As reported by the Swiss public broadcasting organisation RTS, Swiss telecom companies such as Swisscom, Sunrise and Salt have been affected by the cyber-attack on iBasis. The cyber-attack was identified by HackNotice, a service that analyses trends and patterns through a radar system. Radars are becoming more and more common as they help detect attacks by continuously monitoring the entire IT infrastructure.
Dreamlab Technologies created the first Swiss radar, CyObs, back in 2010. "Our high-precision radar system scans global IP addresses for vulnerabilities, interacting with servers and services. From these interactions, we are able to see the level of vulnerability of exposed services on the Internet," explains Nicolas Mayencourt, founder and director of Dreamlab Technologies.
CyObs continuously scans 20 million IP addresses in Switzerland. The latest scan identified more than 113,000 severe and known vulnerabilities. This is three times more than the 2019 results, before the widespread introduction of remote working."Severe vulnerabilities are those that can be hacked by a criminal with potentially serious consequences. Known vulnerabiliities are those that have been published on the internet; increasing the likelihood of an attacker to be aware of them, and thus try to exploit them. So, as you can imagine, this is a very serious risk".
Vulnerabilities can be seen as an open invitation for hackers to attack. "We created this system with the intention of minimising the attack surface and eliminating vulnerabilities by providing visibility of the level of risk associated with them." concluded Mayencourt.
Read the full article and watch the video to hear Nicolas Mayencourt's opinion (French only): https://www.rts.ch/info/sciences-tech/12880952-des-radars-developpes-pour-reperer-ou-prevenir-les-cyberattaques.html