Complete DHS Report for
August 18, 2015
Daily Report
Top Stories
· The U.S. Federal Aviation
Administration reported August 15 that a system problem at the Washington Air
Route Control Center in Virginia forced the agency to temporarily halt area
departures, leading to East Coast flight delays and cancellations. – CNN
12. August 15,
CNN – (National) D.C., New York flight delays caused by air traffic
glitch, FAA says. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported
August 15 that a problem with the system that processes flight plans at the
Washington Air Route Control Center in Leesburg, Virginia, forced the agency to
temporarily halt departures for all aircraft in the District of Columbia area’s
major airports, leading to flight delays and cancellations along the East
Coast.Source: http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/15/travel/flight-delays-dc-new-york/
· An August 15 fire destroyed a
Washington College-leased building on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, causing $3.5
million in estimated damages. – Washington Post
17. August 17,
Washington Post – (Maryland) Damage estimated at $3.5 million after fire at
Maryland’s Washington College. An August 15 fire destroyed a Washington
College-leased administrative building on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, causing an
estimated $3.5 million in damage. The building was unoccupied during the
incident and the cause of the fire remains under investigation. Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/damage-estimated-at-35-million-after-fire-at-marylands-washington-college/2015/08/17/c35a8814-4497-11e5-8e7d-9c033e6745d8_story.html
· The Industrial Control Systems Computer
Emergency Response Team published six advisories covering multiple recently
discovered vulnerabilities affecting Web-based Supervisory Control and Data
Acquisition human machine interfaces. – Securityweek See item 28 below in the Information Technology Sector
· A sulfur dioxide leak at Hydrite
Chemical Co., in Indiana August 15 prompted the evacuation of 200-300
spectators at the Hulman Mini Speedway and hospitalized at least 15 people. – Associated
Press
33. August 16,
Associated Press – (Indiana) 15 treated at hospital after Terre Haute chemical
leak. A sulfur dioxide leak at Hydrite Chemical Co., in Terre Haute,
Indiana, August 15 prompted the evacuation of 200-300 spectators at the nearby
Hulman Mini Speedway racetrack and sent at least 15 people to area hospitals
for respiratory issues including nasal irritation, nausea, and difficulty
breathing. The leak was contained after several hours. Source: http://www.indystar.com/story/news/2015/08/16/treated-hospital-terre-haute-chemical-leak/31825833/
Financial Services Sector
8. August 17,
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission – (National) Citigroup
affiliates to pay $180 million to settle hedge fund fraud charges. The U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission announced August 17 that Citigroup Global
Markets Inc., and Citigroup Alternative Investments LLC (CAI) agreed to pay
$180 million to settle allegations that the affiliates failed to disclose risks
associated with the ASTA/MAT and Falcon hedge funds, which raised almost $3
billion from about 4,000 investors before collapsing, and that CAI accepted up
to $110 million in investments after the funds began to collapse. Source: http://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2015-168.html
For another story, see item 34 below from the Commercial Facilities Sector
34. August 15,
WMAR 2 Baltimore – (Maryland) Bomb threat force Annapolis evacuations. Three
businesses including two Sun Trust Banks and one Giant Food Store in Annapolis
were evacuated for more than 2 hours August 15 after the businesses received
consecutive bomb threats, demanding monetary funds. Police searched the three
facilities and cleared the scene once nothing suspicious was found. Source: http://www.abc2news.com/news/crime-checker/anne-arundel-crime/bomb-threats-force-annapolis-evacuations
Information Technology Sector
28. August 17,
Securityweek – (International) Alerts issued for zero-day flaws in SCADA
systems. The Industrial Control Systems Computer Emergency Response Team
(ICS-CERT) published six advisories after security researchers from Elastica
discovered several remote and local file inclusion, weak password hashing,
insecure authentication, hardcoded credentials, weak cryptography, and
cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerabilities, among others, affecting
Web-based Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) human machine
interfaces (HMI) used by multiple organizations. Source: http://www.securityweek.com/ics-cert-issues-alerts-zero-day-flaws-scada-systems
29. August 17,
Securityweek – (International) BitTorrent flaws can be exploited for DRDoS
attacks: researchers. Security researchers reported that malicious actors
could exploit vulnerabilities in BitTorrent’s Micro Transport (uTP),
Distributed Hash Table (DHT), and Message Stream Encrypton (MSE) protocols as
well as its Sync tool to reflect and amplify traffic via distributed reflective
denial-of-service (DRDoS). Source: http://www.securityweek.com/bittorrent-flaws-can-be-exploited-drdos-attacks-researchers
30. August
17, Securityweek – (International) Exploit
for OS X zero-day published by researcher. A security researcher published
a proof of concept (PoC) for a local privilege escalation vulnerability in
Apple’s OS X Yosetime dubbed “tpwn”, which could be executed by leveraging two
security bugs to gain root privileges using a specially crafted file Source: http://www.securityweek.com/exploit-os-x-zero-day-published-researcher
31. August 15,
Softpedia – (International) Administrators continue to fail in securing
databases by using proper configs. Security researchers from BinaryEdge
released analysis of 4 technologies including Redis, MongoDB, Memcached, and
ElasticSearch, revealing that almost 1.2 petabytes (PB), or 1,175 terabytes
(TB) of data were vulnerable due to administrators’ use of default
configurations that do not block connections from untrusted external actors. Source:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/administrators-continue-to-fail-in-securing-databases-by-using-proper-configs-489322.shtml
For another story, see item 23 below from the Government Facilities Sector
23. August 16,
Charlottesville Daily Progress – (Virginia) UVa board hears
about cyberattack, faculty hiring progress. University of Virginia
officials restored the school’s computer network August 16 after shutting it
down August 14 due to a cyber-security threat that targeted the personal email
accounts of 2 university employees. Faculty, students, and staff were urged to
change their passwords after the network was brought back online.
Communications Sector
See item 28 above in the Information Technology
Sector