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To help assess whether the Fed system is at risk, I turned to IT security expert Tom Kellermann, chief cybersecurity officer at security provider Trend Micro. He says it's apparently possible that weaknesses in the STAR system could make other Fed systems vulnerable. "Watering hole attacks and integrity attacks are flourishing in the wild, and these pose the most severe threats to STAR," Kellermann says. And he sees as worrisome the IG's call for stronger controls to manage access,

"This is the first time we have proof and can tie malware to a particular outage," said Trend Micro senior researcher Kyle Wilhoit. "It is pretty scary."

A new Ursnif malware variant has been detected in the wild, and the U.S. and U.K. are being particularly targeted, according to Trend Micro researchers.

According to a new report by Trend Micro, the North American cyber criminal underground isn't buried as deep as in other geographies.

“The reality is the sector as a whole is dealing with a cyber crime wave,” said Tom Kellermann, chief cyber security officer at Trend Micro, which sells security software.