Cyber Weekly Flash Briefing 04 September 2020: CEOs could become personally liable for cyber attacks, DDoS extortion, WordPress flaw exploited, Business Email Compromise now $80k, printers at risk
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CEOs could soon be personally liable for cyberattacks
Within four years, the majority of CEOs will be held personally responsible for cyberattacks that lead to injury and other physical damage.
This is according to a new report from Gartner, which asserts that liability for cyber-physical security incidents will “pierce the corporate veil to personal liability” for 75 percent of CEOs by 2024.
Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are described as digital systems that interact with the physical world, such as IoT devices or operational technologies (OT).
“Regulators and governments will react promptly to an increase in serious incidents resulting from failure to secure CPSs, drastically increasing rules and regulations governing them,” said Katell Thielemann, Research Vice President at Gartner.
“In the US, the FBI, NSA and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have already increased the frequency and details provided around threats to critical infrastructure-related systems, most of which are owned by private industry. Soon, CEOs won’t be able to plead ignorance or retreat behind insurance policies.”
Why this matters:
CPS attacks with fatalities will incur costs to businesses of more than $50 billion within the next three years, Gartner predicts. Irrespective of the value of human life, businesses are looking at major costs in terms of compensation, litigation, insurance, regulatory fines and reputation loss.
Technology leaders need to help CEOs understand the risks that CPSs represent and the need to dedicate focus and budget to securing them. The more connected CPSs are, the higher the likelihood of an incident occurring.
Read more: https://www.itproportal.com/news/ceos-could-soon-be-personally-liable-for-cyberattacks/
Global DDoS Extorters Demand Ransom from Firms
Security experts are warning of a new global DDoS-related extortion campaign targeting businesses operating in the e-commerce, finance and travel sectors.
Researchers said they had been tracking the threat actors since mid-August, with victims in North America, APAC and EMEA. Emails are typically delivered claiming to come from state-sponsored groups such as Fancy Bear and Lazarus Group, as well as the “Armada Collective.”
The latter group has been linked to similar extortion emails sent in previous years.
The ransom emails threaten to launch DDoS attacks against the recipient organization of over 2Tbps, if payment of anywhere between 10 and 20BTC ($113,000-226,000) is not made. They also threaten to increase the ransom by 10BTC for each deadline missed.
Also included in the messages are the Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs) or IP addresses of servers or services that the group says it will target if their demands are not met.
Why this matters:
DDoS attacks take businesses legitimate online operations offline by flooding them with traffic such that legitimate traffic can’t get through, or they are so swamped with traffic that services can’t cope. Depending on the type of business and how reliant they are on their online presence these types of attacks could prevent firms from operating entirely.
Recipients of the emails were urged not to pay the ransom
Read more: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/global-ddos-extorters-ransom-notes/
Hackers are exploiting a critical flaw affecting >350,000 WordPress sites
Hackers are actively exploiting a vulnerability that allows them to execute commands and malicious scripts on Websites running File Manager, a WordPress plugin with more than 700,000 active installations, researchers said on Tuesday. Word of the attacks came a few hours after the security flaw was patched.
Why this matters:
Attackers are using the exploit to upload files hidden in an image, which from there provides a convenient interface that allows them to run commands in the directory where the File Manager plugin resides. Hackers may be able to exact more damage by uploading scripts that can carry out actions on other parts of a vulnerable site.
Phishing attacks surge during the pandemic
In yet another example of cyber criminals exploiting world events, the frequency of phishing threats has risen considerably since the start of the pandemic, with companies experiencing an average of 1,185 attacks every month.
New research reveals that more than half (53 percent) of over 300 IT professionals surveyed by Cyber security Insiders say they had witnessed an increase in phishing activity since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Why this matters:
The report also shows that 38 percent of respondents report that a co-worker has fallen victim to an attack within the last year. As a result, 15 percent of organizations are now left spending anywhere from one to four days remediating malicious attacks during what is already a difficult time for many.
Read more: https://betanews.com/2020/09/01/phishing-surges-during-pandemic/
Average Business Email Compromise (BEC) attempts are now $80k, but one group is aiming for $1.27m per attack
BEC scammer groups are growing more brazen. The average sum that a BEC group will try to steal from a targeted company is now around $80,000 per attack, according to an industry report published on Monday.
The number is up from $54,000, the average sum that BEC groups tried to obtain from victims in Q1 2020, as reported by the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), an industry coalition made up of more than 2,200 organizations from the cyber-security industry, government, law enforcement, and NGOs sector.
One of the largest industry group of its kind, the APWG has been releasing quarterly reports on the state of phishing operations since 2004.
Why this matters:
Most of these reports have usually centred on email phishing attacks that focus on stealing login credentials and distributing malware. However, since the mid-2010s, BEC fraud has been slowly taking more and more space in APWG's reports, as BEC fraud has become today's top cybercrime trend.
BEC, or Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams, usually begin with phishing, with an email sent to a company's employee. The end goal is to dupe the employee into paying fake invoices or transferring funds to an account controlled by the attackers.
Iran based Pioneer Kitten APT Sells Corporate Network Access
An APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) group known as Pioneer Kitten, linked to Iran, has been spotted selling corporate-network credentials on hacker forums.
Pioneer Kitten is a hacker group that specialises in infiltrating corporate networks using open-source tools to compromise remote external services. Researchers observed an actor associated with the group advertising access to compromised networks on an underground forum in July, according to a blog post earlier this week.
Pioneer Kitten’s work is related to other groups either sponsored or run by the Iranian government, which were previously seen hacking VPNs and planting backdoors in companies around the world.
Why this matters:
The credentials would let other cybercriminal groups and APTs perform cyberespionage and other nefarious cyber-activity. It is also noteworthy to see a group operating on behalf of or closed with a Nation State, in this case Iran, appearing to potential attempt to diversify their revenue streams through sales of stolen credentials.
Read more: https://threatpost.com/pioneer-kitten-apt-sells-corporate-network-access/158833/
Nearly A Million Printers At Risk Of Attack, Thousands Hacked To Prove It
Roughly 28,000 printers recently gave their owners an unexpected lesson in cybersecurity. Seemingly unprompted, the printers whirred to life and produced a 5-step guide to keeping hackers at bay.
“This printer has been hacked,” the message began ominously. Fortunately for the “victims” it was a group of ethical hackers behind the attack. A team of researchers from CyberNews was out to remind the public about the potential peril of connected devices.
To get the ball rolling, the team scoured the globe for printers that were vulnerable. They found more than 800,000 in total using a search engine called Shodan.
Shodan is a tool that’s leaned on by both security researchers and cyber criminals. In the past it’s been used to identify thousands of at-risk surveillance cameras, security alarm systems and hundreds of wind turbines and solar devices.
Why this matters:
Vulnerable devices within your networks can present a vulnerability to other devices on your network too and can be an easy point of entry for attackers.
Many firms do a good job of updating desktops and laptops when operating system updates come out, but too many firms neglect networking devices such as routers, modems and switches, and other devices on their networks such as printers.
Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/leemathews/2020/08/31/800000-printers-vulnerable-28000-hacked/#4b7c9b87d8a9
or: https://cybernews.com/security/we-hacked-28000-unsecured-printers-to-raise-awareness-of-printer-security-issues/
WhatsApp reveals six previously undisclosed vulnerabilities on new security site
Facebook -owned WhatsApp has revealed six previously undisclosed vulnerabilities, which the company has now fixed. The vulnerabilities are being reported on a dedicated security advisory website that will serve as the new resource providing a comprehensive list of WhatsApp security updates and associated Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE).
WhatsApp said five of the six vulnerabilities were fixed in the same day, while the remaining bug took a couple of days to remediate. Although some of the bugs could have been remotely triggered, the company said it found no evidence of hackers actively exploiting the vulnerabilities.
Why this matters:
WhatsApp is one of the world’s most popular apps, with more than two billion users around the world. But it’s also a persistent target for hackers, who try to find and exploit vulnerabilities in the platform. As with all software updates should be applied as soon as possible to ensure that fixes that remediate known vulnerabilities are fixed.
Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/03/whatsapp-security-flaws/
Attackers are trying to exploit a high-severity zero day in Cisco gear
Telecoms and data-centre operators take note: attackers are actively trying to exploit a high-severity zero day vulnerability in Cisco networking devices, the company warned over the weekend.
The security flaw resides in Cisco’s iOS XR Software, an operating system for carrier-grade routers and other networking devices used by telecommunications and data-centre providers. In an advisory published on Saturday, the networking-gear manufacturer said that a patch is not yet available and provided no timeline for when one would be released.
Why this matters:
Zero days do not yet have patches available although the vulnerability is publicly known and in some cases, as in this case, already being targeted by malicious actors.