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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 10 March 2023

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 10 March 2023:

-Business Email Compromise Attacks Can Take Just Hours

-Research Reveals ‘Password’ is Still the Most Common Term used by Hackers to Breach Enterprise Networks

-Just 10% of Firms Can Resolve Cloud Threats in an Hour

-MSPs in the Crosshair of Ransomware Gangs

-Stolen Credentials Increasingly Empower the Cyber Crime Underground

-It’s Time to Assess the Potential Dangers of an Increasingly Connected World

-Mounting Cyber Threats Mean Financial Firms Urgently Need Better Safeguards

-Developers Leaked 10m Credentials Including Passwords in 2022

-Cyber Threat Detections Surges 55% In 2022

-European Central Bank Tells Banks to Run Cyber Stress Tests after Rise in Hacker Attacks

-Employees Are Feeding Sensitive Business Data to ChatGPT

-Is Ransomware Declining? Not So Fast Experts Say

-Preventing Corporate Data Breaches Starts With Remembering That Leaks Have Real Victims

-Faced With Likelihood of Ransomware Attacks, Businesses Still Choosing to Pay Up

-Experts See Growing Need for Cyber Security Workers as One in Six Jobs go Unfilled

Welcome to this week’s Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing – a weekly digest, collated and curated by our cyber threat intelligence 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

Business Email Compromise Attacks Can Take Just Hours

Microsoft’s security intelligence team found that Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks are moving rapidly, with some taking mere minutes. Microsoft found the whole process, from signing in using compromised credentials to registering typo squatting domains and hijacking an email thread, took threat actors only a couple of hours. Such a rapid attack leaves minimal time for organisations to identify and take preventative action. This is worrying when considering the cost of BEC is predicted to more than tens of billions.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/microsoft-business-email-compromise-attacks-can-take-just-hours/

Research Reveals ‘Password’ is Still the Most Common Term used by Hackers to Breach Enterprise Networks

In a report of over 800 million breached passwords, vendor Specops identified some worrying results. Some of the key findings from the report include 88% of passwords used in successful attacks consisting of 12 characters or less and the most common base terms used in passwords involving ‘password’, ‘admin’, ‘welcome’ and ‘p@ssw0rd’. The report found that 83% of the compromised passwords satisfied both the length and complexity requirements of cyber security compliance standards such as NIST, GDPR, HIPAA and Cyber Essentials.

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2023/03/08/research-reveals-password-still-the-most-common-term-used-by-hackers-to-breach-enterprise-networks/

Just 10% of Firms Can Resolve Cloud Threats in an Hour

Two-thirds (39%) of global organisations reported a surge in breaches over the past year, with IT complexity increasing and detection and response capabilities worsening, according to Palo Alto Networks. It found that as enterprises move more of their data and workloads to the cloud, they’re finding it increasingly difficult to discover and remediate incidents quickly. Over two-fifths (42%) reported an increase in mean time to remediate, while 90% said they are unable to detect, contain and resolve cyber-threats within an hour. Nearly a third (30%) reported a major increase in intrusion attempts and unplanned downtime. Part of the challenge appears to be the complexity of their cloud security environments – partly caused by tool bloat.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/10-firms-resolve-cloud-threats-hour/

MSPs in the Crosshairs of Ransomware Gangs

Many attacks have heightened attention around third-party risk and the security obligations of MSPs in meeting multiple customers’ IT needs. Attacks such as the ones on RackSpace and LastPass show that some ransomware actors are now intentionally targeting MSPs to access sensitive customer data. It is now believed that some advanced persistent threat (APT) groups could be stepping up their attacks on MSP’s in order to gain sensitive customer data.

https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-research/msps-in-the-crosshairs-of-ransomware-gangs/

Stolen Credentials Increasingly Empower the Cyber Crime Underground

Threat Intelligence provider Flashpoint found that last year threat actors exposed or stole 22.62 billion credentials and personal records, which often make their way to underground forums and cyber criminal markets. This follows a significant increase in market activity; just last year Flashpoint recorded 190 new illicit markets emerge and the continual rise in attacks focused on stealing credentials only further empowers cyber crime underground.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3690409/stolen-credentials-increasingly-empower-the-cybercrime-underground.html#tk.rss_news

It’s Time to Assess the Potential Dangers of an Increasingly Connected World

As global conflicts continue, cyber has become the fifth front of warfare. The world is approaching 50 billion connected devices, controlling everything from our traffic lights to our nuclear arsenal and we have already seen large-scale cyber attacks. Adding to this, a multitude of infrastructure runs on services ran by a handful of companies; Palo Alto Networks, Cisco and Fortinet control more than 50% of the market for security appliances. As such, an attack on one of these companies could cause a huge ripple effect on their customers.

https://www.darkreading.com/risk/it-s-time-to-assess-the-potential-dangers-of-an-increasingly-connected-world-

Mounting Cyber Threats Mean Financial Firms Urgently Need Better Safeguards

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) 64% of banks and supervisory authorities do not mandate testing and exercising cyber security and 54% lack dedicated a cyber incident reporting regime. This increases the risk of experiencing a cyber attack. Regularly testing and exercising security will aid any organisation in its cyber resilience.

https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/03/02/mounting-cyber-threats-mean-financial-firms-urgently-need-better-safeguards

Insider Threat: Developers Leaked 10m Credentials Including Passwords in 2022

Security provider GitGuardian found that the rate at which developers leaked critical software secrets jumped by 0.5 to reach 5.5 out of every 1,000 commits to GitHub repositories; overall, this amounted to at least 10 million instances of secrets leaking to a public repository. Generic passwords accounted for the majority of leaked secrets (56%) and more than a third (38%) of leaks involved API keys, random number generator seeds and other sensitive strings. These leaks can have worrying consequences for organisations.

https://www.darkreading.com/application-security/inside-threat-developers-leaked-10m-credentials-passwords-2022

Cyber Threat Detections Surges 55% In 2022

Security Provider Trend Micro has said that it stopped 146 billion cyber threats in 2022, a 55% increase on the previous year and evidence of the increase of attacks ramping up. Trend Micro also found a 242% increase in the number of blocked malicious files and an 86% increase in backdoor malware detections with the latter showing an increase in attackers gaining initial access. Furthermore, the number of critical vulnerabilities in 2022 doubled compared to the previous year. Trend Micro noted that this is all likely due to an ever expanding attack surface of organisations.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/cyberthreat-detections-surge-55/

European Central Bank Tells Banks to Run Cyber Stress Tests after Rise in Hacker Attacks

The European Central Bank (ECB) will ask all major lenders in the Eurozone to detail by next year, how they would respond to and recover from a successful cyber attack. The ECB is in the process of designing a scenario involving a theoretical breach of the financial system’s cyber defences, which will be sent to all of the 111 banks it assesses to see how they would react. The stress test stems from the increasing amount of cyber attacks. If cyber has shown us anything, it’s that anyone can be a target and performing a stress test would help any organisation prepare for the worst.

https://www.ft.com/content/f03d68a4-fdb9-4312-bda3-3157d369a4a6

Employees Are Feeding Sensitive Business Data to ChatGPT

1 in 20 employees have put sensitive corporate data into popular AI tool ChatGPT, raising concerns that this could result in massive leaks of proprietary information. In some cases, this has involved employees cutting and pasting strategic documents and asking ChatGPT to make a PowerPoint.

https://www.darkreading.com/risk/employees-feeding-sensitive-business-data-chatgpt-raising-security-fears

Is Ransomware Declining? Not So Fast Experts Say

Security provider CrowdStrike have explained that the perceived decline in ransomware reflects the abilities of threat actors to adapt, splinter and regroup against defensive measures. CrowdStrike expand on this, stating that whilst ransom payments dipped slightly in 2022, there was an uprise in data extortion and ransomware as a service (RaaS).

https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/news/365532201/Is-ransomware-declining-Not-so-fast-experts-say

Preventing Corporate Data Breaches Starts with Remembering that Leaks have Real Victims

The impact a data breach can have on an individual is devastating and ultimately there’s not much an individual can do themselves if the organisation that holds their data isn’t taking the right steps. To best protect themselves and their clients’ data, organisations should look to have appropriate defence in depth controls, including effective asset management, an open security culture, close monitoring of access, utilising strong authentication and maintaining an awareness of the ever changing threat landscape.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/03/07/preventing-corporate-data-breaches/

Faced With Likelihood of Ransomware Attacks, Businesses Still Choosing to Pay Up

In a recent report Proofpoint found that globally 76% of organisations experienced ransomware attempts, with 64% eventually infected. Amongst those that had a cyber insurance policy, 82% of insurers stepped up to pay the ransom either in full or partially. The report found that with the rise in number and sophistication of attacks it is more important than ever for proper security training and awareness in organisations.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/faced-with-likelihood-of-ransomware-attacks-businesses-still-choosing-to-pay-up/

Experts See Growing Need for Cyber Security Workers as One in Six Jobs go Unfilled

A report by the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC) found that 1 in 6 cyber security jobs are unfulfilled and this is only expected to grow in the coming years. The ICTC stated that “This is not just about education or government funding, but about companies willing to provide hands-on training and experience to the next generation of cyber security experts”.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/careers/article-experts-see-growing-need-for-cybersecurity-workers-as-one-in-six-jobs/

Threats

Ransomware, Extortion and Destructive Attacks

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

BEC – Business Email Compromise

Other Social Engineering; Smishing, Vishing, etc

2FA/MFA

Malware

Mobile

Denial of Service/DoS/DDOS

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

Deepfakes

Insurance

Dark Web

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Software Supply Chain

Cloud/SaaS

Attack Surface Management

Asset Management

Encryption

API

Open Source

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Training, Education and Awareness

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Governance, Risk and Compliance

Models, Frameworks and Standards

Data Protection

Careers, Working in Cyber and Information Security

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

Privacy, Surveillance and Mass Monitoring

Artificial Intelligence

Misinformation, Disinformation and Propaganda

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

Nation State Actors

Vulnerability Management

Vulnerabilities

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.

Read More
Black Arrow Admin Black Arrow Admin

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 03 March 2023

Black Arrow Cyber Briefing 03 March 2023:

-It’s Time to Evaluate Your Security Education Plan Amongst the Rise in Social Engineering Attacks

-Mobile Users are More Susceptible to Phishing Attacks

-Phishing as a Service Stimulates Cyber Crime

-Attacker Breakout Time Drops to Just 84 Minutes

-Attackers are Developing and Deploying Exploits Faster Than Ever

-Old Vulnerabilities are Haunting Organisations and Aiding Attackers

-Scams Drive Nearly $9bn Fraud Surge in 2022

-Economic Pressure are Increasing Cyber Security Risks and a Recession Would Only Further This

-Cyber Security in This Era of Polycrisis

-Russian Ransomware Projects Rebranded to Avoid Western Sanctions

-Ransomware Attacks Ravaged Big Names in February

-Firms Who Pay Ransom Subsidise New Attacks

-How the Ukraine War Opened a Fault Line in Cyber Crime

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

  • It’s Time to Evaluate Your Security Education Plan with the Rise in Social Engineering Attacks

Security provider Purplesec found 98% of attacks in 2022 involved an element of social engineering. Social engineering attacks can take many forms including phishing, smishing, vishing and quishing and it’s vital to educate your organisation on how to best prepare for these. Education plans should focusing on educating all levels of users, including those at the top. These plans should also be tested to allow organisations to assess where they are at and identify where they can improve.

https://www.darkreading.com/endpoint/as-social-engineering-attacks-skyrocket-evaluate-your-security-education-plan

  • Mobile Users are More Susceptible to Phishing Attacks

A report conducted by mobile security provider Lookout focused on the impact of mobile phishing. Some of the key findings from the report included that more than 50% of personal devices were exposed to a mobile phishing attack every quarter, the percentage of users falling for multiple mobile phishing links increasing and an increased targeting of highly regulated industries such as insurance, banking and financial services. It is likely that this has resulted from the increase in relaxed bring your own device (BYOD) policies.

https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-research/mobile-users-more-susceptible-to-phishing-attacks-than-two-years-ago/

  • Phishing as a Service Stimulates Cyber Crime

Phishing attacks are at an all-time high and the usage of Phishing as a Service (PaaS) opens this attack technique to virtually anyone. The sale of “phishing kits” and usage of artificial intelligence has further increased the availability of this attack technique. In response, organisations should look to improve their email security, cloud security and education programs for employees.

https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/ciso/23/c/phishing-as-a-service-phaas.html

  • Attacker Breakout Time Drops to Just 84 Minutes

The average time it takes for a threat actor to move laterally from a compromised host within an organisation dropped 14% between 2012 and 2022 down to 84 minutes, according to a report by security provider Crowdstrike. With the reduction in time it takes a threat actor to move across systems, organisations have even less time to enact their incident response plans and contain breaches effectively, putting further pressure on the incident response team. By responding quickly, organisations can minimise the cost and damage of a breach. The report from Crowdstrike found that organisations were facing increasing difficulty in detecting suspicious activity as attackers are choosing to use valid organisation credentials rather than malware, to gain access to an organisation’s systems.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/attacker-breakout-time-drops-just/

  • Attackers are Developing and Deploying Exploits Faster Than Ever

A report from security provider Rapid7 found that over 56% of vulnerabilities were exploited within seven days of public disclosure. Worryingly, the median time for exploitation in 2022 was just one day. The finding from the report highlights the need for organisations to not only conduct threat intelligence to be aware of vulnerabilities but to also look to employ patches where possible in a timely manner.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/03/03/attackers-developing-deploying-exploits/

  • Old Vulnerabilities are Haunting Organisations and Aiding Attackers

Known vulnerabilities, vulnerabilities for which patches have already been made available, are one of the primary attack vectors for threat actors. Vulnerability management vendor Tenable found that the top exploited vulnerabilities were originally disclosed as far back as 2017 and organisations that had not applied these patches were at increased risks of attack.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/03/03/known-exploitable-vulnerabilities/

  • Scams Drive Nearly $9bn Fraud Surge in 2022

Americans lost $8.8 billion to fraud last year, with imposter scams responsible for $2.8 billion of that amount, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Losses to business imposters were particularly damaging, climbing to $660 million from the previous year. Interestingly, the FTC found that younger people reported losing money to fraud the most often.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/investment-scams-drive-9bn-in/

  • Economic Pressure are Increasing Cyber Security Risks and a Recession Would Only Further This

The World Economic Forum’s recent report found that 93% of cyber security leaders and 86% of business leaders think it is moderately or very likely that global geopolitical instability will lead to a catastrophic cyber event in the next two years. Reinforcing this, a report from (ISC)² found that 80% of business executives believe a weakening economy will increase cyber threats and a recession will only amplify this.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3689008/economic-pressures-are-increasing-cybersecurity-risks-a-recession-would-amp-them-up-more.html

  • Cyber Security in this Era of Polycrisis

A year since Russia invaded Ukraine, the geopolitical context is increasingly tense and volatile. The world faces several major crises in what has been coined a 'polycrisis,' a cluster of global shocks with compounding effects. This, along with increasing geopolitical tensions causes a rise in risk from cyber attacks. In fact, the European Union Agency for Cyber Security (ENISA) recently issued an alert regarding actors conducting malicious cyber activities against businesses and governments in the European Union and findings from Google show a 300% increase in state-sponsored cyber attacks targeting users in NATO countries.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/02/cybersecurity-in-an-era-of-polycrisis/

  • Russian Ransomware Projects Rebranded to Avoid Western Sanctions

Research provider TRM labs found that some major Russian-linked ransomware crime gangs have rebranded their activities in 2022 to avoid sanctions. To strengthen their anonymity, two major ransomware crime gangs LockBit and Conti restructured their activities. Conti is reported to have restructured into three smaller groups named Black Besta, BlackByte, Karakurt. LockBit on the other hand launched LockBit 3.0, which is focused on monetary gain. Additionally, the report found that Russian-speaking darknet markets had amassed over $130 million in sales.

https://cryptopotato.com/russian-ransomware-projects-rebranded-to-avoid-western-sanctions-report/

  • Ransomware Attacks Ravaged Big Names in February

Despite the apparent slight drop in ransomware activity last month, several high profile targets of various industries were hit; this ranges from the likes of the US Marshal Service, retailer WH Smith, satellite provider Dish and many more. These attacks reinforce the concept that any organisation can be a victim, regardless of industry.

https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/news/365532056/Ransomware-attacks-ravaged-big-names-in-February

  • Firms Who Pay Ransoms Subsidise New Attacks

A report from security provider Trend Micro found that whilst only a relatively small number of ransomware victims pay their extorters, those that do pay are effectively funding 6-10 new attacks. The report also found that attackers are aware of which industries and countries pay ransoms more often, so organisations belonging to those industries and countries may find themselves an even more attractive target.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/firms-pay-ransom-subsidise-10/

  • How the Ukraine War Opened a Fault Line in Cyber Crime

A report from threat intelligence provider Recorded Future has highlighted the impact that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has had on cyber. Recorded Future explain how a number of threat actor groups fled during the war and in addition to differing political views between groups, there has been a disruption to the cyber environment. In fact, Recorded Future found that Russian-language dark web marketplaces have taken a major hit and the prediction is that the epicentre of cyber crime may shift to English-speaking dark web forums, shops and marketplaces.

https://www.darkreading.com/analytics/ukraine-war-fault-line-cybercrime-forever

Threats

Ransomware, Extortion and Destructive Attacks

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

BEC – Business Email Compromise

Other Social Engineering; Smishing, Vishing, etc

2FA/MFA

Malware

Mobile

Denial of Service/DoS/DDOS

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

AML/CFT/Sanctions

Insurance

Dark Web

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Software Supply Chain

Cloud/SaaS

Containers

Hybrid/Remote Working

Encryption

API

Open Source

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Training, Education and Awareness

Parental Controls and Child Safety

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Governance, Risk and Compliance

Models, Frameworks and Standards

Careers, Working in Cyber and Information Security

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

Privacy, Surveillance and Mass Monitoring

Artificial Intelligence

Misinformation, Disinformation and Propaganda

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

Nation State Actors

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.

Read More
Black Arrow Admin Black Arrow Admin

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 13 January 2023

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 13 January 2023:

-Quarter of UK SMBs Hit by Ransomware in 2022

-Global Cyber Attack Volume Surges 38% in 2022

-1 in 3 Organisations Do Not Provide Any Cyber Security Training to Remote Workers Despite the Majority of Employees Having Access to Critical Data

-AI-Generated Phishing Attacks Are Becoming More Convincing

-Customer and Employee Data the Top Prize for Hackers

-Royal Mail hit by Ransomware Attack, Causes ‘Severe Disruption’ to Services

-The Guardian Confirms Personal Information Compromised in Ransomware Attack

-Ransomware Gang Releases Info Stolen from 14 UK Schools, Including Passport Scans

-The Dark Web’s Criminal Minds See Internet of Things as Next Big Hacking Prize

-Corrupted File to Blame for Computer Glitch which Grounded Every US Flight

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

  • Quarter of UK SMBs Hit by Ransomware in 2022

Over one in four (26%) British SMBs have been targeted by ransomware over the past year, with half (47%) of those compromised paying their extorters, according to new data from anti-virus provider Avast. The security vendor polled 1000 IT decision makers from UK SMBs back in October, to better understand the risk landscape over the previous 12 months.

More than two-thirds (68%) of respondents said they are more concerned about being attacked since the start of the war in Ukraine, fuelling concerns that have led to half (50%) investing in cyber-insurance. They’re wise to do so, considering that 41% of those hit by ransomware lost data, while 34% lost access to devices, according to Avast.

Given that SMBs comprise over 99% of private sector businesses in the country, it’s reassuring that cyber is now being viewed as a major business risk. Nearly half (48%) ranked it as one of the biggest threats they currently face, versus 66% who cited financial risk stemming from surging operational cost. More respondents cited cyber as a top threat than did physical security (35%) and supply chain disruption (33%).

Avast argued that SMBs are among the groups most vulnerable to cyber-threats as they often have very limited budget and resources, and many don’t have somebody on staff managing security holistically. As a result, not only are SMB’s lacking in their defence, but they’re also slower and less able to react to incidents.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/quarter-of-uk-smbs-hit-ransomware/

  • Global Cyber Attack Volume Surges 38% in 2022

The number of cyber attacks recorded last year was nearly two-fifths (38%) greater than the total volume observed in 2021, according to Check Point.

The security vendor claimed the increase was largely due to a surge in attacks on healthcare organisations, which saw the largest year-on-year (YoY) increase (74%), and the activities of smaller, more agile hacking groups.

Overall, attacks reached an all-time high in Q4 with an average of 1168 weekly attacks per organisation. The average weekly figures for the year were highest for education sector organisations (2314), government and military (1661) and healthcare (1463).

Threat actors appear to have capitalised on gaps in security created by the shift to remote working. The ransomware ecosystem is continuing to evolve and grow with smaller, more agile criminal groups that form to evade law enforcement. Hackers are also now increasingly widening their aim to target business collaboration tools such as Slack, Teams, OneDrive and Google Drive with phishing exploits. These make for a rich source of sensitive data given that most organisations’ employees continue to work remotely.

It is predicted that AI tools like ChatGPT would help to fuel a continued surge in attacks in 2023 by making it quicker and easier for bad actors to generate malicious code and emails.

Recorded cyber-attacks on US organisations grew 57% YoY in 2022, while the figure was even higher in the UK (77%). This chimes with data from UK ISP Beaming, which found that 2022 was the busiest year on record for attacks. It recorded 687,489 attempts to breach UK businesses in 2022 – the equivalent of one attack every 46 seconds.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/global-cyberattack-volume-surges/

  • 1 in 3 Organisations Do Not Provide Any Cyber Security Training to Remote Workers Despite the Majority of Employees Having Access to Critical Data

New research from cyber security provider Hornetsecurity has found that 33% of companies are not providing any cyber security awareness training to users who work remotely.

The study also revealed nearly three-quarters (74%) of remote staff have access to critical data, which is creating more risk for companies in the new hybrid working world.

Despite the current lack of training and employees feeling ill-equipped, almost half (44%) of respondents said their organisation plans to increase the percentage of employees that work remotely. The popularity of hybrid work, and the associated risks, means that companies must prioritise training and education to make remote working safe.

Traditional methods of controlling and securing company data aren't as effective when employees are working in remote locations and greater responsibility falls on the individual. Companies must acknowledge the unique risks associated with remote work and activate relevant security management systems, as well as empower employees to deal with a certain level of risk.

The independent survey, which quizzed 925 IT professionals from a range of business types and sizes globally, highlighted the security management challenges and employee cyber security risk when working remotely. The research revealed two core problems causing risk: employees having access to critical data, and not enough training being provided on how to manage cyber security or how to reduce the risk of a cyber-attack or breach.

https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-threats/1-in-3-organizations-do-not-provide-any-cybersecurity-training-to-remote-workers-despite-a-majority-of-employees-having-access-to-critical-data

  • AI-Generated Phishing Attacks Are Becoming More Convincing

It's time for you and your colleagues to become more sceptical about what you read.

That's a takeaway from a series of experiments undertaken using GPT-3 AI text-generating interfaces to create malicious messages designed to spear-phish, scam, harass, and spread fake news.

Experts at WithSecure have described their investigations into just how easy it is to automate the creation of credible yet malicious content at incredible speed. Amongst the use cases explored by the research were the use of GPT-3 models to create:

  • Phishing content – emails or messages designed to trick a user into opening a malicious attachment or visiting a malicious link

  • Social opposition – social media messages designed to troll and harass individuals or to cause brand damage

  • Social validation – social media messages designed to advertise or sell, or to legitimise a scam

  • Fake news – research into how well GPT-3 can generate convincing fake news articles of events that weren’t part of its training set

All of these could, of course, be useful to cyber criminals hell-bent on scamming the unwary or spreading unrest.

https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/ai-generated-phishing-attacks-are-becoming-more-convincing

  • Customer and Employee Data the Top Prize for Hackers

The theft of customer and employee data accounts for almost half (45%) of all stolen data between July 2021 and June 2022, according to a new report from cyber security solution provider Imperva.

The data is part of a 12-month analysis by Imperva Threat Research on the trends and threats related to data security in its report “More Lessons Learned from Analysing 100 Data Breaches”.

Their analysis found that theft of credit card information and password details dropped by 64% compared to 2021. The decline in stolen credit card and password data pointing to the uptake of basic security tactics like multi-factor authentication (MFA). However, in the long term, PII data is the most valuable data to cyber-criminals. With enough stolen PII, they can engage in full-on identity theft which is hugely profitable and very difficult to prevent. Credit cards and passwords can be changed the second there is a breach, but when PII is stolen, it can be years before it is weaponised by hackers.

The research also revealed the root causes of data breaches, with social engineering (17%) and unsecured databases (15%) two of the biggest culprits. Misconfigured applications were only responsible for 2% of data breaches, but Imperva said that businesses should expect this figure to rise in the near future, particularly with cloud-managed infrastructure where configuring for security requires significant expertise.

It’s really concerning that a third (32%) of data breaches are down to unsecured databases and social engineering attacks, since they’re both straightforward to mitigate. A publicly open database dramatically increases the risk of a breach and, all too often, they are left like this not out of a failure of security practices but rather the total absence of any security posture at all.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/customer-employee-data-hackers/

  • Royal Mail hit by Ransomware Attack, Causes ‘Severe Disruption’ to Services

Royal Mail experienced “severe service disruption” to its international export services following a ransomware attack, the company has announced. A statement said it was temporarily unable to despatch export items including letters and parcels to overseas destinations.

Royal Mail said: “We have asked customers temporarily to stop submitting any export items into the network while we work hard to resolve the issue” and advising that “Some customers may experience delay or disruption to items already shipped for export.”

The attack was later attributed to LockBit, a prolific ransomware gang with close ties to Russia. Both the NCSC and the NCA were involved in responding to the incident.

https://www.independent.co.uk/business/royal-mail-cyber-attack-exports-b2260308.html

  • The Guardian Confirms Personal Information Compromised in Ransomware Attack

British news organisation The Guardian has confirmed that personal information was compromised in a ransomware attack in December 2022.

The company fell victim to the attack just days before Christmas, when it instructed staff to work from home, announcing network disruptions that mostly impacted the print newspaper.

Right from the start, the Guardian said it suspected ransomware to have been involved in the incident, and this week the company confirmed that this was indeed the case. In an email to staff on Wednesday, The Guardian Media Group’s chief executive and the Guardian’s editor-in-chief said that the sophisticated cyber attack was likely the result of phishing.

They also announced that the personal information of UK staff members was compromised in the attack, but said that reader data and the information of US and Australia staff was not impacted. “We have seen no evidence that any data has been exposed online thus far and we continue to monitor this very closely,” the Guardian representatives said. While the attack forced the Guardian staff to work from home, online publishing has been unaffected, and production of daily newspapers has continued as well.

“We believe this was a criminal ransomware attack, and not the specific targeting of the Guardian as a media organisation,” the Guardian said.

The company continues to work on recovery and estimates that critical systems would be restored in the next two weeks. Staff, however, will continue to work from home until at least early February. “These attacks have become more frequent and sophisticated in the past three years, against organisations of all sizes, and kinds, in all countries,” the Guardian said.

https://www.securityweek.com/guardian-confirms-personal-information-compromised-ransomware-attack

  • Ransomware Gang Releases Info Stolen from 14 UK Schools, Including Passport Scans

Another month, another release of personal information stolen from a school system. This time, it's a group of 14 schools in the United Kingdom.

Once again, the perpetrator appears to be Vice Society, which is well known for targeting educational systems in the US. As the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) pointed out in a bulletin from Sept. 6, "K-12 institutions may be seen as particularly lucrative targets due to the amount of sensitive student data accessible through school systems or their managed service providers."

The UK hack may have turned up even more confidential information than the Los Angeles school system breach last year. As the BBC reported on Jan. 6, "One folder marked 'passports' contains passport scans for pupils and parents on school trips going back to 2011, whereas another marked 'contract' contains contractual offers made to staff alongside teaching documents on muscle contractions."

Some prominent school cyber attacks in the US include public school districts in Chicago, Baltimore, and Los Angeles. A new study from digital learning platform Clever claims that one in four schools experienced a cyber-incident over the past year, and according to a new report from security software vendor Emsisoft, at least 45 school districts and 44 higher learning institutions suffered ransomware attacks in 2022.

Schools are an attractive target as they are typically data-rich and resource-poor. Without proper resources in terms of dedicated staffing and the necessary tools and training to protect against cyber-attacks, schools can be a soft target. Many of the 14 schools hit by this latest leak are colleges and universities, but primary and secondary schools were also hit, according to the BBC's list.

https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/vice-society-releases-info-stolen-uk-schools-passport-scans

  • The Dark Web’s Criminal Minds See Internet of Things as Next Big Hacking Prize

Cyber security experts say 2022 may have marked an inflection point due to the rapid proliferation of IoT (Internet of Things) devices.

Criminal groups buy and sell services, and one hot idea — a business model for a crime — can take off quickly when they realise that it works to do damage or to get people to pay. Attacks are evolving from those that shut down computers or stole data, to include those that could more directly wreak havoc on everyday life. IoT devices can be the entry points for attacks on parts of countries’ critical infrastructure, like electrical grids or pipelines, or they can be the specific targets of criminals, as in the case of cars or medical devices that contain software.

For the past decade, manufacturers, software companies and consumers have been rushing to the promise of Internet of Things devices. Now there are an estimated 17 billion in the world, from printers to garage door openers, each one packed with software (some of it open-source software) that can be easily hacked.

What many experts are anticipating is the day enterprising criminals or hackers affiliated with a nation-state figure out an easy-to-replicate scheme using IoT devices at scale. A group of criminals, perhaps connected to a foreign government, could figure out how to take control of many things at once – like cars, or medical devices. There have already been large-scale attacks using IoT, in the form of IoT botnets. In that case, actors leveraging unpatched vulnerabilities in IoT devices used control of those devices to carry out denial of service attacks against many targets. Those vulnerabilities are found regularly in ubiquitous products that are rarely updated.

In other words, the possibility already exists. It’s only a question of when a criminal or a nation decides to act in a way that targets the physical world at a large scale. There are a handful of companies, new regulatory approaches, a growing focus on cars as a particularly important area, and a new movement within the software engineering world to do a better job of incorporating cyber security from the beginning.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/09/the-dark-webs-criminal-minds-see-iot-as-the-next-big-hacking-prize.html

  • Corrupted File to Blame for Computer Glitch which Grounded Every US Flight

A corrupted file has been blamed for a glitch on the Federal Aviation Administration's computer system which saw every flight grounded across the US.

All outbound flights were grounded until around 9am Eastern Time (2pm GMT) on Wednesday as the FAA worked to restore its Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system, which alerts pilots of potential hazards along a flight route.

On Wednesday 4,948 flights within, into or out of the US had been delayed, according to flight tracker FlightAware.com, while 868 had been cancelled. Most delays were concentrated along the East Coast. Normal air traffic operations resumed gradually across the US following the outage to the NOTAM system that provides safety information to flight crews.

A corrupted file affected both the primary and the backup systems, a senior government official told NBC News on Wednesday night, adding that officials continue to investigate. Whilst Government officials said there was no evidence of a cyber attack, it shows the real world impacts that an outage or corrupted file can cause.

https://news.sky.com/story/all-flights-across-us-grounded-due-to-faa-computer-system-glitch-us-media-12784252

Threats

Ransomware, Extortion and Destructive Attacks

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Malware

Mobile

Denial of Service/DoS/DDOS

Internet of Things – IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Insurance

Dark Web

Software Supply Chain

Cloud/SaaS

Attack Surface Management

Identity and Access Management

Encryption

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Training, Education and Awareness

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Governance, Risk and Compliance

Careers, Working in Cyber and Information Security

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

Privacy, Surveillance and Mass Monitoring

Artificial Intelligence

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

Nation State Actors

Nation State Actors – Russia

Nation State Actors – China

Nation State Actors – Iran

Nation State Actors – Misc

Vulnerability Management

Applications Five Years or Older Likely to have Security Flaws - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

Patch Where it Hurts: Effective Vulnerability Management in 2023 (thehackernews.com)

70% of apps contain at least one security flaw after 5 years in production - Help Net Security

Rackspace Ransomware Incident Highlights Risks of Relying on Mitigation Alone (darkreading.com)

Does a hybrid model for vulnerability management make sense? • Graham Cluley

Vulnerabilities

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.

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