# MA-787.052020: MyCERT Alert - Festive Season and Holiday Alert

**Date:** 21 May 2020  
**Source:** https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisory?id=MA-787.052020  
**Advisory ID:** MA-787.052020

---

**1.0 Introduction**
As festive season approaches, we would like to alert the System Administrators and Malaysian Internet users to follow necessary measures to secure systems and networks before leaving for the holidays, to ensure organization business continuity and self-protection especially in times of working remotely during this Conditional Movement Control Order (CMCO).
**2.0 Impact**
A total of 4596 incidents reported through Cyber999 between January and April 2020 with majority of incidents are 
| CATEGORY | JAN | FEB | MAR | APR | TOTAL | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | Content 
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |  | 1074 | 943 | 1091 | 1488 | 4596 |
Table 1: Statistics of incidents by category
The above statistics revealed a spike on Fraud incidents at the beginning of Movement Control Order (MCO) in March till April 2020. There were several incidents reported on bogus scam email that demanded victim’s payment in bitcoin. MyCERT released an advisory on the incident as below:
- https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisory?id=MA-785.042020
Other Fraud cases were COVID-19 theme 
- <https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisory?id=MA-779.032020>
MyCERT also released several advisories on work-from-home safety and best practices and Online Video Tele-conferencing (VTC) Application Security Guidelines as below:
- https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisory?id=MA-780.032020
- https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisory?id=MA-782.042020
Advisories on software vulnerabilities as well as product updates such as Microsoft, Adobe, Firefox, Android and others can be found in the following URLs:
- https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisory?id=MA-786.042020
- https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisory?id=MA-783.042020
- https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisory?id=MA-781.032020
- https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisory?id=MA-778.032020
- https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisory?id=MA-775.032020
- https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisory?id=MA-772.022020
- https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisory?id=MA-768.012020
Thus, we highly recommend System Administrators and Malaysian Internet users to 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.
**3.0 Affected System and Devices**
System Administrators should practice additional precautions against any possibilities of intrusions, phishing attacks, and malware activities such as ransomware during this festive season by implementing proper preventive measures against these threats. Data Centers and Web Hosting Companies should beware of any software or third-party add-ons they are running by applying latest patches or upgrades to prevent intrusions that may exploit unpatched applications.
Financial Institutions must be vigilant against any possibilities of phishing and fraudulent activities that target Internet banking. Customers must be advised adequately to avoid themselves becoming victims these scams by applying safe browsing, safe email practice and safe Internet banking practice. Organizations must ensure contact information of System Administrators is made available in the event of a security incident at or originate from your site.
System Administrators and Internet users must be aware of these threats and vulnerabilities by applying necessary patches and updates. Please refer to MyCERT Alerts and Advisories on current threats and vulnerabilities as below:
- <https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisories?id=431fab9c-d24c-4a27-ba93-e92edafdefa5>
**4.0 Recommendations*Following are some recommendations for System Administrators:*
1. Ensure systems, applications and third party add-ons are updated with latest upgrades and security patches.
If you are running older versions of operating systems or software, upgrade it to the latest version as older version are vulnerable and easily manipulated by intruders. Also, patch your web-based applications and network-based appliances 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 latest advisories on patches, service packs and upgrades as below:
<https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisories?id=431fab9c-d24c-4a27-ba93-e92edafdefa5>
2. Update Anti-virus software that are running on hosts and email gateways with the latest signature files and ensure the settings to scan all files is enable.
3. Configure systems properly to avoid incidents such as information disclosure, directory listing due to system misconfiguration.
4. Always enabled logging systems and servers activities and keep them in a sufficient period of time.
5. Backup critical information regularly to limit the impact of data or system loss and to help expedite the recovery process. Ideally, backup daily, on a separate media and store offline at an alternate site.
6. Organizations are recommended to apply defense 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 some recommendations some recommendations for home users:*
1. Update your PCs and browsers with latest upgrades and security patches.
2. Install Anti-Virus software on your PC to scan and block any malware. Update Anti-virus regularly with latest signature files to detect new worms/viruses.
3. Take extra precautions when clicking on links and downloading attachments received via social networking sites or emails.
4. Do not fall victim to online scams. Take precautions against online scams that target Internet users.
5. Users are recommended to practice the following tips and guidelines to browse Internet safely at:
- http://www.cybersafe.my
6. Backup critical information regularly to limit the impact of data or system loss and to help expedite the recovery process. Ideally, backup daily and keep data on a separate device, offline at an alternate site as stated in the best practices below:
- https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisories?id=431fab9c-d24c-4a27-ba93-e92edafdefa5
Please be informed that our physical office will be closed on 25th May until 26th May 2020 respectively as these dates are declared public holidays.
During this CMCO tenure until it is declared lifted by the government, MyCERT will not accept any walk-in reports to ensure safety of our employees and complainants.
Incidents can still be reported to Cyber999 through our reporting channels as listed at the end of the page and we will respond accordingly. To report any critical incident, call Cyber999 via the 24x7 On Call Incident Reporting channel.
Generally, MyCERT advise Internet users to update their devices according to vendors’ latest security announcements and follow best practice security policies to determine necessary updates.
For further enquiries, please contact MyCERT through the following channels:
E-mail: cyber999[at]cybersecurity.my
Phone: 1-300-88-2999 (monitored during business hours)
Fax: +603 - 8008 7000 (Office Hours)
Mobile: +60 19 2665850 (24x7 call incident reporting)
SMS: CYBER999 REPORT EMAIL COMPLAINT to 15888
Business Hours: Mon - Fri 09:00 -18:00 MYT
Web: <https://www.mycert.org.my>
Twitter: <https://twitter.com/mycert>
Facebook: <https://www.facebook.com/mycert.org.my>