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Every organization in the financial industry needs to meet certain regulatory obligations, even if it’s just filing a tax return or submitting an annual report. In certain industries, such as financial services, they’ve added their own additional sets of rules that must be adhered to. For example, organizations who take and process credit card payments have an obligation to meet the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

To make keeping up with new regulations easier, financials are turning to RegTech. RegTech is the contraction of the words Regulatory Technology. In the financial word it is one of the hot topics. What is it and why is it so popular? Read on.

What is RegTech?

By definition, RegTech is an innovative technology that enables organizations to effortlessly adjust to the weight of always expanding needs for regulatory reporting. In essence, RegTech providers are an industry within the financial industry that provides other members of the financial world with the technology that helps them to stay current with ever-changing rules and regulations.

The wins for the users of RegTech consist mainly of these elements:

• Gain efficiency by streamlining and harmonizing processes within the organization.
• Reporting of compliance and issues is made easier by prefabricated, but often customized, modules.
• Risk can be identified and countered quicker by using smart technology.

To achieve these goals, RegTech uses 5 different types of technology:

• Monitoring processes to obtain a real-time objective about what is going on in the organization. This is essential for reporting and risk identification goals.
• Reporting is often a mandatory part of new regulations and, by constant monitoring, the required reports can be produced at the touch of a button.
• Data exchange is another part of many new regulations, specifically those that help startups on their way. Technology to enable and monitor the exchange of data helps to comply with these regulations while keeping an eye on data streams.
• Internal legal departments are supported with tools to make the implementation of new regulations more efficient and thus cheaper.
• Automation is introduced where possible to avoid human mistakes. The jungle of regulations can easily lead to human error. Monitoring and streamlining can help to avoid such errors. Reporting will have to record them if they should occur, nonetheless. And corrections can be applied where needed.

What makes RegTech so popular?

At one point, the financial industry was under a lot of stress due to new regulations. Depending on the country financials are working from and the regions they plan to do business with, the range of regulations they have to comply with can be challenging. RegTech helps financials to respond in a cost-efficient and versatile way, while maintaining a high standard of quality and security.

How does Regtech work?

This is a very hard question to answer as developments are happening at a fast pace. Every new regulation creates opportunities for the RegTech companies to work on new technology and offer it to banks, financial institutions and FinTech companies. On the other side, RegTech companies supply the supervisory agencies that lay down the rules and regulations with the technology to check compliance by the constituents. This branch is sometimes referred to as SupTech.

For example, by combining Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data it is possible to predict suspicious behavior by monitoring transactions in real-time and scanning for irregularities. This technology will pick up the signals much sooner than any human possibly can, and helps to find patterns indicating money laundering and terrorist funding.

Security implications of RegTech

Many of the regulations are laid down with privacy and security in mind. A correct implementation of these regulations should not pose a problem in this field. On the contrary, if the regulators are accomplishing what they set out to do, these regulations should lift the privacy and security demands to a higher level.

Also, implementation of RegTech gives the in-house security teams at financial organizations the opportunity to focus on other issues as the technology takes over one part of their job. This doesn’t mean internal teams should let go of the process entirely, even though that might sound appealing as they often have a lot of other things on their plate, but it should ease the burden somewhat.

It’s not only necessary to measure the effectiveness of your organization’s security controls against the regulations, but also to check whether new and anticipated legislation does not interfere with your existing security standards. An obligation to offer information to your competitors should not reduce your defenses against a data breach. The Know Your Customer (KYC) documentation not only authenticates the customer’s credentials but also helps maintain a verified record of customers. Regulatory compliance mechanisms like the KYC registry store extremely sensitive personally identifiable information (PII) and elaborate customer data. So, it is important to devise systems that prevent unauthorized access, minimize cyber risks, and limit the possible consequences of a data breach.

Risk and compliance functions use different methods to keep up with regulatory challenges. They use software as a service (SaaS) in the cloud to identify risks, strategize risk tolerance, and facilitate regulatory requirements across various regions and financial services.

How does RegTech provide data security and privacy?

There are some key areas where RegTech contributes to keep our data safe:

• Fraud prevention. Information provided by criminals can be checked against existing KYC data. This helps to prevent identity theft and abuse of stolen data.
• Money laundering and terrorist funding are other areas that are monitored by using KYC data.
• Compliance with national regulations. On top of worldwide and business standards you will often find local standards are applied.
• Cloud security tools to keep data stored in the cloud at the same safety level as locally stored data.
• Authentication methods to ensure a high level of security. For example, multi-factor authentication (MFA) methods, cryptography, and encryption.

As more and more business collect PII, customers are concerned about their personal data security and their privacy. And as cybercriminals get more sophisticated, the need for more advanced and effective tools has risen. RegTech companies provide an important part of this new technology for the financial industry.

The post RegTech explained: a crucial toolset for the financial industry appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Apple has patched three vulnerabilities in iOS (and iPadOS) that were actively being exploited in targeted attacks. Vulnerabilities that are being exploited in the wild without a patch being available are referred to as zero-days. The vulnerabilities were found and disclosed by Google’s Project Zero team, and patches were issued yesterday.

What has Apple patched in the update?

Publicly disclosed computer security flaws are listed in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) list. CVE is a dictionary that provides definitions for publicly disclosed cybersecurity vulnerabilities and exposures. The goal of CVE is to make it easier to share data across separate vulnerability capabilities (tools, databases, and services).

The zero-days are listed under the ID numbers:

CVE-2020-27930: Affected by this issue is some unknown processing of the component FontParser. Manipulation with an unknown input could lead to a memory corruption vulnerability. This means a font could be created which leads to memory corruption, allowing for a remote code execution (RCE) attack .

CVE-2020-27932: A malicious application may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges. Apple is aware of reports that an exploit for this issue exists in the wild. Using such a vulnerability could allow malware to bypass security restrictions on an affected system.

CVE-2020-27950: A malicious application may be able to disclose kernel memory. Apple is aware of reports that an exploit for this issue exists in the wild. Disclosed kernel memory may contain sensitive data like encryption keys and memory addresses used to defeat the address space layout randomization.

What is Project Zero?

Formed in 2014, Project Zero is a team of security researchers at Google who find and study zero-day vulnerabilities in hardware and software systems. Their mission is to make the discovery and exploitation of security vulnerabilities more difficult, and to significantly improve the safety and security of the Internet for everyone.

Update your iOS now

Since Apple has flagged that at least two of these vulnerabilities are being exploited in the wild and told us of the possible consequences, users should install the update as soon as possible.

Owners of an iPhone or iPad are advised to update to iOS 14.2 and iPadOS 14.2 or iOS 12.4.9. Apple patched the same vulnerabilities in the Supplementary Update for macOS Catalina 10.15.7. You can always find the latest Apple security updates at its security updates site.

Stay safe, everyone!

The post Update your iOS now! Apple patches three zero-day vulnerabilities appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

First-day returns in California showed voters firmly approving to change their state’s current data privacy law—which already guarantees certain privacy protections that many states do not—through the passage of Prop 24.

As of the morning of November 4, according to The Sacramento Bee, 56.1 percent of California voters said “Yes” to Prop 24. At that time, 65.3 percent of the state’s votes had been counted. Though far from a complete tally, the numbers proved advantageous enough for celebration for the “Yes on 24” campaign.

“With tonight’s historic passage of Prop 24, the California Privacy Rights Act, we are at the beginning of a journey that will profoundly shape the fabric of our society by redefining who is in control of our most personal information and putting consumers back in charge of their own data,” said Alastair Mactaggart, chair of Californians for Consumer Privacy and sponsor for Prop 24. “I’m looking forward to the work ahead and the next steps in implementing this law, including setting up a commission that is dedicated to protecting consumers online.”

Proposition 24 represented one of the rarer examples in data privacy law that split advocates in two. The typical roster of data privacy supporters in the state—including Electronic Frontier Foundation, ACLU of Northern California, Consumer Watchdog, Common Sense Media, Color of Change, and Oakland Privacy—divided themselves into three separate categories: Support, oppose, or neither.

The disagreement was well-founded. As we reported, while some groups praised Prop 24 because of its increased protections on data that could reveal race and ethnicity, other groups opposed the proposition because of new loopholes that could disproportionately harm minority communities.  

Adding a potential sense of voter whiplash to the ballot proposition was that its biggest supporter and primary funder Mactaggart actually served as one of the lead architects on the very law that the proposition was trying to amend. Two years ago, after announcing an intention to bring a ballot proposition to Californians to better secure their data privacy rights, Mactaggart instead worked directly with California lawmakers to get a bill drafted, passed, and signed by then-governor Jerry Brown.

That law, called the California Consumer Privacy Act, barely went into effect in January of this year, and details on its enforcement and on how the public could assert their rights were released only this summer.

In the end, though, none of that drama appeared to matter much to California voters. With the passage of Prop 24, Californians can expect additional protections on what the proposition has defined as “sensitive personal information,” as well as the country’s first government agency established entirely to enforce a data privacy law.  

The post Prop 24 passes in California, will change data privacy law appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

This blog post was authored by Jérôme Segura and Hossein Jazi.

The 2020 US elections have been the subject of intense scrutiny and emotions, while happening in the middle of a global pandemic. As election night ended and uncertainty regarding the results began to creep in, threat actors decided to jump in on it too.

Those tracking the threat landscape know very well that major world events do not go unnoticed by criminals. In this case, we began observing a new spam campaign delivering malicious attachments that exploit doubts about the election process.

The QBot banking Trojan operators return with yet another themed spam wave using the same hijacked email thread technique enticing victims with malicious election interference attachments.

Hijacked email threads pushing bogus DocuSign documents

The malicious emails come as thread replies, similar to what Emotet does to add legitimacy and make detection harder. They contain zip attachments aptly named ElectionInterference_[8 to 9 digits].zip.

While the election results are still being evaluated and debated, victims are enticed to open up the document to read about alleged election interference:

The extracted file is an Excel spreadsheet that has been crafted as if it were a secure DocuSign file. Users are tricked to allow macros in order to ‘decrypt’ the document.

This tried and tested trick will download a malicious payload onto the victim’s machine. The URL for that payload is encoded in a cell of a Cyrillic-named sheet “Лист3”.

Once executed, the QBot Trojan will contact its command and control server and request instructions. In addition to stealing and exfiltrating data from its victims, QBot will also start grabbing emails that will later be used as part of the next malspam campaigns.

World events are the best lure

At the core of the malware attacks we witness each day are typical social engineering schemes. Threat actors need to get victims to perform a certain set of actions in order to compromise them.

Spam campaigns routinely abuse email delivery notifications (Fedex, DHL, etc.) or bank alerts to disguise malicious payloads. But world events such as the Covid pandemic or the US elections provide ideal material to craft effective schemes resulting in high infection ratios.

Malwarebytes users were already protected against this attack thanks to our Anti-Exploit technology. Additionally, we detect the payload as Backdoor.Qbot.

Indicators of Compromise

Malicious Excel documents
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QBot

china[.]asiaspain[.]com/tertgev/1247015.png

1edfe375fafa1f941dc4ee30702f4af31ba636e4b639bcbb90a1d793b5d4b06c
06be75b2f3207de93389e090afd899f392da2e0f1c6e02226db65c61f291b81b

QBot C2s

142.129.227[.]86
95.77.144[.]238

MITRE ATT&CK techniques

The post QBot Trojan delivered via malspam campaign exploiting US election uncertainties appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Before you start to Google for election news, we’d like you to check whether your browser is at the latest and safest version. “Again?”, Chrome users may say. Yes, because Google has found another zero-day vulnerability – that means it’s a hole that is actively being exploited right now.

It’s the second zero-day in Google found in the past two weeks. Last week we reported about CVE-2020-15999 and advised to upgrade to at least version 86.0.4240.111. Today it is the turn of CVE-2020-16009 which is patched in Chrome version 86.0.4240.183 and later.

How do I install Chrome patches?

The easiest way to do it is to allow Chrome to update automatically which basically uses the same method as outlined below but does not require your attention. But you can end up lagging behind if you never close the browser or if something goes wrong, such as an extension stopping you from updating the browser. So, it doesn’t hurt to check now and then. And now would be a good time, given the zero-day vulnerability. My preferred method, which also allows me to keep track, is to have Chrome open the page chrome://settings/help which you can also find by clicking Settings > About Chrome.

If there is an update available, Chrome will notify you and start downloading it. Then it will tell you all you have to do to complete the update is Relaunch the browser.

What is this Chrome patch for?

Google has not disclosed what the 0-day does or how it is used. This is habitual as they want to give users a chance to update before giving threat-actors the chance to design their own exploits. But researchers came to the conclusion that it must have something to do with the way the Chrome browser handles Javascript by looking at the changelog.

After the update, the security hole should be patched and your settings page should say:

If so, you’re good to go for now.

Stay safe, everyone!

The post Update your Chrome again as Google patches second zero-day in two weeks appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

The threat actors behind Maze ransomware have announced their retirement. On November 1, they posted the retirement announcement on the website where they would normally name and shame their victims that were unwilling to pay the ransom.

“The Project is closed.

Maze Team Project is announcing it is officially closed.

All the links to out project, using of our brand, our work methods should be considered to be a scam.

We never had partners or official successors. Our specialists do not works with any other software. Nobody and never will be able to host new partners at our news website. The Maze cartel was never exists and is not existing now. It can be found only inside the heads of the journalists who wrote about it. Attention to everyone who wants for its private information to be deleted from our news website. You can contact to Maze support chat. Support will be continued for a month after the press release.”

The Maze gang was known for introducing an extra way to create leverage against victims. Not only did the attackers lock organizations’ data up, they also stole the data and threatened to publish it if the ransom was not paid, giving victims another compelling reason to pay up, especially if the data was of a sensitive nature.

So it’s ironic that in the rest of the spelling error-ridden statement, the cybercriminals assume the posture of a group of people out to improve the world rather than line its own pockets. As if raising awareness of security flaws and the danger of Bitcoin was the attackers real goal. If they set out to ease their conscience, we would have preferred them to publish their master decryption keys.

Did the Maze gang retire unexpectedly?

Not really. At Malwarebytes we saw detections drop over the last month after a steep peak in August.

We suspect this is a result of the fact that many of their affiliates have moved to a new family, Egregor aka Ransom.Sekhmet. A week earlier, BleepingComputer reported that the Maze gang had stopped seeking out and encrypting new victims some time in September. The gang also cleaned up its data leak site and seemed to be busy extorting its final victims.

Will the Maze ransomware gang truly retire?

We will have to wait and see—history has shown us that when a crime group decides to close its doors, it’s rarely because the criminals have seen the error of their ways and it’s more often due to a new, more powerful threat that the threat actors would prefer to use.

So, with businesses now being targeted with the next ransomware and no sign of hope for victims of the past we see no reason to be particularly happy about this. We do, however, see plenty of reasons for businesses to look at their protection against brute force and other attacks on their RDP ports.

We will keep you posted of any new developments, as always.

Stay safe, everyone!

The post Maze ransomware gang announces retirement appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Healthcare is not in a good place right now.

With some countries and states deciding to go back in to lockdown due to the continued rise of reported COVID-19 infections—and several garnering record-high numbers compared to when almost every country initially went into lockdown—it seems horrible timing that hospital ransomware is back in the news.

Early on in the coronavirus crisis, a promise was made by some ransomware gangs to leave hospitals alone. But cybercriminals behaving like criminals—whether we’re in the middle of a pandemic or not—isn’t something that we should be shocked about.

In the last few months, we’ve seen rising hospital ransomware attacks.

In late September, a chain of hospitals under the Universal Health Services (UHS), one of the largest healthcare providers in the United States, were hit with what appeared to be Ryuk ransomware. According to their official statement, they successfully provided patient care despite not being able to access their IT applications, largely because of back-up processes and offline documentation methods they already had in place. Thankfully, no patient and/or employee data were compromised during the attack.

UHS hospitals and patients were, in a way, lucky. But this isn’t always the case.

Several weeks ago, we reported on Uniklinikum, a German hospital, being hit with a still-unknown strain of ransomware. And because the hospital stopped admitting new patients due to its systems behaving abnormally—a method that many ransomware-hit hospitals have adopted—a woman in need of serious medical attention had to be driven to another hospital 20 miles further. She died. This is considered the first case of death linked to a cyberattack.

“The stereotype of a cybercriminal is that of a bored teenager who is computer literate and socially maladjusted. This is far from the truth and every time there is a crisis we can see that cybercriminals are in reality ruthless and heartless individuals looking to inflict suffering on their victims in whatever way they can, and if a global crisis, such as COVID-19, plays to their advantage they will do so,” Brian Honan, head of BH Consulting, told ISMG in March of this year. “We should not relax any of our defenses but be more aware of criminals looking to leverage the crisis to spread misinformation, set up scams, launch phishing attacks and launch cyberattacks. Contrary to popular belief, there are no common, decent criminals in the online world.”

Last week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the US Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) released a joint alert on ransomware activity targeting hospitals and other healthcare providers. The malware families they named that actively target such organizations are TrickBot, BazarLoader (aka BazarBackdoor), Ryuk, and Conti.

This alert also highlights the importance of having and maintaining an offline, encrypted backup of data; creating, maintaining, and exercising a threat incident response plan—even a basic one—so staff would know how to respond in the event of a ransomware attack; and knowing and following the Ransomware Response Checklist, which is included in this CISA guide page.

Healthcare organizations might think that it’s only sensible to pay the ransom as lives could be severely impacted by a ransomware attack. However, in many cases, this scenario can be avoided by being prepared, expecting to be hit, and knowing what to do when—not if—it comes.

The post Hospital ransomware: Gangs are back to target healthcare appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

We had a very busy week at Malwarebytes Labs.

We offered advice on Google’s patch for an actively exploited zero-day bug that affects Chrome users, our podcast talked about finding consumer value in Cybersecurity Awareness Month with Jamie Court, we provided guidance about keeping ransomware cash away from your business, pointed out how scammers are spoofing bank phone numbers to rob victims, analyzed how a fake COVID-19 survey hides ransomware in a Canadian university attack, and discussed how a new Emotet delivery method was spotted during a downward detection trend.

Believe it or not, we also found time to explain what was going on with the HP printer issue on Mac, analyzed how California’s Prop 24 splits data privacy supporters and discussed Vastaamo, a data breach with unprecedented consequences.

Other cybersecurity news

• Federal agencies are warning of an increased and imminent cybercrime threat to US hospitals and healthcare providers, especially with regard to ransomware attacks. (Source: NBC)
• Despite their own claims, questions have been raised as to whether the SunCrypt gang are indeed the newest members of the Maze cartel. (Source: Security Boulevard)
• The five biggest cybersecurity threats for the healthcare industry as seen by cloud-first security firm Wandera. (Source: TechRepublic)
• CVE-2020-14882 A bug in Oracle Weblogic is being actively exploited, and the exploitation is trivial. (Source: InfoSec Handlers Diary Blog)
• Foreign cyber threats to the 2020 US presidential election are predominantly sophisticated disinformation campaigns. (Source: digital shadows)
• Why satellite hacking has become the biggest global threat for countries like the US, China, Russia, and India? (Source: The Eurasia Times)
• Facebook warned of perception hacks undermining trust in democracy. (Source: Axios)
• Microsoft warned that threat actors are actively exploiting systems unpatched against the ZeroLogon privilege escalation vulnerability in the Netlogon Remote Protocol. (Source: BleepingComputer)
• Email compromise attacks are on the increase as threat actors shift their focus from finance employees to group mailboxes. (Source: BetaNews)
• Zoom has kicked off end-to-end encryption for its mobile and desktop apps. (Source: ZDNet)

Stay safe, everyone!

The post A week in security (October 26 – November 1) appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

California’s data privacy house is divided.

On the Golden State’s November ballot this year is the question as to whether to amend California’s barely-two-year-old data privacy law, the California Consumer Privacy Act. Far from the first attempt to change the fledgling law, Proposition 24 sets itself apart because its primary backer is the same man who ushered in the state’s data privacy law two years ago.

California voters are therefore presented with a strange, legislative about-face: One of the lead architects for California’s privacy law thinks it is already time to change that law—perhaps dramatically so. The proposition seeks to create a new category of consumer data, a new data protection agency, and new carveouts for certain uses of data.

The law-making whiplash isn’t just affecting voters, either, as many privacy advocates disagree with the changes, and the parallel campaigns both supporting and opposing Proposition 24 have split typical bedfellows.

Standing in support of the proposition are the consumer rights advocacy Consumer Watchdog (who we recently spoke with), family tech safety nonprofit Common Sense, civil rights organization NAACP, and multiple privacy scholars and notable politicians, including “surveillance capitalism” expert and Harvard Business School professor Shoshana Zuboff and former Democratic presidential hopeful Andrew Yang.

Standing in opposition are multiple consumer advocacy groups including Consumer Action (not to be confused with Consumer Watchdog) and Public Citizen, privacy and human rights nonprofit Center for Digital Democracy, racial justice organization Color of Change, and ACLU of Northern California.

This division has also produced potentially confusing, conflicting statements for Californians trying to understand which way to vote.

For example, on one side, the NAACP has voiced support for Prop 24 because it “allows consumers to stop companies from using online racial profiling to discriminate against them.” On the other side, however, ACLU of Northern California has asked voters to vote no on Prop 24, arguing that it “will disproportionately harm poor people and people of color.”

Who then is right?

As is usually the case in data privacy debacles, the devil is in the details. In fact, both groups have a point—they’re just focusing on different pieces of the proposition.

Today, let’s look at why this one ballot prop has divided a typically unified group of privacy advocates.

The origin of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

More than two years ago, a real estate developer became a privacy advocate.

Alastair Mactaggart has told the story of his transformation many times, and it always begins with a Google engineer disclosing just how much information the company knows about its consumers. After learning about a legislative tool in California politics that allows voters to directly approve policy, Mactaggart began drafting up a ballot proposition with a co-lead named Mary Ross.

That proposition never made it onto the state’s 2018 ballots, but it didn’t have to. By working directly with state lawmakers, Mactaggart and Ross managed to write up a bill eventually signed into law by then-governor Jerry Brown.

On June 28, 2018, the California Consumer Privacy Act, or CCPA, became law. With the governor’s signature, Californians could eventually expect new data privacy rights, including the rights to access and delete their data, port their data to another provider, and opt out of having their data sold.

The success of the law today, however, eludes easy definition. Simply put, not enough time has passed. CCPA did not come into effect until January 1, 2020, and businesses and consumers lacked details on compliance and on how to assert new data privacy rights. California’s Attorney General finally submitted those details, called “regulations,” this summer. 

If such little time has passed, then, why already try to change it?

According to Mactaggart, it’s because the law already needs major support, after facing no less than 18 legislative attempts to amend it in the past two years—several of which could have removed any teeth to the law’s protective bite.

“I’m not a politician. I don’t want to be a politician. I just want to get a good law in place,” Mactaggart told CNN. “It was a little daunting to see how hard business tried to just destroy it this year.”

What is Prop 24?

To its supporters, Proposition 24 is a chance to strengthen a data privacy law that is already a prime target.

If passed by voters, Prop 24—also called the California Privacy Rights Act and which you can read in its full 52 pages here—would amend the CCPA to create a new category of “sensitive personal information,” create a new right of data “correction,” triple some of CCPA’s fines for violations regarding children’s data, amend the liability companies face for some data breaches, and create a new data protection agency to handle enforcement of the CCPA.

Prop 24’s new category of “sensitive personal information” would receive new data protections, too, as Californians could separately choose to protect this data from certain uses.

According to the bill, “sensitive personal information” would include precise geolocation data, information revealing racial or ethnic origin, religious or philosophical beliefs, or union membership, email and text message content, genetic data, and biometric information that is specifically collected and analyzed “for the purpose of uniquely identifying a customer.” The proposition would also include Social Security, driver’s license, state ID, or passport numbers into its definition of “sensitive personal information.”

Granting people the ability to stop companies from using sensitive information in ways that they do not approve of is a major boon to Californians, said Carmen Balber, executive director for Consumer Watchdog.

“Under Prop 24, a consumer can limit the use of their sensitive information to stop Uber from profiling them based on race, stop Spotify from utilizing their precise geo-location and prevent Facebook from using their sexual orientation, health status or religion in its algorithms,” Balber said.

Further, the creation of a data protection agency has won over several supporters, including entrepreneur and former presidential candidate Yang. In a recent piece for The San Francisco Chronicle, Yang wrote positively about the data protection agency which could serve as a “watchdog over big tech.”

But for several privacy rights advocates, Prop 24 also includes too many concessions—and too many lost opportunities—to earn their support.

Electronic Frontier Foundation, which neither supports nor opposes the proposition, said instead:

“Prop 24 does not do enough to advance the data privacy of California consumers. It is a mixed bag of partial steps backwards and forwards.”

Prop 24 opposition

Though Prop 24’s detractors have several, separate concerns, each organization cites one same problem with the proposition: It expands the CCPA’s current allowance for “pay-for-privacy” schemes.

Pay-for-privacy schemes rear up in data privacy bills every few months, and they always present the same risk. In fact, Malwarebytes Labs already wrote about a pay-for-privacy provision included in a data privacy bill introduced last year. In that bill, consumers could have been penalized for exercising their potential right to not be tracked online, after signing up for a universal “Do Not Track” website.

Prop 24, however, packages the pay-for-privacy risk a little differently. According to Prop 24, businesses could withhold discounts from customers exercising their privacy rights strictly when operating “loyalty club” programs. 

The carve-out may sound small, but, according to ACLU of Northern California, the expansion of any pay-for-privacy scheme would disproportionately harm at-risk communities first. The argument is similar to the organization’s concerns with any “data as property” proposals—struggling families who need the money the most would not be able to say no to any bargain that puts a dollar amount on their data privacy.

“The fact is that working families are already struggling to stay healthy, find a job, keep food on the table, and maintain their housing,” the organization wrote. “No one should be put in the position of choosing between the necessities of survival and their privacy.”

Separate from the pay-for-privacy risk, the No on Prop 24 Coalition—which includes ACLU of Northern California, Oakland Privacy, Indivisible SF, and the California League of Women Voters—published a list of complaints about the proposition.

The group said that Prop 24 would allow companies to collect Californians’ data as soon as they leave state borders, override an incoming law that grants more data transparency for employees, and, as a bit of a mini-bombshell, it includes a carveout for credit reporting agencies that, according to one news site, is lifted “almost verbatim” from a lobbyist’s demands.

Finally, the No on Prop 24 Coalition said that Prop 24 would re-shift the burden of data privacy back to the consumer, forcing Californians to opt out of data usage and sales with each and every individual website and app that they visit and use.

This is a known problem in data privacy, and it is in part why just this year, US Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio passed around a federal data privacy bill that no longer hinges on the idea of consent.

What next?

Californians will finish voting with the rest of the nation on November 3. According to recent polling released by the Yes on Prop 24 campaign, the proposition could smoothly sail into becoming law. According to that data, a whopping 77 percent of likely voters in California plan to vote yes.

That statistic is, admittedly, a shock, not because Malwarebytes Labs has a position on the ballot proposition, but because of an entirely separate, non-controversial opinion: 52 pages is a lot to ask voters to read through.

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“Hell is too nice a place for these people.” Never have we seen outrage about a cybercrime at such a level. The outrage is aimed at cybercriminals behind the data breach that occurred at Finnish psychotherapy practice Vastaamo. Vastaamo, which has treated some 40,000 patients, is a subcontractor to several major public-sector hospital districts. Finland’s president Sauli Niinisto called the blackmailing “cruel and repulsive.” Prime Minister Sanna Marin said the hacking of such sensitive information was ”shocking in many ways.”

What happened at Vastaamo?

For once it wasn’t a ransomware attack on a health care organization. Vastaamo was first breached in 2018, with a follow-up in March 2019, and on both occasions the attackers managed to steal tens of thousands of patient records. Due to the nature of the practice, the records contained extremely sensitive and confidential information about some of the most vulnerable people.

Sadly, it appears as though security levels were raised at Vastaamo only after the 2019 hack, and by then the data had already gone. Vastaamo was informed of the extortion in late September, 2020, when the three Vastaamo employees received an extortion message.

What did the attackers do to monetize the Vastaamo breach?

Vastaamo has been summoned to pay roughly half a million US dollars in Bitcoin. But that’s not the worst bit. Recently, the attackers started to send extortion messages to the patients, asking them to pay around $240 to prevent their data from being published. And that is a first, as far as we know—not just demanding a ransom from the breached organization, but also from all those that were unlucky enough to have their data on record there.

The aftermath

Here’s what’s been going on since the attack:

• Vastaamo’s CEO Ville Tapio was fired by the board because he was considered to be aware of the breaches and of shortcomings in the psychotherapy provider’s data security systems.
• Vastaamo’s owner, who bought the practice a few months after the second breach but was not informed about it, began legal proceedings related to its purchase.
• Finnish police are still investigating, hindered by the long interval between breach and extortion demands. They are not even sure whether the extortionists are the same people as the initial attackers.
• Finland’s infosec community has set up a website with guidance for the victims on how to recover from the breach.
• Many of the victims are considering legal action against Vastaamo. Unfortunately, Finnish procedural law does not allow for class-action lawsuits.
• The extortionists have already published some 300 files using the anonymous Tor communication software.
• Various Finnish organizations have rapidly mobilized ways to help the victims of the breach, including direct dial numbers for churches and therapy services.

It will probably take some time before it becomes clear what went down exactly, if ever. And the number of leaked patient files and the way the patients are being extorted makes this case one of a kind. Let’s hope it stays that way.

Healthcare and cybersecurity in general

We at Malwarebytes have warned about security issues in the healthcare industry many times before, pointing out some major causes of inadequate cyber defenses:

• The Internet of Things (IoT): Due to their nature and method of use, you will find a lot of IoT devices in hospitals. They likely all run on different operating systems and require specific security settings in order to shield them from the outside world.
• Legacy systems: Quite often, older equipment will not run properly on newer operating systems, which results in an outdated OS or even software that has reached the end-of-life point. End-of-life means the software will no longer receive patches or updates even when there are known issues.
• Lack of adequate backups: Even when the underlying problem has been resolved, it can take far too long for an attacked target to get back to an operational state. Organizations need to at least have a backup plan and maybe even backup equipment and servers for the most vital functions so they can keep them running when disaster strikes.
• Extra stressors: Additional issues like COVID-19, fires, and other natural disasters can cut time and push aside the need to perform updates, make backups, or think about anything cybersecurity related. These stressors and other reasons are often referred to as “we have more important things to do.”

What should Vastaamo victims do now?

Some of the guidance given to Vastaamo clients applies to other situations, but some is very specific for this one. Should your data be leaked in a data breach, Malwarebytes published a quick checklist in 2018.

Vastaamo’s website has the following suggestions for victims:

• Do not call 112 (Finnish 911 equivalent), as the emergency center will not be able to help with this.
• Record and preserve any emails, messages, and other evidence you receive.
• Record all information about the sender at the time of receiving the message in the crime report.
• Do not pay the ransom
• Do not distribute mails, as they contain personal information.

Victim Support Finland, backed by the Ministry of Justice, has more guidance in English for those who suspecttheir data may have been comprised in the Vastaamo breaches.

Stay safe everyone!

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