New Crypto Source program extends Mastercard’s safe, secure, and trusted services.

Mastercard today introduces Crypto SourceTM, a new program to enable financial institutions to bring secure crypto trading capabilities and services to their customers.

The 2022 Mastercard New Payments Index reported that 29% of respondents globally hold cryptocurrency as an investment, with another 65% indicating a preference for crypto-related services to be provided by their current trusted financial institution.\*

In partnership with regulated and licensed crypto custody providers, Mastercard's financial institution partners will gain access to a comprehensive suite of buy, hold and sell services for select crypto assets, augmented with proven identity, cyber, security and advisory services. This Crypto Source offering is complemented by Mastercard Crypto SecureTM to bring additional security to the crypto ecosystem and support card issuers in their compliance with complex regulations.

Now, Mastercard’s suite of crypto-related offerings for banks and fintechs includes:

*   **Technology and partnership support to enable buy, hold and sell** of select crypto assets
*   **Security management** including Mastercard’s identity solutions, crypto analytics, transaction monitoring, anti-money laundering, ‘Know Your Business’ and lifecycle stages, cybersecurity, and biometrics
*   **Crypto spend and cash out capabilities offered** through a range of products, including crypto cards, open banking and cross border services. Financial institutions would also be able to offer additional functionality using Mastercard’s technology such as digital receipts and loyalty solutions
*   **Crypto program management** including program design, product development and technology implementation, as well as go-to-market optimization and marketing consultancy services, providing end-to-end support for banks, fintechs and issuers to offer crypto programs at scale

“At Mastercard, trust is our business. What we are announcing today is a connected approach to services that will help bring users safely and securely into the crypto ecosystem. Our recent investments in this space, such as the acquisition of CipherTrace and Ekata, are providing us with a unique set of capabilities to help provide our customers and consumers with the most technically advanced solutions available in the market,” **said** **Ajay Bhalla, President, Cyber & Intelligence at Mastercard.**

To support this program, Mastercard is expanding its partnership and work with Paxos Trust Company, a leading regulated blockchain infrastructure platform. The partnership aims for Paxos to provide crypto-asset trading and custody services on behalf of the banks, while Mastercard will leverage its technology to integrate those capabilities into banks’ interfaces, resulting in a seamless experience for the consumer.

“Our commitment is simple – to explore crypto and the underlying digital assets technology to support consumer choice in payments. Today is an exciting step in our crypto journey that draws on the strengths of our global businesses, from open banking and identity verification to analytics and fraud monitoring to settlement solutions. We’re excited to build on our long-term partnership with Paxos – co-innovating to bring safe and secure technology to financial institutions. Our crypto product innovations will provide choice at scale and continue to bring one-of-a-kind opportunities to financial institutions as they seek to offer new, advanced services to their customers,” **said Jorn Lambert, Chief Digital Officer at Mastercard.**

“Mastercard has a powerful network of financial institutions around the world. This exciting offering developed by Paxos and Mastercard will give FIs the fastest and most trusted way to offer safe, reliable crypto access for their consumers globally. We’re thrilled to partner with Mastercard to further accelerate the mainstream adoption of digital assets,” **said Walter Hessert, Head of Strategy at Paxos.**

Over the past few years, Mastercard has been working alongside its customers and partners to bring new services and capabilities that help make crypto more accessible, safe and secure. These efforts have been complemented with the addition of new technologies through Finicity, Ekata, RiskRecon and CipherTrace. This unique combination of services provides eligible financial institutions the opportunity to directly manage crypto asset investments for consumers. Mastercard also continues to support banks, governments and others through its Crypto & Digital Currencies Consulting Services.

Mastercard Crypto Source is currently being prepared for pilot programs. Additional details on broader availability will be made available at a later date.

Mastercard To Bring Crypto Trading Capabilities To Banks

There's nothing yet to suggest CVE-2022-42889 is the next Log4j. But proof-of-concept code is available, and interest appears to be ticking up.

Researchers are closely tracking a critical, newly disclosed vulnerability in Apache Commons Text that gives unauthenticated attackers a way to execute code remotely on servers running applications with the affected component.

The flaw (CVE-2022-42889) has been assigned a severity ranking of 9.8 out of a possible 10.0 on the CVSS scale and exists in versions 1.5 through 1.9 of Apache Commons Text. Proof-of-concept code for the vulnerability is already available, though so far there has been no sign of exploit activity.

**Updated Version Available**

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) released an updated version of the software (Apache Commons Text 1.10.0) on September 24 but issued an advisory on the flaw only last Thursday. In it, the Foundation described the flaw as stemming from insecure defaults when Apache Commons Text performs variable interpolation, which basically is the process of looking up and evaluating string values in code that contain placeholders. "Starting with version 1.5 and continuing through 1.9, the set of default Lookup instances included interpolators that could result in arbitrary code execution or contact with remote servers," the advisory said.

NIST, meanwhile, urged users to upgrade to Apache Commons Text 1.10.0, which it said, "disables the problematic interpolators by default."

The ASF Apache describes the Commons Text library as providing additions to the standard Java Development Kit's (JDK) text handling. Some 2,588 projects currently use the library, including some major ones such as Apache Hadoop Common, Spark Project Core, Apache Velocity, and Apache Commons Configuration, according to data in the Maven Central Java repository.

In an advisory today, GitHub Security Lab said it was one of its pen testers that had discovered the bug and reported it to the security team at ASF in March.

Researchers tracking the bug so far have been cautious in their assessment of its potential impact. Noted security researcher Kevin Beaumont wondered in a tweet on Monday if the vulnerability could result in a potential Log4shell situation, referring to the infamous Log4j vulnerability from late last year.

"Apache Commons Text supports functions that allow code execution, in potentially user supplied text strings," Beaumont said. But in order to exploit it, an attacker would need to find Web applications using this function that also accept user input, he said. "I won't be opening up MSPaint yet, unless anybody can find webapps that use this function and allow user supplied input to reach it," he tweeted.

**Proof-of-Concept Exacerbates Concerns**

Researchers from threat intelligence firm GreyNoise told Dark Reading the company was aware of PoC for CVE-2022-42889 becoming available. According to them, the new vulnerability is nearly identical to one ASF announced in July 2022 that also was associated with variable interpolation in Commons Text. That vulnerability (CVE-2022-33980) was found in Apache Commons Configuration and had the same severity rating as the new flaw.

"We are aware of Proof-Of-Concept code for CVE-2022-42889 that can trigger the vulnerability in an intentionally vulnerable and controlled environment," GreyNoise researchers say. "We are not aware of any examples of widely deployed real-world applications utilizing the Apache Commons Text library in a vulnerable configuration that would allow attackers to exploit the vulnerability with user-controlled data."

GreyNoise is continuing to monitor for any evidence of "proof-in-practice" exploit activity, they added.

Jfrog Security said it is monitoring the bug and so far, it appears likely that the impact will be less widespread than Log4j. "New CVE-2022-42889 in Apache Commons Text looks dangerous," JFrog said in a tweet. "Seems to only affect apps that pass attacker-controlled strings to-StringLookupFactory.INSTANCE.interpolatorStringLookup().lookup()," it said.

The security vendor said people using Java version 15 and later should be safe from code execution since script interpolation won't work. But other potential vectors for exploiting the flaw — via DNS and URL — would still work, it noted.

Researchers Keep a Wary Eye on Critical New Vulnerability in Apache Commons Text

Just 65 cybersecurity professionals are in the workforce for every 100 available jobs, new study shows.

Widely reported shortages of trained cybersecurity professionals are driving the industry to try to come up with some with creative recruiting and training solutions. But it's complicated. 

At the very same time, automation is increasingly performing the tedious entry-level tasks that early-career threat hunters once built their chops working on, making it harder to gain early experience. 

The result is demand for job openings requiring some previous cybersecurity experience over the past year grew 2.4 times faster than the rate of the rest of the economy, while only 65 cybersecurity professionals are in the workforce for every 100 available jobs, according to newly released research from CyberSeek and partners National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education at NIST, Lightcast, and ComTIA. Overall there were some 769,736 cybersecurity job openings listed over the 12-month period ending in September of this year.

"The CyberSeek data reaffirms the critical importance of feeder roles and thinking more creatively about on-ramps and career pathways," Ron Culler, vice president cyber learning officer, CompTIA said about the cybersecurity employee recruitment study findings. "We see this trend continuing and are committed to ensuring that cybersecurity professionals are prepared for the current and future challenges this will bring."

Besides staffing up the security operations, employers are increasingly searching for potential hires with cybersecurity skill sets across other specialized areas of business including auditor, software developer, cloud architect, and tech support engineer, CyberSeek found. 

**Cybersecurity Experience Expectations Unrealistic **

In many cases, those demands for cybersecurity experience are unnecessary, Timothy Morris, chief security adviser with Tanium, tells Dark Reading.

"Degrees are not required for most cybersecurity jobs," Morris explains. "Provide on-the-job training with tuition assistance for degrees. Building great, world-class cybersecurity teams requires a skill diversity. I've had success with folks that have varied backgrounds (teachers, retailers, mechanics) seeking a new career." 

Instead, Morris suggests employers search out job seekers with curiosity and a passion for solving problems. 

Phil Neray, vice president of cyber-defense strategy at CardinalOps, agrees and suggests hiring managers looking for cybersecurity talent consider applicants with past job experience in crime and fraud investigations, history and foreign policy, data science, IT networking, and music.

"Hiring in a tough labor market requires a certain level of open-mindedness and intellectual humility on the part of the hiring manager," Neray tells Dark Reading. "There are lots of people with nontraditional backgrounds who can become excellent cybersecurity professionals because they exhibit key traits like a willingness to learn, an analytical 'hacker mindset' when discovering the unknown, creativity, and attention to detail."

Cybersecurity's Hiring Spree Requires a Recruiting Rethink

Excessive statefulness hurts the ability to scale networks, applications, and ancillary supporting infrastructure, thus affecting an entire service delivery chain's ability to withstand a DDoS attack.

In this era of accelerated digital transformation, organizations have come to rely on increasingly complex application and service delivery chains to seamlessly and consistently deliver goods and services across the Internet. In turn, they expect similar levels of service and consistency from business partners and suppliers — and all at Internet speed and scale.

This is why, of the three elements of information security — confidentiality, integrity, and availability — it is availability that is at the forefront of the organization's ability to conduct business and attain its goals. The growing reliance on remote work and education has only served to increase the criticality of availability across all verticals, at all levels of contribution.

As a result of this wholesale shift in operational models, it is now possible for threat actors to disrupt not only an organization's public-facing applications and services — which is bad enough, both in terms of revenue and of brand reputation — but to negatively impact the ability of front-line workers to execute their responsibilities. This is the goal of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

**Scaling Defenses as DDoS Attacks Increase**

Threat actors launch DDoS attacks for a variety of reasons, including extortion, contracted attacks from business competitors, ideological motivations, disputes related to online gaming, and even simple nihilism. And DDoS attacks against an organization's supply chain partners or external services vendors can be just as disruptive as a direct attack against the organization's organic assets. The record-breaking number of DDoS attacks observed during 2021 exhibited significant increases in preattack reconnaissance, the introduction of multiple new DDoS vectors, and unprecedented growth in multivector DDoS attacks targeted across multiple verticals.

While metrics such as attack volume (bits-per-second, or bps), throughput (packets-per-second, or pps), and application-layer load (transactions-per-second \[tps\] or queries-per-second \[qps\]) are necessary for understanding attack dynamics and scaling DDoS defenses, it is important to realize that DDoS attacks are attacks against both capacity and state.

In the networking context, maintaining state means tracking the current status or condition of a given network communication session. In terms of applications and services, it means doing so for discrete transactions or processes. While stateful operation can be desirable in some specific circumstances and for short time frames, excessive instantiations of state impose significant constraints on the ability to scale networks, applications, and ancillary supporting infrastructure, thus affecting the ability of the entire service delivery chain to withstand DDoS attacks.

**How DDoS Attacks Overcome Stateful Firewalls, IPSes, and Load-Balancers**

Placing a stateful firewall — a category that encompasses Web application firewalls (WAFs) — on an enterprise network enhances security by dropping all incoming network traffic not directly related to outgoing user-initiated network requests. However, it does not help secure public-facing Web servers, authoritative DNS servers, application servers, and the like because incoming packets to those servers and services are unsolicited.

Also, low-volume DDoS attacks can overwhelm even the highest-capacity stateful firewalls. This is due to the significant memory and processing overhead consumed in tracking connection state for all incoming Internet traffic; it simply isn't possible to do so at Internet scale. When stateful firewalls — or the applications, services, and servers sited behind them — are subjected to a DDoS attack, the firewall state-tables are quickly exhausted, and either the firewalls themselves will be rendered inoperable under the increased traffic load or the programmatically generated attack traffic will crowd out legitimate incoming connections by exhausting the ability of the firewall to track state.

This allows attackers to successfully disrupt the organization's public-facing services, including e-commerce, high-demand content, customer service and support applications, and DNS, as well as the VPN infrastructure for the remote workforce.

Stateful load-balancers, intrusion prevention systems (IPSes), and the applications and services behind them are also susceptible to state exhaustion as a result of DDoS attacks. The same is true of applications that carry excessive state at key points in the service delivery chain. Accordingly, state minimization and state distribution should be key in network and application design.

**Best Current Practices for Network Infrastructure**

Industry coalition Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security (MANRS) suggests a set of network infrastructure self-protection best current practices (BCPs) to implement to ensure that the network itself is resilient and can maintain availability even in the face of attack. Critical service delivery elements, such as authoritative and recursive DNS servers, application and content farms, etc., must also be configured and deployed in a scalable, distributed, and resilient manner. Stateless access-control lists (ACLs) should be implemented to enforce situationally appropriate network access control policies for servers, services, and applications, reducing the options available to attackers.

Out-of-band (OOB) management capabilities and edge-to-edge visibility into all network traffic are crucial to maintaining situational awareness and control when under attack.

Flow telemetry, such as NetFlow and IPFIX, should be exported from edge routers and layer-3 switches to provide visibility into all traffic ingressing, egressing, and traversing the network. All network edges should be instrumented. Flow telemetry collection and analysis allows network operators to detect, classify, and trace back DDoS attack traffic in real time.

Network infrastructure-based DDoS mitigation techniques such as flowspec and source-based remote triggered blackholing (S/RTBH) allow edge routers and layer-3 switches to be leveraged against DDoS attacks. Along with flow telemetry export, these mechanisms should be supported in all peering- and customer aggregation-edge network infrastructure elements.

Intelligent DDoS mitigation systems (IDMSes) are intended to protect against volumetric, application-layer, and state-exhaustion DDoS attacks. They incorporate DDoS-specific countermeasures that are either fully stateless or which instantiate into a minimal, ephemeral state that is quickly shed in order to differentiate between DDoS attack traffic and legitimate user/partner traffic. IDMSes can typically evaluate all contents of the packet header and payload, reassemble fragmented packets and application-layer messages, and evaluate incoming requests to ensure that they are sourced from legitimate clients, rather than DDoS-capable botnets.

By implementing these BCPs and ensuring that they have the ability to detect, classify, trace back, and mitigate DDoS attacks, organizations can ensure that their public-facing applications, services, and content remain available — even in the face of attack.

The Risk of Stateful Anti-Patterns in Enterprise Internet Architecture

Main driver for the change: "Plaintext SMS messages are inherently insecure."

Private messaging app Signal plans to discontinue the ability for Android users to send and receive plaintext SMS and MMS messages with the Signal app.

The app developer cited its priority of providing security and privacy to users for the decision — as well as protecting users from surprise messaging bills from their mobile providers and providing an overall more streamlined and clear user experience.

"The most important reason for us to remove SMS support from Android is that plaintext SMS messages are inherently insecure. They leak sensitive metadata and place your data in the hands of telecommunications companies. With privacy and security at the heart of what we do, letting a deeply insecure messaging protocol have a place in the Signal interface is inconsistent with our values and with what people expect when they open Signal," the mobile messaging app provider wrote in a post late last week.

The phaseout will occur over the next few months, and Android Signal users will receive notifications on how to export SMS messages and select a default SMS messenger, as well as how to invite users to Signal who texted them via SMS. 

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Signal to Ditch SMS/MMS Messaging on Android

Ransom Cartel ransomware-as-a-service operator blog claims to offer a new and improved version of REvil ransomware.

Although the REvil ransomware-as-a-service operation appeared to evaporate last October, analysts have found the group's influence is still considerable. 

Notably, threat researchers from Unit 42 reported finding connections between REvil activities and that of ransomware group Ransom Cartel, an up-and-coming cybercrime group claiming to offer "the same, yet improved software" as REvil. 

Following analysis, the Unit 42 team determined Ransom Cartel somehow was able to gain access to REvil ransomware source code. Ransom Cartel also mimics REvil tactics, including double extortion, Unit 42 added. However, the researchers said there are some aspects of the REvil operation that Ransom Cartel seems to lack. 

"Based on the fact that the Ransom Cartel operators clearly have access to the original REvil ransomware source code, yet likely do not possess the obfuscation engine used to encrypt strings and hide API calls," the Unit 42 ransomware report explained, "we speculate that the operators of Ransom Cartel had a relationship with the REvil group at one point, before starting their own operation."

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Tactics Tie Ransom Cartel Group to Defunct REvil Ransomware

Research report identifies the challenges as well as the opportunities for new products and services that arise from the threat that quantum computers pose to the "blockchain" mechanism.

**DUBLIN, Oct. 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/** — The report "The Quantum Threat to Blockchain: Emerging Business Opportunities" has been added to **ResearchAndMarkets.com's** offering.

This new research report identifies not only the challenges, but also the opportunities in terms of new products and services that arise from the threat that quantum computers pose to the "blockchain" mechanism. According to a recent study by the consulting firm Deloitte, approximately one-fourth of the blockchain-based cybercurrency Bitcoin in circulation in 2022 is vulnerable to quantum attack.

The analyst foresees major commercial opportunities arising to protect blockchain against future quantum computer intrusions and agrees with the White House National Security Memorandum NSM-10, released on May 04, 2022, which indicates the urgency of addressing imminent quantum computing threats and the risks they present to the economy and to national security in the latest report _"The Quantum Threat to Blockchain: Emerging Business Opportunities"_.

Although the main focus of this report is on the quantum threat to the integrity of cybercurrencies, the applicability of blockchain (and therefore the threat of quantum) is much broader than the newer types of money. Blockchain technology has been proposed for a wide range of transactions, including insurance, real estate, voting, supply chain tracking, gambling, etc.

A quantum computer-compromised blockchain would allow eavesdropping, unauthorized client authentication, signed malware, cloak-in encrypted session, a man-in-the-middle attack (MITM), forged documents, and emails. These attacks can lead to mission-critical operations disruption, reputation, and trust damage, as well as loss of intellectual property, financial assets, and regulated data. Note that this report covers both technical and policy issues relating to the quantum vulnerability of blockchain.

As things stand now, blockchains are secured with relatively garden-variety encryption schemes. However, quantum computers will have the computational power to break these schemes as they grow in power. Predictions of when quantum computers will attain such power vary from five years to never, but, the threat hangs over the cryptocurrency industry as a whole and is a dampener to its prospects.

Quantum computers directly threaten classical public-key/private key cryptography blockchain technologies because they can break the computational security assumptions of elliptic curve cryptography. They also significantly weaken the security of critical private key or hash function algorithms, which protect the blockchain's secrets.

Also, some of the early expenditures on quantum-safe technology in the cybercurrency market will undoubtedly go to protecting data from attacks later, when quantum computing resources become mature. This issue becomes more important as we grow closer to the day when powerful quantum computers become a reality. But preemptive action on the quantum threat means that the business opportunities in this space are emerging right now.

As this report makes clear, the publisher sees major commercial opportunities to protect blockchain and the technologies dependent on blockchain against future quantum computer intrusions. One area that this report focuses on especially is post-quantum encryption (PQC), in which relatively traditional encryption schemes are devised that are simply much harder to break than currently used encryption schemes. With NIST announcing a new set of PQC standards in July 2022, the publisher believes that PQC firms will be receiving major investments in the near term as a result of the growing concerns about bad actors with access to quantum computing resources.

The publisher believes there is also a need for relatively low-cost information-theoretically secure (ITS) solutions that instantly strengthen standardized cryptography systems used in blockchains. Thus, this report also discusses quantum-enabled blockchain architectures based on Quantum Random Number Generators (QRNG) and Quantum Key Distribution (QKD).

**Key Highlights:**

*   With NIST announcing a new set of PQC standards in July 2022, PQC firms will soon be receiving major investments in the near term , much of which will apply to blockchain. However, not all NIST-based PQC solutions will be feasible for blockchain use. Given the nature and intricacy of PQC, it will take years of planning for a successful migration to PQC-backed Blockchain protection.
*   The earliest of expenditures on quantum safe technology in the block chain market will go to protecting data from attacks later, when quantum computing resources become mature. This issue becomes more important as we grow closer to the day when powerful quantum computers become a reality. But data theft today requires preemptive action. The quantum threat to the blockchain means that business opportunities in this space are emerging right now.
*   There is a need for low-cost information-theoretically secure (ITS) solutions that instantly strengthen standardized cryptography systems used in blockchains. Already much discussed in this context are quantum-enabled blockchain architectures based on Quantum Random Number Generators (QRNG) and Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). Another important concept is quantum-enabled blockchain, which refers to an entire blockchain or some aspects of the blockchain functionality being run in quantum computing environments.
*   Mining is another aspect of blockchains vulnerable to quantum attacks. Mining is the consensus process that certifies new transactions and keeps blockchain activities protected. One risk with mining is that miners using quantum computers could launch a 51% attack. A 51% attack is when a single entity controls more than half of the computational power of the blockchain. A quantum attack on mining would undermine the network's hashing power.

**Key Topics Covered:**

**Chapter One: Introduction**  
1.1 Objective and Scope of this Report  
1.1.1 The Threat of Quantum Computers to Blockchain  
1.2 Cryptography Background to this Report  
1.2.1 Concerned Organizations  
1.2.2 NIST PQC Efforts and Beyond  
1.2.3 Addressable Market for Quantum-safe Cybercurrency  
1.3 The Goals of this Report

**Chapter Two: Classical Blockchain Cryptography and Quantum Computing Attacks**  
2.1 Overview of the Quantum Threat  
2.2 NIST and Post-quantum Cryptography  
2.2.1 Structure of the NIST PQC Effort  
2.2.2 Importance of Asymmetric Digital Signatures  
2.2.3 Impact of Doubling Key Size  
2.2.4 Algorithm Security Strength  
2.3 Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)  
2.4 Quantum Attack Resources Estimates to Break ECC and DSA  
2.5 Quantum Resistant Cryptography for Blockchains  
2.5.1 Taproot and Bitcoin Core  
2.5.2 Impact of NIST-based PQC Algorithms  
2.6 Post-quantum Random Oracle Model  
2.6.1 Modeling Random Oracles for Quantum Attackers  
2.7 Summary of this Chapter

**Chapter Three: Quantum Opportunities of the Blockchain Kind**  
3.1 Blockchain Basics  
3.1.1 What are Classical Blockchains?  
3.2 Quantum-Enabled Blockchain  
3.2.1 Role of Quantum-safe Security Technologies  
3.3 Blockchain Security  
3.3.1 Role of Conventional Cryptography  
3.3.2 Attacks on Classical Cryptography  
3.3.2.1 Some Known Attacks Against ECDSA  
3.3.2.2 ECDSA Key Pair Generation:  
3.3.2.3 Signature Computation:  
3.3.2.4 Recommendations:  
3.3.2.5 Blockchain Security Summary:  
3.4 Mitigating Cyberattacks on Blockchains  
3.5 Blockchain Security: Entropy/Randomness  
3.5.1 Examples of Low Entropy Attacks  
3.6 Random Number Generator Product Evolution  
3.6.1 PRNGs  
3.6.2 TRNGs  
3.6.3 QRNGs  
3.6.4 OpenSSL 3.0  
3.7 Summary of this Chapter

**Chapter Four: Quantum Impacts on the Cryptocurrency Business**  
4.1 Qubit and Quantum Gates  
4.1.1 Qubits  
4.1.2 Quantum Gates  
4.1.3 Quantum Fourier Transform  
4.1.4 Oracle  
4.1.5 Amplitude Amplification  
4.2 Quantum Algorithms  
4.2.1 Shor's Algorithm  
4.3 Specific Quantum Threat to Blockchains  
4.3.1 Risk of Quantum Attack in Authentication  
4.3.2 Grover's Algorithm and Hashing  
4.4 Risk of Quantum Attack in Mining  
4.5 Nonce Attacks  
4.6 Blockchain Data Structures  
4.7 Summary of this Chapter

**Chapter Five: Quantum Hash and QKD**  
5.1 Classical to Quantum Hashing Functions  
5.1.1 Summary: Quantum Hashing Functions  
5.2 Quantum Key Distribution (QKD)  
5.2.1 Technical Issues  
5.2.2 Issues Needing Work in Blockchain Enabled QKD  
5.2.2.1 Summary: QKD Technical Issues and Blockchain Integration  
5.2.2.2 Software-defined Networking QKD and Blockchain  
5.3 Notes on Interface Protocols  
5.3.1 Southbound Interface  
5.3.2 Northbound Interface Protocol  
5.3.3 Resource Allocation  
5.4 Steps Blockchain Organizations Can Take Now  
5.5 Summary of this Chapter

**About the Publisher**

**About the Analyst**

**Acronyms and Abbreviations Used In this Report**

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/lh4alo

**SOURCE:** Research and Markets

New Research Report Predicts Blockchain and Quantum Threat Will Quickly Spread Beyond Cybercurrencies; Surge in New Product and Services Opportunities to Come

Here's how to differentiate vendors that can back up their words with solutions and those that  cannot.

I recently found myself in a meeting with a fast-talker. I'm sure that most of you know the type and have run across them more than a few times over the course of your careers. These people spout long sentences with big words that have very little meaning. They also seem to have a response for everything (words) yet almost never follow up on or complete anything (action).

While fast-talkers can be frustrating, they can also teach us six valuable lessons about how to vet vendors — separating those that can back up their words with action (solutions) vs. those who can't.

**1\. Ask for the Data**

There is such a thing as objective truth. That truth is based on facts — also known as empirical evidence or data. When a vendor is trying to sell you on something, ask to see the data to back it up. The serious vendors will be able to show you. If a vendor can't back up its claims with data, that raises some serious questions.

**2\. Request References**

In the security and fraud space, trust is huge, and it's built up over time. Vendors that have their customers' trust have undoubtedly worked very hard to attain it. That holds value and should not be taken lightly. Ask your prospective vendor about its client list, and then ask those clients their opinions about the company.

**3\. Listen for Straightforward Answers**

I don't know about you, but when I ask a straightforward question, I expect a straightforward answer. As the adage, often attributed to Albert Einstein, goes: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." If the vendor's answer becomes a monologue, something is off.

**4\. Ask for Proof**

Vendors often claim that they can do A, B, and C. If those are capabilities I need to address my operational gaps, fantastic. Still, ask them to show you how they do what they say. Vendors that truly have the capability will gladly show you — sometimes in more depth or detail than you cared to see. Vendors that are merely paying lip service to having certain capabilities will likely talk in circles or change the subject. That should clue you in to the likelihood that they probably cannot address your operational gaps.

**5\. Establish Clear Success Criteria**

When engaging with a vendor, it is important to create and document clear success criteria. What are the engagement's objectives? What operational gaps are you looking to address? What does success look like? What metrics will be used to measure it? If during the engagement the success criteria need to be adjusted, what is the process for doing so? These are among the questions that need to be answered before a vendor engagement commences. Vendors that cannot successfully meet the success criteria will most likely push back on them. This can be an indicator that the vendor can't back up their words with actions.

**6\. Require a Proof of Concept**

A proof of concept (PoC) is a common way for vendors to show value and demonstrate to customers that they can back up their words in practice. Any PoC should be governed by and measured objectively against the agreed-on success criteria. If the vendor shies away from a PoC or will not commit or agree to being measured by success criteria, that raises some questions.

It is true that many vendors in the security and fraud space say the same things. However, there are ways for enterprises to hold those vendors accountable to their words. By doing so, businesses can ensure that they get the solutions they need, rather than empty promises.

What Fast-Talkers Can Teach Us About Vetting Vendors

Foreign nations continue to target various US public entities and private industries with cyberattacks, but the coming midterms are driving more disinformation than hacking, say experts.

While traditional cyberattack operations against US government organizations have remained fairly consistent, influence and disinformation attacks by foreign nations have increased in the run-up to the US midterm elections.  

On the cyberattack front, the China-linked hacking group Budworm has targeted several government agencies, including the legislature for a US state, over the past six months, according to Symantec, part of Broadcom Software. The attack on a US government organization is the second recent incident — after a hiatus of more than six years — where the group has targeted a US private-sector agency, the company's researchers stated in an advisory.

The attack is a departure from the group's more recent strategy of targeting Southeast Asia, and could mark a shift in strategy, says Dick O'Brien, principal intelligence analyst for the Symantec Threat Hunter team.  

The group "has been mounting espionage attacks in other regions, mostly Asia and the Middle East, \[and\] earlier this year German intelligence warned of attacks on organizations in that country," he says. "We consider Budworm to be one of the more capable APT outfits, and the return to the US could signal a change in strategic priorities."

However, security experts expect mostly a variety of influence attacks to ramp up against US government agencies and the campaigns of political candidates as the country's midterm elections approach. 

Cyber-intelligence firm Recorded Future pointed to the US intelligence community's assessment of foreign threats to the 2020 election and concluded that the country should expect more of the same in 2022.

"\[I\]n 2022, such behavior \[attempting to influence politics\] has likely only intensified against the backdrop of conventional and hybrid warfare in Ukraine, broad international ramifications of said conflict, lingering effects of a global pandemic, and a broadening distrust in traditional democratic institutions," Recorded Future stated in its report, adding: "The key motivations for influencing US elections are typically centered around adversaries' long-term geopolitical interests and furthering their own domestic goals."

Russia is focused on "sowing discord with regard to US political and societal affairs," with a focus on hindering concerted opposition to its invasion of Ukraine, while China conducts both public and private campaigns against its detractors, and Iranian actors aim to create support for a nuclear deal. Domestic extremists have become a significant disinformation threat over the past half decade, the company concluded.

**Not Just Russia**

Foreign countries continue to level a variety of attacks against public and private US organizations. In addition to Budworm, aka Aquatic Panda, cybersecurity services firm CrowdStrike has encountered North Korean hacking groups such as Stardust Chollima attacking financial organizations and stealing cryptocurrency and Iranian groups such as Charming Kitten targeting US government officials.

Recently, FBI officials warned both Republican and Democratic campaigns that they are being targeted by hackers thought to be linked to the Chinese state-sponsored APT1 group, according to The Washington Post. The hackers targeted the domains belonging to more than 100 political parties in US states with Internet scans and other attack activity, the National Security Agency (NSA) reported warned.

Such disruptive attacks and financial hacking are a constant presence, says Adam Meyers, senior vice president of threat intelligence for CrowdStrike.

"There is constantly espionage operations targeting the US — you know, constant, we are tracking it every single day," he says.

With the US midterm elections less than a month away, much of the disinformation has focused on attempting to change attitudes of undecided voters and energizing supporters to get out and vote.

In addition, some threat actors have targeted election officials with online attacks. County-level election workers are being targeted with phishing attacks, with Arizona, for example, seeing a doubling of attacks between the second and third quarters, according to endpoint detection and response (EDR) firm Trellix. Another battleground state, Pennsylvania, also saw an dramatic increase of nearly 70% in malicious e-mail messages, the company said in an Oct. 12 blog post.

The surge in e-mail messages is a reminder that election security issues affect smaller government agencies, which do not have the deep pockets of larger companies, Trellix researchers stated in the post.

"\[S\]tates and localities do not operate on an equal cybersecurity footing" as the federal government, they said. "Some will be more susceptible to attacks than others and many will continue to require the help of the federal government to not only harden themselves to these and other attacks, but also educate local election employees in cyber hygiene to thwart them at their point of attack."

**CISA, FBI: No "Successful Attack" on Election Systems**

To reassure US citizens that their votes will count, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) published an announcement on Oct. 4, emphasizing that the agencies have not yet seen any significant, nor successful, attack on election systems.  

"As of the date of this report, the FBI and CISA have no reporting to suggest cyber activity has ever prevented a registered voter from casting a ballot, compromised the integrity of any ballots cast, or affected the accuracy of voter registration information," the agencies stated. "Any attempts tracked by FBI and CISA have remained localized and were blocked or successfully mitigated with minimal or no disruption to election processes."

Former president Donald Trump and his supporters have pushed dispelled theories of election fraud both prior to and following the 2020 presidential election. In the Republican primaries, many Trump supporters also made claims, without evidence, of election fraud, prior to the final tally, even when they won the primary.

CISA and the FBI did not address any specific claims, but warned voters to be critical of such news.

"Be wary of emails or phone calls from unfamiliar email addresses or phone numbers that make suspicious claims about the elections process or of social media posts that appear to spread inconsistent information about election-related incidents or results," the agencies stated.

Disinformation Attacks Threaten US Midterm Elections

A cross-disciplinary effort of change is needed to attract new professionals in the coming decade.

In 2010, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published the report "A Human Capital Crisis in Cybersecurity," which noted "there are about 1,000 security people in the US who have the specialized security skills to operate effectively in cyberspace. We need 10,000 to 30,000."

Twelve years later, the Cyberspace Solarium Commission 2.0 Workforce Development Agenda for the National Cyber Director observed that "in the United States, there are almost 600,000 open cybersecurity jobs across the private sector and federal, state, and local governments — a remarkable gap considering that the field currently employs just over a million professionals." This is not an encouraging trend.

**Stakeholders Who Have the Power**

To effect multigenerational change, there are four distinct groups of stakeholders that have the power to best address a problem that has existed for over a decade.

**Cybersecurity buyers** should generally stop buying point solutions and instead focus on a strategy of long-term consolidation of technical cybersecurity capabilities. Although the latest shift-left-zero-trust-artificial-intelligence-XDR-machine-learning "solution" may provide comprehensive coverage against the latest techniques from an advanced persistent threat, it's meaningless unless your organization has actual proof of engagement by an advanced persistent threat (APT) that uses those techniques. Each new point solution has a training and operations burden, typically a minimum of two people who must learn to design and operate the solution.

Unfortunately, each new solution also needs to be integrated into the organization's existing security stack, which takes precious time and resources, and where visibility failures may provide coverage for threat actors to hide. By comparison, an integrated security stack might not immediately cover every conceivable technology threat permutation, but it will take fewer human resources to own and operate, and those staff tasked with operations will have in-depth knowledge as a result.

**HR professionals** should de-emphasize the importance of certifications for interns and junior and midcareer professionals and instead focus on on-the-job training and clearly defined career paths for cybersecurity professionals. The issue with certifications has existed since before CSIS in 2010 observed, "It is the consensus of the Commission that the current professional certification regime is not merely inadequate; it creates a dangerously false sense of security." Part of the reason for the workforce gap is the sheer number of entry-level job postings that require certifications; the specificity of the job descriptions also has been repeatedly shown to discourage otherwise-qualified women and minorities from even applying.

Retaining cybersecurity professionals is similarly difficult, as many junior and midcareer professionals will change jobs every two to five years to gain expertise with new technologies and additional security domains. Both hiring and retention can be managed effectively with well-defined career paths for cybersecurity professionals, such as those defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) program. When supplemented by paid training from employers, employees are more likely to stay, which further reduces the cybersecurity skills gap.

**Compliance professionals** should be aware that their security counterparts are continuously overextended and seek to automate as many compliance operations as feasible. When responding to an internal assessment or an external audit, compliance professionals regularly rely on the security team to collect evidence of internal control operation and effectiveness. Realistically, this is an "extra" job duty on the part of security professionals, and as such, these tasks may be done in a rush or put off to the last minute, due to the more pressing duties on their limited time. These activities include manual tasks such as taking a screenshot of the password policy and saving it in a defined location or creating a PDF report showing that all hard drives are encrypted. As these compliance activities do not require creativity or intuition, they are prime opportunities for automation, which will lessen the time burden on security professionals. This may also result in a positive change in budgetary priorities, as an organization that has automated many compliance operations can hire additional security staff rather than additional compliance staff.

**Individual cybersecurity professionals** should reach out to middle schools and high schools to find opportunities to speak to young people about their jobs. A persistent misconception in secondary education is that cybersecurity jobs require a programming background, yet most cybersecurity jobs require no expertise in programming. Individual contributors across all disciplines — including sales, marketing, UX design, customer success, DFIR, and red teamers — should try to speak to one secondary school audience about what they do, why they love their job, and how their job has a middle-class salary that likely only required a two-year degree. That last part will resonate with many secondary school students and their parents who are considering how long it may take to pay off a four-year university degree.

Despite there not being a single solution to solving the cybersecurity workforce gap, there are reasons to be hopeful. The cybersecurity community attracts people who like working in teams and sharing their knowledge and experiences. A cross-disciplinary effort of behavioral changes across stakeholders based on shared values may be our best solution moving forward for the next decade.

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DARKReading