Information Technology

A Microsoft Windows 10 app feature is being abused in a new phishing campaign spreading the BazarBackdoor malware. 

On Thursday, researchers from Sophos Labs said the attack was noticed after the cybersecurity firm’s own employees were targeted with spam emails — but rather than being run-of-the-mill, these emails were written with at least a basic level of social engineering.One of the emails, sent by a “Sophos Main Manager Assistant,” the non-existent “Adam Williams,” demanded to know why a researcher hadn’t responded to a customer’s complaint. To make resolution easier, the email helpfully contained a .PDF link to the message.  However, the link was a trap and revealed a “novel” technique used to deploy the BazarBackdoor malware.  Sophos says that the company is, at the least, “unfamiliar” with this method, in which the Windows 10 App installer process is exploited to deliver malicious payloads.  This is how it works: the phishing lure will direct potential victims to a website that uses the Adobe brand and asks users to click on a button to preview a .PDF file. However, if you hovered over the link, the prefix “ms-appinstaller” is displayed. 
Sophos
“In the course of running through an actual infection I realized that this construction of a URL triggers the browser [in my case, Microsoft’s Edge browser on Windows 10], to invoke a tool used by the Windows Store application, called AppInstaller.exe, to download and run whatever’s on the other end of that link,” Sophos researcher Andrew Brandt explained. 

In turn, this link points to a text file, named Adobe.appinstaller, which then points to a larger file hosted on a separate URL, Adobe_1.7.0.0_x64appbundle.  A warning prompt then appears as well as a notice that the software has been digitally signed with a certificate issued several months ago. (Sophos has made the certificate authority aware of the abuse).  Victims are then asked to allow the installation of “Adobe PDF Component,” and if they grant permission, the BazarBackdoor malware is deployed and executed in a matter of seconds.  BazarBackdoor, akin to BazarLoader, communicates over HTTPS but is a distinctive malicious program due to the amount of noisy traffic the backdoor generates. BazarBackdoor is able to exfiltrate system data and has been linked to Trickbot, as well as the potential deployment of Ryuk ransomware.  “Malware that comes in application installer bundles is not commonly seen in attacks,” Brandt said. “Unfortunately, now that the process has been demonstrated, it’s likely to attract wider interest. Security companies and software vendors need to have the protection mechanisms in place to detect and block it and prevent the attackers from abusing digital certificates.” Previous and related coverage Have a tip? Get in touch securely via WhatsApp | Signal at +447713 025 499, or over at Keybase: charlie0 More

About 200,000 service members leave the military each year. For veterans who aren’t ready or don’t want to retire yet, the next mission is often the search for a civilian career. Many veterans have years of professional training and real-world experience in information technology and cybersecurity.The US alone had nearly 500,000 available cybersecurity positions in March 2021. Veterans from all military branches and career fields bring a wealth of skills and attributes to the table. These characteristics include leadership skills, teamwork, integrity, and maintaining composure under pressure. But veterans face challenges in entering the civilian workforce. Hurdles include networking with civilian job contacts and translating military experience and skills to civilian language and roles.If you’re a veteran, know someone who is, or are in a position to hire people for information technology or cybersecurity jobs, continue reading for guidance on how veterans can connect with civilian IT and cybersecurity opportunities.How can you prepare for a civilian career?In short: Start early. Retirement timeline and prepActive-duty military members can retire after 20 years. Service members on track for retirement or whose military contract is set to expire can begin the process 24 months ahead of their transition date. One year before transitioning, service members receive a pre-retirement information package. Allow yourself six months to assemble and submit all the required documentation. The military requires service members to participate in a Transition Assistance Program before leaving active duty. The federal departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, Education, and Labor, along with the Small Business Administration and the Office of Personnel Management, cooperate to support the TAP program. Translate your job title to civilian speak

The Army and Marine Corps call their job titles military occupational specialties (MOS). The Navy and Coast Guard call their job titles ratings, while the Air Force calls them Air Force Specialty Codes. The Space Force uses the Air Force system. Translating these roles and responsibilities into language civilians can understand is key to getting hired.All six service branches have IT and cybersecurity jobs with civilian equivalents. Several online sources, including the Disabled Veterans National Foundation and Military.com, have apps that allow you to plug in your military job code and see equivalent civilian job roles or job postings. O*NET is another valuable career transition resource. It’s sponsored by the Department of Labor and the Employment and Training Administration. The site helps current and former service members understand how their military job skills can be translated into a civilian career.Once you’ve identified job opportunities, next comes a task that many veterans find challenging: You need to explain your military job title, experience, and responsibilities in simple, civilian language.The executive director of American Corporate Partners, a nonprofit organization that provides career counseling for returning veterans and spouses of active duty service members, told The Muse that one way to translate military job experience to a civilian audience is to focus on your professional accomplishments. Highlighting individual achievements is better than simply listing job titles and duty assignments, which often don’t translate easily to a non-military audience. It’s also good to highlight transferable skills and rephrase military jargon into simpler terms.Hiring military veterans? An employer’s guideEmployers can connect with job-seeking military veterans by adopting several strategies. Here are some suggestions from employment websites, government organizations, and nonprofits:Learn the cultureIf you’re serious about hiring veterans, take some time to learn about the military. The military invests significant resources into training and indoctrinating its members. Service members learn to think, talk, and behave according to their service branch’s culture.When they leave the military, veterans often retain beliefs and behaviors learned in the military, which can make transitioning into a new civilian work culture difficult. A basic understanding of military culture, traditions, and organizational structure will set a good foundation for connecting with veterans. The Department of Veterans Affairs has several resources that explain military basics.Speak military languageMilitary jobs and culture are usually mission-oriented. One strategy to attract veterans is to write military-friendly job descriptions. To do this, the Department of Labor suggests writing job descriptions that are competency-based rather than experience-based. Other suggestions include highlighting problem-solving, strategic thinking, or leadership aspects of jobs. When reviewing veteran applicant resumes, hiring managers should be trained to know what to look for and how veterans’ experiences and attributes may be transferable into the civilian workplace.Advertise in the right placesStart by researching veteran-oriented employment groups and job boards. Keep your eyes open for veteran-oriented job fairs or events in your region. If you live in a community with a significant military presence, consider introducing yourself to local military community commanders. Military installations are increasingly open to partnering with civilian employers as part of supporting their members’ transition out of the military. Encouraging current employees with a military background to help with recruitment can go a long way toward building trust with veteran applicants. Form a veteran employee resource group Whether you’ve already got veterans working in your organization or you’re looking to make your first hire, consider starting a veterans group. By making the ERG open to all who want to support veterans hiring initiatives, you’ll gain some momentum and create community and collaboration. Similarly, veteran ERGs can be influential in shaping a workplace that is truly military friendly. Career resources and jobs for veteransReady to take the next step? Whether on college campuses or through various veteran service organizations, there are many nonprofit organizations, as well as local and state programs, that can help veterans find meaningful post-military careers. In addition, here are seven organizations that provide career and employment support for current members of the military, veterans, spouses, and those looking to hire veterans:Veterans Employment CenterThe VA Employment Center is a federal government resource that offers career and employment assistance for veterans and family members, along with connections to personalized education and career counseling.Veterans Employment ToolkitThe Veterans Employment Toolkit from the VA provides a variety of outside resources for employers, managers or supervisors, and human resource professionals. Hire Heroes USAHire Heroes USA works to help military members, veterans, and their spouses find civilian careers and succeed in the civilian workforce. With support from about 20 major companies, the organization maintains a free job board and sponsors virtual job fairs and training events.VeteratiBuilt by veterans for veterans, this digital platform facilitates mentoring and networking opportunities for current service members, people who are leaving the military, and their spouses. The platform allows you to choose your mentors from the ranks of CEOs, entrepreneurs, and other successful veterans.Warriors to WorkThis program provides veterans and their family members with job placement, resume writing assistance, interview preparation, and networking opportunities. The program also focuses on reducing the stigma around combat-related injuries and works to help companies retain veterans.Career One StopSponsored by the US Department of Labor, CareerOneStop features tools and career resources specifically for veterans. The resources include information about employment, training, education, and financial help after military service.FedsHireVetsThe federal Office of Personnel Management runs this FedsHireVet, which works to increase the number of transitioning military members, veterans, and their family members who are employed in the civil service. This article was reviewed by Dr. Michael J. KirchnerDr. Michael J. Kirchner is an assistant professor of organizational leadership at Purdue University Fort Wayne, where he teaches courses in leadership and human resource development. Dr. Kirchner also serves as the campus’ veteran resource center director. Previously, Kirchner oversaw the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Military and Veterans Resource Center, where he guided programming for the campus’ 1,500+ military-affiliated student population. Under his leadership (2013-2016), the campus built a nationally recognized “military-college-career” framework focusing on supporting student veteran transitions. Kirchner earned his Ph.D. in human resource development from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His research on career transitions and leadership development has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, including Human Resource Development Quarterly, Advances in Developing Human Resources, New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development, and Industrial and Commercial Training. Kirchner is also the founder and president of Time for Development LLC, where he provides consulting to organizations on military-friendly programming, human resource development strategy, and training design. He served for a year in Baghdad, Iraq, from 2004-2005 as part of the U.S. Army National Guard.Kirchner is a paid member of the Red Ventures Education freelance review network.  More

New research into the security posture of Europe’s top pharmaceutical giants has revealed concerning levels of vulnerabilities and weak spots in web applications. 

On Thursday, Outpost24 published new research that claims the top 10 pharmaceutical countries in the region are all failing to maintain a robust security posture — with 80% considered to be “critically exposed” to the risk of cyberattacks. According to the report, Outpost24’s “2021 Web Application Security for Healthcare,” EU pharmaceutical businesses often run large numbers of web applications and 3.3% of those scanned by the firm are deemed “suspicious,” including open test environments that should have been closed.  In addition, 18% of organizations analyzed are using outdated, unpatched web components that contain known vulnerabilities. US healthcare organizations have roughly the same amount of suspicious apps in operation but tend to run far fewer apps on the whole — however, 23.74% of them are outdated.
Outpost24
Over 200 EU pharmaceutical application forms noted in the report are operating without encryption, which puts users at risk of both the interception and theft of their information online. Outpost24 said that basic SSL failures, privacy policy misconfigurations, and cookie settings also feature as common security and compliance problems.  The damage a cyberattack can cause a healthcare or pharmaceutical company can be severe. The COVID-19 pandemic put a target on the back of many of these organizations, with an Oxford University lab with COVID-19 research links and the UK Research and Innovation organization being only two examples of recent victims of incidents leading to data theft and disruption. 

“As the attack surface and trade secrets that pharmaceutical organizations process become more pertinent, it will give threat actors more reasons and motivations to step up malicious attacks for profit and put public health at risk,” commented Nicolas Renard, Outpost24 security researcher. Previous and related coverage Have a tip? Get in touch securely via WhatsApp | Signal at +447713 025 499, or over at Keybase: charlie0 More

The cybersecurity industry continues to have issues finding talent to fill all of the available roles. To address the problem, the Utah legislature is giving Utah Valley University (UVU) and Utah State University (USU) a $5 million grant. The goal is to build an academic pipeline that will prepare students to work in fields like cybersecurity, security analytics, and artificial intelligence. 

Utah has more than 4,000 unfilled tech jobs, and the grant is part of the state’s Deep Technology Talent Initiative (DTTI), which aims to expand academic tech programs and collaborate with local tech giants like Adobe, Northrup Grumman, and FireEye. Alongside the new programs at both schools, the companies will provide work experience for students through internships, capstones, and laboratory work. Both UVU’s Center for National Security Studies and USU’s Center for Anticipatory Intelligence are part of the Intermountain Intelligence, Industry and Security Consortium (I3SC), which hopes to equip students to fill roles in Utah’s “Silicon Slopes.””The next advancement in higher education requires us to play as a team. USU is excited to lead out alongside UVU in creating a leading-edge learning team — the I3SC consortium — that includes industry, state, and federal partners working together in unprecedented ways to prepare our graduates to be leaders in innovation, security, and resilience,” Jeannie Johnson, director of the Center for Anticipatory Intelligence at USU, told ZDNet.Through the DTTI, I3SC was awarded $5,013,900 to create a “multifaceted academic pipeline program” available to students at both institutions. The courses will cover a variety of topics including secure computing, artificial intelligence, security analytics, cybersecurity, anticipatory intelligence, and security studies.Thousands of students are already enrolled in tech programs at both schools, and the I3SC consortium’s goal is to build out a tech workforce that can handle the emerging threats from foreign governments, hackers, and other cybersecurity issues.”We’re at a critical point where the threat landscape presents challenges for companies at all levels. The need has never been greater for smart, experienced, and skilled professionals, and that is what we are building with our consortium,” said Ryan Vogel, director of the Center for National Security Studies at UVU.

Vogel added that they have already received a lot of interest from students across the STEM and policy disciplinary spectrum. “We need graduates ready to take jobs, professionals that are skilled and experienced. That’s our focus with this project: to meet this demand and exceed it, in cybersecurity and other technological areas,” Vogel said.  More

A North Korean hacking group has been attacking think tanks in the South through malware-laden blog posts. 

In a new campaign, tracked since June 2021, the state-sponsored advanced persistent threat (APT) group has been attempting to plant surveillance and theft-based malware on victim machines. On Wednesday, researchers from Cisco Talos said the Kimsuky APT, also known as Thallium or Black Banshee, is responsible for the wave of attacks, in which malicious Blogspot content is being used to lure “South Korea-based think tanks whose research focuses on political, diplomatic, and military topics pertaining to North Korea, China, Russia, and the US.” Specifically, geopolitical and aerospace organizations appear to be on the APT’s radar.  Kimsuky has been active since at least 2012. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an advisory (.PDF) on the APT in 2020, noting that the state-sponsored group is tasked by the North Korean government with “global intelligence gathering.” Past victims have been located in South Korea, Japan, and the United States. AhnLab says that compensation forms, questionnaires, and research documents attached to emails have been used in the past as phishing lures, and in the campaign detected by Talos, malicious Microsoft Office documents are still a primary attack vector. Typically, malicious VBA macros are included in the documents, and when triggered, will download the payloads from Blogspot. 

According to the team, the blogposts deliver three types of malicious content based on the Gold Dragon/Brave Prince malware family: initial beacons, file stealers, and implant deployment scripts — the latter of which is designed to infect endpoints and launch further malware components, including a keylogger, information stealer, and a file injector module for website login credential theft. While some APTs will try to steal whatever content they can from an infected machine, Kimsuky has adopted a different approach. The threat actors will, instead, scan for files of particular interest to them.  This includes content related to North Korea, denuclearization, the relationships between the US, China, and Russia, as well as rocket designs, aviation fuel research, fluid mechanics, and material science.  “The attackers knew exactly which files they were looking for,” Talos commented. “This indicates that the attackers have a deep understanding of their targets’ endpoints, likely obtained from previous compromises.”The researchers informed Google of their findings and the malicious blog content has since been removed. However, this is unlikely to stop Kimsuky’s activities.   “Kimsuky is a highly motivated threat actor targeting a number of entities in South Korea,” the researchers say. “This group has been relentlessly creating new infection chains to deliver different types of malware to their victims. Such targeted attacks can result in the leak of restricted research, unauthorized access for espionage, and even destructive attacks against target organizations.” Previous and related coverage Have a tip? Get in touch securely via WhatsApp | Signal at +447713 025 499, or over at Keybase: charlie0 More

Major comic book company Diamond Comic Distributors is struggling to keep up with its planned shipments after being hit with a ransomware attack on Sunday. In a statement, the company said its planned shipments for Wednesday would be delayed about two to four days throughout the country due to the attack; reorders are expected to resume within the next 72 hours. The delays will also affect international retailers. The company said it was dealing with a ransomware attack affecting its order processing systems as well as its internal communications platforms.”Our IT department and a team of third-party experts are working around the clock to address these issues and restore full operations,” Diamond Comic Distributors said. “We want to assure you that customer data and financial information is not stored on our network, and as such, we have no reason to believe it has been impacted by this attack.”Based in Maryland, Diamond Comic Distributors said it was working with Agility Recovery to deal with the incident and added that law enforcement has been contacted.The company is one of the biggest print comic book distributors in the world, and hundreds of retailers depend on them for some of the biggest comics available. 

Josh Rickard, security solutions architect at cybersecurity firm Swimlane, said the attack was evidence that — even without the theft of customer or business data — ransomware groups could still cause significant damage. “Diamond Comic Distributors’ website has been temporarily taken down, and its ability to process customer orders has been disrupted, affecting not only Diamond Comic Distributors’ business and success, but also the other retailers it is responsible for selling several comic book publications to on a regular basis,” Rickard explained. More

Researchers with cybersecurity firm Randori have discovered a remote code execution vulnerability in Palo Alto Networks firewalls using the GlobalProtect Portal VPN. 

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The zero-day — which has a severity rating of 9.8 — allows for unauthenticated, remote code execution on vulnerable installations of the product. The issue affects multiple versions of PAN-OS 8.1 prior to 8.1.17, and Randori said it found numerous vulnerable instances exposed on internet-facing assets, in excess of 70,000 assets. It is used by a number of Fortune 500 companies and other global enterprises.Palo Alto has released an update that patches CVE-2021-3064 after being notified about the issue in September. Aaron Portnoy, principal scientist at Randori, told ZDNet that the original catalyst for their research into Palo Alto Networks firewalls was identifying its presence on customer perimeters.”Once an attacker has control over the firewall, they will have visibility into the internal network and can proceed to move laterally. Randori believes the best way to identify potential points of attack is to assess the attack surface. We then devoted resources into assessing the attack surface of the firewall itself in a lab environment. This process allowed us to identify the components an attacker would have to exploit in order to compromise the device,” Portnoy explained.”As is the case with many closed-source products, simply setting up an environment in which to develop an exploit is challenging. Complex products such as PAN firewalls include protections that make this process difficult regardless of the vulnerability. We have found the overall security posture of the affected devices to be on par with other vendors in the space.” 

Portnoy said that exploitation is difficult but possible on devices with ASLR enabled, which appears to be the case in most hardware devices. “On virtualized devices (VM-series firewalls), exploitation is significantly easier due to lack of ASLR, and Randori expects public exploits will surface,” Portnoy said. According to Portnoy, in October 2020, his team was tasked with researching vulnerabilities with the GlobalProtect Portal VPN. By November 2020, his team discovered CVE-2021-3064, began authorized exploitation of Randori customers, and successfully landed it at one of their customers — over the internet — not just in a lab.The exploit gains root privileges — complete control over the device — and can execute arbitrary code. Portnoy said his team was able to gain a shell on the affected target, access sensitive configuration data, extract credentials and more while moving laterally from there and gaining visibility into the internal network. Randori exploited Palo Alto Networks PA-5220, including PAN-OS 8.1.16 and PAN-OS 8.1.15.”The vulnerability chain consists of a method for bypassing validations made by an external web server (HTTP smuggling) and a stack-based buffer overflow. Exploitation of the vulnerability chain has been proven and allows for remote code execution on both physical and virtual firewall products. Publicly available exploit code does not exist at this time,” Randori said.”VPN devices are attractive targets for malicious actors, and exploitation of PA-VM virtual devices, in particular, is made easier due to their lack of Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR). CVE-2021-3064 is a buffer overflow that occurs while parsing user-supplied input into a fixed-length location on the stack. The problematic code is not reachable externally without utilizing an HTTP smuggling technique. The exploitation of these together yields remote code execution as a low privileged user on the firewall device.”Randori noted that in order to exploit the vulnerability, the attacker must have network access to the device on the global protect service port (default port 443). As the affected product is a VPN portal, they added that this port is often accessible over the internet. In addition to the patch, Randori suggested affected organizations look through the available Threat Prevention signatures 91820 and 91855 that Palo Alto Networks made available. They can be enabled to thwart exploitation while organizations plan for the software upgrade. For those that do not use the VPN capability as part of the firewall, Randori recommended disabling the VPN functionality.Portnoy and Randori touted the situation as an example of the ethical use of zero-days to protect companies from the kind of threats they face from nation-state actors. Portnoy estimates that the vulnerability would be worth several hundred thousand dollars on the black market. More

Congress passed a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill on Friday that included about $2 billion in cybersecurity funding. The bill — now heading to President Joe Biden’s desk — includes $1 billion in state, local, tribal and territorial cyberdefense grants, $100 million for the Department of Homeland Security, and $21 million for National Cyber Director Chris Inglis. 

The four-year, $1 billion grant fund is something state and local governments have been waiting for to help tackle their growing cybersecurity to-do list. To receive a portion of the millions of dollars in grant funding each year, states have to match a specified percentage of the federal dollars. The percentage starts at 10% and grows to 40% over the next four years. The idea is that states will get used to accounting for cyber funding in their budgets as a result.The Washington Post noted that for the cybersecurity grant program, 1% will go to each state and 0.25% will go to all four US territories. Another 3% will go to tribal governments. The rest of the funding will be split between states based on their population size and specifically their rural population numbers. States are required to devote at least 25% of the funding to cyber programs in rural areas. The bill says $200 million in grants will be handed out in 2022, $400 million will be spent in 2023, $300 million in 2024, and $100 million in 2025. The Federal Highway Administration is also required to create a tool that can help them respond to cyberattacks.  Jonathan Reiber, former chief strategy officer for cyber policy in the office of the US Secretary of Defense during the Obama administration, told ZDNet that the bill addresses some of the biggest concerns experts have about the country’s cybersecurity readiness and infrastructure. “This investment will help the country achieve a state of real cybersecurity readiness where it matters most. This bill also focuses on securing elements of our critical infrastructure that could cause national-level systemic risks if disrupted. Vulnerabilities in the energy sector present a strategic risk for the US — from our electric utilities to oil and gas distribution, as we saw with the Colonial Pipeline attack — and hostile actors have been targeting the energy sector for years,” said Reiber, who is now a senior director at AttackIQ. “This bill will not only help ensure cybersecurity capabilities are built and deployed — it also calls for continuous assessments to ensure that our cyberdefense investments work as intended. It’s not enough to have built the best defense capabilities; they need to be exercised and ready when the adversary attacks. These resources can help ensure effectiveness.” 

He added that Inglis is “one of the most talented cybersecurity leaders in the world” and that it was a positive step to see the amount of money given to support the office of the National Cyber Director. Drew Jaehnig, industry practice leader of the public sector at Bizagi, honed in on the parts of the bill that focused on securing industrial or operational technology (OT) systems. Jaehnig spent 20 years at the Department of Defense and said the increased funding for OT systems was sorely needed. He noted that it was also “well overdue” for the federal government to provide support for state, local, tribal, and territorial cyber training, recruitment, and non-profit security grants. “In the long run, however, this will also require state and local officials to respond proportionally. It is interesting to note that FEMA will be responsible for the allocation and distribution of the appropriate funds to state, local, and non-profit organizations. This needs to be a preventative process to avert cyber-disasters and FEMA will need to be judicious in fund allocation to maximize the effects. State and local governments should consider consolidated actions to maximize the investment impact,” Jaehnig said. “Congress got a good start on the training aspects of cybersecurity strategy. The continued focus on CyberSentry and the hardening of the federal space are welcome advances. A nod of encouragement was given to a new generation of emergency protocols for cybersecurity, but this will certainly require additional funding from state and local partners to be successful.”Experts online noted that the grants to states and local governments specifically say the funding cannot be used for ransom payments to hackers.  Mark Carrigan, vice president of OT cybersecurity at Hexagon, said the $50 billion dedicated to improving the resiliency of power and water systems was an important part of the bill considering it protects them from cyberattacks and natural disasters. The Environmental Protection Agency and CISA will get a significant slice of the funding in the bill to beef up the security of water systems after a spate of attacks over the last year. Implemented properly, this program could make a considerable difference by making the country’s critical infrastructure more resilient to inevitable events — hurricanes, droughts, floods, and cyber-attacks, Carrigan explained.Some questioned whether enough people were working in cybersecurity to enact some of the measures in the bill and wondered whether government organizations would use the funding for one-time projects instead of looking at it as a recurring investment. Lookout’s federal sales engineer Victoria Mosby said the additional funding dedicated to increasing cybersecurity across all levels of the government will have a ripple effect across multiple vectors, not just the procurement of new tools. “Funding will give many cybersecurity teams the funds needed to continue updating antiquated systems and procedures. Many of these changes will spread outside of infosec teams into general IT infrastructure and new policy adoption to account for moving certain systems to the cloud and allowing for increased remote working,” Mosby said. “Increased hiring to bolster existing security teams and training to beef up the skills of existing professionals, with the increasing reliance on the cloud and remote workforce professionals need to have a better understanding of cloud security and the concept of ‘zero trust’. It would be curious to see if some of those funds funnel down into K-12 and higher education to create a new degree and certificate programs to bolster the incoming cyber workforce.”Other experts said it was important that the federal government is using the bill to request new cybersecurity programs to protect the development of new and current highways, rail, and supply chain programs. James McQuiggan, a security awareness advocate at KnowBe4, said these programs focus on aspects of cybersecurity risk management, incident response, and require the use of the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework (CSF). McQuiggan touted the measures in the modernization of transportation (Division A) section that say that all-controlling and monitoring systems (SCADA) should contain security features for access control, prevent exploitation of the systems and comply with the new cybersecurity requirements for the federal government’s supply chain and the use of zero trust. He also said the billions provided for programs expanding broadband access would come with upsides and downsides. “Throughout the bill, there are many requirements for training. Training for cyber incident response, workforce development training, safety training, but missing is the need to increase a more robust cybersecurity culture within the government at the federal, state, and county levels,” McQuiggan explained. “Several key areas in the bill seem to focus on the symptoms of an issue and not the root cause. The broadband internet section (Division F – broadband) requests the implementation of higher internet speeds to people who don’t have within their areas. One item lacking is the need for the people benefitting from this to understand the internet’s benefits and dangers. Broadband providers should provide free email filters for phishing and malicious attachments to reduce the risk of people falling victim to identity theft and loss of finances due to online scams.” Some cybersecurity experts echoed McQuiggan’s concerns about the expansion of broadband access, noting how important it is for the country but also warning that it would introduce a host of cybersecurity issues. Perry Carpenter, chief evangelist, and strategy officer at KnowBe4, said the increased internet access for everyone would create a “richer” environment for cybercriminals. “We are about to potentially see the largest infrastructure upgrade of our lifetimes. It will impact us, our children, and potentially our grandchildren,” said KnowBe4’s Carpenter. “It’s imperative that we minimize mistakes of our past and start right. Build security in. Make it fundamental to how success is defined.” More