Reference no: EM132313277 , Length: word count : 2000

Assessment Title : Research in Information Security Management

Purpose of the assessment

Students should be able to demonstrate their achievements in the following unit learning outcomes:

Investigate and discuss the appropriate design and secure solutions for varieties of organisations

Implement a process to support the administration and the management of organisations’ security

Conduct practical investigations into network systems including industry procedures of information gathering, vulnerability identification, exploitation and privilege escalation. 

A report between 1500 and 2500 words

Assignment Description

In the recent times the frequency of cyber-attacks has increased and needs to be dealt proactively. The cyber-attacks have been witnessed and reported against, from world’s leading businesses like yahoo and GitHub to the small organizations like law firms. These attacks ultimately result losing sensitive or private data and increased service downtimes. As the measures used to minimize the impact of such attacks are coming into the plays, the attackers are also using novel network attack approaches.

To understand how to defend a network against attacks, an administrator must first identify network vulnerabilities. Specialized security audit software developed by equipment and software manufacturers can be used to help identify potential weaknesses. In addition, the same tools used by attackers can be used to test the ability of a network to mitigate an attack.

After the vulnerabilities are known, steps can be taken to help mitigate the network attacks. This Assignment gives a planned research project that is separated into three parts: Researching Network Attacks, Current attack and a Case study.

In Part 1, you research various network attacks that have actually occurred. You select one of these and describe how the attack was perpetrated and how extensive the network outage or damage was. You also investigate how the attack could have been mitigated or what
mitigation techniques might have been implemented to prevent future attacks. In Part 2, you research about the attack on GitHub and answer the questions that are related with the part. In Part 3, you need to write a technical report about the given case study, which is about social engineering attack.

Part 1- Researching Network Attacks

In Part 1 of this Assignment, you will research various computer system attacks that have recently occurred and select one on which to report. Fill in the form below based on your findings.

Task: List one of the computer attacks you identified in your search? The following table can be used.

Name of attack:

Type of attack:

Dates of attacks:

Computers / Organisations affected:

How it works and what it did:

Mitigation options:

References:

Part 2- Researching about GitHub DDOS Attack

On February 28, 2018, the biggest ever DDOS attack (1.35Tbs) on GitHub’s code hosting website was reported. DDOS attack is a denial of service attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine resource unavailable. GitHub managed to drive the availability in 10minutes after becoming aware of the attack. Research about this attack is required while answering to the below questions. At least three different resources should be used.

Q1) How it works and what techniques are used?

Q2) How this attack is propagated?

Q3) Discuss the impact of this attack on the operation of an organization? What are some key steps organizations can take to help protect their networks and resources?

Q4) Give an example of a duty of the Incident response planning, Disaster recovery planning and Business continuity planning when having an unexpected event like this attack.

Q5) How GitHub’s incidence recovery plan helped limiting the downtime of this attack?

Q6) Briefly describe the lessons learned from this DDOS attack.

Q7) If any Australian organization or Australian businesses is infected with cyber-attacks, who is the main point of contact for this cyber security issues?

Part 3- CASE STUDY: How cyber-criminals targeted QLD law firm with social engineering.

Recently The Brisbane Times broke a story about cybercriminals who stole millions of dollars from Queensland law firms in December. This story is interesting because the cybercriminals involved didn’t hack into the lawyer's network or infect their computers with a virus - they
just sent them an email. The lawyers who fell for this scam were targeted with phone calls from people who said they were seeking legal representation. The phone calls seemed legitimate; after explaining their problems the callers promised to email the lawyers with ‘important documents’ related to their cases.

When the lawyers received the emails they found links to a file-sharing site. They clicked on the links and were required to enter their email account passwords to gain access. This whole process was a trick designed to collect the lawyer’s email login passwords. Once the
scammers gained access to the lawyer's email accounts they moved to phase two of the scam, monitoring the firm's email traffic for invoices requesting payment. When they saw a suitably large invoice arrive in the firm’s inbox they sent a bogus message with false bank account details so that the payment went into the bank account of the scammers instead of the law firm.

Lawyers are smart people, right? Not the sort who easily fall for scams. But the criminals who executed this fraud gained their trust by speaking to them on the phone so that when the  scam email arrived, the victims were primed and waiting to click on the malicious link it
contained.

Speaking to The Brisbane Times, Queensland Law Society(QLS) president Christine Smythe said, “They are quite cunning... They are people who speak good English, answer in a convincing away and come with a backstory... The precise method of attack varies, but the
essence is that the criminals obtain access to the firm’s email accounts and use this to misdirect funds.”

The fraud against this Queensland law firm is an example of social engineering, a method of cybercrime that hinges on psychological manipulation. Most people would categorise cybercrime as an IT issue but in reality, the majority of cyber-attacks are targeted at people,
because they are usually the weakest link in the security chain.

Contemporary cybercrime is as much about psychology as technology. The criminals behind the law firm fraud went to a lot of trouble to make sure their scam hit home, but similar techniques are used in email scams every day. Using the brand names of well-known companies or posing as government agencies, cybercriminals use many different manipulation tricks to deceive. But the ultimate objective of these social engineering attacks is always the same; to gain the trust of the victim just long enough to extract a password or account number that will get them past the company’s defences.

People are not machines. We make a lot of decisions based on emotional responses and social cues. We haven’t got the mental bandwidth to parse every communication and verify its authenticity. Like the lawyers who fell for the email scam in Queensland, we’re all prone to
making errors of judgement and that’s the security gap cybercriminals can most easily exploit.

Social engineering is a booming crime category because cybercriminals understand that it’s easier to deceive a person than a machine. TechBeacon’s ‘2016 Cybersecurity Trend Report’ reveals that 65% of professionals identify social engineering as the most serious security threat to their business. Human beings are still the gatekeepers of valuable data.

Bank accounts, file storage, credit card details; they are all protected by passwords and those passwords can be obtained with trickery because they are stored in human brains. Hacking into a company using social engineering techniques is as simple as sending a cleverly worded email to people who work there.

If criminals can trick one person into clicking on a malicious link or logging into a compromised website, they can use that person as an access point to the company’s most valuable data. In her interview about the law firm scams, Smythe commented, “These emails are coming almost every day now at our firm, just from different people… It's something we talk about with staff on a daily basis; as soon as you are asked for email credentials then pull back. All practitioners must take the measures they can to ensure their email account is secure and stays secure.”

Task: Write a Memo that analyses and explains the seriousness of the situation and highlight key breaches, also elaborate ITSec recommendations.