affect the operation of buses or metro systems, people with disabilities who ...
- Fairfax County schools hit by Maze ransomware, student data leaked
September 12, 2020
Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), the 10th largest school division in the US, was recently hit by ransomware according to an official statement published on Friday evening. The school district is also the largest in the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area and it has a budget of $3.1 billion approved for 2021. FCPS has over 188,000 current students and ...