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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 28 October 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 28 October 2022:

-‘Biggest Cyber Risk Is Complacency, Not Hackers’ - UK Information Commissioner Issues Warning as Construction Company Fined £4.4 Million

-Ransomware Threat Shifts from US to EMEA and APAC

-Phishing Attacks Increase by Over 31% In Third Quarter

-UK Urged to Watch for Fraud as People Aim to Make Extra Cash in Cost of Living Crisis

-HR Departments Play a Key Role in Cyber Security

-The Long-Term Psychological Effects of Ransomware Attacks

-7 Hidden Social Media Cyber Risks for Enterprises

-54% of Staff Would Reconsider Working for a Firm That Had Experienced a Cyber Breach, Research Finds

-Evolve as Fast as the Cyber Criminals: Protect Your Business Now, Before it’s Too Late

-Enterprise Ransomware Preparedness Improving but Still Lacking

-Why Are There So Many Data Breaches? A Growing Industry of Criminals is Brokering in Stolen Data

-How The "pizza123" Password Could Take Down an Organisation

Welcome to this week’s Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing – a weekly digest, collated and curated by our cyber experts to provide senior and middle management with an easy to digest round up of the most notable threats, vulnerabilities, and cyber related news from the last week.

Top Cyber Stories of the Last Week

  • ‘Biggest Cyber Risk Is Complacency, Not Hackers’ - UK Information Commissioner Issues Warning as Construction Company Fined £4.4 Million

The UK Information Commissioner has warned that companies are leaving themselves open to cyber attack by ignoring crucial measures like updating software and training staff.

The warning comes as the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) issued a fine of £4,400,000 to Interserve Group Ltd, a Berkshire based construction company, for failing to keep personal information of its staff secure. This is a breach of data protection law.

The ICO found that the company failed to put appropriate security measures in place to prevent a cyber attack, which enabled hackers to access the personal data of up to 113,000 employees through a phishing email.

The compromised data included personal information such as contact details, national insurance numbers, and bank account details, as well as special category data including ethnic origin, religion, details of any disabilities, sexual orientation, and health information.

John Edwards, UK Information Commissioner, said:

 “The biggest cyber risk businesses face is not from hackers outside of their company, but from complacency within their company. If your business doesn't regularly monitor for suspicious activity in its systems and fails to act on warnings, or doesn't update software and fails to provide training to staff, you can expect a similar fine from my office.

 “Leaving the door open to cyber attackers is never acceptable, especially when dealing with people’s most sensitive information. This data breach had the potential to cause real harm to Interserve’s staff, as it left them vulnerable to the possibility of identity theft and financial fraud.

 “Cyber attacks are a global concern, and businesses around the world need to take steps to guard against complacency. The ICO and NCSC already work together to offer advice and support to businesses, and this week I will be meeting with regulators from around the world, to work towards consistent international cyber guidance so that people’s data is protected wherever a company is based.”

https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/media-centre/news-and-blogs/2022/10/biggest-cyber-risk-is-complacency-not-hackers/

  • Ransomware Threat Shifts from US to EMEA and APAC

The volume of ransomware detections in Q3 2022 was the lowest in two years, but certain geographical regions have become bigger targets as attacks on US organisations wane, according to SonicWall. The security vendor used its own threat detection network, including over one million security sensors in more than 200 countries, to reveal the current landscape.

The good news is that global malware volumes have remained flat for the past three quarters, amounting to a total of over four billion detections in the year to date. Of these, ransomware is also trending down after a record-breaking 2021. Even so, SonicWall detected 338 million compromise attempts in the first three quarters of the year.

Year-to-date ransomware attempts in 2022 have already exceeded the full-year totals from four of the past five years, the vendor claimed. While attacks on US organisations dipped by 51% year-on-year during the period, they increased significantly in the UK (20%), EMEA (38%) and APAC (56%).

The cyber-warfare battlefront continues to shift, posing dangerous threats to organisations of all sizes. With expanding attack surfaces, growing numbers of threats and the current geopolitical landscape, it should be no surprise that even the most seasoned IT professional can feel overwhelmed.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/ransomware-threat-shifts-from-us/

  • Phishing Attacks Increase by Over 31% In Third Quarter

Email security and threat detection company Vade has found that phishing emails in the third quarter this year increased by more than 31% quarter on quarter, with the number of emails containing malware in the first three quarters surpassing the 2021 level by 55.8 million.

Malware emails in the third quarter of 2022 alone increased by 217% compared to same period in 2021. Malware email volume peaked in July, reaching 19.2 million, before month-over-month declines in August and September, with numbers dropping to 16.8 million and 16.5 million respectively.

According to the report, email is the preferred attack vector for phishing and malware, as it gives hackers a direct channel to users, the weakest link in an organisation’s attack surface. The report analyses phishing and malware data captured by Vade, which does business internationally.

As attacks become more sophisticated, Vade said, they also become increasingly capable of evading the basic security offered by email providers, which almost eight in 10 businesses still rely on, according to Vade’s research.

While the activity of threat actors fluctuates, Vade’s research found that impersonating trusted and established brands remains the most popular strategy for hackers. In the third quarter of 2022, Facebook was the most impersonated brand for the second consecutive quarter, followed by Google, MTB, PayPal, and Microsoft.

The financial services sector remains the most impersonated industry, representing 32% of phishing emails detected by Vade, followed by cloud at 25%, social media at 22%, and internet/telco at 13%.

As phishing attacks increase, the techniques used by threat actors continue to evolve. While phishing campaigns were traditionally large scale and random, more recent campaigns seen by Vade suggest that hackers have pivoted to using more targeted campaigns.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3678311/phishing-attacks-increase-by-over-31-in-third-quarter-report.html#tk.rss_news

  • UK Urged to Watch for Fraud as People Aim to Make Extra Cash in Cost of Living Crisis

Brits have been warned to “stay alert for fraud” as more people are out to make extra cash as the cost of living rises across the country.

UK Finance said that more than half (56%) of people admitted that they are likely to look for opportunities to make extra money in the coming months, which could leave some people more susceptible to fraud.

According to the trade association’s Take Five To Stop Fraud campaign, one in six, or 16%, of people said the rising cost of living means they are more likely to respond to an unprompted approach from someone offering an investment opportunity or a loan.

Young people were more likely to be at risk, the data suggested, which surveyed 2,000 people across the UK. More than a third (34%) of 18 to 34-year-olds said they are more likely to respond to an unprompted approach from someone, with three in 10 (30%) also more likely to provide their personal or financial details to secure the arrangement.

Overall, three in five people (60%) said they are concerned about falling victim to financial fraud or a scam. It comes as recent figures from UK Finance showed that £609.8m was lost due to fraud and scams in the first half of this year.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/uk-watch-for-fraud-extra-cash-cost-of-living-crisis-230154352.html

  • HR Departments Play a Key Role in Cyber Security

A common shortcoming of human resources (HR) departments is that — despite being an operation designed to put humans at the centre of how an organisation is run — they often fail to adequately align with their IT counterparts and the core technology systems that define how a business is run and protected from cyber-risk.

Insufficient coordination between HR and IT processes and procedures remains common and gives rise to security gaps that can represent some of the most dangerous vulnerabilities on a company's attack surface. Let's examine the scope of the challenge and some key cyber-asset management priorities that can close the schism for a more robust cyber security posture.

Gone are the days when HR's role in securing the enterprise relied on basic tutorials for employees about protecting passwords on company equipment. Today's threat environment intersects with the workforce in more ways than ever — from bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and authentication gaps to user vulnerabilities that make spear-phishing seem quaint. Traditional social engineering attacks are now being augmented by zero-click exploits that compromise employee devices without the user ever having to click a link or take any action at all.

Beyond malicious threats, even routine HR processes can introduce risk to the organisation when they're not adequately aligned with the IT processes in an organisation. As just one example, when an employee leaves a company, the offboarding goes far beyond just the exit interview to also include removing access to multiple enterprise systems, accounts, and devices — all of which require close coordination between HR and IT personnel and systems.

To better secure the enterprise, it's mission-critical to get HR and IT more united in a common and advanced understanding of cyber hygiene and risk mitigation. This relies on enhanced awareness of the impact that HR processes have on cyber assets in other parts of the organisation, as well as the HR role in access management for employees and contractors. This requires asset visibility that must be ongoing and in real time, since our roles, devices, and access to data and systems may change multiple times over the course of our employment.

https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-threats/hr-departments-play-a-key-role-in-cybersecurity

  • The Long-Term Psychological Effects of Ransomware Attacks

Northwave has conducted scientific research into the psychological effects of a ransomware crisis on both organisations and individuals. The findings reveal the deep marks that a ransomware crisis leaves on all those affected. It also shows how their IT and security teams can turn in disarray long after the crisis itself has passed.

The research reveals how the psychological impact of ransomware attacks can persist on people in affected organisations for a very long time. It shows that crisis team members may develop serious symptoms far later. Top management and HR need to take measures against this, in fact right from the very beginning of the crisis. They are the ones bearing responsibility for the well-being of their staff.

They also discovered how teams have fallen apart some time after the crisis, with members leaving or staying home on sick-leave. The study reveals that effects can linger throughout the organisation. All in all the investigation shows that this invisible impact of a cyber crisis is an issue for the general business management, and certainly also for HR.

Northwave regards the response to a cyber attack as occurring in three phases. First comes the actual crisis situation, which evolves into an incident phase after about a week. A plan of action is then in place, and recovery measures are launched. The fire has been largely extinguished after a month or so, with the first (basic) functionalities available again.

Full recovery can take one to two years. Each phase has its specific effects on the minds and bodies of those involved, and by extension, on the organisation or parts of it. “On average a company is down for three weeks following a malware attack,” notes Van der Beijl. “But it surprised us that the impact persists for so long afterwards. Psychological issues are still surfacing a year after the actual crisis.”

One of every seven employees involved in the attack, either directly or indirectly, exhibits severe enough symptoms several months later, at a level considered to be above the clinical threshold at which professional trauma treatment help is needed. One in five employees say they would actually have needed more professional help subsequently in coming to terms with the attack. One in three liked to have more knowledge and concrete tools to deal with the psychological effects of the attack.

A ransomware attack has enduring psychological effects on the way employees view the world. Two-thirds of employees, including those not actually involved in the attack, now believe the world is less safe. As one IT manager pointed out, “I’ve become far more suspicious. The outside world is a dangerous place.”

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/10/25/psychological-effects-ransomware/

  • 7 Hidden Social Media Cyber Risks for Enterprises

Whether they use it to amplify the brand, recruit new employees, advertise new products, or even sell directly to consumers, corporate brands love social media.

According to recent figures, brand advertising on social media is up by 53% in the last year, and that's not accounting for further investments that brands are making in developing and distributing content. They're pushing viral videos, funny memes, podcasts, written material, and more to increase engagement with their customers.

And brands are doing it across not only the old reliable social networks like Facebook and Twitter, but also emerging platforms like TikTok. In fact, according to another recent study, in 2022 marketers are expanding their horizons, with their increased content investments focused on areas like live streaming, long-form and short-form video content, virtual reality and augmented reality content, experimental content, and live audio chat rooms. The top platforms they're focused on most for increasing spending are now TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

With the broadening of these social-media marketing strategies comes more risk. Whether an organisation uses social media to amplify its brand, or its executives and employees leverage social channels to bolster their professional and personal brands, these marketing platforms are a breeding ground for a wide range of cyber attacks and scams, including in the areas of artificial intelligence, deepfakes, and biometrics.

Cyber criminals, fraudsters, spies, and activists work around the clock to take advantage of emerging attack surfaces that arise from enterprise use of social media. The article below presents just a few avenues that organisations may overlook when they double-down on their social media investments.

https://www.darkreading.com/application-security/7-hidden-social-media-cyber-risks-enterprises

  • 54% of Staff Would Reconsider Working for a Firm That Had Experienced a Cyber Breach, Research Finds

Over half (54%) of office workers would reconsider working for a company that had recently experienced a cyber breach. That's according to a new study by cyber security technology provider, Encore.

An independent study of 100 C-level executives, 100 Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and 500 office workers in the US and the UK, conducted by Censuswide, sought to uncover the gap that remains between boards and security teams when it comes to addressing cyber demands.

Only a third (33%) of staff said they would be "completely unphased" if their employer suffered a cyber break-in. The majority (57%) of C-level executives polled said they have been breached in the last 12 months alone. Most office workers, however, were unaware, with only 39% believing their organisation had been the victim of a successful attack.

The immediate financial cost of a cyber-attack remains the number one concern for businesses, but security teams are learning that there is a long tail to these breaches, with employees at risk of losing faith in their company, its ethics and values and its overarching responsibilities to the general public. In a competitive market, this is a stark warning to businesses across the world. Keeping your staff in the dark about cyber risk is a fundamental error, not to mention the additional impact of delayed disclosure to customers.

41% of C-level executives polled named reputational damage as one of the biggest costs to their business following a cyber-attack, with 34% agreeing that loss of clientele or their trust was a significant cost.

Despite many admitting to suffering a cyber breach in the last year, the overwhelming majority (92%) of CISOs and C-level executives polled believe their business is secure at any given moment. Encore believes that a mindset shift is needed at an organisational level, treating cyber incidents and the security of employee and customer data as a fundamental part of normal business operations, not a function that sits on the outside, looking in.

https://www.darkreading.com/careers-and-people/54-of-staff-would-reconsider-working-for-a-firm-that-had-experienced-a-cyber-breach-research-finds

  • Evolve as Fast as the Cyber Criminals: Protect Your Business Now, Before It’s Too Late

According to the 2022 Cyber Threat Report, 2021 saw a global average increase of 105% in the number of ransomware attacks. Proofpoint's 2022 State of the Phish report said that a staggering 82% of UK businesses that experienced a ransomware attack sent payment to the cyber criminals – believing this was the cheapest and easiest way to regain access to their data. However, in many cases criminals simply took the payment without restoring access and the organisation finds itself on criminal target lists as it has demonstrated that attacks pay off. Even when decryption keys are handed over it can take an extended period of time to restore data.

One attack, on a hospital in Dusseldorf, Germany, was implicated in the death of a patient who had to be diverted to an alternative site as the A&E department had been forced to close due to the loss of core computer systems. It appears that the attack had been misdirected, and the hackers – who were quickly apprehended by the police – handed over the encryption keys immediately when they realised what had happened. Nevertheless, the decryption process was slow. It began in the early hours of September 11 and by September 20 the hospital was still unable to add or retrieve information, or even send emails. 30 servers had been corrupted.

The methods and techniques required to conduct a cyber-attack have never been more accessible. Whether it is on the darknet or through open-source content, the ability to purchase material that allows a malicious user to conduct a cyber-attack is readily available. Conducting a ransomware attack and using it to extort money from companies and government services alike, is now viewed as a viable business model by organised criminals.

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2022/10/28/evolve-as-fast-as-the-cybercriminals-protect-your-business-now-before-its-too-late/

  • Enterprise Ransomware Preparedness Improving but Still Lacking

The majority of organisations have made ransomware preparedness a top-five business priority, yet only half believe their preparedness is stronger than it was two years ago. That is according to a recent survey, "The Long Road Ahead to Ransomware Preparedness" by Enterprise Strategy Group, a division of TechTarget.

Despite warnings and available preparedness resources, ransomware continues to distress companies. Seventy-nine percent of survey respondents said they suffered a successful attack within the last year, and 73% reported they had one or more attacks that caused negative financial impact or disrupted business operations in the same time period.

The good news is the board and the C-suite are finally getting the message that more needs to be done to address impending ransomware attempts. In fact, 79% of respondents said business leaders made ransomware preparedness a top business priority, and 82% of organisations plan to invest more in ransomware preparedness over the next 12 to 18 months.

With preparedness investments expected to grow, the survey asked how organisations currently tackle ransomware. Respondents said the most important prevention tactics involve efforts in the following:

  • network security (43%)

  • backup infrastructure security (40%)

  • endpoint security (39%)

  • email security (36%)

  • data encryption (36%)

Ongoing activities cited included data recovery testing, employee security awareness training, response readiness assessments, incident response functional exercises, penetration testing, incident planning and playbook development, phishing simulation programs, tabletop exercises, and blue/red/purple team engagements.

https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/feature/Enterprise-ransomware-preparedness-improving-but-still-lacking

  • Why Are There So Many Data Breaches? A Growing Industry of Criminals is Brokering in Stolen Data

New details have emerged on the severity of the Australian Medibank hack, which has now affected all users. Optus, Medibank, Woolworths, and, last Friday, electricity provider Energy Australia are all now among the Australian household names that have fallen victim to a data breach.

If it seems like barely a week goes by without news of another incident like this, you would be right. Cyber crime is on the rise – seven major Australian businesses were affected by data breaches in the past month alone.

But why now? And who is responsible for this latest wave of cyber attacks?

In large part, the increasing number of data breaches is being driven by the growth of a global illicit industry that trades in your data. In particular, hackers known as “initial access brokers” specialise in illegally gaining access to victim networks and then selling this access to other cyber criminals.

Hackers and initial access brokers are just one part of a complex and diversifying cyber crime ecosystem. This ecosystem contains various cyber criminal groups who increasingly specialise in one particular aspect of online crime and then work together to carry out the attacks.

Ransomware attacks are complex, involving up to nine different stages. These include gaining access to a victim’s network, stealing data, encrypting a victim’s network, and issuing a ransom demand. Increasingly, these attacks are carried out not by lone cyber criminal groups, but rather by networks of different cyber crime groups, each of which specialises in a different stage of the attack.

Initial access brokers will often carry out the first stage of a ransomware attack. Described by Google’s Threat Analysis Group as “the opportunistic locksmiths of the security world”, it’s their job to gain access to a victim’s network.

https://theconversation.com/why-are-there-so-many-data-breaches-a-growing-industry-of-criminals-is-brokering-in-stolen-data-193015

  • How The "pizza123" Password Could Take Down an Organisation

Criminal hackers took responsibility for a recent FastCompany breach, saying they exploited an easily guessed default password, "pizza123." The business magazine reused the weak password across a dozen WordPress accounts, according to the hackers, who described the attack in their own article on FastCompany.com before the publication took the site down.

The breach, the bitter taste of pizza123, and the plight of malicious push notifications, demand caution when selecting and managing passwords.

The hackers claimed to have used the vulnerable password pizza123 to access authentication tokens, Apple News API keys, and Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) tokens. Then they sent offensive push notifications to the home screens of subscribers of the FastCompany channel on the Apple News service.

After decades of investment in sculpting the organisation's brand image, a business can watch its reputation flounder in the face of an obscene push notification. The sentiment of millions of faithful customers can turn sour in an instant. By the time organisations block the messages and make public apologies, the harm is done.

Customers can swap to a competitor, or even sue for the offence when they have entrusted a publisher to provide safe content. Regulatory bodies can fine organisations. The company can spend time and money defending itself in court and restoring its image. But malicious push notifications can do a lot worse than offend customers—criminal hackers can load messages with malware and infect consumer devices, leading to privacy violations and consumer financial fraud.

People often build passwords using the first word that comes to mind and a brief series of numbers. Pizza123 is a perfect example of an easy-to-guess password. Employees will create passwords already appearing on breached password lists. Criminal hackers use brute force attacks to confirm working passwords from the same lists.

Nearly two-thirds of employees reuse their passwords. The more they reuse them across business and personal accounts, the more likely criminal hackers will breach them and test them on the organisation. Hackers know to try the same passwords on different companies they hack because of password reuse.

Robust password management enables fine-grained password policies and policy customisation. With a custom password policy, organisations can increase complexity requirements, like length and previous-password change minimums. A custom password policy with increased complexity requirements will block 95% of weak and breached passwords.

Password length is a particularly critical component of strong passwords. Ninety-three percent of the passwords used in brute force attacks include eight or more characters. A custom password policy can require a minimum password length, decreasing password entropy.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/how-the-pizza123-password-could-take-down-an-organization/


Threats

Ransomware and Extortion

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Other Social Engineering; Smishing, Vishing, etc

Malware

Mobile

Internet of Things – IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Insurance

Dark Web

Software Supply Chain

Denial of Service DoS/DDoS

Cloud/SaaS

Hybrid Working

Attack Surface Management

Encryption

API

Open Source

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Biometrics

Social Media

Cyber Bullying, Cyber Stalking and Sextortion

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Data Protection

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

Spyware, Cyber Espionage & Cyber Warfare, including Russian Invasion of Ukraine







Sector Specific

Industry specific threat intelligence reports are available.

Contact us to receive tailored reports specific to the industry/sector and geographies you operate in.

·       Automotive

·       Construction

·       Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)

·       Defence & Space

·       Education & Academia

·       Energy & Utilities

·       Estate Agencies

·       Financial Services

·       FinTech

·       Food & Agriculture

·       Gaming & Gambling

·       Government & Public Sector (including Law Enforcement)

·       Health/Medical/Pharma

·       Hotels & Hospitality

·       Insurance

·       Legal

·       Manufacturing

·       Maritime

·       Oil, Gas & Mining

·       OT, ICS, IIoT, SCADA & Cyber-Physical Systems

·       Retail & eCommerce

·       Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)

·       Startups

·       Telecoms

·       Third Sector & Charities

·       Transport & Aviation

·       Web3


As usual, contact us to help assess where your risks lie and to ensure you are doing all you can do to keep you and your business secure.

Look out for our ‘Cyber Tip Tuesday’ video blog and on our YouTube channel.

You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Links to articles are for interest and awareness and linking to or reposting external content does not endorse any service or product, likewise we are not responsible for the security of external links.

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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 02 September 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 02 September 2022

-79% Of Companies Only Invest in Cyber Security After Hacking Incidents

-Nearly Half of Breaches During First Half of 2022 Involved Stolen Credentials

-Outdated Infrastructure Not Up to Today’s Ransomware Challenges

-Ghost Data Increases Enterprise Business Risk

-Detected Cyber Threats Surge 52% in 1H 2022

-An Interview with Initial Access Broker Wazawaka: ‘There Is No Such Money Anywhere as There is in Ransomware’

-Cyber Crime Underground More Dangerous Than Organisations Realize

-New Ransomware Group BianLian Activity Exploding

-Can Your Passwords Withstand Threat Actors’ Dirty Tricks?

-Ransomware Gangs’ Favourite Targets

-Tentacles of ‘0ktapus’ Threat Group Victimize 130 Firms

-Organisations Are Spending Billions on Malware Defence That’s Easy to Bypass

Welcome to this week’s Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing – a weekly digest, collated and curated by our cyber experts to provide senior and middle management with an easy to digest round up of the most notable threats, vulnerabilities, and cyber related news from the last week.

Top Cyber Stories of the Last Week

  • 79% Of Companies Only Invest in Cyber Security After Hacking Incidents

The British cyber security company Tanium published a survey on investments in digital protection in UK companies with alarming results: 79% of them only approve investments in cyber security after suffering a data breach; 92% experienced a data attack or breach, of which 74% occurred in 2021. Leadership reticence is also high, with 63% of leaders convinced cyber security is only a concern after an attack.

The complexity of the situation has grown with the digital transformation of work. If it streamlines many processes, it can also open up serious security gaps. A sensitive point is the “home office”: companies need effective solutions to eliminate gaps that may appear between employees’ computers (often shared devices) and the company’s internal network.

Putting in solutions is just the beginning of a necessary strategy and investment effort in virtual protection. Complex scams based on phishing, reverse engineering, and backdoor-type malicious programs (“planted” discreetly on a device and sometimes inactive for months) often combine real-world and virtual-world fraud.

The escalation of corporate data hijacking appears in this scenario. The most notorious case at a global level of such an incident, with a million-dollar ransom demand, was launched in 2021 on Colonial Pipeline. This US company paid $40 million to regain control over strategic data after fuel supplies through its pipelines to several states were threatened for days.

https://informationsecuritybuzz.com/infosec-news/79-of-the-companies-only-invest-in-cybersecurity-after-hacking-incidents/

  • Nearly Half of Breaches During First Half of 2022 Involved Stolen Credentials

According to a new report by Acronis, a Switzerland-based cyber security company, nearly half of breaches during the first six months of 2022 involved stolen credentials.

The goal of stealing credentials is to launch ransomware attacks. According to the report, these “continue to be the number one threat to large and medium-sized businesses, including government organisations.”

Attackers usually use phishing techniques to extract these credentials. In the first half of the year, over 600 malicious email campaigns made their way across the internet, of which 58% were phishing attempts and 28% featured malware.

Acronis also added that “as reliance on the cloud increases, attackers have homed in on different entryways to cloud-based networks.”

Additionally, cyber criminals now also target unpatched or software vulnerabilities to extract data, with a recent increase on Linux operating systems and managed service providers (MSPs) and their network of SMB customers.

The third vector spotted by Acronis was “non-traditional entry avenues” such as cryptocurrencies and decentralised finance (DeFi) systems.

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2022/08/30/nearly-half-of-breaches-during-first-half-of-2022-involved-stolen-credentials/

  • Outdated Infrastructure Not Up to Today’s Ransomware Challenges

A global research commissioned by Cohesity reveals that nearly half of respondents say their company depends on outdated, legacy backup and recovery infrastructure to manage and protect their data. In some cases, this technology is more than 20 years old and was designed long before today’s multicloud era and onslaught of sophisticated cyber attacks plaguing enterprises globally.

Challenges pertaining to outdated infrastructure could easily be compounded by the fact that many IT and security teams don’t seem to have a plan in place to mobilise if and when a cyber attack occurs. Nearly 60% of respondents expressed some level of concern that their IT and security teams would be able to mobilise efficiently to respond to the attack.

These are just some of the findings from an April 2022 survey, conducted by Censuswide, of more than 2,000 IT and SecOps professionals (split nearly 50/50 between the two groups) in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. All respondents play a role in the decision-making process for IT or security within their organisations.

IT and security teams should raise the alarm bell if their organisation continues to use antiquated technology to manage and secure their most critical digital asset – their data.

Cyber criminals are actively preying on this outdated infrastructure as they know it was not built for today’s dispersed, multicloud environments, nor was it built to help companies protect and rapidly recover from sophisticated cyber attacks.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/08/30/outdated-infrastructure-manage-data/

  • Ghost Data Increases Enterprise Business Risk

IT has to get its hands around cloud data sprawl. Another area of focus should be on ghost data, as it expands the organisation's cloud attack surface.

Cloud sprawl is a big issue for organisations, with business teams spinning up cloud systems and services on their own, often without IT oversight. That leads to cloud data sprawl as data is scattered across different environments. If IT doesn’t know about the cloud systems and services, then IT is also not managing the data being collected, processed, and stored there.

We all know about shadow IT, the systems and network devices in the organisation’s environment that IT is not managing. Similarly, shadow data refers to unmanaged data store copies and snapshots or log data that are not part of IT’s backup and recovery strategy. Researchers at Cyera estimate that 60% of the data security posture issues that are present in cloud accounts stem from unsecured sensitive data.

Then there is the problem of ghost data. When data gets deleted from cloud systems, it isn’t fully gone. Copies linger in backups or snapshots of data stores. Ghost data refers to those copies left behind after the original has been deleted, and Cyera’s recent analysis show that enterprises have quite a lot of it.

After scanning the three major cloud providers (Amazon Web Services, Azure, and Google Cloud), Cyera researchers found that over 30% of scanned customer cloud data stores are ghost data and more than 58% contain sensitive, or very sensitive, data. For example, researchers found unsecured database snapshots in non-production environments that contained sensitive customer data where the original database had been destroyed. Researchers also uncovered sensitive personal and authentication data in plain text where the production data and application were no longer in use.

Ghost data usually has no business value - the data was deleted for a reason - and having it around unnecessarily increases business risk. Attackers don’t care if they get their hands on the original sensitive information or the copy because to them, all data has value, regardless of the form it takes.

https://www.darkreading.com/edge-threat-monitor/ghost-data-increases-enterprise-business-risk

  • Detected Cyber Threats Surge 52% in 1H 2022

A leading cyber security vendor blocked 63 billion threats in the first half of 2022 alone, over 50% more than the same period a year ago.

The findings come from the Trend Micro 2022 Midyear Cybersecurity Report and illustrate the scale of the challenge facing network defenders.

Trend Micro highlighted the persistent threat posed by ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) groups as one that will continue to cause major challenges for organisations in the years to come.

It said detections of prolific groups such as LockBit and Conti increased by 500% year-on-year in 1H 2022. Such groups will continue to adapt their tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) in the race for profits.

The report warned of a surge in threats targeting Linux systems, for example. It said detections of attacks on Linux servers and embedded systems grew 75% year-on-year in the first half of 2022. Both SMBs and larger organisations are now a target, it claimed.

Many RaaS groups exploit vulnerabilities as a primary attack vector. Their job is getting easier as the number of published common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) continues to grow strongly.

Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative published advisories on 944 vulnerabilities in the first half of 2021, a 23% year-on-year increase. The number of critical bug advisories it published soared by 400% over the same period.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/detected-cyberthreats-surge-52-in/

  • An Interview with Initial Access Broker Wazawaka: ‘There Is No Such Money Anywhere as There is in Ransomware’

Last April, a ransomware group threatened to expose police informants and other sensitive information if the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department did not pay a demand.

The brazen attack was the work of a gang known as Babuk, which in early 2021 gained a reputation for posting stolen databases on its website from victims that refused to pay a ransom. Just days after it tried to extort the Metropolitan Police Department, Babuk announced it was closing its ransomware affiliate program, and would focus on data theft and extortion instead.

Earlier this year, cyber security journalist Brian Krebs uncovered details about one man behind the operation named Mikhail Matveev, who was also connected to a number of other groups and identities, including the handle ‘Wazawaka.’ According to Krebs, Matveev had become more unhinged than usual, “publishing bizarre selfie videos” and creating a Twitter account to share exploit code.

Matveev talked to Recorded Future about his interaction with other hackers, details about ransomware attacks he’s been involved in, and how he settled on the name Babuk.

Click the link below for the full interview but the long and short is ransomware has created a criminal ecosystem the likes of which the world has never seen.

https://therecord.media/an-interview-with-initial-access-broker-wazawaka-there-is-no-such-money-anywhere-as-there-is-in-ransomware/

  • Cyber Crime Underground More Dangerous Than Organisations Realise

Kela, a cyber threat intelligence specialist, found in a new study of some 400 security pros in the US that organisations are more at risk from the “cyber crime underground” than they realise.

The Israel-based company surveyed security team members responsible for gathering cyber crime threat intelligence daily to better understand if they’re proactively scanning the dark web and other cyber crime sources, what tools they’re using and the gaps they see in their cyber crime threat intelligence approach. Nearly 60% of the respondents do not believe their current cyber crime prevention is effective, the results showed.

Here are the study’s key findings:

  • 69% are concerned about threats from the cyber crime underground.

  • 54% wouldn’t be surprised to find their organisation’s data on the cyber crime underground.

  • Only 38% believe that they’re very likely to detect it if it was released.

  • 48% have no documented cyber crime threat intelligence policy in place.

  • Only 41% believe their current security program is very effective.

  • 49% are not satisfied with the visibility they have of the cyber crime underground.

  • Of the 51% who were satisfied with their visibility into the cyber crime underground, 39% were still unable to prevent an attack.

  • Additional training and proficiency in cyber crime intelligence investigations is the most needed capability.

https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-research/cybercrime-underground-more-dangerous-than-organizations-realize-threat-intelligence-firm-warns/

  • New Ransomware Group BianLian Activity Exploding

A new ransomware group operating under the name BianLian emerged in late 2021 and has become increasingly active since.

The threat actor already has twenty alleged victims across several industries (insurance, medicine, law and engineering), according to a research paper from US cyber security firm Redacted, published on September 1, 2022. The majority of the victim organisations have been based in Australia, North America and the UK.

The research team has given no attribution yet but believes the threat actor “represents a group of individuals who are very skilled in network penetration but are relatively new to the extortion/ransomware business.”

BianLian uses a custom toolkit, including homemade encryptors and encryption backdoors. Both, as well as the command-and-control (C&C) software the hackers use, are written in Go, an increasingly popular programming language among ransomware threat actors.

Troublingly, the Redacted team of researchers has found evidence that BianLian is likely now trying to up their game.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/new-ransomware-group-bianlian/

  • Can Your Passwords Withstand Threat Actors’ Dirty Tricks?

Password security hinges on the answer to that seemingly simple question. Unfortunately, you can’t know the answer until you’ve engaged a ruthless penetration tester to find out if your environment can stand up to the frighteningly good password cracking skills of today’s most nefarious hackers.

The whole purpose of hiring skilled penetration testers (“pentesters”) is to find out if your environment is truly impenetrable — and if it’s not, exactly how you should shore up your defences. Good pentesters and red teamers spend their time trying to simulate and emulate the real bad actors. After all, what’s the point of pressure-testing your IT infrastructure if you don’t use the same pressure that you’ll face in the real world?

You should “train like you fight.” Without sparring, how can you expect to jump into a boxing ring and go a few rounds with a skilled boxer? That’s the entire point of goal-based penetration testing and red/purple team engagements that simulate real-world threat actors.

Password cracking will continue to evolve – and so should your penetration testing tactics and plans. By the time you get to your fourth or fifth round with a quality pentesting consultancy, your risk mitigation will have dramatically improved — which means you’ll be able to move on to the next stage of security maturity.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/08/30/stand-up-to-password-cracking/

  • Ransomware Gangs’ Favourite Targets

Barracuda released its fourth-annual threat research report which looks at ransomware attack patterns that occurred between August 2021 and July 2022.

For the 106 highly publicised attacks our researchers analysed, the dominant targets are still five key industries: education (15%), municipalities (12%), healthcare (12%), infrastructure (8%), and financial (6%). The number of ransomware attacks increased year-over-year across each of these five industry verticals, and attacks against other industries more than doubled compared to last year’s report.

While attacks on municipalities increased only slightly, the analysis over the past 12 months showed that ransomware attacks on educational institutions more than doubled, and attacks on the healthcare and financial verticals tripled. Many choose not to disclose when they get hit.

This year, researchers dug in deeper on these highly publicised attacks to see which other industries are starting to be targeted. Service providers were hit the most, and ransomware attacks on automobile, hospitality, media, retail, software, and technology organisations all increased as well.

Most ransomware attacks don’t make headlines, though. Many victims choose not to disclose when they get hit, and the attacks are often sophisticated and extremely hard to handle for small businesses.

As ransomware and other cyber threats continue to evolve, the need for adequate security solutions has never been greater. Many cyber criminals target small businesses in an attempt to gain access to larger organisations. As a result, it is essential for security providers to create products that are easy to use and implement, regardless of a company’s size.

Additionally, sophisticated security technologies should be available as services, so that businesses of all sizes can protect themselves against these ever-changing threats. By making security solutions more accessible and user-friendly, the entire industry can help to better defend against ransomware and other cyber attacks.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/08/31/ransomware-attack-patterns/

  • Tentacles of ‘0ktapus’ Threat Group Victimise 130 Firms

Over 130 companies were tangled in sprawling phishing campaign that spoofed a multi-factor authentication system.

Targeted attacks on Twilio and Cloudflare employees are tied to a massive phishing campaign that resulted in 9,931 accounts at over 130 organisations being compromised. The campaigns are tied to focused abuse of identity and access management firm Okta, which gained the threat actors the 0ktapus moniker, by researchers.

The primary goal of the threat actors was to obtain Okta identity credentials and multi-factor authentication (MFA) codes from users of the targeted organisations. These users received text messages containing links to phishing sites that mimicked the Okta authentication page of their organisation.

114 US-based firms were impacted, with additional victims of sprinkled across 68 additional countries. The full scope of the attack is still unknown but the 0ktapus campaign has been incredibly effective, and the full scale of it may not be known for some time.

The 0ktapus attackers are believed to have begun their campaign by targeting telecommunications companies in hopes of winning access to potential targets’ phone numbers.

While unsure exactly how threat actors obtained a list of phone numbers used in MFA-related attacks, one theory researchers posit is that 0ktapus attackers began their campaign targeting telecommunications companies.

https://threatpost.com/0ktapus-victimize-130-firms/180487/

  • Organisations Are Spending Billions on Malware Defence That’s Easy to Bypass

Last year, organisations spent $2 billion on products that provide Endpoint Detection and Response, a relatively new type of security protection for detecting and blocking malware targeting network-connected devices. EDRs, as they're commonly called, represent a newer approach to malware detection. Static analysis, one of two more traditional methods, searches for suspicious signs in the DNA of a file itself. Dynamic analysis, the other more established method, runs untrusted code inside a secured "sandbox" to analyse what it does to confirm it's safe before allowing it to have full system access.

EDRs—which are forecasted to generate revenue of $18 billion by 2031 and are sold by dozens of security companies—take an entirely different approach. Rather than analyse the structure or execution of the code ahead of time, EDRs monitor the code's behaviour as it runs inside a machine or network. In theory, it can shut down a ransomware attack in progress by detecting that a process executed on hundreds of machines in the past 15 minutes is encrypting files en masse. Unlike static and dynamic analyses, EDR is akin to a security guard that uses machine learning to keep tabs in real time on the activities inside a machine or network.

Despite the buzz surrounding EDRs, new research suggests that the protection they provide isn't all that hard for skilled malware developers to circumvent. In fact, the researchers behind the study estimate EDR evasion adds only one additional week of development time to the typical infection of a large organisational network. That's because two fairly basic bypass techniques, particularly when combined, appear to work on most EDRs available in the industry.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/08/newfangled-edr-malware-detection-generates-billions-but-is-easy-to-bypass/


Threats

Ransomware

BEC – Business Email Compromise

Malware

Mobile

Internet of Things – IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Insurance

Dark Web

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Software Supply Chain

Denial of Service DoS/DDoS

Cloud/SaaS

Encryption

API

Open Source

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Training, Education and Awareness

Privacy

Travel

Parental Controls and Child Safety

Spyware, Cyber Espionage & Cyber Warfare, including Russian Invasion of Ukraine






Sector Specific

Industry specific threat intelligence reports are available.

Contact us to receive tailored reports specific to the industry/sector and geographies you operate in.

·       Automotive

·       Construction

·       Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)

·       Defence & Space

·       Education & Academia

·       Energy & Utilities

·       Estate Agencies

·       Financial Services

·       FinTech

·       Food & Agriculture

·       Gaming & Gambling

·       Government & Public Sector (including Law Enforcement)

·       Health/Medical/Pharma

·       Hotels & Hospitality

·       Insurance

·       Legal

·       Manufacturing

·       Maritime

·       Oil, Gas & Mining

·       OT, ICS, IIoT, SCADA & Cyber-Physical Systems

·       Retail & eCommerce

·       Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)

·       Startups

·       Telecoms

·       Third Sector & Charities

·       Transport & Aviation

·       Web3


As usual, contact us to help assess where your risks lie and to ensure you are doing all you can do to keep you and your business secure.

Look out for our ‘Cyber Tip Tuesday’ video blog and on our YouTube channel.

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Links to articles are for interest and awareness and linking to or reposting external content does not endorse any service or product, likewise we are not responsible for the security of external links.

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