Weekly Infosec News Brief August 24-30

Survey Shows Many Federal Government Workers Ignore Mobile Security Rules

A survey by mobile security software vendor Lookout indicates that a large proportion of government employees ignore their agencies' rules concerning mobile devices, web services, and security. Twenty-four percent of respondents indicated they forwarded work documents to their personal email accounts, 17% used cloud-based file sharing services for work documents, and nearly half used their personal mobile devices for work documents, despite policies prohibiting these behaviors (and annual training to reinforce these policies). While it is important to have policies governing these types of employee behaviors, without technical controls to prevent or monitor them you are likely to experience high levels of non-compliance.
https://www.lookout.com/resources/reports/federal-byod
http://www.eweek.com/small-business/mobile-device-security-ignored-by-federal-workers.html


 Google to Configure Chrome Browser to Automatically Prevent Flash-based Ads from Running

Google announced last week that the next version of Chrome (to roll out September 1st) will automatically "pause" Flash-based advertisements. This behavior has been available as a configuration setting since March, but with the new version the setting will be enabled by default. Given the MANY serious Flash vulnerabilities, including many that were actively exploited long before they were patched, this is a great move. A lot of malicious Flash content is delivered in the form of ads (see the story below). This is yet one more step toward eliminating Flash. What safeguards does your organization have from potentially-malicious Flash content on the web?
https://plus.google.com/+GoogleAds/posts/UQSBzWiMpEG
https://grahamcluley.com/2015/08/nail-adobe-flashs-coffin-chrome-block-flash-ads-september-1st/


Malicious Advertisement Served by Major Australian Telco Network Telstra

Telstra, Australia's largest telecom company, was running a malicious advertisement through their web advertising network for several days this month. The advertisement appeared on a number of sites that published ads through Telstra's network, and was redirecting users to an exploit kit that installed what appears to have been a banking malware on vulnerable computers. People frequently say that they feel safe from malware because they avoid disreputable websites, but it is important to note that malicious ads on the web are a common source of malware and can appear on very respectable and reputable websites -- virtually any site that displays advertising could potentially end up hosting malicious advertising.
http://www.scmagazine.com/malvertising-on-telstra-website-similar-to-plentyofish-attack/article/434343/


Federal Appeals Courts Says that the FTC can Bring Suit Against Wyndham for Poor Security

Last Monday, a federal appellate court issued a ruling that the FTC's enforcement suit against Wyndham Hotels for their poor information security practices can proceed. Wyndham had argued that the agency lacked the ability to bring an enforcement action because there was no specific standard of security which they were required to maintain. The FTC argued, however, and the court agreed, that the FTC could bring action against Wyndham for "unfair and deceptive trade practices" due to their poor security practices. The court specifically cited Wyndham's privacy policy as stating or implying that they were protecting customers' data privacy, in contrast with the long and egregious list of poor security practices the FTC cited (e.g., storing credit card data unencrypted, lacking firewalls).
http://www.wired.com/2015/08/court-says-ftc-can-slap-companies-getting-hacked/

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