AMU Cyber & AI

Cyber Defense Brief 23 Jan 2017 – Sundance Cyber Economic Attack & Ransomware with SaaS

By James Lint
Faculty Member, School of Business, American Military University
Senior Editor for
 In Cyber Defense and Contributor, In Homeland Security

Sundance Cyberattack Forces Box Office to Close

Variety and multiple Twitter accounts reported the box office closed on Saturday at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. “Sundance Film Festival has been subject to a cyberattack, causing network outages that have shut down our box office,” said a spokesperson for the festival. “No further information about the attack is available at this time, but our team is working hard to get our system back up and running as soon as possible. All screenings will still take place as planned.”

It appears the systems came back online approximately 40 minutes later.  The attack appears to be a Distributed Denial of Service. There is a strong possibility that the attack ran from a botnet.

The real issue is that this type of cyberattack is an economic crime. When people see the stoppage of commerce and business operations, this activity should be a crime prosecuted for what it is…economic criminal activity.

No reason was given for the targeting of the Sundance Film Festival or its solution that brought the box office back to being operational and online.

Ransomware Is Rising: Is There an Impact on SaaS?

Ransomware has been getting much more common. In this type of cyberattack, criminals enter your computer, encrypt it and demand a payment to unencrypt your data. This situation is similar to a criminal demanding payment for letting you watch TV without cutting your cable line.

Criminals are getting in the middle of business and the customers, and they are demanding payment to free previously paid for service or information. This activity is the same style as kidnapping and asking for money.

Dmitry Dontsov wrote in CMS Wire about his expectations in 2017.

  1. The number of ransomware attacks will increase.
  2. Bad actors will use a variety of methods to spread their malware.

Dmitry also discussed the issue of businesses relying on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications to run their operations. The attractiveness of these services is that a larger company such as Microsoft provides advance security management capability in their SaaS.

Some companies are using cloud-based services and trying to block the impact of ransomware. In the past, ransomware on  local computers can synchronize with the cloud server system. Ransomware continues to evolve. The security companies are looking at multiple cloud storage solutions and newer protection.

Many colleges and college students use version of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications because of the ease and costeffectiveness. They also must remember their backups and updates.

Good cybersecurity practices by users and good training from cyber defenders will make cyberdefense much easier.

Sundance-TW
Sundance-TW

This article highlights cyber news that influences cyber defenders. Information is retrieved from aggregators and credit given to them.

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