Complete DHS Report for January 28, 2016
Daily Report
Top Stories
• The Federal Aviation Administration announced January 26
that it will transfer controllers to address understaffing following an
inspector general report which found that 13 airport control facilities have
few fully trained controllers. – Associated Press
4. January
27, Associated Press – (National) Watchdog: Nation’s busiest airports lack qualified
air traffic controllers. The Federal Aviation Administration announced that
it is expediting the transfer of controllers from well-staffed traffic control
centers to address understaffing at other centers following the January 26
release of a U.S. Department of Transportation’s inspector general report which
found that 13 airport control facilities and en route centers in Anchorage,
Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Dallas, Houston, New York, Las Vegas, Miami, and
Albuquerque have few fully trained controllers. The report also questions the
validity of minimum staffing levels required by the administration after
managers at 23 key facilities examined cited a higher number of controllers
needed to fill all work shifts. Source: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/01/27/watchdog-nations-busiest-airports-lack-qualified-air-traffic-controllers.html
• Texas officials estimated that approximately 800,000
gallons of treated sludge wastewater spilled out of the Aransas Pass city
treatment plant and into Redfish Bay January 26. – Corpus Christi
Caller-Times
10. January
26, Corpus Christi Caller-Times – (Texas) 800,000 gallons of
wastewater spilled in Redfish Bay. Officials estimated that approximately
800,000 gallons of treated sludge wastewater spilled out of the Aransas Pass
city treatment plant and into Redfish Bay after the main pump to the clarifier
failed January 26. All private water well residents within a half-mile of the
affected area were placed under a boil water advisory. Source: http://www.caller.com/news/local/800000-gallons-of-wastewater-spilled-in-redfish-bay-2a485a28-b024-1385-e053-0100007f262d-366644131.html
• PayPal patched a critical remote code execution flaw in
its Manager portal which could potentially allow attackers to execute arbitrary
shell commands to gain access to production databases. – The Register See item 19 below in the Information Technology Sector
• A six-alarm fire in a downtown New Orleans building
halted all streetcar lines and closed the historic Canal Street after the blaze
began in a four-story building and spread to an adjacent building January 27. –
Associated Press
23. January
27, Associated Press – (Louisiana) No injuries as fire closes New Orleans’ historic
Canal St. A six-alarm fire in a downtown New Orleans building halted all
streetcar lines and closed the historic Canal Street, which contains several
restaurants and businesses, after the blaze began in a four-story building and
spread to an adjacent building January 27. No injuries were reported and the
cause of the incident is under investigation. Source: http://wkrn.com/2016/01/27/new-orleans-firefighters-battling-fire-on-canal-street/
Financial Services Sector
3. January
26, Lincoln Journal Star – (Iowa; Nebraska) 3 Cubans indicted in
Nebraska for credit card scam. Nebraska officials announced January 26 that
3 Cuban-born Texas men were indicted for allegedly participating in a scheme in
which they allegedly stole credit and debit account numbers and re-encoded the
information onto 251 fake credit cards to buy or redeem gift cards across Iowa
and Nebraska. The scheme cost cardholders nearly $30,000 in losses. Source: http://journalstar.com/news/local/911/cubans-indicted-in-nebraska-for-credit-card-scam/article_6e5773ca-2754-5fcc-ba51-79ef1a2c5609.html
Information Technology Sector
18. January
27, SecurityWeek – (International) Hackers can abuse HP enterprise printers for
storage. A researcher from MacKeeper reported that misconfigured enterprise
devices can be susceptible to hosting malicious code and evading detection by
security products, in addition to allowing attackers to use free, open-source
tools to upload files to HP printers and interact with the devices over port
9100 through access via a web browser at “http:///
hp/device /.” HP advised users to protect their printers by
implementing a logging system on each device and turning off unused ports and
protocols. Source: http://www.securityweek.com/hackers-can-abuse-hp-enterprise-printers-storage
19. January
27, The Register – (International) PayPal patches deadly server remote code
execution flaw. PayPal patched a critical remote code execution flaw after
an independent security researcher discovered the flaw in PayPal’s Manager
portal, hosted at manager.paypal.com which could potentially allow attackers to
execute arbitrary shell commands on PayPal’s servers through a Java object
deserialization bug to gain access to production databases. Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/27/paypal_patches_deadly_server_remote_code_execution_flaw_pays_5k/
20. January
27, SecurityWeek – (International) Check Point unveils new threat prevention
appliances. Check Point network security firm released new hardware
appliances, including its 15000 and 23000 Series for enterprise networks
targeted with zero-day threats that allow each new hardware to run all security
protections simultaneously including full Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) traffic
inspection, advanced monitoring, and threat prevention protocols without
creating a performance bottleneck or compromising security effectiveness. Source:
http://www.securityweek.com/check-point-unveils-new-threat-prevention-appliances
21. January
26, SecurityWeek – (International) Blended DDoS attacks grow in size,
complexity, frequency: Report. Arbor Networks released its 11th Annual
Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report (WISR) which revealed that distributed
denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks targeted enterprise networks’ infrastructure,
applications, and services simultaneously, increased through cloud-based
services by 29 percent from 2015, and focused on Doman Name System (DNS)
servers rather than Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) services. In addition,
the report stated that 50 percent of enterprises firewalls failed due to
successful DDoS attacks. Source: http://www.securityweek.com/blended-ddos-attacks-grow-size-complexity-frequency-report
22. January
26, Softpedia – (International) NanoLocker ransomware can be cracked, but
only under certain conditions. A Canadian security researcher discovered a
flaw in the NanoLocker ransomware’s operations that can halt the ransomware’s
encryption by
restarting a victim’s personal computer (PC) or entering the PC into sleep
mode, which stops the encryption process and leaves the configuration file in
an uncompleted encryption stage. While in the uncompleted encryption state, the
Canadian security researcher created a decrypter to restore encrypted files
from the ransomware, which can be downloaded from GitHub or from Google Drive. Source:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/nanolocker-ransomware-can-be-cracked-but-only-under-certain-conditions-499455.shtml
Communications Sector
Nothing to report