Headline April 10, 2018/ ''' !READINESS FOR CYBERATTACK? '''

''' !READINESS FOR CYBERATTACK? '''

*MOLES, SABOTEURS, CYBERATTACKS* - miscreants, utter criminals, the Digital World is very, very complex, and fraught with-

Pitfalls and traps every breath and every step of the way.

And on The World Students Society, as Zilli never fails to remind me and us all, that the *Operational Readiness for Cyberattack and Cyberattacks is just about Zero*.

The Students of the world, it is now becoming obvious, just couldn't care less. The anticipated attack will be different. A hell of lot worse. You can't catch it, and it will happen right under your noses.''

I stop to think and nominate Technologist :

Rabo, Haleema, Saima, to the *Global Supervisory Committee* against Cyberattacks. Assisted by......................

Dr. Masud Reza, [PhD in Artificial Intelligence/ Michigan University, and Dr Mustansir Tanoli formerly IBM/MIT/Italy [PhD in Designs].

So, A Cyberattack that 'the world isn't ready for'. And the case study and the research story continues............

Mr. Ben-Oni has a knack for technical work, but not the marketing, and found it difficult to get new clients.

So at the age of 19, he crossed the country and took on a job at IDT, back when the company was a low - profile long-distance telephone service provider.

As IDT started acquiring and spinning off an eclectic list of ventures, Mr. Ben-Oni found himself responsible for securing shale of projects in Mongolia and the Golan Heights, a ''Star Trek'' comic books company -

A project to cure cancer, a yeshiva university that trains underprivileged students in cyber security, and a small mobile telecommunications company that Verizon recently acquired for $3.1 billion.

Which is to say he has encountered hundreds of thousands of hackers of every stripe, motivation and skill level.

He eventually started a security business, IOSecurity, under IDT, to share some of the technical tools he had developed to keep IDT's many businesses secure.

By Mr.Ben-Oni's estimate, IDT experiences hundreds of attacks every day on its businesses, but perhaps only four each year give him pause.

Nothing compared to the attack that struck in April.

Lake the WannaCry  attack in May, the assault on IDT relied on cyberweapons developed by the N.S.A. that were leaked online in April by a mysterious group of hackers calling themselves the Shadow Brokers, alternately believed to be -

Russian-backed cybercriminals, an N.S.A. mole or both.

The WannaCry attack - which the N.S.A. and security researchers have tied to North Korea -employed one N.S.A. cyberweapon; the I.D.T. assault used two.

BOTH WannaCry and the IDT attack used a hacking tool the agency had code-named EternalBlue.

The tool took advantage of unpatched Microsoft servers to automatically spread malware from one server to another, so that within 24 hours North Korea's hackers had spread their ransomware to-

*To More than 200,000 servers around the globe*. 

The attack on IDT went a step further with another stolen N.S.A. cyberweapon, called DoublePulsar.

The N.S.A used DoublePulsar to penetrate computer systems without tripping the security alarms. It allowed N.S.A. spies to inject their tools into the  nerve center of a target's computer system, called the Kernel, which manages communications between a  computer's hardware and its software.

In the pecking order of a  computer system the Kernel is at the very top, allowing anyone with secret access to it to take full control of a machine.

It is also a dangerous blind spot for most security software, allowing attackers to do what they want and go unnoticed.

In IDT's case, attackers used DoublePulsar to steal an IDT's contractor's credentials.

Then they deployed ransomware in what appears to be a cover for their real motive : broader access to IDT's businesses.

Mr. Ben-Oni learned of the attack only when a contractor, working from a home, switched on her computer to find that all her data had been encrypted and that attackers were demanding a ransom to unlock it.

He might have assumed that this was a simple case of ransomware.

But the attack struck Mr. Ben-Oni as unique. For one thing it was timed perfectly to the Sabbath.

Attackers entered IDT's network at 6 p.m. on Saturday on the dot, two and a half hours before the Sabbath would end, and when most of the IDT's employees - 40 percent of whom identify as Orthodox Jews - would be off the clock.

For another, the attackers compromised the contractor's computer through her home modem - strange.

The black box of sorts, a network recording device made by the Israeli security company Secdo, show's that the ransomware was installed after the attacker had made off with the contractor's credentials. And they managed to bypass every security detection mechanism along the way.

Finally, before they left, they encrypted her computer with ransomware, demanding $130 to unlock it, to cover up the more invasive attack on her computer.

The Honor and Serving of the latest Operational Research on Computer Systems, Cyberattacks, Security, Encryption Technologies continues.

With respectful dedication to the Leaders, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all  on !WOW! - the World Students Society and Twitter- !E-WOW! - the Ecosystem 2011:

''' Get Set : !WOW! '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless