Faith-Based Daily Awareness Post 30 September 2024

These updates are shared to help raise the situational awareness of Faith-Based organizations to best defend against and mitigate the impacts from all-hazards threats including physical security, cybersecurity, and natural disasters.

Recent Ransomware Incidents

INC Ransom, one of the many ransomware groups, had a very active weekend. Attacks have occurred against several Faith-Based Organizations.

• SentinelOne: Inc. Ransom
• Cybereason: THREAT ALERT: INC Ransomware
• ReliaQuest: Inc Ransom Attack Analysis

Analyst Comments:

Ransomware continues to be a cyberthreat against Faith-Based Organizations (FBO). FBOs can improve their ransomware resilience by reviewing FB-ISAO’s What We Learned About Ransomware Resilience blog. Here are some highlights:

• Plan. Have a cyber incident response plan (IRP) and know that an IRP is not the same as a ransomware plan.
• Exercise. (No! not the kind you do at the gym!). As with building resilience to all-hazards, hold discussion-based exercises, to include executive workshops & tabletops, and also conduct drills, and consider other operational exercises.
• Share Information. Information sharing build resilience across a whole community.
• Enable Multi-factor Authentication (MFA). MFA is a way to verify user identity that is more secure than the classic username-password combination.

Daily, the team posts a ransomware report to the FB-ISAO #pir_05-fbo_imminent_cyber_threat Slack channel. Knowing details of current cyberattacks against other FBOs can aid in detecting attacks.

The Pig Butchering Invasion Has Begun

Wired reports:

In 2023, the FBI had reports of nearly $4 billion in losses from the scams, and some researchers put all-time total global losses at $75 billion or more. Beijing has made a concerted effort in recent months to crack down on pig butchering schemes and human trafficking to scamming centers in the Southeast Asian region, but the activity is proliferating around the world nonetheless.

Analyst Comments:

FINANCIAL INDUSTRY REGULATORY AUTHORITY (FINRA) provides ‘Pig Butchering’ Scams: What They Are and How to Avoid Them.

FINRA explains “So named in reference to the practice of fattening a pig before slaughter, these scams often involve fraudsters contacting targets seemingly at random, then gaining trust before ultimately manipulating their targets into phony investments and disappearing with the funds.” The FINRA website also details the “Pig Butchering” scam process.

FINRA provides details on the following warning signs:

• Unexpected contact
• Refusal to participate in video chats
• Request for financial information
• Invitation to invest in specific financial products
• Unknown or confusing investment opportunity
• Unfamiliar trading platforms
• Exaggerated claims and elevated emotions
• Sense of urgency about an upcoming news announcement or share price increase

Also, FINRA’s BrokerCheck will tell if a promoter is a registered investment professional.