Cisco: Malware and encrypted traffic will challenge federal agencies

Hackers will continue to give U.S. government agencies headaches in the coming months thanks to an evolving malware market and their use of encryption to evade detection, Cisco said in a new report.

Hackers will continue to give U.S. government agencies headaches in the coming months thanks to an evolving malware market and their use of encryption to evade detection, Cisco declared in a new report.

“The expanding volume of encrypted web traffic, both legitimate and malicious, creates even more challenges and confusion for the public sector as it tries to identify and monitor potential threats,” the networking giant said in a report on government cybersecurity.

“The growing number and variety of malware types and families perpetuates chaos in the attack landscape by undermining government efforts to gain and hold ground on threats,” the report said.

Malware is evolving to the point that ransomware campaigns can be launched automatically, without human assistance, according to Cisco. Internet of Things botnets are also on the rise and carrying out advanced distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, researchers found.

Verizon’s annual cybersecurity report also found a rise in ransomware; 56 percent of 1,379 malware incidents the firm surveyed involved ransomware.

Agencies should use machine learning and artificial intelligence to keep pace with threats, Cisco said. The report also recommended a greater emphasis on cybersecurity at “the network edge, where a more proactive defense can be staged.”

The report also highlighted how, as evidenced by the prevalence of ransomware, data is a prized commodity in the hacking world. “[F]or some adversaries, the prize isn’t ransom, but the destruction of a government’s systems and data, especially related to public safety and utilities. We expect this activity to increase,” the report stated.

Well-resourced hackers have hit Cisco’s own equipment recently. Cisco said last week that hackers, some of them backed by a nation-state, had attacked the company’s switches in multiple countries.

Government

• FBI officials say AI is bolstering adversaries, emphasizing need to focus on cyber basics, patching

• Feds accuse China of ‘systematic’ distillation of U.S. AI models

• CIA’s Michael Ellis says cyber intelligence is changing how the agency operates

• Jail time for Maine child in 764 marks turning point in federal law enforcement

Technology

• European parliament members call for slowdown of Serbia’s EU entry over spyware use

• FCC proposes public scorecard to rate telecoms on anti-robocall efforts

• Pegasus, NoviSpy variant spyware found on devices of Serbian activists

• Wyden seeks upgraded NSA security guidance on commercial VPN use

Threats

• Chinese espionage groups swarm to exploit triple-link chain of zero-days

• Microsoft discloses two actively exploited zero-days among 974 vulnerabilities

• Russian national extradited to US for alleged involvement in bank-account takeover scheme

• Attackers exploit zero-days in consistently besieged SonicWall product

Policy

• Whistleblower says USPS deploying new, ‘untested’ IT systems governing mail-in ballots

• ‘Watershed 250’ test program in Texas looks to private sector for water cybersecurity help

• Former sexual abuse victims say Grok used their images, videos to train deepfake capabilities

• Cyber threats nudge Trump to sign executive order on foreign equipment in U.S. energy infrastructure