Weekly Infosec News Brief - Oct 5-11

Vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook Web Services Exploited

Cybereason, an Israel-based security vendor, claims to have discovered a "back door" in Microsoft's Outlook Web Services that was used to install malware on a company's web services, and to compromise the data of thousands of employees. Microsoft has responded that the flaw is only exploitable by a user or attacker who already has privileged access to the Exchange server in question.
http://www.cybereason.com/cybereason-labs-research-a-new-persistent-attack-methodology-targeting-microsoft-owa/
http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2015/10/07/no-new-security-vulnerability-in-outlook-web-access-owa.aspx
http://www.scmagazine.com/backdoor-in-ms-outlook-webmail-raises-security-doubts/article/443415/


 FBI Urges Organizations and Users to Adopt Multi-Factor Authentication

The FBI issued a posting urging organizations and individuals to use two-factor authentication (aka multi-factor authentication) for their organizational systems and personal accounts. Many free email and social media providers now offer systems that provide for a second means of authentication in addition to passwords, and many banks and other financial service providers do as well. Organizations have many options now for implementing similar security measures, and the cost and effort to do so have continued to come down.
http://www.executivegov.com/2015/10/fbi-calls-on-businesses-online-users-to-adopt-2-factor-authentication/


US Postal Service Employees Performed Poorly on Recent Social Engineering Tests

Several months ago, the US Postal Service experienced a compromise of employee data that stemmed from a successful spear-phishing attack. Now in a test of their employees' susceptibility to such attacks, the USPS has proven to have a distressingly high failure rate, as well as a very low reporting rate. A majority of employees failing the test were found not to have completed the required annual security awareness training. Does your organization have a security awareness program? Do you know how vulnerable you are to attack attempts of this type?
​http://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2015/10/after-usps-phishing-hack-audit-shows-postal-workers-still-click-links/122639/?oref=ng-HPtopstorys


WinRAR Vulnerability was a Red Herring

The vulnerability in the WinRAR compression client that was announced by Malwarebytes and covered in this blog last week has turned out to have been somewhat of a false alarm. The potential for exploitation is real, but the problem is not in the WinRAR software. Because the vulnerability involves
https://blog.malwarebytes.org/news/2015/10/redaction-winrar-vulnerability/
http://www.scmagazine.com/malwarebytes-apologizes-for-jumping-the-the-gun-on-winrar-vulnerability/article/443998/

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