# MA-1055.042024: MyCERT Alert - Festive Season and Holiday Alert

**Date:** 03 Apr 2024  
**Source:** https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisory?id=MA-1055.042024  
**Advisory ID:** MA-1055.042024

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**1.0 Introduction**
As the Malaysian holiday for “Hari Raya Aidilfitri” approaches over the weekend and many of us will be leaving for a holiday break, we would like to alert System Administrators and Internet users to ensure sufficient measures have been implemented to secure their systems and networks before leaving for the holidays.
A total of 1,027 incidents were received through the Cyber999 Incident Response Centre between January and February 2024 with a majority of incidents reported 
*Figure 1: Statistics of incidents by category*
There have been several security incidents since early this year such as R00TK1T, Impersonate Scam Call, Ransomware, fake Gaza petition message link spread via WhatsApp, and data breach incidents which we released Alert & Advisory to address these issues. Other than that, we also produced advisories on software vulnerabilities as well as product updates for Microsoft. Below are the URLs for some of the mentioned advisories:
- <https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisories?id=431fab9c-d24c-4a27-ba93-e92edafdefa5>
- <https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisory?id=MA-1015.012024>
- <https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisory?id=MA-1027.022024>
- <https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisory?id=MA-1028.022024>
- <https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisory?id=MA-1034.022024>
- <https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisory?id=MA-1037.022024>
Thus, we highly recommend System Administrators and Malaysian Internet users refer to our Alerts and Advisories to practice necessary steps to prevent security incidents and minimize impacts or risks to a certain extent with preventive measures in place.
**2.0 Affected System and Devices**
System Administrators should practice additional precautions against any possibilities of intrusions, DDoS, phishing attacks, and malware activities such as ransomware during the festive season, by implementing proper preventive measures against the threats. Data practices and Web Hosting Companies should also take extra precautions against any software or third-party add-ons they're running by applying the latest patches or upgrades to prevent intrusions that may exploit unpatched applications.
Financial Institutions must also be vigilant against any possibilities of phishing and fraudulent activities that target Internet banking. Customers must be advised adequately on avoiding themselves becoming victims of phishing and fraudulent activities by applying safe browsing, safe email practice and safe Internet banking practices. Organizations must ensure the contact information of System Administrators is made available in the event of a security incident that occurs at or originates from your site.
System Administrators and Internet users must be aware of these threats and vulnerabilities by applying necessary patches and updates by referring to Cyber999 released on Alerts and Advisories on current threats and vulnerabilities.
**3.0 Recommendations**
Listed below are some recommendations for System Administrators:
- Make sure systems, applications and third-party add-ons are updated with the latest upgrades and security patches.
- If you're running older versions of operating systems or software, make sure they are upgraded to the latest versions as older versions may have some vulnerability that can be manipulated by intruders. Aside from that, please make sure that your web-based applications and network-based appliances are patched accordingly.
- Refer to your respective vendors' websites for the latest patches, service packs and upgrades. Otherwise, you may also refer to MyCERT’s website for the latest advisories on patches, service packs and upgrades.
- Make sure Anti-virus software that is running on hosts and email gateways is updated with the latest signature files and and  enabled to scan all files.
- Make sure that your systems are configured properly in order to avoid incidents such as information disclosure, directory listing that are caused by system misconfiguration.
- Make sure loggings of systems and servers is always enabled.
- Perform regular backups of all critical information to limit the impact of data or system loss and to help expedite the recovery process. Ideally, the backup must be done daily, on a separate media and stored offline at an alternate site.
- Organizations are recommended to apply defence in depth strategy in protecting their networks. Firewalls, intrusion prevention systems (IPS), network and host-based intrusion detection systems (IDS) can prevent and log most of the generic attacks.
Following are some recommendations for home users:
- Make sure your PCs and browsers are up to date with the latest upgrades and security patches.
- Install Anti-Virus software on your PCs to scans and blocks any malware to the PC. The Anti-virus should be regularly updated with the latest signature files in order to detect new worms/viruses.
- Do not simply click on links and attachments that they receive via social networking sites or emails. Extra precautions must be taken when opening the links and attachments.
- Do not fall victim to online scams. Take precautions against online scams that target Internet users.
- Users are recommended the following tips and guidelines on safe Internet at our CyberSAFE website.
- Perform regular backups of all critical information to limit the impact of data or system loss and to help expedite the recovery process. Ideally, the backup must be done on daily basis and this data should be kept on a separate device, stored offline at an alternate site.
Please take note that,  incidents can be reported to us through our other reporting channels as below and our staff is on duty to respond to the incidents. If you need to report critical incident, you can call Cyber999 Incident Response Centre via the 24x7 On Call Incident Reporting channel.
Generally, CyberSecurity Malaysia advises the users to be updated with the latest security announcements by the vendor and follow best practice security policies to determine which updates should be applied.
For further enquiries, please contact us through the following channels:
E-mail: cyber999[at]cybersecurity.my 
Phone: 1-300-88-2999 (monitored during business hours)  
Mobile: +60 19 2665850 (24x7 call incident reporting) 
Business Hours: Mon - Fri 08:30 -17:30 MYT 
Web: [https://www.mycert.org.my](https://www.mycert.org.my/) 
Twitter: <https://twitter.com/mycert> 
Facebook: <https://www.facebook.com/mycert.org.my>