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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 05 May 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 05 May 2022

-Cyber Scams Cost Victims $6.9b-Plus Worldwide in 2021

-Bad Actors Are Maximizing Remote Everything

-New Hacker Group Pursuing Corporate Employees Focused on Mergers and Acquisitions

-FBI: Business Email Compromise: The $43 Billion Scam

-Disgruntled Employees Cashing in On Confidential Information Over Dark Web

-Google Sees More APTs Using Ukraine War-Related Themes

-Cryptocurrency Regulators Are Scrambling to Catch Up with Hackers Who Are Swiping Billions

-Tackling the Threats Posed by Shadow IT

-Hackers Used the Log4j Flaw to Gain Access Before Moving Across a Company's Network, Say Security Researchers

-This Sneaky Hacking Group Hid Inside Networks For 18 Months Without Being Detected

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

  • Cyber Scams Cost Victims $6.9b-Plus Worldwide in 2021

Cyber-scams cost victims around the globe at least $6.9 billion last year, according to the FBI's latest Internet Crime Report.

Since 2017, the bureau's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received an average of 552,000 complaints per year. This includes reports of extortion, identity theft, phishing, fraud, and a slew of other nefarious schemes that cost victims no less than $18.7 billion in losses over the five-year period.

Unsurprisingly, the volume of these crimes — and related costs — have grown every year; 2021 set records for the total number of complaints (847,376) as well as losses exceeding $6.9 billion, a jump from the $4.2 billion reported a year earlier.

As with earlier years, phishing attacks were by far the most commonly reported crimes, with 323,972 last year. A subset of this category, business email compromise (BEC), is proving very lucrative and cost victims almost $2.4 billion from 19,954 victims, according to the Feds.

BEC involves a cyber criminal compromising a legitimate email account, and then tricking a business or individual into transferring funds, sending employees' personal data, or unlocking cryptocurrency wallets. The fraudster then steals the cash, drains the crypto wallet and/or sells employees' identities and credentials on the dark web.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/05/fbi_cyber_scams/

  • Bad Actors Are Maximising Remote Everything

The rise of remote work and learning opened new opportunities for many people – as we’ve seen by the number of people who have moved to new places or adapted to “workcations.” Cyber criminals are taking advantage of the same opportunities – just in a different way. Evaluating the prevalence of malware variants by region reveals a sustained interest by cyber adversaries in maximising the remote work and learning attack vector.

As hybrid work and learning become embedded paradigms in our culture, there are fewer layers of protection between malware and would-be victims. And bad actors are gaining access to more tools to help them pull off their nefarious deeds – like exploit kits. At the same time, the attack surface has rapidly expanded and continues to do so.

That means enterprises must take a work-from-anywhere approach to their security. They need to deploy solutions capable of following, enabling and protecting users no matter where they are located. They need security on the endpoint (EDR) combined with zero trust network access (ZTNA) approaches.

https://threatpost.com/bad-actors-remote-everything/179458/

  • This Sneaky Hacking Group Hid Inside Networks For 18 Months Without Being Detected

A previously undisclosed cyber-espionage group is using clever techniques to breach corporate networks and steal information related to mergers, acquisitions and other large financial transactions – and they've been able to remain undetected by victims for periods of more than 18 months.

Detailed by cyber security researchers at Mandiant, who've named it UNC3524, the hacking operation has been active since at least December 2019 and uses a range of advanced methods to infiltrate and maintain persistence on compromised networks that set it apart from most other hacking groups. These methods include the ability to immediately re-infect environments after access is removed. It's currently unknown how initial access is achieved. 

One of the reasons UNC3524 is so successful at maintaining persistence on networks for such a long time is because it installs backdoors on applications and services that don't support security tools, such as anti-virus or endpoint protection.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-sneaky-hacking-group-hid-inside-networks-for-18-months-without-being-detected/

  • FBI: Business Email Compromise: The $43 Billion Scam

According to the FBI, business email compromise (BEC) and email account compromise (EAC) losses have surpassed $43 billion globally. BEC/EAC is a sophisticated scam that targets both businesses and individuals who perform legitimate transfer-of-funds requests.

The BEC/EAC scam continues to grow and evolve, targeting small local businesses to larger corporations, and personal transactions. Between July 2019 and December 2021, there was a 65% increase in identified global exposed losses, meaning the dollar loss that includes both actual and attempted loss in United States dollars.

The following information was derived from filings with financial institutions between June 2016 and December 2021:

  • Domestic and international incidents: 241,206

  • Domestic and international exposed dollar loss: $43,312,749,946

The following BEC/EAC statistics were reported in victim complaints to the IC3 between October 2013 and December 2021:

  • Total US victims: 116,401

  • Total US exposed dollar loss: $14,762,978,290

  • Total non-US victims: 5,260

  • Total non-US exposed dollar loss: $1,277,131,099

https://informationsecuritybuzz.com/expert-comments/fbi-business-email-compromise-the-43-billion-scam/

  • Disgruntled Employees Cashing in On Confidential Information Over Dark Web

Disgruntled employees are making hundreds of thousands of dollars by leaking confidential information over a new platform on the so-called dark web, cyber researchers have said.

Hidden in a part of the internet that is only accessible using special software, the Industrial Spy platform promises huge payouts to staff willing to hand over "dirty secrets" to competitors, according to experts at intelligence business Cyberint.

Industrial Spy currently has data on twelve companies from a range of industries available to people who sign up, Cyberint said.

The platform recently managed to sell two tranches of company data for $400,000 (£318,236) and $750,000 each.

An individual has advertised the platform to potential purchasers of the data on the dark web.

The post said: "With our information you could refuse partnership with an unscrupulous partner, reveal dirty secrets of your competitors and earn millions of dollars using insider information."

Cyber criminals have long approached employees individually and offered a bribe to release sensitive information such as internal data and passwords to access computer systems.

But this new platform allows employees to act on their own initiative to steal data and sell it online.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/05/02/disgruntled-employees-cashing-confidential-information-dark/

  • Google Sees More APTs Using Ukraine War-Related Themes

Researchers at Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) say the number of advanced threat actors using Ukraine war-related themes in cyber attacks went up in April with a surge in malware attacks targeting critical infrastructure.

According to Google, known state-backed APT groups from China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, along with various unattributed groups have been using war-related themes in phishing and malware distribution campaigns.

Looking at the cyber attacks that target Eastern Europe, however, a new Google report notes there hasn't been a significant change from the normal levels of activity, despite the increased adoption of lures related to the Ukraine war.

https://www.securityweek.com/google-sees-more-apts-using-ukraine-war-related-themes

  • Cryptocurrency Regulators Are Scrambling to Catch Up with Hackers Who Are Swiping Billions

Just four months in, 2022 has been a banner year for hackers, and fraudsters targeting the industry have swindled more than $1 billion from cryptocurrency investors, according to separate estimates by cryptocurrency analysis firm Immunefi.

The rise in fraud has put US regulators on the offensive. The US Securities and Exchange Commission, which has positioned itself as the industry’s main regulator and enforcer, announced on Tuesday that it was going to double its staff working to resources to combat the rise in fraud.

“Crypto markets have exploded in recent years, with retail investors bearing the brunt of abuses in this space. Meanwhile, cyber-related threats continue to pose existential risks to our financial markets and participants,” Gurbir Grewal, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement said in a statement. “The bolstered Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit will be at the forefront of protecting investors and ensuring fair and orderly markets in the face of these critical challenges.”

https://www.cyberscoop.com/cryptocurrency-sec-cybersecurity-bitcoin-regulation-enforcement/

  • Tackling the Threats Posed by Shadow IT

While remote technologies have allowed businesses to shift their workforces online, this flexibility has created a swathe of challenges for IT teams who must provide a robust security framework for their organisation – encompassing all the personnel and devices within their remit. In addition to the ever-increasing number of personal devices, corporate devices and programs, more and more applications are moving to the cloud as workloads become increasingly distributed across public clouds and software-as-a-service (SaaS).

This means IT teams are even harder pressed to secure and manage the complex environments they operate in. The unsanctioned use of corporate IT systems, devices, and software – known as shadow IT – has increased significantly during the shift to remote work, and recent research found almost one in seven (68%) are concerned about information security because of employees following shadow IT practices.

Shadow IT can allow hackers to steal employee and customer identities, company intellectual property, and cause companies to fail compliance audits. It can also open the door to enterprises accidentally breaking laws and exposes organisations to data exfiltration, malware, and phishing.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/05/05/shadow-it-risk/

  • Hackers Used the Log4j Flaw to Gain Access Before Moving Across a Company's Network, Say Security Researchers

State-backed hacking groups are some of the most advanced cyber attack operations in the world - but criminals don't need to rely on them if they can exploit unpatched cyber security flaws.

A North Korean hacking and cyber espionage operation breached the network of an engineering firm linked to military and energy organisations by exploiting a cyber security vulnerability in Log4j.

First detailed in December, the vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228) allows attackers to remotely execute code and gain access to systems that use Log4j, a widely used Java logging library.

The ubiquitous nature of Log4j meant cyber security agencies urged organisations globally to apply security updates as quickly as possible, but months on from disclosure, many are still vulnerable to the flaw.

According to cyber security researchers at Symantec, one of those companies that was still vulnerable was an undisclosed engineering firm that works in the energy and military sectors. That vulnerability resulted in the company being breached when attackers exploited the gap on a public-facing VMware View server in February this year. From there, attackers were able to move around the network and compromise at least 18 computers.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/heres-how-hackers-used-the-log4j-flaw-to-gain-access-before-moving-across-a-companys-network/

  • New Hacker Group Pursuing Corporate Employees Focused on Mergers and Acquisitions

[Explanatory note from Black Arrow: When a group of cyber attackers is identified by the cyber security community, it is given a code name usually composed of letters and digits. These groups are also sometimes referred to as APTs., or Advanced Persistent Threats, because the groups are highly skilled and are persistent in their attacks; they are often supported by their state government].

A newly discovered suspected espionage threat actor has been targeting employees focusing on mergers and acquisitions as well as large corporate transactions to facilitate bulk email collection from victim environments.

Mandiant is tracking the activity cluster under the uncategorised moniker UNC3524, citing a lack of evidence linking it to an existing group. However, some of the intrusions are said to mirror techniques used by different Russia-based hacking crews like APT28 and APT29.

"The high level of operational security, low malware footprint, adept evasive skills, and a large Internet of Things (IoT) device botnet set this group apart and emphasise the 'advanced' in Advanced Persistent Threat," the threat intelligence firm said in a report.

The initial access route is unknown but upon gaining a foothold, attack chains involving UNC3524 culminate in the deployment of a novel backdoor called QUIETEXIT for persistent remote access for as long as 18 months without getting detected in some cases.

https://thehackernews.com/2022/05/new-hacker-group-pursuing-corporate.html

Threats

Ransomware

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Malware

Mobile

IoT

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs

Supply Chain

Open Source

Passwords & Credential Stuffing

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

Nation State Actors

Nation State Actors – Russia

Nation State Actors – China

Nation State Actors – North Korea

Nation State Actors – Misc

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 Admin Black Arrow Admin

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 29 April 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 29 April 2022

-Ransomware Attacks Surged to New Highs in 2021

-NCSC and Allies Publish Advisory on The Most Commonly Exploited Vulnerabilities In 2021

-Network Attacks Increased to a 3-Year High

-World War Three Is Far More Likely Than Anyone Is Prepared to Admit

-The Ransomware Crisis Deepens, While Data Recovery Stalls

-Ransoms Only Make Up 15% of Ransomware Costs

-Defending Your Business Against Russian Cyber Warfare

-5-Year Vulnerability Trends Are Both Surprising and Sadly Predictable

-Cisco Talos Observes 'Novel Increase' in APT Activity in Q1

-Deepfakes Set to Be Used in Organised Crime

-Smart Contract Developers Not Really Focused on Security. Who Knew?

-Tractor-Trailer Brake Controllers Vulnerable to Remote Hacker Attacks

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

  • Ransomware Attacks Surged to New Highs in 2021

Ransomware attacks are getting more frequent, more successful and more expensive.

Sixty-six percent of the organisations surveyed by Sophos for its annual State of Ransomware report admitted that they were hit with a ransomware attack last year, up from 37% in 2020. And 65 percent of those attacks were successful in encrypting their victims' data, up from 54 percent the year before.

On top of that, the average ransom paid by organisations for their most significant ransomware attack grew by nearly five times, to just over $800,000, while the number of organisations that paid ransoms of $1 million or more tripled to 11%, the UK-based cybersecurity company said. For its annual report, Sophos surveyed 5,600 organisations from 31 countries. A total of 965 of those polled shared details of their ransomware attacks.

The numbers aren't a huge surprise after a year of epic ransomware attacks that shut down everything from a major oil pipeline to one of the largest meat processors in the US. While both Colonial Pipeline and JBS US Holdings paid millions in ransom, the attacks paused their operations long enough to spark panic buying and drive prices up for consumers.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/ransomware-attacks-surged-to-new-highs-in-2021/#ftag=CAD-09-10aai5b

  • NCSC and Allies Publish Advisory on The Most Commonly Exploited Vulnerabilities In 2021

The UK and international partners have published an advisory for public and private sector organisations on the 15 most commonly exploited vulnerabilities in 2021.

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a part of GCHQ, has jointly published an advisory with agencies in the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, showing that malicious cyber actors aggressively targeted newly disclosed critical software vulnerabilities across the public and private sectors worldwide.

Threat actors often geared their efforts towards targeting internet-facing systems, such as email and virtual private network (VPN) servers.

It also indicates that, to a lesser extent, actors continue to exploit publicly known – and often dated – vulnerabilities, some of which were routinely exploited in 2020 or earlier.

The advisory directs organisations to follow specific mitigation advice to protect against exploitation, which includes applying timely patches, using a centralised patch management system and replacing any software no longer supported by the vendor.

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/news/ncsc-and-allies-publish-advisory-on-the-most-commonly-exploited-vulnerabilities-in-2021

  •  Network Attacks Increased to a 3-Year High

WatchGuard Technologies’ Internet Security Report for Q4 2021 revealed all threats were up, whether they’re network attacks or malware.

When the pandemic started, their research team saw a big drop in malware being detected by network security devices. In this period, tech based jobs moved to remote work, which meant a lot of users were no longer browsing the internet and encountering bad things through the network security control at the office. That’s probably why network detection for malware dropped quite a bit at the beginning of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, network attacks continued to rise even through the pandemic, since the servers still lived at the offices and the cloud, and network security still protected those.

The big takeaway in Q4 2021 is that malware rose significantly, returning to normal levels. The reason might be the holiday season, but it’s most probably the fact that, at the end of last year, a lot of tech-based offices started reopening and offering employees to come back in, and thus there’s a bigger chance for network security controls to catch malware.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/04/25/network-attacks-q4-2021-video/

  • World War Three Is Far More Likely Than Anyone Is Prepared to Admit

A Telegraph article looks at the Russia-Ukraine conflict and considers risks posed by new weapons and how the West’s failure to understand our enemies are raising the chances of a horrific conflict.

The fact is the world is becoming more, rather than less, dangerous: there are plenty of other wannabe Putins, and they are better equipped to sow death and destruction. Not only traditional and nuclear threats but bioterrorism is a growing worry and a major cyber attack or assault on transatlantic cables could be so devastating to an internet-based economy as to be seen as a declaration of war.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/27/world-war-three-far-likely-anyone-prepared-admit/

  • The Ransomware Crisis Deepens, While Data Recovery Stalls

Higher probabilities of attack, soaring ransoms, and less chance of getting data back — the ransomware plague gets worse, and cyber insurance fails to be a panacea.

When it comes to ransomware, more companies are seeing attacks and have had data encrypted, according to research out this week. And even though more companies are backing up or paying ransom demands, less data was recovered in 2021 compared with the previous year.

For instance, in its "State of Ransomware 2022" report, cybersecurity firm Sophos found that 66% of surveyed companies had encountered ransomware in 2021, with two-thirds of those firms — or 43% overall — suffering from an actual attack that encrypted data. In its previous report covering 2020, the frequency of successful attacks was much smaller, with about 20% overall resulting in encryption.

The deteriorating cyberthreat landscape is largely due to the evolution of ransomware groups and their techniques, says Sean Gallagher, senior threat researcher with Sophos.

"Over the past couple of years, there has been a massive transition from ransomware to ransomware-as-a-service," he says. "There are very well-established [groups] that are doing these attacks, and as a result, the number of attacks companies are seeing has gone up."

Ransomware continues to plague companies with business-disrupting attacks and defy efforts by cybersecurity experts to rein in the operators behind the criminals’ campaigns. Not only did the portion of companies affected by ransomware more than double last year, but the mean ransomware payment more than quadrupled to $812,000, according to the Sophos report.

https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/ransomware-crisis-deepens-data-recovery-stalls

  • Ransoms Only Make Up 15% of Ransomware Costs

New research suggests that paying ransoms is only the tip of the cost iceberg when it comes to ransomware attacks.

Researchers at Check Point have revealed that the collateral damage of ransomware attacks make up costs roughly seven times higher than the ransom demanded by threat actors.

The costs include financial implications caused by incident response efforts, system restoration, legal fees, monitoring costs and the overall impact of business disruption.

Ransomware attacks are an increasingly popular attack method, typically involving stealing data from the victim, encrypting data and forcing them to pay for decryption and avoiding a data leak.

Check Point said in the report:

“Most other losses, including response and restoration costs, legal fees, monitoring costs, etc., are applied whether the extortion demand was paid or not. The year 2020 showed that the average total cost of a ransomware attack was more than seven times higher than the average ransom paid.”

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2022/04/28/ransoms-only-make-up-15-of-ransomware-costs/

  • Defending Your Business Against Russian Cyber Warfare

We are likely to see Russian state sponsored attacks escalate as the West continues to increase sanctions and support Ukraine.

The eyes of the world are focused on the war in Ukraine. As expected, Russia has targeted Ukraine with cyber attacks first, and much of the West is wondering when Russia will also retaliate against countries supporting Ukraine. Most agree that some attacks are already in progress, and the attacks against western entities are sure to escalate as the war continues and more sanctions are put in place. 

The first wave of companies targeted by the Russian state, and threat actors it supports, will be those that suspend Russian operations or take direct action to support Ukraine. Information operations and subversion against these companies will likely ensue. In the event of Russian cyberwarfare, reviewing the industries, styles, and objectives of their attacks can help organisations to prepare and implement more robust defences. These defences include actions both inside and outside an enterprise's perimeter.

https://www.securityweek.com/defending-your-business-against-russian-cyberwarfare

  • 5-Year Vulnerability Trends Are Both Surprising and Sadly Predictable

What 5,800+ pentests show us: Companies have been struggling with the same known and preventable security bugs year over year. Bandwidth stands at the heart of the problem.

Cyber crime can cause major disruption when it comes to the sustainability and long-term success of companies. Teams want to have robust security but often struggle to meet that objective. It's crucial for security professionals to leverage insights into emerging trends in cybersecurity to pinpoint which vulnerabilities put organisations at the greatest risk, and Cobalt's "State of Pentesting" reports explore how to achieve efficiency to strengthen security.

The "State of Pentesting 2022" surveyed 602 cybersecurity and software development professionals and analysed data from 2,380 pentests conducted over the course of 2021 to pull key insights that are relevant to security and development teams when it comes to fixing vulnerabilities.

As a result of the data collected, the top five most common vulnerability categories outlined in this year's "State of Pentesting" report include:

·       Server Security Misconfigurations

·       Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

·       Broken Access Control

·       Sensitive Data Exposure

·       Authentication and Sessions

Surprisingly — yet predictably — these vulnerability categories have stayed at the top of the list for at least the last five years in a row. They're also recognisable to those who are familiar with OWASP Top 10 list for Web Application Security Risks.

The majority of these findings are connected to missing configurations, outdated software, and a lack of access management controls — all common and easily preventable security flaws. So, what's holding companies back from preventing well-known security flaws? Why does this come as a surprise?

https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-threats/5-year-vulnerability-trends-are-both-surprising-and-sadly-predictable

  • Cisco Talos Observes 'Novel Increase' in APT Activity in Q1

Advanced persistent threat actors have been busy over the past few months, according to Cisco Talos.

The security vendor released its Quarterly Trends report, which examined incident response trends from engagements in the first quarter of 2022. While ransomware remained the top threat, as it has for the past two years now, Cisco observed a new trend of increased APT activity. The Cisco Talos Incident Response (CTIR) team attributed some of the increase to groups like Iranian state-sponsored Muddywater and China-based Mustang Panda.

One suspected Chinese APT, dubbed "Deep Panda," was connected to exploitation of the Log4j flaw that was discovered last year in the widely used Java logging tool. Log4j exploitation was the second most common threat for Q1 behind ransomware, indicating the bug is a growing threat despite a patch being available.

https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/news/252516380/Cisco-Talos-observes-novel-increase-in-APT-activity-in-Q1

  • Deepfakes Set to Be Used in Organised Crime

New research from Europol suggests that deepfakes will be used extensively in organised crime operations.

Europol has warned of a projected rise in the use of deepfake technology by organised crime organisations.

Deepfakes involve the use of artificial intelligence to create realistic audio and audio-visual content “that convincingly shows people saying or doing things they never did, or create personas that never existed in the first place.”

Law enforcement and the challenge of deepfakes is the first published analysis of the Europol Innovation Lab’s Observatory function, warning that law enforcement agencies must rapidly improve skills and technologies utilised by officers in order to keep up with criminal deepfake use.

The analysis report highlighted how deepfakes are used primarily in disinformation, non-consensual pornography and document fraud campaigns, which will grow more realistic in years to come.

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2022/04/29/deepfakes-set-to-be-used-in-organised-crime/

  • Smart Contract Developers Not Really Focused on Security. Who Knew?

"Smart contracts," which consist of self-executing code on a blockchain, are not nearly as smart as the label suggests.

They are at least as error-prone as any other software, where historically the error rate has been about one bug per hundred lines of code.

And they may be shoddier still due to disinterest in security among smart contract developers, and perhaps inadequate technical resources.

Multi-million dollar losses attributed to smart contract bugs – around $31m stolen from MonoX via smart contract exploit and ~$34m locked into a contract forever due to bad increment math, to name a few – illustrate the consequences.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/26/smart_contract_losses/

  • Tractor-Trailer Brake Controllers Vulnerable to Remote Hacker Attacks

We’ve been predicting this for a while now and the move to more and more connected systems, autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles, how long until someone is subject to threats to disconnect a vehicle’s brakes as they are driving along a motorway? Who wouldn’t pay the ransom demand in that scenario?

A report this week is related to articulated lorries but this is something that will be affecting all vehicles unless safeguards are put in place.

Researchers have analysed the cyber security of heavy vehicles and discovered that the brake controllers found on many tractor-trailers in North America are susceptible to remote hacker attacks.

The research was conducted by the US National Motor Freight Traffic Association (NMFTA), which is a non-profit organisation that represents roughly 500 motor freight carriers, in collaboration with Assured Information Security, Inc.

NMFTA has been analysing the cyber security of heavy vehicles since 2015 and it has periodically disclosed its findings. The latest report from the organisation came in early March, when the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) also issued an advisory to describe two vulnerabilities affecting trailer brake controllers.

The flaws described in the CISA advisory are related to the power line communications (PLC) between tractors and trailers, specifically the PLC4TRUCKS technology, which uses a standard named J2497 for bidirectional communications between the tractor and trailer without adding new wires.

https://www.securityweek.com/tractor-trailer-brake-controllers-vulnerable-remote-hacker-attacks

Threats

Ransomware

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Malware

Mobile

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

AML/CFT

Denial of Service DoS/DDoS

Cloud

Travel

Parental Controls and Child Safety

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

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 22 April 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 22 April 2022:

-Why Ransomware Attacks Prefer Small Business Targets Rather Than Rich Enterprises

-Ransomware Plagues Finance Sector as Cyber Attacks Get More Complex

-76% of Organisations Worldwide Expect to Suffer a Cyber Attack This Year

-Most Email Security Approaches Fail to Block Common Threats

-Financial Leaders Grappling with More Aggressive and Sophisticated Attack Methods

-Hackers Sneak Malware into Resumes Sent to Corporate Hiring Managers

-West Warns of Russian Cyber-Attacks As Concerns Rise Over Putin’s Nuclear Rhetoric

-Criminals Adopting New Methods To Bypass Improved Defences, Says Zscaler

-Cyber Criminals Are ‘Drinking the Tears’ Of Ukrainians

-Hackers For Hire Attempt to Destroy Hedge Fund Manager's Reputation

-New Threat Groups and Malware Families Emerging

-Economic Warfare: Attacks on Critical Infrastructure Part of Geopolitical Conflict

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

  • Why Ransomware Attacks Prefer Small Business Targets Rather Than Rich Enterprises

Enterprise businesses with 25,000 employees+ are less likely to get hit by a ransomware attack than smaller businesses — even though big companies typically can afford to pay higher ransoms, the 2022 CyberEdge Cyberthreat Defense Report concluded.

What explains hackers taking aim at small businesses more frequently than enterprise giants?  The answer: Damaging a critical infrastructure facility or similar disruptions are certain to catch the eye of federal law enforcement, or national governments — something that no hacker wants, CyberEdge said. Smaller to medium-sized firms, as it turns out, get hit more frequently by ransomware attacks, on average at roughly 70 percent, the report said.

Overall, some 71 percent of organisations have been bitten by ransomware in 2022, up a point and a half from last year and by 8.5 points in 2020. It’s companies of 10,000 to 24,999 employees that are the sweet spot for ransomware hackers, nearly 75 percent of which are victimised by cyber extortionists.

The extensive study, which surveyed 1,200 security decision makers and practitioners employed by companies of greater than 500 people in 17 countries across 19 industries, is geared to helping gauge their internal practices and investments against those of their counterparts in other parts of the world.

https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-research/why-ransomware-attacks-prefer-small-business-targets-rather-than-rich-enterprises/

  • Ransomware Plagues Finance Sector as Cyber Attacks Get More Complex

Cyber criminals have evolved from hacking wire transfers to targeting market data, as ransomware continues to hit financial firms, says a new VMware report. Here's what to do about it.

Ransomware plagues financial institutions as they face increasingly complex threats over previous years owing to the changing behaviour of cyber criminal cartels, according to VMware's latest Modern Bank Heists report.

This has happened as the cyber crime cartels have evolved beyond wire transfer frauds to target market strategies, take over brokerage accounts, and island-hop into banks, according to the report.

For the report, VMware surveyed 130 financial sector CISOs and security leaders from across different regions including North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Central and South America, and Africa.

Report findings were consistent with observations by other security experts. "The Secret Service, in its investigative capacity to protect the nation's financial payment systems and financial infrastructure, has seen an evolution and increase in complex cyber-enabled fraud," says Jeremy Sheridan, former assistant director at the US Secret Service. "The persistent, inadequate security of systems connected to the internet provides opportunity and methodology."

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3657875/ransomware-plagues-finance-sector-as-cyberattacks-get-more-complex.html

  • 76% of Organisations Worldwide Expect to Suffer a Cyber Attack This Year

Ransomware, phishing/social engineering, denial of service (DoS) attacks, and the business fallout of a data breach rank as the top concerns of global organisations, a new study shows.

The newly published Cyber Risk Index, a study by Trend Micro and the Ponemon Institute, shows that more than three-quarters of global organisations expect to suffer a cyber attack in the next 12 months — 25% of which say an attack is "very likely."

More than 80% of the 3,400 CISO and IT professionals and managers surveyed say their organisations were hit with one or more successful cyber attacks in the past 12 months, and 35% suffered seven or more attacks, according to the report, which covers the second half of 2021.

https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/76-of-organizations-worldwide-expect-to-suffer-a-cyberattack-this-year

  • Most Email Security Approaches Fail to Block Common Threats

A full 89 percent of organisations experienced one or more successful email breaches during the previous 12 months, translating into big-time costs.

On overwhelming number of security teams believe their email security systems to be ineffective against the most serious inbound threats, including ransomware.

That’s according to a survey of business customers using Microsoft 365 for email commissioned by Cyren and conducted by Osterman Research, which examined concerns with phishing, business email compromise (BEC), and ransomware threats, attacks that became costly incidents, and preparedness to deal with attacks and incidents.

“Security team managers are most concerned that current email security solutions do not block serious inbound threats (particularly ransomware), which requires time for response and remediation by the security team before dangerous threats are triggered by users,” according to the report, released Wednesday.

Less than half of those surveyed said that their organisations can block delivery of email threats. And, correspondingly, less than half of organisations rank their currently deployed email security solutions as effective.

https://threatpost.com/email-security-fail-block-threats/179370/

  • Financial Leaders Grappling with More Aggressive and Sophisticated Attack Methods

VMware released a report which takes the pulse of the financial industry’s top CISOs and security leaders on the changing behaviour of cyber criminal cartels and the defensive shift of the financial sector.

The report found that financial institutions are facing increased destructive attacks and falling victim to ransomware more than in years past, as sophisticated cyber crime cartels evolve beyond wire transfer fraud to now target market strategies, take over brokerage accounts and island hop into banks.

In the Modern Bank Heists report, 63% of financial institutions admitted experiencing an increase in destructive attacks, with cyber criminals leveraging this method as a means to burn evidence as part of a counter incident response.

Additionally, 74% experienced at least one ransomware attack over the past year, with 63% paying the ransom. When asked about the nation-state actors behind these attacks, the majority of financial instructions stated that Russia posed the greatest concern, as geopolitical tension continues to escalate in cyberspace.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/04/21/cybercriminal-cartels-financial-sector/

  • Hackers Sneak Malware into Resumes Sent to Corporate Hiring Managers

A new set of phishing attacks delivering the ‘more_eggs’ malware has been observed striking corporate hiring managers with bogus resumes as an infection vector, a year after potential candidates looking for work on LinkedIn were lured with weaponised job offers.

"This year the more_eggs operation has flipped the social engineering script, targeting hiring managers with fake resumes instead of targeting jobseekers with fake job offers," eSentire's research and reporting lead, Keegan Keplinger, said in a statement.

The Canadian cyber security company said it identified and disrupted four separate security incidents, three of which occurred at the end of March. Targeted entities include a US-based aerospace company, an accounting business located in the UK, a law firm, and a staffing agency, both based out of Canada.

The malware, suspected to be the handiwork of a threat actor called Golden Chickens (aka Venom Spider), is a stealthy, modular backdoor suite capable of stealing valuable information and conducting lateral movement across the compromised network.

"More_eggs achieves execution by passing malicious code to legitimate windows processes and letting those windows processes do the work for them," Keplinger said. The goal is to leverage the resumes as a decoy to launch the malware and sidestep detection.

https://thehackernews.com/2022/04/hackers-sneak-moreeggs-malware-into.html

  • West Warns of Russian Cyber Attacks as Concerns Rise Over Putin’s Nuclear Rhetoric

Cyber crime groups have publicly pledged support for Russia, western officials worry about Putin’s reliance on nuclear threats and the battle for Mariupol in Ukraine grinds on.

The US and four of its closest allies have warned that “evolving intelligence” shows that Russia is contemplating cyber attacks on countries backing Ukraine, as the Kremlin’s frustration grows at its failure to make military gains.

Vladimir Putin used the launch on Wednesday of a powerful new Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), capable of carrying ten or more warheads, to make nuclear threats against western countries.

The Sarmat has long been in development and test flights were initially due to start in 2017. The Pentagon confirmed that the US had been given notice of the test and was not alarmed. Western officials are more concerned by the increasing emphasis Moscow puts on its nuclear arsenal as its conventional forces have faltered in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian army continued to put up resistance in the besieged and devastated city of Mariupol, but Putin’s Chechen ally, Ramzan Kadyrov, predicted that the last stand of the port’s defenders at the Azovstal steel works would fall on Thursday.

The Kremlin has made repeated threats against the many countries that have been supplying Ukraine’s army with modern weapons, and members of the “Five Eyes” intelligence sharing network – the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – predicted Moscow could also work with cyber crime groups to launch attacks on governments, institutions and businesses.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/21/west-warns-of-russian-cyber-attacks-as-concerns-rise-over-putins-nuclear-rhetoric

  • Criminals Adopting New Methods To Bypass Improved Defences, Says Zscaler

The number of phishing attacks worldwide jumped 29 percent last year as threat actors countered stronger enterprise defences with newer methods, according to researchers with Zscaler's ThreatLabz research team.

Cyber criminals have adapted to multi-factor authentication (MFA), employee security awareness training, and security controls by broadening who and where they will attack.

While the United States remained the country with the most phishing attempts, others are seeing faster growth in the number of incidents – exploiting new vectors like SMS and lowering the barrier of entry for launching attacks through pre-built tools made available on the market.

"Phishing attacks continue to remain one of the most prevalent attack vectors, often serving as a starting point for more advanced next stage attacks that may result in a large-scale breach," Deepen Desai, CISO and vice president of security research and operations at Zscaler, told The Register.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/20/phishing-attempts-on-rise-zscaler/

  • Cyber Criminals Are ‘Drinking the Tears’ of Ukrainians

In biology, when an insect drinks the tears of a large creature, it is called lachryphagy. And in cyberspace, malicious actors are likewise “drinking tears” by exploiting humanitarian concerns about the war in Ukraine for profit. Different forms of deception include tricking people into donating to bogus charities, clicking on Ukraine-themed malicious links and attachments, and even impersonating officials to extort payment for rescuing loved ones.

It is an unfortunate reality that cyber opportunists are engaging in lachryphagy to exploit humanitarian concerns about the war for profit or data collection. To date, one of the largest cryptocurrency scams involving fraudulent Ukrainian relief payments totalled $50 million in March, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Immediately following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, cybersecurity companies warned the public that criminals were preying on Ukrainian relief fundraising efforts with cryptocurrency scams. Bitdefender Labs reports that cyber criminals have impersonated Ukrainian government entities and charitable organisations such as UNICEF, and the Australian humanitarian agency, Act for Peace. “Some [scammers] are even pretending to be Wladimir Klitschko, whose brother Vitali is mayor of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv,” according to the BBC.

https://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/3273636-cyber-criminals-are-drinking-the-tears-of-ukrainians/?rl=1

  • Hackers For Hire Attempt to Destroy Hedge Fund Manager's Reputation

Hackers bombarded a British hedge fund manager with 3,000 emails and fake news stories about his mortgage in an effort to destroy his reputation after being hired by a corporate rival.

Criminals even sought to gain personal information about Matthew Earl by pretending to be his sister in a three-year campaign when he raised concerns over the controversial German payments company Wirecard.

Mr Earl, a former City analyst who runs the hedge fund ShadowFall, said he was targeted by a group called Dark Basin.

This group has been linked to Aviram Azari, who this week pleaded guilty in New York to a conspiracy to target journalists and critics of Wirecard using phishing emails.

Mr Earl said the hacking attempts started in 2016 after ShadowFall, nicknamed the “dark destroyer” in the City, criticised the financial performance of Wirecard. The German company was later mired in a series of accounting scandals and went bust.

He said: “I was being sent very targeted emails, which were crafted with personal information about my interests, friends and family’s details. They were very specific.”

Mr Earl received news stories that appeared to be from media outlets such as Reuters and Bloomberg. Another email appeared to be sent by his sister, sharing family photographs, he added.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/04/21/reign-terror-hackers-hire-ramp-corporate-espionage/

  • New Threat Groups and Malware Families Emerging

Mandiant announced the findings of an annual report that provides timely data and insights based on frontline investigations and remediations of high-impact cyber attacks worldwide. The 2022 report––which tracks investigation metrics between October 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021—reveals over 1,100 new threat groups and 733 new malware families.

The report also notes a realignment and retooling of China cyber espionage operations to align with the implementation of China’s 14th Five-Year Plan in 2021. The report warns that the national-level priorities included in the plan “signal an upcoming increase in China-nexus actors conducting intrusion attempts against intellectual property or other strategically important economic concerns, as well as defence industry products and other dual-use technologies over the next few years.”

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/04/22/adversaries-innovating-and-adapting/

Economic Warfare: Attacks on Critical Infrastructure Part of Geopolitical Conflict

We’ve known for years that since at least March of 2016, Russian government threat actors have been targeting multiple U.S. critical infrastructure sectors including the energy, nuclear, commercial facilities, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing sectors. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), and other agencies have acknowledged this for quite some time in many of their technical alerts and statements.

In the intervening years, with the acceleration of digital transformation, cyber criminals and nation-state actors have increasingly set their sights on these sectors. The convergence of physical and digital assets brings competitive advantage but also inevitable risks. Attacks against hospitals, oil pipelines, food supply chains, and other critical infrastructure, have brought into sharp focus the vulnerability of cyber-physical systems (CPS) and the impact on lives and livelihoods when they are disrupted. Now, overwhelming signs indicate critical infrastructure companies are in the bullseye of geopolitical conflict.

https://www.securityweek.com/economic-warfare-attacks-critical-infrastructure-part-geopolitical-conflict

Threats

Ransomware

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Malware

Mobile

BYOD

IoT

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Insurance

Dark Web

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Cloud

Passwords & Credential Stuffing

Digital Transformation

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

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 15 April 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 15 April 2022:

-Cyber Security Is Getting Harder: More Threats, More Complexity, Fewer People

-Terrible Cloud Security Is Leaving the Door Open for Hackers. Here's What You're Doing Wrong

-More Organisations Are Paying the Ransom. Why?

-Cyber Attack Puts City Firms on High Alert To Bolster Defences

-More Than 60% of Organisations Suffered a Breach in the Past 12 Months

-Account Takeover Poised to Surpass Malware as The No. 1 Security Concern

-Security Research Reveals 42% Rise In New Ransomware Programs In 2021

-Fraudsters Stole £58m with Remote Access Trojans (RATs) in 2021

-As State-Backed Cyber Threats Grow, Here's How the World Is Reacting

-Q1 Reported Data Compromises Up 14% Over 2021

-Europol Announces Operation to Hit Russian Sanctions-Evaders

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

  • Cyber Security Is Getting Harder: More Threats, More Complexity, Fewer People

Splunk and Enterprise Strategy Group released a global research report that examines the security issues facing the modern enterprise. More than 1,200 security leaders participated in the survey, revealing they’ve seen an increase in cyber attacks while their teams are facing widening talent gaps.

According to the report, 65% of respondents say they have seen an increase in attempted cyber attacks. In addition, many have been directly impacted by data breaches and costly ransomware attacks, which have left security teams exhausted:

·       49% of organisations say they have suffered a data breach over the past two years, an increase from 39% a year earlier.

·       79% of respondents say they’ve encountered ransomware attacks, and 35% admit that one or more of those attacks led them to lose access to data and systems.

·       59% of security teams say they had to devote significant time and resources to remediation, an increase from 42% a year ago.

·       54% of respondents report that their business-critical applications have suffered from unplanned outages related to cyber security incidents on at least a monthly basis, with a median of 12 outages per year. The median time to recover from unplanned downtime tied to cyber security incidents is 14 hours. Respondents estimated the cost of this downtime averaged about $200,000 per hour.

·       64% of security professionals have stated that it’s challenging to keep up with new security requirements, up from 49% a year ago.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/04/13/modern-enterprise-security-issues/

  • Terrible Cloud Security Is Leaving the Door Open for Hackers. Here's What You're Doing Wrong

A rise in hybrid work and a shift to cloud platforms has changed how businesses operate - but it's also leaving them vulnerable to cyber attacks.

Cloud applications and services are a prime target for hackers because poor cyber security management and misconfigured services are leaving them exposed to the internet and vulnerable to simple cyber attacks.

Analysis of identity and access management (IAM) polices taking into account hundreds of thousands of users in 18,000 cloud environments across 200 organisations by cyber security researchers at Palo Alto Networks found that cloud accounts and services are leaving open doors for cyber criminals to exploit – and putting businesses and users at risk.

The global pandemic pushed organisations and employees towards new ways of remote and hybrid working, with the aid of cloud services and applications. While beneficial to businesses and employees, it also created additional cyber security risks – and malicious hackers know this.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/terrible-cloud-security-is-leaving-the-door-open-for-hackers-heres-what-youre-doing-wrong/

  • More Organisations Are Paying the Ransom. Why?

Most organisations (71%) have been hit by ransomware in 2021, and most of those (63%) opted for paying the requested ransom, the 2022 Cyberthreat Defense Report (CDR) by the CyberEdge Group has shown.

The research company says that possible explanations for the steady yearly rise of the percentage of organisations that decided to pay the ransom may include: the threat of exposing exfiltrated data, increased confidence for data recovery, and the fact that many organisations find that paying a ransom is significantly less costly than system downtime, customer disruption, and potential lawsuits.

“72% of ransom-paying victims recovered their data [in 2021], up from 49% in 2017. This increased confidence for successful data recovery is often factored into the ransom-paying decision,” the company noted.

Similarly, BakerHostatler’s 2022 Data Security Incident Response Report says that in ransomware incidents the US-based law firm was called in to manage in 2021, ransomware groups provided decryptors and stuck to their promise to not publish stolen data 97% of the time.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/04/11/organizations-paying-ransom/

  • Cyber Attack Puts City Firms on High Alert to Bolster Defences

Experts warn a combination of 'ignorance and arrogance' makes City executives vulnerable to attacks.

City firms on high alert for cyber attacks were sent a clear warning recently, bolstering concerns of the potential for breaches from Russia.

Ince Group, the London-listed law firm, last month fell prey to hackers who infiltrated its computer systems and stole confidential data. The company's security systems detected the intrusion on March 13, prompting the IT team to shut down servers to try and prevent widespread damage.

But soon after, the hackers demanded a ransom for stolen data and threatened to publish it on the dark web if Ince Group, which has clients in the shipping, energy and healthcare sectors, didn't pay up.

The incident has intensified worries of possible breaches after warnings that City firms could be targeted by Russian hackers following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Julia O'Toole, chief executive of MyCena Security Solutions, says executives should be "very concerned" about any news of a cyber attack at a rival company.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/04/11/cyber-attack-puts-city-firms-high-alert-bolster-defences/

  • More Than 60% of Organisations Suffered a Breach in the Past 12 Months

Firms focus too narrowly on external attackers when it's insiders, third parties, and stolen assets that cause many breaches, new study shows.

The majority of companies — 63% — have suffered at least one breach in the past 12 months. The global average breach cost $2.4 million — a price tag that increases to $3.0 million for companies unprepared to respond to compromises.

The new data from Forrester Research, released on April 8 in a report titled "The 2021 State Of Enterprise Breaches," found that the number of breaches and the cost of breaches varied widely depending on the geographic location of the business and to what degree the organisation is prepared to respond to breaches. Companies in North America had the largest disparity between the haves and have-nots: While the average organisation required 38 days to find, eradicate, and recover from a breach, companies that failed to adequately prepare for security challenges took 62 days.

The difference in response resulted in a large difference in cost as well, with the average North American company paying $3.0 million to recover from a breach, a bill that rises to $4.0 million if the company suffered from a lack of incident-response preparation.

"The misalignment between the expectation and the reality of breaches has become very important," says Allie Mellen, an analyst with Forrester's Security and Risk group. "On a global scale, there is a big disparity of about $600,000 between those who are prepared to respond to a breach and those who are not."

https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/more-than-60-of-organizations-suffered-a-breach-in-the-past-12-months

  • Account Takeover Poised to Surpass Malware as The No. 1 Security Concern

As most researchers and financial executives can attest, virtually all types of fraud have dramatically risen over the past two years. However, attackers taking over legitimate financial accounts have become even more of a favourite with cyber criminals than most fraud schemes.

Many major recent research reports have pointed out that account takeover (ATO), a form of identity theft where bad actors access legitimate bank accounts, change the account information and passwords, and hijack a real customer’s account, has skyrocketed since last year. According to Javelin Research’s annual "Identity Fraud Study: The Virtual Battleground" report, account takeover increased by 90% to an estimated $11.4 billion in 2021 when compared with 2020 — representing roughly one-quarter of all identity fraud losses last year.

Like many types of financial fraud, cyber thieves are betting on the fact that if they attempt to seize a large number of legitimate accounts, eventually they will get a payoff.

Account takeovers are a numbers game, the more accounts that an organisation has, the bigger their risk that some of them will be compromised.

Account takeovers often piggyback off of previous attacks, making these crimes a way for hackers to make the most out of stolen information. Diskin pointed out that account takeovers most commonly happen when a password is “taken from another data leak and reused for different accounts. But there are a variety of risky scenarios that can lead to compromise.”

https://www.scmagazine.com/analysis/cybercrime/account-takeover-poised-to-surpass-malware-as-the-no-1-security-concern

  • Security Research Reveals 42% Rise in New Ransomware Programs In 2021

Critical infrastructure in the crosshairs: operational technology vulnerabilities jump 88% .

Threat intelligence analysts at Skybox Research Lab uncovered a 42% increase in new ransomware programs targeting known vulnerabilities in 2021. The Silicon Valley cyber security company released its annual 2022 Vulnerability and Threat Trends Report, revealing how quickly cyber criminals capitalise on new security weaknesses – shrinking the window that organisations have to remediate vulnerabilities ahead of an attack.

With 20,175 new vulnerabilities published in 2021, Skybox Research Lab witnessed the most vulnerabilities ever reported in a single year. And these new vulnerabilities are just the tip of the iceberg. The total number of vulnerabilities published over the last 10 years reached 166,938 in 2021 — a three-fold increase over a decade. These cumulative vulnerabilities, piling up year after year, represent an enormous aggregate risk, and they’ve left organisations struggling with a mountain of cyber security debt. As the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) highlights in its Top Routinely Exploited Vulnerabilities list, threat actors are routinely exploiting publicly disclosed vulnerabilities from years past.

The sheer volume of accumulated risks — hundreds of thousands or even millions of vulnerability instances within organisations — means they can’t possibly patch all of them. To prevent cyber security incidents, it is critical to prioritise exposed vulnerabilities that could cause the most significant disruption, then, apply appropriate remediation options including configuration changes or network segmentation to eliminate risk, even before patches are applied or in cases where patches aren’t available.

https://informationsecuritybuzz.com/study-research/skybox-security-research-reveals-42-rise-in-new-ransomware-programs-in-2021/

  • Fraudsters Stole £58m with Remote Access Trojans (RATs) in 2021

2021 saw victims of Remote Access Tool (RAT) scams lose £58m in 2021, official UK police figures show.

RAT scams involve scammers taking control of a victim’s device, typically in order to access bank accounts.

Some 20,144 victims fell for this type of scam in 2021, averaging around £2800 stolen per incident.

Typically, RAT attacks begin with a victim being inundated with pop-ups claiming there is a problem with the computer. Users are often then asked to call a “hotline” number, when a scammer will persuade them to download a RAT.

RAT scams are often compared to the classic “tech support” scams. Modern RAT scams are typically more devious, however, with scammers often cold-calling their victims pretending to work for their bank and claiming that they need computer access to investigate a fraudulent transaction.

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2022/04/11/fraudsters-stole-58m-with-rats-in-2021/

  • As State-Backed Cyber Threats Grow, Here's How the World Is Reacting

With the ongoing conflict in Eurasia, cyber warfare is inevitably making its presence felt. The fight is not only being fought on the fields. There is also a big battle happening in cyberspace. Several cyber-attacks have been reported over the past months.

Notably, cyber attacks backed by state actors are becoming prominent. There have been reports of a rise of ransomware and other malware attacks such as Cyclops Blink, HermeticWiper, and BlackCat. These target businesses as well as government institutions and nonprofit organisations. There have been cases of several attempts to shut down online communications and IT infrastructure.

The ongoing list of significant cyber incidents curated by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) shows that the number of major incidents in January 2022 is 100% higher compared to the same period in the previous year. With the recent activities in cyberspace impacted by the emergence of the geopolitical tumult in February, it is not going to be surprising to see an even more dramatic rise in the number of significant incidents.

https://thehackernews.com/2022/04/as-state-backed-cyber-threats-grow.html

  • Q1 Reported Data Compromises Up 14% Over 2021

The Identity Theft Resource Center published a First Quarter 2022 Data Breach Analysis which found that Q1 of 2022 began with the highest number of publicly reported data compromises in the past three years.

Publicly reported data compromises totalled 404 through March 31, 2022, a 14 percent increase compared to Q1 2021.

This is the third consecutive year when the number of total data compromises increased compared to Q1 of the previous year. It also represents the highest number of Q1 data compromises since 2020.

https://informationsecuritybuzz.com/expert-comments/q1-reported-data-compromises-up-14-over-2021/

  • Europol Announces Operation to Hit Russian Sanctions-Evaders

European police have announced a major new operation designed to crack down on Russian oligarchs and businesses looking to circumvent sanctions.

Operation Oscar will run for at least a year as an umbrella initiative that will feature many separate investigations, Europol explained.

The policing organisation’s European Financial and Economic Crime Centre will work to exchange information and intelligence with partners and provide operational support in financial crime investigations.

A key focus appears to be on illicit flows of money, which Russian individuals and entities will be trying to move around the region in order to bypass sanctions imposed since President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Europol will centralise and analyse all information contributed under this operation to identify international links, criminal groups and suspects, as well as new criminal trends and patterns,” Europol said.

“Europol will further provide tailor-made analytical support to investigations, as well as operational coordination, forensics and technical expertise, and financial support to the relevant national authorities.”

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/europol-hit-russian/

Threats

Ransomware

Other Social Engineering

Malware

Mobile

IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Denial of Service DoS/DDoS

Cloud

Privacy

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

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 08 April 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 08 April 2022

-Nearly Two-Thirds of Ransomware Victims Paid Ransoms Last Year, Finds "2022 Cyberthreat Defense Report"

-New Android Banking Malware Remotely Takes Control of Your Device

-Network Intrusion Detections Skyrocketing

-Organisations Underestimating the Seriousness Of Insider Threats

-Watch Out For Phishing Emails From Genuine Mailing Lists, Following Mailchimp Hack

-SpringShell Attacks Target About One in Six Vulnerable Orgs

-New Threat Group Underscores Mounting Concerns Over Russian Cyber Threats

-Consumer Fraud Tripled in The Last Two Years

-Borat RAT: Multiple Threat of Ransomware, DDoS and Spyware

-Bank Had No Firewall License, Intrusion or Phishing Protection – Guess The Rest

-Global APT Groups Use Ukraine War for Phishing Lures

-Paying Ransom Doesn’t Guarantee Data Recovery

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

  • Nearly Two-Thirds of Ransomware Victims Paid Ransoms Last Year, Finds "2022 Cyberthreat Defense Report"

CyberEdge Group, a leading research and marketing firm serving the cyber security industry’s top vendors, announced the launch of its ninth annual Cyberthreat Defense Report (CDR). The award-winning CDR is the standard for assessing organisations’ security posture, gauging perceptions of information technology (IT) security professionals, and ascertaining current and planned investments in IT security infrastructure – across all industries and geographic regions.

A record 71% of organisations were impacted by successful ransomware attacks last year, according to the 2022 CDR, up from 55% in 2017. Of those that were victimised, nearly two-thirds (63%) paid the requested ransom, up from 39% in 2017.

https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/nearly-two-thirds-of-ransomware-victims-paid-ransoms-last-year-finds-2022-cyberthreat-defense-report-

  • New Android Banking Malware Remotely Takes Control of Your Device

A new Android banking malware named Octo has appeared in the wild, featuring remote access capabilities that allow malicious operators to perform on-device fraud.

Octo is an evolved Android malware based on ExoCompact, a malware variant based on the Exo trojan that quit the cyber crime space and had its source code leaked in 2018.

The new variant has been discovered by researchers at ThreatFabric, who observed several users looking to purchase it on darknet forums.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-android-banking-malware-remotely-takes-control-of-your-device/

  • Network Intrusion Detections Skyrocketing

A WatchGuard report shows a record number of evasive network malware detections with advanced threats increasing by 33%, indicating a higher level of zero day threats than ever before.

Researchers detected malware threats in EMEA at a much higher rate than other regions of the world in Q4 2021, with malware detections per Firebox at 49%, compared to Americas at 23% and APAC at 29%. The trajectory of network intrusion detections also continued its upward climb with the largest total detections of any quarter in the last three years and a 39% increase quarter over quarter.

Researchers suggest that this may be due to the continued targeting of old vulnerabilities as well as the growth in organisations’ networks. As new devices come online and old vulnerabilities remain unpatched, network security is becoming more complex.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/04/08/network-malware-detections/

  • Organisations Underestimating the Seriousness of Insider Threats

Imperva releases data that shows organisations are failing to address the issue of insider threats during a time when the risk is at its greatest.

New research, conducted by Forrester, found that 59% of incidents in EMEA organisations that negatively impacted sensitive data in the last 12 months were caused by insider threats, and yet 59% do not prioritise insider threats the way they prioritise external threats. Despite the fact that insider events occur more often than external ones, they receive lower levels of investment.

This approach is at odds with today’s threat landscape where the risk of malicious insiders has never been higher. The rapid shift to remote working means many employees are now outside the typical security controls that organisations employ, making it harder to detect and prevent insider threats.

Further, the Great Resignation is creating an environment where there is a higher risk of employees stealing data. This data could be stolen intentionally by people looking to help themselves in future employment, because they are disgruntled and want revenge, or it could be taken unintentionally when a careless employee leaves the business with important information.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/04/08/organizations-insider-threats-issue/

  • Watch Out for Phishing Emails from Genuine Mailing Lists, Following Mailchimp Hack

A Mailchimp hack means that you’ll want to be even more vigilant than usual about phishing emails. Attackers have taken a clever approach to making their emails appear genuine …

When you subscribe to an email list, there’s a decent chance that the emails you received are actually sent by a company called Mailchimp, rather than directly by the company itself. Mailchimp offers companies a range of tools that make it easy to manage email databases, and send marketing emails and newsletters.

Hackers managed to gain access to more than 100 Mailchimp customer accounts, giving them the ability to send emails that would appear to have come from any one of those businesses.

Users will need to be more vigilant when receiving emails and avoid clicking on links in emails, even if they appear genuine.

https://9to5mac.com/2022/04/05/mailchimp-hack-phishing-alert/

  • SpringShell Attacks Target About One in Six Vulnerable Orgs

Roughly one out of six organisations worldwide that are impacted by the Spring4Shell zero-day vulnerability have already been targeted by threat actors, according to statistics from one cyber security company.

The exploitation attempts took place in the first four days since the disclosure of the severe remote code execution (RCE) flaw, tracked as CVE-2022-22965, and the associated exploit code.

According to Check Point, who compiled the report based on their telemetry data, 37,000 Spring4Shell attacks were detected over the past weekend alone.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/springshell-attacks-target-about-one-in-six-vulnerable-orgs/

  • New Threat Group Underscores Mounting Concerns Over Russian Cyber Threats

Crowdstrike says Ember Bear is likely responsible for the wiper attack against Ukrainian networks and that future Russian cyber attacks might target the West.

As fears mount over the prospects of a “cyberwar” initiated by the Russian government, the number of identified Russian threat actors also continues to climb. Last week CrowdStrike publicly revealed a Russia-nexus state-sponsored actor that it tracks as Ember Bear.

CrowdStrike says that Ember Bear (also known as UAC-0056, Lorec53, Lorec Bear, Bleeding Bear, Saint Bear) is likely an intelligence-gathering adversary group that has operated against government and military organisations in eastern Europe since early 2021. The group seems “motivated to weaponize the access and data obtained during their intrusions to support information operations (IO) aimed at creating public mistrust in targeted institutions and degrading government ability to counter Russian cyber operations,” according to CrowdStrike intelligence.

Despite its state-sponsored Russia nexus, Ember Bear differs from its better-known kin such as Fancy Bear or Voodoo Bear because CrowdStrike can’t tie it to a specific Russian organisation. Its target profile, assessed intent, and technical tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) are consistent with other Russian GRU cyber operations.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3655976/new-threat-group-underscores-mounting-concerns-over-russian-cyber-threats.html

  • Consumer Fraud Tripled in The Last Two Years

Reported cases of consumer fraud more than tripled in the years 2020-2021 from prior years, finds a new report by Accenture, presenting a growing challenge for public safety agencies to find new strategies to counter the trend.

The report compiled data from eight developed nations (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States) on consumer fraud, defined as any fraud directly targeting citizens and excluding fraud targeting government agencies and companies. Reports of such fraud increased at an estimated 6.8% rate annually during 2013-2019 and then increased to a 22.5% annual growth rate yearly during 2020-2021 in parallel with the large shift of workers and consumers to digital channels and greater use of technology during the pandemic.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/04/08/consumer-fraud-tripled/

  • Borat RAT: Multiple Threat of Ransomware, DDoS and Spyware

A new remote access trojan (RAT) dubbed "Borat" doesn't come with many laughs but offers bad actors a menu of cyberthreats to choose from.

RATs are typically used by cyber criminals to get full control of a victim's system, enabling them to access files and network resources and manipulate the mouse and keyboard. Borat does all this and also delivers features to enable hackers to run ransomware, distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) and other online assaults and to install spyware, according to researchers at cyber security biz Cyble.

"The Borat RAT provides a dashboard to Threat Actors (TAs) to perform RAT activities and also has an option to compile the malware binary for performing DDoS and ransomware attacks on the victim's machine," the researchers wrote in a blog post, noting the malware is being made available for sale to hackers.

Borat – named after the character made famous by actor Sacha Baron Cohen in two comedy films – comes with the standard requisite of RAT features in a package that includes such functions as builder binary, server certificate and supporting modules.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/04/borat-rat-ransomware-ddos/

  • Bank Had No Firewall License, Intrusion or Phishing Protection – Guess the Rest

An Indian bank that did not have a valid firewall license, had not employed phishing protection, lacked an intrusion detection system and eschewed use of any intrusion prevention system has, shockingly, been compromised by criminals who made off with millions of rupees.

The unfortunate institution is called the Andra Pradesh Mahesh Co-Operative Urban Bank. Its 45 branches and just under $400 million of deposits make it one of India's smaller banks.

It certainly thinks small about security – at least according to Hyderabad City Police, which last week detailed an attack on the Bank that started with over 200 phishing emails being sent across three days in November 2021. At least one of those mails succeeded in fooling staff, resulting in the installation of a Remote Access Trojan (RAT).

Another technology the bank had chosen not to adopt was virtual LANs, so once the RAT went to work the attackers gained entry to the Bank's systems and were able to roam widely – even in its core banking application

https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/05/mahesh_bank_no_firewall_attack/

  • Global APT Groups Use Ukraine War for Phishing Lures

Security researchers have detected multiple APT campaigns leveraging Ukraine war-themed documents and news sources to lure victims into clicking on spear-phishing links.

Check Point Research said victim locations ranged from South America to the Middle East, with malware downloads designed to perform keylogging and screenshotting and execute commands.

The threat groups in question include El Machete, which is targeting the financial and government sectors in Nicaragua and Venezuela with malicious macro-laden Word documents containing articles on the war.

One of the docs was an article written by the Russian ambassador to Nicaragua titled: “Dark plans of the neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine.”

Another is Lyceum, an Iranian state-linked group targeting the energy sector with emails about war crimes in Ukraine that link to a malicious document hosted elsewhere. Its victims so far have been in Israel and Saudi Arabia, according to Check Point.

One email contained a link to an article from The Guardian hosted on the news-spot[.]live domain, alongside several malicious docs about the war.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/global-apt-ukraine-war-phishing/

  • Paying Ransom Doesn’t Guarantee Data Recovery

OwnBackup announced the findings of a global survey conducted by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) that reveals a staggering 79% of respondent organisations have been targeted by ransomware within the past 12 months. Of those organisations, nearly three quarters said the attack was successful, meaning that it disrupted business operations.

Other key findings

·       Of the respondents that said their organisation paid a cyber ransom to regain access to data, applications, and/or systems after an attack, only 14% were able to recover all of their data.

·       87% of respondents who made ransom payments said that they experienced additional extortion attempts beyond the initial ransomware demand.

·       31% of respondent organisations targeted by ransomware indicated that application user and permission misconfigurations were the initial point of compromise.

·       87% of respondents are very or somewhat concerned about their backups being infected by ransomware attacks.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/04/07/organizations-targeted-by-ransomware/

Threats

Ransomware

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Other Social Engineering

Malware

Mobile

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Insurance

Supply Chain

Cloud

Privacy

Passwords & Credential Stuffing

Travel

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

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 01 April 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 01 April 2022

-One Tenth of UK Staff Bypass Corporate Security

-Majority Of Data Security Incidents Caused by Insiders

-One-Third of UK Firms Suffer A Cyber Attack Every Week

-Russia's Cyber Criminals Fear Sanctions Will Erase Their Wealth

-86% Of Organisations Believe They Have Suffered a Nation-State Cyber Attack

-Multiple Hacking Groups Are Using the War in Ukraine As A Lure In Phishing Attempts

-4 Ways Attackers Target Humans to Gain Network Access

-Security Incidents Reported to FCA Surge 52% in 2021

-NCSC Suggests Rethinking Russian Supply Chain Risks

-25% Of Workers Lost Their Jobs In The Past 12 Months After Making Cyber Security Mistakes: Report

-Attackers Compromise 94% Of Critical Assets Within Four Steps Of Initial Breach

-UK Spy Chief Warns Russia Looking for Cyber Targets

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

  • One Tenth of UK Staff Bypass Corporate Security

A new study from Cisco has found that a tenth of UK employees actively circumvent their organisation’s security measures.

The network technology company polled over 1000 UK professionals working for organisations that allow hybrid working, in order to better understand the potential security risks of the modern, flexible workplace.

The research has revealed that many hybrid workers do not see cyber security as their responsibility, with many actively finding workarounds or engaging in risky behaviours such as password reuse.

19% of employees said they reuse passwords for multiple accounts and applications, with only 15% using password managers.

The problem seems to stem from user friction in existing security measures. Only 44% of survey participants said they found it easy to securely access their IT equipment.

A majority said they would be willing to use biometric authentication, a reflection of how enterprise security is still catching up to consumer functionality.

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2022/03/28/one-tenth-of-uk-staff-bypass-corporate-security/

  • Majority Of Data Security Incidents Caused by Insiders

New research from Imperva has revealed that 70% of EMEA organisations have no insider risk strategy, despite 59% of data security incidents being caused by employees.

The shocking revelation comes as part of a wider study carried out by Forrester: Insider Threats Drive Data Protection Improvements. The study involved interviewing 150 security and IT professionals in EMEA.

An insider threat is defined by Imperva as originating from “inappropriate use of legitimate authorised user accounts” by either their rightful owner or a threat actor who has managed to compromise them.

The study found that insider threats were responsible for 59% of incidents impacting sensitive data in the past 12 months. This supports a previous Imperva analysis of the most significant breaches of the past five years, revealing that 24% were caused by either human error or compromised credentials.

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2022/04/01/majority-of-data-security-incidents-caused-by-insiders/

  • One-Third of UK Firms Suffer a Cyber Attack Every Week

Cyber attacks and related incidents at UK organisations continue their seemingly unstoppable upward trajectory, with new statistics from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) revealing that 31% of businesses and 26% of charity organisations now experience incidents on a weekly basis.

The data, contained in the annual cyber security breaches survey report, paints a stark picture of the scale of the threat facing the average organisation, and the urgent need to boost standards and defences.

It is vital that every organisation takes cyber security seriously as more and more business is done online and we live in a time of increasing cyber risk.  No matter how big or small your organisation is, you need to take steps to improve digital resilience.

Some 20% of businesses and 19% of charities said they had experienced a negative outcome as a direct consequence of an attack. The average cost of an attack, spread out across all organisations, now works out at £4,200, or £19,400 if only medium and large businesses are considered, although there is probably a vast amount of under-reporting, so the true figures are certainly higher.

Meanwhile, 35% of businesses and 38% of charities said they had experienced some kind of negative impact during the incident, such as service downtime.

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252515288/One-third-of-UK-firms-suffer-a-cyber-attack-every-week

  • Russia's Cyber Criminals Fear Sanctions Will Erase Their Wealth

Punitive economic sanctions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine had crooks discussing the best ways to adapt to the new reality.

Members of Russian-language underground forums are not immune to the latest news. Russia's invasion of Ukraine and subsequent economic sanctions against Moscow got forum users to discuss how to live in this new world they find themselves in.

According to a report by the Digital Shadows Photon team, dark web forums are teeming with questions on how to ensure the safety of funds held in Russia-based accounts.

One user sought advice on what to do with dollars held in a Russian bank, with others suggesting converting dollars to rubles for a few months.

"I hope you were joking about [holding the funds in rubles for] half a year? After half a year, your rubles will only be good for lighting a fire, they will not be good for anything else," a forum user responded.

https://cybernews.com/news/russias-cybercriminals-fear-sanctions-will-erase-their-wealth/

  • 86% Of Organisations Believe They Have Suffered a Nation-State Cyber Attack

A new study by Trellix and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has revealed that 86% of organisations believe they have fallen victim to a nation-state cyber attack.

The research surveyed 800 IT decision-makers in Australia, France, Germany, India, Japan, the UK and US.

It has also been revealed that 92% of respondents have faced, or suspect they have faced, a nation-state backed cyber attack in the past 18 months, or anticipate one in the future.

Russia and China were identified as the most likely suspects behind said attacks. 39% of organisations that believe they have been hit with a nation-state cyber attack believe Russia were the perpetrators.

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2022/03/29/86-of-organisations-believe-they-have-suffered-a-nation-state-cyberattack/

  • Multiple Hacking Groups Are Using the War in Ukraine as A Lure in Phishing Attempts

Hostile hacking groups are exploiting Russia's invasion of Ukraine to carry out cyber attacks designed to steal login credentials, sensitive information, money and more from victims around the world.

According to cyber security researchers at Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG), government-backed hackers from Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, as well as various unattributed groups and cyber criminal gangs, are using various themes related to the war in Ukraine to lure people into becoming victims of cyber attacks.

In just the last two weeks alone, Google has seen several hacking groups looking to take advantage of the war to fulfil their malicious aims, whether that's stealing information, stealing money, or something else.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-multiple-hacking-groups-are-using-the-war-in-ukraine-as-a-lure-in-phishing-attempts/

  • 4 Ways Attackers Target Humans to Gain Network Access

Since the day we started receiving email, we hope that our antivirus or endpoint protection software alerts us to problems. In reality, it often does not. When technology fails, it’s likely because the attacker made an end run around it by targeting humans. Here are four ways they do it:

1. The targeted human attack

2. Fraudulent wire transfer email

3. Tricking users into handing over credentials

4. Bypassing multi-factor authentication

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3654850/4-ways-attackers-target-humans-to-gain-network-access.html#tk.rss_news

  • Security Incidents Reported to FCA Surge 52% in 2021

The number of cyber security incidents reported to the UK’s financial regulator surged by over 50% last year after a significant increase in cyber-attacks, according to new figures from Picus Security.

The security vendor submitted Freedom of Information (FoI) requests to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to compile its latest report, Cyber Security Incidents in the UK Financial Sector.

The 52% year-on-year increase in “material” security incidents reported to the FCA seems to have been driven by cyber-attacks, which comprised nearly two-thirds (65%) of these reports.

Picus Security claimed that the rest are likely explained by “system and process failures and employee errors.”

In addition, a third of incident reports were about corporate or personal data breaches, and a fifth involved ransomware.

Picus Security explained that to qualify as a material incident, there needs to have been a significant loss of data, operational IT outages, unauthorized IT access, and/or an impact on a large number of customers.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/security-incidents-reported-fca/

  • NCSC Suggests Rethinking Russian Supply Chain Risks

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) of the UK has urged organisations to reconsider the risks associated with “Russian-controlled” parts of their supply chains.

Ian Levy, technical director of the NCSC argued that “Russian law already contains legal obligations on companies to assist the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), and the pressure to do so may increase in a time of war. We also have hacktivists on each side, further complicating matters, so the overall risk has materially changed.”

Levy has suggested that while there is currently nothing to suggest that the Russian state intends to force commercial providers to sabotage UK interests, that doesn’t mean it will not happen in the future.

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2022/03/30/ncsc-suggests-rethinking-russian-supply-chain-risks/

  • 25% Of Workers Lost Their Jobs in The Past 12 Months After Making Cyber Security Mistakes: Report

For business leaders, there is never a good time for their employees to make mistakes on the job. This is especially true now for workers who have anything to do with the cyber security of their companies and organisations. Given the growing risks of cyber attacks across the world and the increased threats posed by Russia in the aftermath of their invasion of Ukraine, these are certainly perilous times.

Indeed, a new study released by email security company Tessian found that one in four employees (26%) lost their job in the last 12 months after making a mistake that compromised their company’s security.

According to the second edition of Tessian’s Psychology of Human Error report, people are falling for more advanced phishing scams—and the business stakes for mistakes are much higher.

The study also found that:

  • Two-fifths (40%) of employees sent an email to the wrong person, with almost one-third (29%) saying their business lost a client or customer because of the error

  • Over one-third (36%) of employees have made a mistake at work that compromised security and fewer are reporting their mistakes to IT.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardsegal/2022/03/29/25-of-workers-lost-their-jobs-in-the-past-12-months-after-making-cybersecurity-mistakes-report/?sh=d47cdfa49b26

  • Attackers Compromise 94% of Critical Assets Within Four Steps of Initial Breach

New research from XM Cyber analysing the methods, attack paths, and impacts of cyber attacks has discovered that attackers can compromise 94% of critical assets within just four steps of initial breach points. The hybrid cloud security company’s Attack Path Management Impact Report incorporates insights from nearly two million endpoints, files, folders, and cloud resources throughout 2021, highlighting key findings on attack trends and techniques impacting critical assets across on-prem, multi-cloud, and hybrid environments.

The findings showed that 75% of an organisation’s critical assets are open to compromise in their current security state, while 73% of the top attack techniques used last year involved mismanaged or stolen credentials. Just over a quarter (27%) of most common attack techniques exploited a vulnerability or misconfiguration.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3655633/attackers-compromise-94-of-critical-assets-within-four-steps-of-initial-breach.html

  • UK Spy Chief Warns Russia Looking for Cyber Targets

A UK intelligence chief warned that the Kremlin is hunting for cyber targets and bringing in mercenaries to shore up its stalled military campaign in Ukraine.

Jeremy Fleming, who heads the GCHQ electronic spy agency, praised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “information operation” for being highly effective at countering Russia’s massive disinformation drive spreading propaganda about the war.

While there were expectations that Russia would launch a major cyber attack as part of its military campaign, Fleming said such a move was never a central part of Moscow’s standard playbook for war.

“That’s not to say that we haven’t seen cyber in this conflict. We have — and lots of it,” Fleming said in a speech in Canberra, Australia, according to a transcript released in London on Wednesday.

He said GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre has picked up signs of “sustained intent” by Russia to disrupt Ukrainian government and military systems.

“We’ve seen what looks like some spillover of activity affecting surrounding countries,” Fleming said. “And we’ve certainly seen indicators which suggest Russia’s cyber actors are looking for targets in the countries that oppose their actions.”

He provided no further details. He said the UK and other Western allies will continue to support Ukraine in beefing up its cyber security defences.

https://www.securityweek.com/uk-spy-chief-warns-russia-looking-cyber-targets

Threats

Ransomware

BEC – Business Email Compromise

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Other Social Engineering

Malware

Mobile

IoT

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Supply Chain

Denial of Service DoS/DDoS

Passwords & Credential Stuffing

Spyware, Espionage & Cyber Warfare

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 25 March 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 25 March 2022:

-Morgan Stanley Client Accounts Breached in Social Engineering Attacks

-Ransomware Is Scary, But Another Scam Is Costing Victims Much, Much More

-Phishing Kits Constantly Evolve to Evade Security Software

-Ransomware Payments, Demands Rose Dramatically in 2021

-7 Suspected Members of LAPSUS$ Hacker Gang, Aged 16 to 21, Arrested in UK

-Here's How Fast Ransomware Encrypts Files

-HEAT Attacks: A New Class of Cyber Threats Organisations Are Not Prepared For

-The Cyber Warfare Predicted In Ukraine May Be Yet To Come

-The Three Russian Cyber Attacks The West Most Fears

-Do These 8 Things Now To Boost Your Security Ahead Of Potential Russian Cyber Attacks

-Cyber Crime Victims Suffered Losses of Over $6.9B in 2021 in the US Alone

-Expanding Threat Landscape: Cyber Criminals Attacking from All Sides

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

  • Morgan Stanley Client Accounts Breached in Social Engineering Attacks

Morgan Stanley Wealth Management says some of its customers had their accounts compromised in social engineering attacks.

The account breaches were the result of vishing (aka voice phishing), a social engineering attack where scammers impersonate a trusted entity (in this case Morgan Stanley) during a voice call to convince their targets into revealing sensitive information such as banking or login credentials.

The company said in a notice sent to affected clients that, "on or around February 11, 2022," a threat actor impersonating Morgan Stanley gained access to their accounts after tricking them into providing their Morgan Stanley Online account info.

After successfully breaching their accounts, the attacker also electronically transferred money to their own bank account by initiating payments using the Zelle payment service.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/morgan-stanley-client-accounts-breached-in-social-engineering-attacks/

  • Ransomware Is Scary, But Another Scam Is Costing Victims Much, Much More

Business email compromise (BEC) remains the biggest source of financial losses, which totalled $2.4 billion in 2021, up from an estimated $1.8 billion in 2020, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Internet Crime Center (IC3).

The FBI says in its 2021 annual report that Americans last year lost $6.9 billion to scammers and cyber criminals through ransomware, BEC, and cryptocurrency theft related to financial and romance scams. In 2020, that figure stood at $4.2 billion.

Last year, FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received 847,376 complaints about cybercrime losses, up 7% from 791,790 complaints in 2020.

BEC has been the largest source of fraud for several years despite ransomware attacks grabbing most headlines.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/ransomware-is-scary-but-another-scam-is-costing-victims-much-much-more-says-fbi/#ftag=RSSbaffb68

  • Phishing Kits Constantly Evolve to Evade Security Software

Modern phishing kits sold on cybercrime forums as off-the-shelf packages feature multiple, sophisticated detection avoidance and traffic filtering systems to ensure that internet security solutions won’t mark them as a threat.

Fake websites that mimic well-known brands are abundant on the internet to lure victims and steal their payment details or account credentials.

Most of these websites are built using phishing kits that feature brand logos, realistic login pages, and in cases of advanced offerings, dynamic webpages assembled from a set of basic elements.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/phishing-kits-constantly-evolve-to-evade-security-software/

  • Ransomware Payment Demands Rose Dramatically in 2021

Ransomware attackers demanded dramatically higher ransom fees last year, and the average ransom payment rose by 78% to $541,010, according to data from incident response (IR) cases investigated by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42.

IR cases by Unit 42 also saw a whopping 144% increase in ransom demands, to $2.2 million. According to the report, the most victimised sectors were professional and legal services, construction, wholesale and retail, healthcare, and manufacturing.

Cyber extortion spiked, with 85% of ransomware victims — some 2, 556 organisations — having their data dumped and exposed on leak sites, according to the "2022 Unit 42 Ransomware Threat Report."

Conti led the ransomware attack volume, representing some one in five cases Unit 42 investigated, followed by REvil, Hello Kitty, and Phobos.

https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/ransomware-payments-demands-rose-dramatically-in-2021

  • 7 Suspected Members of LAPSUS$ Hacker Gang, aged 16 to 21, Arrested in UK

The City of London Police has arrested seven teenagers between the ages of 16 and 21 for their alleged connections to the prolific LAPSUS$ extortion gang that's linked to a recent burst of attacks targeting NVIDIA, Samsung, Ubisoft, LG, Microsoft, and Okta.

"The City of London Police has been conducting an investigation with its partners into members of a hacking group," Detective Inspector, Michael O'Sullivan, said in a statement shared with The Hacker News. "Seven people between the ages of 16 and 21 have been arrested in connection with this investigation and have all been released under investigation. Our enquiries remain ongoing."

The development, which was first disclosed by BBC News, comes after a report from Bloomberg revealed that a 16-year-old Oxford-based teenager is the mastermind of the group. It's not immediately clear if the minor is one among the arrested individuals. The said teen, under the online alias White or Breachbase, is alleged to have accumulated about $14 million in Bitcoin from hacking.

https://thehackernews.com/2022/03/7-suspected-members-of-lapsus-hacker.html

  • Here's How Fast Ransomware Encrypts Files

Forty-two minutes and 54 seconds: that's how quickly the median ransomware variant can encrypt and lock out a victim from 100,000 of their files.

The data point came from Splunk's SURGe team, which analysed in its lab how quickly the 10 biggest ransomware strains — Lockbit, REvil, Blackmatter, Conti, Ryuk, Avaddon, Babuk, Darkside, Maize, and Mespinoza — could encrypt 100,000 files consisting of some 53.93 gigabytes of data. Lockbit won the race, with speeds of 86% faster than the median. One Lockbit sample was clocked at encrypting 25,000 files per minute.

Splunk's team found that ransomware variants are all over the map speed-wise, and the underlying hardware can dictate their encryption speeds.

https://www.darkreading.com/application-security/here-s-how-fast-ransomware-encrypts-files

  • HEAT Attacks: A New Class of Cyber Threats Organisations Are Not Prepared For

Web malware (47%) and ransomware (42%) now top the list of security threats that organisations are most concerned about. Yet despite the growing risks, just 27% have advanced threat protection in place on every endpoint device that can access corporate applications and resources.

This is according to research published by Menlo Security, exploring what steps organisations are taking to secure themselves in the wake of a new class of cyber threats – known as Highly Evasive Adaptive Threats (HEAT).

As employees spend more time working in the browser and accessing cloud-based applications, the risk of HEAT attacks increases. Almost two-thirds of organisations have had a device compromised by a browser-based attack in the last 12 months. The report suggests that organisations are not being proactive enough in mitigating the risk of these threats, with 45% failing to add strength to their network security stack over the past year. There are also conflicting views on the most effective place to deploy security to prevent advanced threats, with 43% citing the network, and 37% the cloud.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/03/22/web-security-threats/

  • The Cyber Warfare Predicted in Ukraine May Be Yet to Come

In the build-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the national security community braced for a campaign combining military combat, disinformation, electronic warfare and cyber attacks. Vladimir Putin would deploy devastating cyber operations, the thinking went, to disable government and critical infrastructure, blind Ukrainian surveillance capabilities and limit lines of communications to help invading forces. But that’s not how it has played out. At least, not yet.

The danger is that as political and economic conditions deteriorate, the red lines and escalation judgments that kept Moscow’s most potent cyber capabilities in check may adjust. Western sanctions and lethal aid support to Ukraine may prompt Russian hackers to lash out against the west. Russian ransomware actors may also take advantage of the situation, possibly resorting to cyber crime as one of the few means of revenue generation.

https://www.ft.com/content/2938a3cd-1825-4013-8219-4ee6342e20ca

  • The Three Russian Cyber Attacks the West Most Fears

The UK's cyber authorities are supporting the White House's calls for "increased cyber-security precautions", though neither has given any evidence that Russia is planning a cyber-attack.

Russia has previously stated that such accusations are "Russophobic".

However, Russia is a cyber-superpower with a serious arsenal of cyber-tools, and hackers capable of disruptive and potentially destructive cyber-attacks.

Ukraine has remained relatively untroubled by Russian cyber-offensives but experts now fear that Russia may go on a cyber-offensive against Ukraine's allies.

"Biden's warnings seem plausible, particularly as the West introduced more sanctions, hacktivists continue to join the fray, and the kinetic aspects of the invasion seemingly don't go to plan," says Jen Ellis, from cyber-security firm Rapid7.

This article from the BCC outlines the hacks that experts most fear, and they are repeats of things we have already seen coming out of Russia, only potentially a lot more destructive this time around.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-60841924

  • Do These 8 Things Now to Boost Your Security Ahead of Potential Russian Cyber Attacks

The message comes as the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ramp up warnings about Russian hacking of everything from online accounts to satellite broadband networks. CISA's current campaign is called Shields Up, which urges all organisations to patch immediately and secure network boundaries. This messaging is being echoed by UK and other Western Cyber authorities:

The use of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is being very strongly advocated. The White House and other agencies both sides of the Atlantic also urged companies to take seven other steps:

  • Deploy modern security tools on your computers and devices to continuously look for and mitigate threats

  • Make sure that your systems are patched and protected against all known vulnerabilities, and change passwords across your networks so that previously stolen credentials are useless to malicious actors

  • Back up your data and ensure you have offline backups beyond the reach of malicious actors

  • Run exercises and drill your emergency plans so that you are prepared to respond quickly to minimize the impact of any attack

  • Encrypt your data so it cannot be used if it is stolen

  • Educate your employees to common tactics that attackers will use over email or through websites

  • Work with specialists to establish relationships in advance of any cyber incidents.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/white-house-warns-do-these-8-things-now-to-boost-your-security-ahead-of-potential-russian-cyberattacks/

  • Cyber Crime Victims Suffered Losses of Over $6.9B in 2021 in the US Alone

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reported a record-breaking year for 2021 in the number of complaints it received, among which business email compromise (BEC) attacks made up the majority of incidents.

IC3 handled 847,376 complaint reports last year — an increase of 7% over 2020 — which mainly revolved around phishing attacks, nonpayment/nondelivery scams, and personal data breaches. Overall, losses amounted to more than $6.9 billion.

BEC and email account compromises ranked as the No. 1 attack, accounting for 19,954 complaints and losses of around $2.4 billion.

"In 2021, heightened attention was brought to the urgent need for more cyber incident reporting to the federal government. Cyber incidents are in fact crimes deserving of an investigation, leading to judicial repercussions for the perpetrators who commit them," Paul Abbate, deputy director of the FBI wrote in the IC3's newly published annual report.

https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/fbi-cybercrime-victims-suffered-losses-of-over-6-9b-in-2021

  • Expanding Threat Landscape: Cyber Criminals Attacking from All Sides

Research from Trend Micro warns of spiralling risk to digital infrastructure and remote workers as threat actors increase their rate of attack on organisations and individuals.

“Attackers are always working to increase their victim count and profit, whether through quantity or effectiveness of attacks,” said Jon Clay, VP of threat intelligence at Trend Micro.

“Our latest research shows that while Trend Micro threat detections rose 42% year-on-year in 2021 to over 94 billion, they shrank in some areas as attacks became more precisely targeted.”

Ransomware attackers are shifting their focus to critical businesses and industries more likely to pay, and double extortion tactics ensure that they are able to profit. Ransomware-as-a-service offerings have opened the market to attackers with limited technical knowledge – but also given rise to more specialisation, such as initial access brokers who are now an essential part of the cybercrime supply chain.

Threat actors are also getting better at exploiting human error to compromise cloud infrastructure and remote workers. Trend Micro detected and prevented 25.7 million email threats in 2021 compared to 16.7 million in 2020, with the volume of blocked phishing attempts nearly doubling over the period. Research shows home workers are often prone to take more risks than those in the office, which makes phishing a particular risk.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/03/22/threat-actors-increase-attack/

Threats

Ransomware

Phishing & Email

Other Social Engineering

Malware

Mobile

IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Insurance

Dark Web

Supply Chain

Cloud

Passwords & Credential Stuffing

Spyware, Espionage & Cyber Warfare

Nation State Actors

Nation State Actors – Russia

Nation State Actors – China

Nation State Actors – North Korea

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 Admin Black Arrow Admin

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 18 March 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 18 March 2022

-Guernsey Cyber Security Warning For Islanders And Businesses

-CISOs Face 'Perfect Storm' Of Ransomware And State-Supported Cyber Crime

-Four Key Risks Exacerbated By Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine

-These Four Types Of Ransomware Make Up Nearly Three-Quarters Of Reported Incidents

-Critical Infrastructure Threat as Ransomware Groups Target 'Enemies of Russia'

-Cyber Insurance War Exclusions Loom Amid Ukraine Crisis

-Zelenskyy Deepfake Crude, But Still Might Be A Harbinger Of Dangers Ahead

-Cyber Crooks’ Political In-Fighting Threatens the West

-Cloud-Based Email Threats Surge 50% in 2021

-Millions of New Mobile Malware Strains Blitzed Enterprise in 2021

-UK Criminal Defence Lawyer Hadn't Patched When Ransomware Hit

-Russian Ransomware Gang Retool Custom Hacking Tools Of Other APT Groups

-The Massive Impact of Vulnerabilities In Critical Infrastructure

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

Guernsey Cyber Security Warning for Islanders and Businesses

There has been a rise in cyber-attacks since the war in Ukraine began, according to the States of Guernsey and a cyber-security firm.

The States said: "We have seen a noticeable increase in the number of phishing emails since the war began."

The Channel Islands see more than 10 million cyber attacks every month, according to research by Guernsey firm Black Arrow Cyber Consulting.

It encouraged vigilance, as the islands are not immune to these attacks.

A States spokesman said: "The whole community needs to remain vigilant against such emails, which are designed to appear to be from reputable sources in order to dupe people into providing personal information or access to their device via the clicking of a link."

Bruce McDougall, from Black Arrow Cyber Consulting, said: "Criminals don't let a good opportunity go to waste. So they're conducting scams encouraging people to make false payments in the belief they're collecting for charities."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-guernsey-60763398

CISOs Face 'Perfect Storm' Of Ransomware and State-Supported Cyber Crime

As some nations turn a blind eye, defence becomes life-or-death matter

With ransomware gangs raiding network after network, and nation states consciously turning a blind eye to it, today's chief information security officers are caught in a "perfect storm," says Cybereason CSO Sam Curry.

"There's this marriage right now of financially motivated cyber crime that can have a critical infrastructure and economic impact," Curry said during a CISO roundtable hosted by his endpoint security shop. "And there are some nation states that do what we call state-ignored sanctioning," he continued, using Russia-based REvil and Conti ransomware groups as examples of criminal operations that benefit from their home governments looking the other way. 

"You get the umbrella of sovereignty, and you get the free license to be a privateer in essence," Curry said. "It's not just an economic threat. It's not just a geopolitical threat. It's a perfect storm."

It's probably not a huge surprise to anyone that destructive cyber attacks keep CISOs awake at night. But as chief information security officers across industries — in addition to Curry, the four others on the roundtable spanned retail, biopharmaceuticals, electronics manufacturing, and a cruise line — have watched threats evolve and criminal gangs mature, it becomes a battle to see who can innovate faster; the attackers or the defenders.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/18/ciso_security_storm/

Four Key Risks Exacerbated by Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has altered the emerging risk landscape, and it requires enterprise risk management (ERM) leaders to reassess previously established organisational risk profiles in at least four key areas, according to Gartner.

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has increased the velocity of many risks we have tracked on a quarterly basis in our Emerging Risks survey,” said Matt Shinkman, VP with the Gartner Risk and Audit Practice.

“As ERM leaders reassess their organisational risk models, they must also ensure a high frequency of communication with the C-Suite as to the critical changes that require attention now.”

There are four major areas of risk that ERM leaders should continually monitor and examine their mitigation strategies as part of a broader aligned assurance approach as the war continues: Talent Risk, Cyber Security Risk, Financial Risk and Supply Chain Risk

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/03/17/erm-leaders-risk/

These Four Types of Ransomware Make Up Nearly Three-Quarters of Reported Incidents

Any ransomware is a cyber security issue, but some strains are having more of an impact than others.

Ransomware causes problems no matter what brand it is, but some forms are noticeably more prolific than others, with four strains of the malware accounting for a combined total of almost 70% of all attacks.

According to analysis by cyber security company Intel 471, the most prevalent ransomware threat towards the end of 2021 was LockBit 2.0, which accounted for 29.7% of all reported incidents. Recent victims of LockBit have included Accenture and the French Ministry of Justice. 

Almost one in five reported incidents involved Conti ransomware, famous for several incidents over the past year, including an attack against the Irish Healthcare Executive. The group recently had chat logs leaked, providing insights into how a ransomware gang works. PYSA and Hive account for one in 10 reported ransomware attacks each.

"The most prevalent ransomware strain in the fourth quarter of 2021 was LockBit 2.0, which was responsible for 29.7% of all reported incidents, followed by Conti at 19%, PYSA at 10.5% and Hive at 10.1%," said the researchers.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/these-four-types-of-ransomware-make-up-nearly-three-quarters-of-reported-incidents/

Critical Infrastructure Threat as Ransomware Groups Target 'Enemies of Russia'

The cyber crime underground has fractured into pro-Ukraine and pro-Russia camps, with the latter increasingly focused on critical national infrastructure (CNI) targets in the West, according to a new report from Accenture.

The consulting giant’s Accenture Cyber Threat Intelligence (ACTI) arm warned that the ideological schism could spell mounting risk for Western organisations as pro-Kremlin criminal groups adopt quasi-hacktivist tactics to choose their next victims.

Organisations in the government, media, finance, insurance, utilities and resources sectors should be braced for more attacks, said ACTI.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/critical-infrastructure-threat/

Cyber Insurance War Exclusions Loom Amid Ukraine Crisis

An expanding threat landscape is testing the limits of cyber insurance coverage.

The industry experienced a rapid maturation over the past three years as enterprises required a broader umbrella of insurance coverage to combat increasing cyber risks. While demands and premiums continue to rise, one recent area of contention involves war and hostile acts, an exclusion that's becoming harder to categorize.

A judgment in December, coupled with the Russian invasion last month that posed potential cyber retaliations to Ukraine allies, highlighted shortcomings in insurance policies when it comes to cyber conflicts.

https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/news/252514592/Cyber-insurance-war-exclusions-loom-amid-Ukraine-crisis

Zelenskyy Deepfake Crude, But Still Might Be a Harbinger of Dangers Ahead

Several deepfake video experts called a doctored video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that went viral this week before social media platforms removed it a poorly executed example of the form, but nonetheless damaging.

Elements of the Zelenskyy deepfake — which purported to show him calling for surrender — made it easy to debunk, they said. But that won’t always be the case.

https://www.cyberscoop.com/zelenskyy-deepfake-troubles-experts/

Cyber Crooks’ Political In-Fighting Threatens the West

They’re choosing sides in the Russia-Ukraine war, beckoning previously shunned ransomware groups and thereby reinvigorating those groups’ once-diminished power.

A rift has formed in the cyber crime underground: one that could strengthen, rather than cripple, the cyber-onslaught of ransomware.

According to a report, ever since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, “previously coexisting, financially motivated threat actors divided along ideological factions.”

“Pro-Ukrainian actors are refusing to sell, buy, or collaborate with Russian-aligned actors, and are increasingly attempting to target Russian entities in support of Ukraine,” wrote researchers from Accenture’s Cyber Threat Intelligence (ACTI). “However, pro-Russian actors are increasingly aligning with hacktivist-like activity targeting ‘enemies of Russia,’ especially Western entities due to their claims of Western warmongering.”

What might otherwise seem like a good thing – bad guys fighting bad guys – may in fact pose an increased threat to the West.

https://threatpost.com/cybercrooks-political-in-fighting-threatens-the-west/178899/

Cloud-Based Email Threats Surge 50% in 2021

There was a 50% year-on-year surge in cloud-based email threats in 2021, but a drop in ransomware and business email compromise (BEC) detections as attacks became more targeted, according to Trend Micro.

The security vendor’s 2021 roundup report, Navigating New Frontiers, was compiled from data collected by customer-installed products and cloud-based threat intelligence.

It revealed that Trend Micro blocked 25.7 million email threats targeting Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 users last year, versus 16.7 million in 2020.

The number of phishing attempts almost doubled during the period, as threat actors continued to target home workers. Of these, 38% were focused on stealing credentials, the report claimed.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/cloudbased-email-threats-surge-2021/

Millions of New Mobile Malware Strains Blitzed Enterprise in 2021

Researchers uncovered more than two million new mobile malware samples in the wild last year, Zimperium said in a new report.

Those threats spanned some 10 million mobile devices in at least 214 countries, the Dallas, Texas-based solution provider said in its newly released 2022 Global Mobile Threat Report. Indeed, mobile malware proved in 2021 to be the most prevalent security threat to enterprises, encountered by nearly 25 percent mobile endpoints among Zimperium’s customers worldwide. The 2.3 million new mobile strains Zimperium’s researchers located amount to nearly 36,000 new strains of malware weekly and roughly 5,000 each day.

https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-services-and-products/mobile/millions-of-new-mobile-malware-strains-blitzed-enterprises-in-2021/

UK Criminal Defence Lawyer Hadn't Patched When Ransomware Hit

Criminal defence law firm Tuckers Solicitors is facing a fine from the UK's data watchdog for failing to properly secure data that included information on case proceedings which was scooped up in a ransomware attack in 2020.

The London-based business was handed a £98,000 penalty notice by the Information Commissioner's Office under Article 83 of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation 2018.

The breach was first noted by Tuckers on August 23 2020 when part of its IT system became unavailable. On closer inspection, resident techies found a note from the attackers confirming they had compromised part of the infrastructure. The Microsoft Exchange server was out of action and two days' worth of emails were lost, as detailed by the company blog at the time.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/15/brit_solicitor_fined_for_failing/

Russian Ransomware Gang Retool Custom Hacking Tools of Other APT Groups

A Russian-speaking ransomware outfit likely targeted an unnamed entity in the gambling and gaming sector in Europe and Central America by repurposing custom tools developed by other APT groups like Iran's MuddyWater, new research has found.

The unusual attack chain involved the abuse of stolen credentials to gain unauthorized access to the victim network, ultimately leading to the deployment of Cobalt Strike payloads on compromised assets, said Felipe Duarte and Ido Naor, researchers at Israeli incident response firm Security Joes, in a report published last week.

Although the infection was contained at this stage, the researchers characterized the compromise as a case of a suspected ransomware attack.

The intrusion is said to have taken place in February 2022, with the attackers making use of post-exploitation tools such as ADFind, NetScan, SoftPerfect, and LaZagne. Also employed is an AccountRestore executable to brute-force administrator credentials and a forked version of a reverse tunneling tool called Ligolo.

https://thehackernews.com/2022/03/russian-ransomware-gang-retool-custom.html

The Massive Impact of Vulnerabilities in Critical Infrastructure

Recent cyber events have shown how extremely vulnerable critical infrastructure is. What are the biggest security concerns?

In any world conflict, one of the primary threats posed is cyber actors disabling or destroying the core infrastructure of the adversary. Based on the global reaction to the current world conflict, countries fear reprisals. The worry is that there will be collateral damage to the critical infrastructure of other countries not directly involved in the current conflict.

Today, services such as healthcare systems, power grids, transportation and other critical industries are increasingly integrating their operational technology with traditional IT systems in order to modernize their infrastructure, and this has opened up a new wave of cyber attacks. Though businesses are ramping up their security initiatives and investments to defend and protect, their efforts have largely been siloed, reactive, and lack business context. Lack of visibility of risk across the estate is a huge problem for this sector.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/03/15/critical-infrastructure-security/

Threats

Ransomware

Phishing & Email

Malware

Mobile

IoT

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Supply Chain

DoS/DDoS

Cloud

Privacy

Passwords & Credential Stuffing

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Spyware, Espionage & Cyber Warfare

Nation State Actors

Nation State Actors – Russia

Nation State Actors – China

Nation State Actors – Iran

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 11 March 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 11 March 2022

-Sharp Rise in SMB Cyberattacks By Russia And China

-We're Seeing An 800% Increase in Cyber Attacks, Says One MSP

-Internet Warfare: How The Russians Could Paralyse Britain

-Just 3% Of Employees Cause 92% Of Malware Events

-70% Of Breached Passwords Are Still in Use

-Organisations Taking Nearly Two Months To Remediate Critical Risk Vulnerabilities

-Android Malware Escobar Steals Your Google Authenticator MFA Codes

-Smartphone Malware Is On The Rise - Here's How To Stay Safe

-Russia May Use Ransomware Payouts to Avoid Sanctions’ Financial Harm

-How An 8-Character Password Could Be Cracked in Less Than An Hour

-Cyber Insurance and Business Risk: How the Relationship Is Changing Reinsurance & Policy Guidance

-Security Teams Prep Too Slowly for Cyber Attacks

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

Sharp Rise in SMB Cyber Attacks by Russia and China

SaaS Alerts, a cloud security company, unveiled the findings of its latest report which analysed approximately 136 million security events across 2,100 small and medium businesses (SMBs) globally and identified cyber trends negatively impacting businesses.

The findings of the report take into account security events occurring across more than 120,000 user accounts during the period of January 1st to December 31st, 2021 and shows that the vast majority of attacks on top SaaS platforms such as Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Slack and Dropbox are originating from Russia and China. The data set is statistically significant and enables solution providers managing a portfolio of SaaS applications with pertinent data and trends to support defensive IT security re-alignments as required.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/03/09/saas-security-events-smbs/

We're Seeing An 800% Increase in Cyber Attacks, Says One Managed Service Provider

Revenge and inflation are believed to be key drivers behind an 800 percent increase in cyber attacks seen by a single managed services provider since the days before the onset of Russia's invasion of Ukraine last month.

The attacks are coming not only from groups inside of Russia but also from elsewhere within the region as well from Russia allies like North Korea and Iran, historically sources of global cyber-threats.

The MSP serves about 2,400 companies around the world, most of them small businesses and midsize enterprises and most in North America. The MSP said it has seen the spike in cyber attacks throughout its customer base.

The sharp rise has been attributed to pro-Russian cyber criminal groups linked to nation states lashing out at countries – first Ukraine and then Western countries – angry at the sanctions being levelled against Russia. At the same time, the sharp inflation that is spreading around the world is also hitting hackers, who need to make money to keep up with rising costs.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/11/russia-invasion-cyber-war-rages/

Internet Warfare: How the Russians Could Paralyse Britain

The collapse of critical national infrastructure is a science fiction staple. Fifty years ago, actively switching off a country’s water and power networks would have required huge physical damage to power stations and the sources of those services. Today, however, many of the tools we use every day are connected to the internet.

All of those things now have remote access — and therefore, all of them could be vulnerable.

Ukraine has been blitzed by cyber attacks since the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and they have increased in the lead-up to the invasion. As Russia marched into Ukraine, British officials were concerned about “spillover” from any cyber offensives targeted thousands of miles away.

In today’s interconnected digital world, the reality is that distance from the conflict zone makes no difference.

As the West fears a cyber-reprisal, what would a successful attack look like in Britain — and how likely is a complete “network failure”?

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russia-cyberattack-uk-what-would-happen-l3dt98dmb

Just 3% Of Employees Cause 92% Of Malware Events

A small group of employees is typically responsible for most of the digital risk in an organisation, according to new research.

The report, from cybersecurity company Elevate Security and cyber security research organisation Cyentia, also found that those putting their companies at risk from phishing, malware, and insecure browsing are often repeat offenders.

The research found that 4% of employees clicked 80% of phishing links, and 3% were responsible for 92% of malware events.

Four in five employees have never clicked on a phishing email, according to the research. In fact, it asserts that half of them never see one, highlighting the need to focus anti-phishing efforts on at-risk workers.

The malware that phishing and other attack vectors deliver also affects a small group of employees. The research found that 96% of users have never suffered from a malware event. Most malware events revolve around the 3% of users who suffered from two malware events or more, reinforcing the notion that security awareness messages just aren't getting through to some.

https://www.itpro.co.uk/security/malware/366011/just-3-of-employees-cause-92-of-malware-events

70% Of Breached Passwords Are Still in Use

A new report examines trends related to exposed data. Researchers identified 1.7 billion exposed credentials, a 15% increase from 2020, and 13.8 billion recaptured Personally Identifiable Information (PII) records obtained from breaches in 2021.

Through its analysis of this data, it was found that despite increasingly sophisticated and targeted cyber attacks, consumers continue to engage in poor cyber practices regarding passwords, including the use of similar passwords for multiple accounts, weak or common passwords and passwords containing easy-to-guess words or phrases connected to pop culture.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/03/08/exposed-data-trends/

Organisations Taking Nearly Two Months to Remediate Critical Risk Vulnerabilities

Edgescan announces the findings of a report which offers a comprehensive view of the state of vulnerability management globally. This year’s report takes a more granular look at the trends by industry, and provides details on which of the known, patchable vulnerabilities are currently being exploited by threat actors.

The report reveals that organisations are still taking nearly two months to remediate critical risk vulnerabilities, with the average mean time to remediate (MTTR) across the full stack set at 60 days.

High rates of “known” (i.e. patchable) vulnerabilities which have working exploits in the wild, used by known nation state and cybercriminal groups are not uncommon.

Crucially, 57% of all observed vulnerabilities are more than two years old, with as many as 17% being more than five years old. These are all vulnerabilities that have working exploits in the wild, used by known nation state and cybercriminal groups. Edgescan also observed a concerning 1.5% of known, unpatched vulnerabilities that are over 20 years old, dating back to 1999.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/03/10/state-of-vulnerability-management/

Android Malware Escobar Steals Your Google Authenticator MFA Codes

The Aberebot Android banking trojan has returned under the name 'Escobar' with new features, including stealing Google Authenticator multi-factor authentication codes.

The new features in the latest Aberebot version also include taking control of the infected Android devices using VNC, recording audio, and taking photos, while also expanding the set of targeted apps for credential theft.

The main goal of the trojan is to steal enough information to allow the threat actors to take over victims' bank accounts, siphon available balances, and perform unauthorised transactions.

Like most banking trojans, Escobar displays overlay login forms to hijack user interactions with e-banking apps and websites and steal credentials from victims.

The malware also packs several other features that make it potent against any Android version, even if the overlay injections are blocked in some manner.

The authors have expanded the set of targeted banks and financial institutions to a whopping 190 entities from 18 countries in the latest version.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/android-malware-escobar-steals-your-google-authenticator-mfa-codes/

Smartphone Malware Is on The Rise - Here's How to Stay Safe

The volume of malware attacks targeting mobile devices has skyrocketed so far this year, cyber security researchers are saying.

A new report from security company Proofpoint claims that the number of detected mobile malware attacks has spiked 500% in the first few months of 2022, with peaks at the beginning and end of February.

Much of this malware aims to steal usernames and passwords from mobile banking applications, Proofpoint says. But some strains are even more sinister, recording audio and video from infected devices, tracking the victim's location, or exfiltrating and deleting data.

https://www.techradar.com/nz/news/smartphone-malware-is-coming-for-more-and-more-of-us

Russia May Use Ransomware Payouts to Avoid Sanctions’ Financial Harm

FinCEN warns financial institutions to be wary of unusual cryptocurrency payments or illegal transactions Russia may use to ease financial hurt from Ukraine-linked sanctions.

Russia may ramp up ransomware attacks against the United States as a way to ease the financial hurt it’s under due to sanctions, U.S. federal authorities are warning. Those sanctions have been levied against the nation and Vladimir Putin’s government due to its invasion of Ukraine.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a FinCEN Alert (PDF) on Wednesday advising all financial institutions to remain vigilant against potential efforts to evade the expansive sanctions and other U.S.-imposed restrictions related to the current conflict. One way this may be done is to move cryptocurrency funds through ransomware payments collected after Russian state-sponsored actors carry out cyberattacks.

“In the face of mounting economic pressure on Russia, it is vitally important for financial institutions to be vigilant about potential Russian sanctions evasion, including by both state actors and oligarchs,” said FinCEN Acting Director Him Das in a press statement.

https://threatpost.com/russia-ransomware-payouts-avoid-sanctions/178854/

How An 8-Character Password Could Be Cracked in Less Than an Hour

Security experts keep advising us to create strong and complex passwords to protect our online accounts and data from savvy cybercriminals. And “complex” typically means using lowercase and uppercase characters, numbers and even special symbols. But complexity by itself can still open your password to cracking if it doesn’t contain enough characters, according to research by security firm Hive Systems.

As described in a recent report, Hive found that an 8-character complex password could be cracked in just 39 minutes if the attacker were to take advantage of the latest graphics processing technology. A seven-character complex password could be cracked in 31 seconds, while one with six or fewer characters could be cracked instantly. Shorter passwords with only one or two character types, such as only numbers or lowercase letters, or only numbers and letters, would take just minutes to crack.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-an-8-character-password-could-be-cracked-in-less-than-an-hour/

Cyber Insurance and Business Risk: How the Relationship Is Changing Reinsurance & Policy Guidance

Cyber insurance is a significant industry and growing fast — according to GlobalData, it was worth $7 billion in gross written premiums in 2020. The cyber-insurance market is expected to reach $20.6 billion by 2025. Over the past few years, the cyber-insurance market was competitive, so premiums were low and policies were comprehensive. Over the past year, that has changed — the volume of claims has gone up and led to more payouts, which affected the insurance companies' profitability.

The recent Log4j issue will affect how insurance and reinsurance companies write their policies in future. Already, we're seeing discussions about Log4j-related issues being excluded from reinsurance policies in 2022, as many policies came up for renewal on Dec. 31, 2021. This will affect the policies that insurance companies can offer to their customers.

What does this mean for IT security teams? For practitioners, it will make their work more important than before, as preventing possible issues would be more valuable to the business. Carrying out standard security practices like asset inventory and vulnerability management will be needed, while examining software bills of materials for those same issues will help on the software supply chain security side. These practices will also need to be highly automated, as business must be able to gain accurate insights within hours, not months, to deal with future threats while reducing the cost impact.

For those responsible for wider business risk, these developments around cyber insurance will present a more significant problem. Cyber-insurance policies will still be available — and necessary where needed — but the policies themselves will cover less ground. While the past few years had pretty wide-ranging policies that would pay out on a range of issues, future policies will deliver less coverage.

https://www.darkreading.com/risk/cyber-insurance-and-business-risk-how-the-relationship-is-changing-reinsurance-policy-guidance-

Security Teams Prep Too Slowly for Cyber Attacks

Attackers typically take days or weeks to exploit new vulnerabilities, but defenders are slow to learn about critical issues and take action, requiring 96 days on average to learn to identify and block current cyber threats, according to a new report analysing training and crisis scenarios.

The report, Cyber Workforce Benchmark 2022, found that cybersecurity professionals are much more likely to focus on vulnerabilities that have garnered media attention, such as Log4j, than more understated issues, and that different industries develop their security capabilities at widely different rates. Security professionals in some of the most crucial industries, such as transport and critical infrastructure, are twice as slow to learn skills compare to their colleagues in the leisure, entertainment, and retail sectors.

The amount of time it takes for security professionals to get up to speed on new threats matters. CISA says that patches should be applied within 15 days, sooner than that if the vulnerability is being exploited, says Kevin Breen, director of cyber threat research at Immersive Labs.

https://www.darkreading.com/risk/security-teams-prep-too-slowly-for-cyberattacks

Threats

Ransomware

Phishing & Email

Malware

Mobile

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Insurance

Supply Chain

DoS/DDoS

Parental Controls and Child Safety

Spyware, Espionage & Cyber Warfare

Vulnerabilities

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 04 March 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 04 March 2022

-Cyber Criminals Exploit Invasion of Ukraine

-UK Data Watchdog Urges Vigilance Amid Heightened Cyber Threat

-Phishing - Still a Problem, Despite All The Work

-Phishing Attacks Hit All-Time High In December 2021

-Ransomware Infections Top List Of The Most Common Results Of Phishing Attacks

-Social Media Phishing Attacks Are at An All Time High

-Insurance Giant AON Hit by a Cyber Attack

-How Prepared Are Organisations To Face Email-Based Ransomware Attacks?

-The Most Impersonated Brands in Phishing Attacks

-As War Escalates In Europe, It’s ‘Shields Up’ For The Cyber Security Industry

-2022 May Be The Year Cyber Crime Returns Its Focus To Consumers

-Kaspersky Neutral Stance In Doubt As It Shields Kremlin

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

Cyber Criminals Exploit Invasion of Ukraine

Cyber criminals are exploiting Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine to commit digital fraud.

In a blog, researchers at Bitdefender Labs said they had witnessed “waves of fraudulent and malicious emails,” some of which were engineered to exploit the charitable intentions of global citizens towards the people of Ukraine.

Since March 1, researchers have been tracking two specific phishing campaigns designed to infect victims with Agent Tesla and Remcos remote access Trojans.

Agent Tesla is a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) Remote Access Trojan (RAT) and data stealer that can be used to exfiltrate sensitive information, including credentials, keystrokes and clipboard data from victims.

Remcos RAT is typically deployed via malicious documents or archives to give the attacker full control over their victims’ systems. Once inside, attackers can capture keystrokes, screenshots, credentials and other sensitive system data and exfiltrate it.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/cyber-criminals-invasion-ukraine/

UK Data Watchdog Urges Vigilance Amid Heightened Cyber Threat

The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) reports a ‘steady and significant’ increase in cyber-attacks against UK firms over the past two years.

Employees should report any suspicious emails rather than delete them and firms must step up their vigilance against cyber-attacks in the face of a heightened threat from Russian hackers, the UK’s data watchdog has said.

John Edwards, the Information Commissioner, said a new era of security had begun where instead of blacking out windows, people needed to maintain vigilance over their inboxes.

Experts including the UK’s cyber security agency have said Russian hackers could target Britain, and the imposition of sanctions by London on Moscow has increased those fears.

Asked about the potential for a Russia-Ukraine cyber conflict spreading to the UK, Edwards said: “We have picked up on that heightened threat environment and we think it’s really important to take the opportunity to remind businesses of the importance of security over the data that they hold. This is a different era from blacking out the windows and keeping the lights off. The threats are going to come in through your inbox.”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/mar/04/uk-data-watchdog-urges-vigilance-amid-heightened-cyber-threat

Phishing - Still a Problem, Despite All The Work

Phishing is a threat that most people know about. Emails designed to trick you into clicking a malicious link or divulge passwords and other credentials have become an everyday occurrence. Despite this familiarity, and the multitude of tools and techniques which purport to stop it, phishing remains the number one initial attack vector affecting organisations and individuals.

Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet. Phishing can only be dealt with using multiple complementary measures. This fact leads to some questions: Which measures are most (cost) effective? How should they be implemented? Can they be automated?

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/phishing-still-a-problem-despite-the-work

Phishing Attacks Hit All-Time High in December 2021

The Anti-Phishing Working Group international consortium (APWG) saw 316,747 phishing attacks in December 2021 — the highest monthly total observed since it began its reporting program in 2004. Overall, the number of phishing attacks has tripled from early 2020.

In the fourth quarter of 2021, the financial sector, which includes banks, became the most frequently attacked cohort, accounting for 23.2 percent of all phishing. Attacks against webmail and software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers remained prevalent as well. Phishing against cryptocurrency targets — such as cryptocurrency exchanges and wallet providers — inched up to represent 6.5 percent of attacks.

Overall, the number of brands that were attacked in 4Q descended from a record 715 in September 2021, cresting at 682 in November for the Q4 period.

The solution provider Abnormal Security observed 4,200 companies, organisations, and government institutions falling victim to ransomware in Q4 2021, some 36 percent higher than in Q3 2021 and the highest number the company has witnessed over the past two years.

“The overall distribution of ransomware victims indicates that ransomware attacks are industry-agnostic,” said Crane Hassold, Director of Threat Intelligence at Abnormal Security.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/03/03/phishing-attacks-december-2021/

Ransomware Infections Top List of The Most Common Results of Phishing Attacks

A report from insider threat management software company Egress found some startling conclusions when it spoke to IT leadership: Despite the pervasive and very serious threat of ransomware, very few boards of directors consider it a top priority.

Eighty-four percent of organisations reported falling victim to a phishing attack last year, Egress said, and of those 59% were infected with ransomware as a result. If you add in the 14% of businesses that said they weren’t hit with a phishing attack, and you still end up at around 50% of all organisations having been hit with ransomware in 2021.

Egress said that its data shows there has been a 15% increase in successful phishing attacks over the past 12 months, with the bulk of the attacks utilising malicious links and attachments. Those methods aren’t new, but a 15% increase in successful attacks means that something isn’t working.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/ransomware-infections-top-list-of-the-most-common-results-of-phishing-attacks/

Social Media Phishing Attacks Are at An All Time High

Phishing campaigns continue to focus on social media, ramping up efforts to target users for the third consecutive year as the medium becomes increasingly used worldwide for communication, news, and entertainment.

The targeting of social media is the highlighted finding in the 2021 Phishing report by cybersecurity firm Vade, who analysed phishing attack patterns that unfolded throughout 2021.

As part of their report, Vade analysed 184,977 phishing pages to create stats based on a billion corporate and consumer mailboxes that the cyber security firm protects.

Vade also recorded a rise in the sophistication of phishing attacks, especially those targeting Microsoft 365 credentials, an evolution in the tech support scams, and the inevitable dominance of COVID-19 and item shipping lures.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/social-media-phishing-attacks-are-at-an-all-time-high/

Insurance Giant AON Hit by a Cyber Attack

Professional services and insurance giant AON has suffered a cyberattack that impacted a "limited" number of systems.

AON is a multinational professional services firm offering a wide array of solutions, including business insurance, reinsurance, cyber security consulting, risk solutions, healthcare insurance, and wealth management products.

AON generated $12.2 billion of revenue in 2021 and has approximately 50,000 employees spread throughout 120 countries.

In a filing with the US SEC, AON has disclosed that they suffered a cyberattack on February 25th, 2022.

AON has not provided any details of the attack other than that it occurred and affected a limited number of systems.

The company stated that although in the early stages of assessing the incident, based on the information currently known, the company did not expect the incident to have a material impact on its business, operations or financial condition.

In addition to being an insurance broker, AON is also a leading reinsurance company, meaning that they insure the insurance companies.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/insurance-giant-aon-hit-by-a-cyberattack-over-the-weekend/

How Prepared Are Organisations to Face Email-Based Ransomware Attacks?

Proofpoint released a report which provides an in-depth look at user phishing awareness, vulnerability, and resilience. The report reveals that attackers were more active in 2021 than 2020, with findings uncovering that 78% of organisations saw email-based ransomware attacks in 2021, while 77% faced business email compromise attacks (BEC) (18% YoY increase of BEC attacks from 2020), reflecting cyber criminals’ continued focus on compromising people, as opposed to gaining access to systems through technical vulnerabilities

This year’s report examines responses from commissioned surveys of 600 information and IT security professionals and 3,500 workers in the U.S., Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, and the UK. The report also analyses data from nearly 100 million simulated phishing attacks sent by customers to their employees over a one-year period, along with more than 15 million emails reported via the user-activated PhishAlarm reporting button.

Attacks in 2021 also had a much wider impact than in 2020, with 83% of survey respondents revealing their organisation experienced at least one successful email-based phishing attack, up from 57% in 2020. In line with this, 68% of organisations said they dealt with at least one ransomware infection stemming from a direct email payload, second-stage malware delivery, or other exploit. The year-over-year increase remains steady but representative of the challenges organisations faced as ransomware attacks surged in 2021.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/02/28/email-based-ransomware-attacks/

The Most Impersonated Brands in Phishing Attacks

Vade announced its annual ranking of the top 20 most impersonated brands in phishing. Facebook, which was in the second spot in 2020, rose to the top spot for 2021, representing 14% of phishing pages, followed by Microsoft, with 13%.

The report analysed 184,977 phishing pages linked from unique phishing emails between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2021.

Key findings:

·         Financial services is the most impersonated industry

·         Microsoft is the most impersonated cloud brand and the top corporate brand

·         Facebook dominates social media phishing

·         35% of all phishing pages impersonated financial services brands

·         Mondays and Tuesdays are the top days for phishing

·         78% of phishing attacks occur on weekdays

·         Monday and Thursday are the top days for Facebook phishing

·         Thursday and Friday are the top days for Microsoft phishing

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/03/04/most-impersonated-brands-phishing/

As War Escalates in Europe, It’s ‘Shields Up’ For The Cyber Security Industry

In unprecedented times, even government bureaucracy moves quickly. As a result of the heightened likelihood of cyberthreat from Russian malactor groups, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) — part of the Department of Homeland Security — issued an unprecedented warning recommending that “all organisations — regardless of size — adopt a heightened posture when it comes to cyber security and protecting their most critical assets.”

The blanket warning is for all industries to take notice. Indeed, it’s a juxtaposition of sorts to think the cyber security industry is vulnerable to cyber attack, but for many nation state groups, this is their first port of call.

Inspired by the spike in attacks on cyber security agencies globally, a report from Reposify assessed the state of the cyber security industry’s external attack surface (EAS). It coincides with CISA’s warning, and highlights critical areas of concern for the sector and how they mirror trends amongst pharmaceutical and financial companies, providing vital insight into where organisations can focus their efforts, and reinforce the digital perimeter.

https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/02/as-war-escalates-in-europe-its-shields-up-for-the-cybersecurity-industry/

2022 May Be The Year Cyber Crime Returns Its Focus to Consumers

Threat analysts expect 2022 to be the tipping point for a shift in the focus of hackers from large companies back to consumers.

This prediction is the result of several factors that make consumers a lot more lucrative to threat actors today than in previous years.

ReasonLabs has compiled a detailed report on the status of consumer-level cyber security and what trends are most likely to emerge this year.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/2022-may-be-the-year-cybercrime-returns-its-focus-to-consumers/

Kaspersky Neutral Stance in Doubt As It Shields Kremlin

Kaspersky Lab is protecting the resources of the Russian Ministry of Defence and other high-value domains that are instrumental to the Russian propaganda machine – Russia Today, TASS news agency, Gazprom bank.

The company insists that they ‘never provide any law enforcement or government organisation with access to user data or the company's infrastructure.”

Eugene Kaspersky's refusal to condemn the Kremlin for its invasion of Ukraine set the cyber security community on fire. His company has tried to shake ties to the Russian government for years but hasn't succeeded quite yet. And recent events, it seems, only made things worse.

"We welcome the start of negotiations to resolve the current situation in Ukraine and hope that they will lead to a cessation of hostilities and a compromise. We believe that peaceful dialogue is the only possible instrument for resolving conflicts. War isn't good for anyone," Eugene Kaspersky tweeted when Russian and Ukrainian delegations met for peace talks near Ukraine's border with Belarus.

https://cybernews.com/security/kaspersky-neutral-stance-in-doubt-as-it-shields-kremlin/

Threats

Ransomware

Phishing & Email

Other Social Engineering

Malware

Mobile

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

DoS/DDoS

Nation State Actors

Passwords & Credential Stuffing

Spyware, Espionage & Cyber Warfare

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 25 February 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 25 February 2022

-Britain Warns of Cyber Attacks as Russia-Ukraine Crisis Escalates

-Ransomware Extortion Doesn't Stop After Paying The Ransom

-Ukraine Calls For Volunteer Hackers To Protect Its Critical Infrastructure And Spy On Russian Forces

-Study: UK Firms Most Likely To Pay Ransomware Hackers

-Conti Ransomware Group Announces Support of Russia, Threatens Retaliatory Attacks

-91% of UK Organisations Compromised by an Email Phishing Attack in 2021

-Almost 100,000 New Mobile Banking Trojan Strains Detected In 2021

-Anonymous Collective Has Hacked The Russian Defence Ministry And Leaked The Data Of Its Employees In Response To The Ukraine Invasion

-Email Remains Go-To Method for Cyber Attacks, Phishing Research Report Finds

-The Future of Cyber Insurance

-Businesses Are at Significant Risk of Cyber Security Breaches Due to Immature Security Hygiene and Posture Management Practices

-Microsoft Teams Is The New Frontier For Phishing Attacks

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

Britain Warns of Cyber Attacks as Russia-Ukraine Crisis Escalates

Britain warned of potential cyber attacks with "international consequences" this week after Russian President Vladimir Puitin ordered troops to two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine.

Britain's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a part of the GCHQ eavesdropping intelligence agency, called on British organisations to "bolster their online defences" following the developments.

"While the NCSC is not aware of any current specific threats to UK organisations in relation to events in and around Ukraine, there has been an historical pattern of cyber attacks on Ukraine with international consequences," it said in a statement.

Last week, Ukranian banking and government websites were briefly knocked offline by a spate of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks which the United States and Britain said were carried out by Russian military hackers.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/britain-warns-cyberattacks-russia-ukraine-crisis-escalates-2022-02-22/

Ransomware Extortion Doesn't Stop After Paying The Ransom

A global survey that looked into the experience of ransomware victims highlights the lack of trustworthiness of ransomware actors, as in most cases of paying the ransom, the extortion simply continues.

This is not a surprising or new discovery, but when seeing it reflected in actual statistics, one can appreciate the scale of the problem in full.

The survey was conducted by cyber security specialist Venafi, and the most important findings that emerge from the respondents are the following:

  • 18% of victims who paid the ransom still had their data exposed on the dark web.

  • 8% refused to pay the ransom, and the attackers tried to extort their customers.

  • 35% of victims paid the ransom but were still unable to retrieve their data.

As for the ransomware actor extortion tactics, these are summarized as follows:

  • 83% of all successful ransomware attacks featured double and triple extortion.

  • 38% of ransomware attacks threatened to use stolen data to extort customers.

  • 35% of ransomware attacks threatened to expose stolen data on the dark web.

  • 32% of attacks threatened to directly inform the victim's customers of the data breach incident.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ransomware-extortion-doesnt-stop-after-paying-the-ransom/

Ukraine Calls For Volunteer Hackers To Protect Its Critical Infrastructure And Spy On Russian Forces

The government of Ukraine is calling on the hacking community to volunteer its expertise and capabilities, following the invasion of the country by Russian forces.

Reuters reports that Yegor Aushev, the CEO of Kyiv-based Cyber Unit Technologies which has worked with Ukraine's government on the defence of critical infrastructure, claims to have been asked to post a digital call-to-arms after being asked by "a senior Defence Ministry official."

The message, which was posted on hacking forums by Aushev on Thursday, begins "Ukrainian cybercommunity! It’s time to get involved in the cyber defense of our country," and calls for cybersecurity experts and hackers to apply as a volunteer via a Google Docs link.  The page volunteers are directed to asks applicants to list their specialities, such as if they have developed malware, and professional references.

According to Aushev, volunteers will be divided into two groups - tasked with offensive and defensive cyber operations.

https://www.bitdefender.com/blog/hotforsecurity/ukraine-calls-for-volunteer-hackers-to-protect-its-critical-infrastructure-and-spy-on-russian-forces/

Study: UK Firms Most Likely To Pay Ransomware Hackers

Some 82% of British firms which have been victims of ransomware attacks paid the hackers in order to get back their data, a new report suggests.

The global average was 58%, making the UK the most likely country to pay cyber-criminals.

Security firm Proofpoint's research also found that more than three-quarters of UK businesses were affected by ransomware in 2021.

Phishing attacks remain the key way criminals access networks, it found.

Phishing happens when someone in a firm is lured into clicking on a link in an email that contains malware, which in turn can help cyber-criminals access company networks.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60478725

Conti Ransomware Group Announces Support of Russia, Threatens Retaliatory Attacks

An infamous ransomware group with potential ties to Russian intelligence and known for attacking health care providers and hundreds of other targets posted a warning Friday saying it was “officially announcing a full support of Russian government.”

The gang said that it would use “all possible resources to strike back at the critical infrastructures” of any entity that organises a cyberattack “or any war activities against Russia.” The message appeared Friday on the dark-web site used by ransomware group Conti to post threats and its victims’ data. Security researchers believe the gang to be Russia-based.

Conti ransomware was part of more than 400 attacks against mostly U.S. targets between spring 2020 and spring 2021, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the FBI reported in September.

https://www.cyberscoop.com/conti-ransomware-russia-ukraine-critical-infrastructure/

91% of UK Organisations Compromised by an Email Phishing Attack in 2021

More than nine in 10 (91%) UK organizations were successfully compromised by an email phishing attack last year, according to Proofpoint’s 2022 State of the Phish report.

The study observed a significant rise in email-based attacks globally in 2021 compared to 2020. Over three-quarters (78%) of organizations were targeted by email-based ransomware attacks last year and 77% faced business email compromise (BEC) attacks, the latter an 18% year-on-year increase from 2020.

The survey of 600 information and IT security professionals and 3500 workers in the US, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Spain and the UK also found that attacks in 2021 were more likely to be successful than in 2020. More than four in five (83%) respondents said their organization experienced at least one successful email-based phishing attack last year, up from 57% in 2020. In addition, 68% of organizations admitted they had to deal with at least one ransomware infection stemming from a direct email payload, second-stage malware delivery or other exploit.

Worryingly, 60% of organizations infected with ransomware admitted to paying a ransom, with around a third (32%) paying additional sums to regain access to data and systems.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/uk-organizations-email-phishing/

Almost 100,000 New Mobile Banking Trojan Strains Detected In 2021

Researchers have found almost 100,000 new variants of mobile banking Trojans in just a year.

As our digital lives have begun to centre more on handsets rather than just desktop PCs, many malware developers have shifted part of their focus to the creation of mobile threats.

Many of the traditional infection routes are still workable -- including phishing and the download and execution of suspicious software -- but cyber attackers are also known to infiltrate official app stores, including Google Play, to lure handset owners into downloading software that appears to be trustworthy.

This technique is often associated with the distribution of Remote Access Trojans (RATs). While Google maintains security barriers to stop malicious apps from being hosted in its store, there are methods to circumvent these controls quietly.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/almost-100000-new-mobile-banking-trojans-detected-in-2021/

Anonymous Collective Has Hacked The Russian Defence Ministry And Leaked The Data Of Its Employees In Response To The Ukraine Invasion

A few hours after the Anonymous collective has called to action against Russia following the illegitimate invasion of Ukraine its members have taken down the website of the Russian propaganda station RT News and news of the day is the attack against the servers of the Russian Defense Ministry.

“Anonymous, a group of hacktivists, successfully hacked and leaked the database of the website of the Ministry of Defense of Russia.” reported the Pravda agency.

The website of the Kremlin (Kremlin.ru) is also unreachable, but it is unclear if it is the result of the Anonymous attack or if the government has taken offline it to prevent disruptive attacks.

The Russian Government’s portal, and the websites of other ministries are running very slow.

The collective is also threatening the Russian Federation and private organizations of attacks, it is a retaliation against Putin’s tyranny.

Anonymous pointed out that it is not targeting Russian citizens, but only their government.

“We want the Russian people to understand that we know it’s hard for them to speak out against their dictator for fear of reprisals.”

https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/128428/hacking/anonymous-russian-defense-ministry.html

Email Remains Go-To Method for Cyber Attacks, Phishing Research Report Finds

If you don’t know what it is, if you can’t identify it and if you can’t make sure you don’t topple into its traps, then you can’t fight it, suggests a new report by security provider Proofpoint in its eighth annual State of the Phish report.

The “it” is email-based malware attacks, the kingpin of all hacking methods, that victims often fall for out of a lack of awareness, inadequate training or risky behaviours, such as using a company mobile device for home use.

Proofpoint’s report takes an in-depth look at user phishing awareness, vulnerability and resilience and comes away with some startling numbers: More than three-quarters of organizations associated with the 4,100 IT security professionals and staffers in the worldwide study were hit by email-based ransomware attacks in 2021 and an equal number were victimized by business email compromise attacks, an 18 percent spike from 2020.

What explains the year-over-year climb? Answer: Cyber criminals continue to focus on compromising people, not necessarily systems, Proofpoint said. Email remains cyber criminals’ go-to attack strategy, said Alan Lefort, Proofpoint security awareness training senior vice president and general manager. “Infosec and IT survey participants experienced an increase in targeted attacks in 2021 compared to 2020, yet our analysis showed the recognition of key security terminology such as phishing, malware, smishing (text-based ruse), and vishing (telephone trickery) dropped significantly,” said Lefort. “The awareness gaps and lax security behaviors demonstrated by workers creates substantial risk for organizations and their bottom line.”

https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-news/email-remains-go-to-method-for-cyberattacks-phishing-research-report-finds/

The Future of Cyber Insurance

In 2016, just 26% of insurance clients had cyber coverage. That number rose to 47% in 2020, according to a US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. But the demand for cyber coverage isn't the only thing soaring.

At the end of 2020, insurance prices jumped anywhere from 10% to 30%. In the third quarter of 2021, the average cost of cyber insurance premiums climbed a record 27.6%.

If the rates continue to rise, companies might decide it's not worth the cost. That is, if insurers continue to cover their industry.

https://www.darkreading.com/risk/the-future-of-cyber-insurance

Businesses Are at Significant Risk of Cyber Security Breaches Due to Immature Security Hygiene and Posture Management Practices

Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), a leading IT analyst, research, and strategy firm, and a division of TechTarget, Inc., today announced new research into security hygiene and posture management – a foundational part of a strong security program. The study reveals that many aspects of cyber security are managed independently and with antiquated tools, leaving organisations with limited visibility and weak defenses against an ever-evolving threat landscape. Since strong cybersecurity starts with the basics, like knowing about all IT assets deployed, this situation makes organisations vulnerable to advanced threats among strategic, yet often hurried, cloud and digital transformation initiatives.

The new report, Security Hygiene and Posture Management, summarizes a survey of 398 IT and cyber security professionals responsible for evaluating, purchasing, and utilizing products and services for security hygiene and posture management, including vulnerability management, asset management, attack surface management, and security testing tools. The data reveals that organisations must aim to further assess security posture management processes, examine vendor risk management requirements, and test security tool and processes more frequently.

https://www.darkreading.com/risk/businesses-are-at-significant-risk-of-cybersecurity-breaches-due-to-immature-security-hygiene-and-posture-management-practices

Microsoft Teams Is The New Frontier For Phishing Attacks

Even with email-based phishing attacks proving to be more successful than ever, cyberattackers are ramping up their efforts to target employees on additional platforms, such as Microsoft Teams and Slack.

One advantage is that in those applications, most employees still assume that they’re actually talking to their boss or coworker when they receive a message.

“The scary part is that we trust these programs implicitly — unlike our email inboxes, where we’ve learned to be suspicious of messages where we don’t recognize the sender’s address,” said anti-fraud technology firm Outseer.

Notably, traditional phishing has seen no slowdown: Proofpoint reported that 83% of organizations experienced a successful email-based phishing attack in 2021 — a massive jump from 57% in 2020. And outside of email, SMS attacks (smishing) and voice-based attacks (vishing) both grew in 2021, as well, according to the email security vendor.

However, it appears that attackers now view widely used collaboration platforms, such as Microsoft Teams and Slack, as another growing opportunity for targeting workers, security researchers and executives say. For some threat actors, it’s also a chance to leverage the additional capabilities of collaboration apps as part of the trickery.

https://venturebeat.com/2022/02/23/microsoft-teams-is-the-new-frontier-for-phishing-attacks/

Threats

Ransomware

BEC – Business Email Compromise

Phishing & Email

Other Social Engineering

Malware

Mobile

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Supply Chain

Nation State Actors

Privacy

Spyware, Espionage & Cyber Warfare

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 18 February 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 18 February 2022

-Small Businesses Facing Upwards of 11 Cyber Threats Per Day Per Device

-As Ukraine Tensions Rise, UK Organisations Should Protect Themselves From Cyber Threats

-Microsoft Teams Targeted With Takeover Trojans

-The European Central Bank is Warning Banks of Possible Russia-Linked Cyber Attack Amid the Rising Crisis With Ukraine

-Companies Face Soaring Prices For Cyber Insurance

-Even When Warned, Businesses Ignore Critical Vulnerabilities And Hope For The Best

-Ransomware-Related Data Leaks Nearly Doubled in 2021: Report

-Online Fraud Skyrocketing: Gaming, Streaming, Social Media, Travel and Ecommerce Hit the Most

-Poor Security Hygiene Organisations and Ransomware Attacks: Painful Math

-Security Teams Expect Attackers to Go After End Users First

-US Warns of Imminent Russian Invasion of Ukraine With Tanks, Jet Fighters, Cyber Attacks

-TrickBot Malware Targeted Customers of 60 High-Profile Companies Since 2020

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

As Ukraine Tensions Rise, UK Organisations Should Protect Themselves From Cyber Threats

In a world that is so dependent on digital assets, cyber resilience is more important than ever. At the National Cyber Security Centre – a part of GCHQ – the mission is to make the UK the safest place to live and work online, but they have said they cannot do it alone. 

Now, at a time of heightened cyber threats, the NCSC is urging all organisations to follow their advice on the steps they should take to improve their resilience.

The UK is closer to the crisis in Ukraine than you might think. While 2,000-odd miles separate us physically from their borders with Russia, that distance is much shorter in cyber space – and attacks targeting Ukraine’s digital infrastructure could be felt here in Britain.

Cyber attacks do not respect geographic boundaries. On a daily basis, businesses in the UK are targeted by ransomware attacks from criminals overseas.

And as tensions have risen in Ukraine in recent weeks, authorities have already seen a number of cyber attacks occurring. On Friday evening, the UK government judged that the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) was involved in last week’s distributed denial of service attacks against the financial sector in Ukraine.

If the situation continues to escalate, we could see cyber attacks that have international consequences, intentional or not. Rising tensions in the region, with the risk of overspill, are why the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has said that the UK’s cyber risk has heightened in the last month, although there is no evidence of the UK being specifically targeted.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/02/19/uk-organisations-should-protect-now-unintended-consequences/

Small Businesses Facing Upwards of 11 Cyber Threats Per Day Per Device

BlackBerry's 2022 Threat Report highlights growing threats to SMBs, calls on government to make cyber security top priority

BlackBerry Limited has released the 2022 BlackBerry Annual Threat Report, highlighting a cybercriminal underground which it says has been optimised to better target local small businesses. Small businesses will continue to be an epicentre for cybercriminal focus as SMBs facing upward of 11 cyber threats per device per day, which only stands to accelerate as cybercriminals increasingly adopt collaborative mindsets.

The report also uncovered cyber breadcrumbs from some of last year’s most notorious ransomware attacks, suggesting some of the biggest culprits may have simply been outsourced labour.  In multiple incidents BlackBerry identified threat actors leaving behind playbook text files containing IP addresses and more, suggesting the authors of this year’s sophisticated ransomware are not the ones carrying out attacks. This highlights the growing shared economy within the cyber underground.

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2022/02/15/small-businesses-facing-upwards-of-11-cyberthreats-per-day-per-device/

Microsoft Teams Targeted With Takeover Trojans

Threat actors are targeting Microsoft Teams users by planting malicious documents in chat threads that execute Trojans that ultimately can take over end-user machines, researchers have found.

Researchers began tracking the campaign in January, which drops malicious executable files in Teams conversations that, when clicked on, eventually take over the user’s computer, according to a report published Thursday.

Using an executable file, or a file that contains instructions for the system to execute, hackers can install DLL files and allow the program to self-administer and take control over the computer. By attaching the file to a Teams attack, hackers have found a new way to easily target millions of users.

Cyber criminals long have targeted Microsoft’s ubiquitous document-creation and sharing suite – the legacy Office and its cloud-based version, Office 365 – with attacks against individual apps in the suite such as PowerPoint as well as business email compromise and other scams.

Now Microsoft Teams – a business communication and collaboration suite – is emerging as an increasingly popular attack surface for cybercriminals.

https://threatpost.com/microsoft-teams-targeted-takeover-trojans/178497/

The European Central Bank is Warning Banks of Possible Russia-Linked Cyber Attack Amid the Rising Crisis With Ukraine

The European Central Bank is warning banks of possible Russia-linked cyber attack amid the rising crisis with Ukraine and is inviting them to step up defences.

The news was reported by Reuters, citing two unnamed sources. The ECB pointed out that addressing cyber security is a top priority for the European agency.

“The European Central Bank is telling euro zone banks zone to step up their defences against cyber attacks, also in the context of geopolitical tensions such as the stand-off between Russia and Ukraine, the ECB’s top supervisor said on Thursday.” reported Reuters.

ECB warned that the rising risk from cyber attacks begun in 2020.

https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/128004/breaking-news/european-central-bank-warns-russia-cyberattacks.html

Companies Face Soaring Prices For Cyber Insurance

The cost of cyber insurance has risen steeply over the past year. According to Marsh, the price of cover in the US grew by 130 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2021 alone, while in the UK it grew by 92 per cent. That has increased pressure on companies who are facing cost inflation in other parts of their business.

The steep hikes in the cost of cyber insurance come against a backdrop of rising prices more broadly. According to Marsh, commercial insurance prices rose 13 per cent in the final quarter of 2021.

The hardening market from reduced capacity allied with increasing cyber fraud are potent forces. Pricing becomes more challenging, reinsurance appetite reduced whilst costs increasing and fraudsters have as much access to the latest technologies as do enterprises, the government sector and the insurance industry.

There may be limits to what insurers can cover. Speaking to the Financial Times last week the chief executive of Zurich said: “A connected economy offers lots of opportunities for cyber attacks.” A major cyber risk, he added, “is something only governments can manage”.

Companies will have to do more themselves to fight cyber fraud with technology partners. Meanwhile brokers and insurers must review underwriting data and practices and government raise effectiveness at prosecuting criminals.

https://www.ft.com/content/60ddc050-a846-461a-aa10-5aaabf6b35a5

Even When Warned, Businesses Ignore Critical Vulnerabilities And Hope For The Best

A Bulletproof research found the extent to which businesses are leaving themselves open to cyber attack. When tested, 28% of businesses had critical vulnerabilities – vulnerabilities that could be immediately exploited by cyber attacks.

A quarter of businesses neglected to fix those critical vulnerabilities, even though penetration testing had highlighted them to the business after a retest was completed.

The research analyzed data from over 3,800 days’ worth of penetration testing services. These tests are a means of identifying vulnerabilities within an organisation’s security systems by simulating how malicious actors would seek to exploit such shortcomings.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/02/18/businesses-critical-vulnerabilities/

Ransomware-Related Data Leaks Nearly Doubled in 2021: Report

There was a significant increase in ransomware-related data leaks and interactive intrusions in 2021, according to the 2022 Global Threat Report released on Tuesday by endpoint security firm CrowdStrike.

The number of ransomware attacks that led to data leaks increased from 1,474 in 2020 to 2,686 in 2021, which represents an 82% increase. The sectors most impacted by data leaks in 2021 were industrial and engineering, manufacturing, and technology.

The growth and impact of big game hunting in 2021 was a palpable force felt across all sectors and in nearly every region of the world. Although some adversaries and ransomware ceased operations in 2021, the overall number of operating ransomware families increased,” CrowdStrike said in its report.

https://www.securityweek.com/ransomware-related-data-leaks-nearly-doubled-2021-report

Online Fraud Skyrocketing: Gaming, Streaming, Social Media, Travel and Ecommerce Hit the Most

An Arkose Labs report is warning UK commerce that it faces its most challenging year ever. Experts analyzed over 150 billion transaction requests across 254 countries and territories in 2021 over 12 months to discover that there has been an 85% increase in login attacks and fake consumer account creation at businesses.

Alongside this, it identified that one in four new online accounts created were fake. A further 21% of all traffic was confirmed as a fraudulent cyber attack.

From the earliest days of online information to the rapid evolution of today’s metaverses, the internet has come a long way. However, this latest data shows that it is more under attack than ever before.

Your digital identity is a currency for fraudsters and wherever there is online commerce, cyber criminals are quick to identify vulnerabilities.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/02/14/fake-consumer-account/

Poor Security Hygiene Organisations and Ransomware Attacks: Painful Math

Poor cyber security hygiene is widely considered to be a major influencing factor for exposure to a ransomware attack. But is that an accurate assessment?

In a new study, RiskRecon, a security best practices specialist, investigated 600+ cyber hijacks to determine if companies victimized by a “detonation” had poor cyber security hygiene at the time and which factors, such as web encryption, application security and email security, are key gaps in coverage.

The answer: Cyber security hygiene does in fact play a large role in an organisation’s vulnerability to a ransomware attack. RiskRecon analyzed the cyber security hygiene on the day of ransomware incident for 622 organisations spanning 633 ransomware events occurring between 2017 and 2021. Based on a comparison population of cyber security ratings and assessments of some 100,000 entities, companies that have very poor cyber security hygiene in their internet-facing systems (a ‘D’ or ‘F’ RiskRecon rating) have about a 40 times higher rate of destructive ransomware events as compared to those with clean cyber security hygiene. Only .03 percent of ‘A-rated’ companies were victims of a destructive ransomware attack, compared with 1.08 percent of ‘D-rated’ and 0.91 percent of ‘F-rated’ companies.

The cyber security conditions underlying the RiskRecon rating reveal just how poor the cyber security hygiene is of companies, on average, that fall victim to a material system-encrypting ransomware attack. For example, ransomware victims have an average of 11 material software vulnerabilities in their internet-facing systems, in comparison with only one issue in the general population. Looking at network services that criminals commonly exploit, ransomware victims expose 3.3 times more unsafe network services to the internet than the general population.

https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-research/poor-security-hygiene-organisations-and-ransomware-attacks-painful-math/

Security Teams Expect Attackers to Go After End Users First

Phishing, malware, and ransomware have spurred organisations to increase their investments in endpoint security, according to Dark Reading’s Endpoint Security Survey.

The shift to a more distributed work environment and an increase in digital transformation initiatives have motivated organisations to bolster their endpoint security defences. However, end users continue to be a major source of worry for IT and security decision-makers, according to the latest Dark Reading survey.

Phishing, malware, and ransomware pose major threats to organisations, as do attacks involving credential theft. An overwhelming 93% of IT and security professionals in Dark Reading’s "2022 Endpoint Security Survey" cite the growing number of ransomware attacks as the reason behind increased investments in endpoint security. Similarly, 83% say the increase in attacks using end-user credentials spurred their endpoint investments.

End users pose one of the biggest threats to the organisation, as 87% expect that if attackers wanted to steal the organisation’s data, they would begin by targeting a single end user.

Concerns about the end user are not new. Verizon’s "2021 Data Breach Investigations Report" found that 85% of the breaches it investigated in 2020 involved end users in some way – such as stolen account credentials, incorrectly assigned privileges or elevated privileges, social engineering, and user error.

https://www.darkreading.com/edge-threat-monitor/end-users-remain-one-of-the-biggest-headaches-in-it-security

US Warns of Imminent Russian Invasion of Ukraine With Tanks, Jet Fighters, Cyber Attacks

President Biden said Friday he is convinced Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to invade Ukraine and that he expects an attack in the coming days, with targets including the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

US officials said a Russian attack could involve a broad combination of jet fighters, tanks, ballistic missiles and cyberattacks, with the ultimate intention of rendering Ukraine’s leadership powerless.

The officials said Mr. Putin has laid the groundwork in recent days through a series of destabilizing activities and false-flag operations, long predicted by U.S. and allied officials and intended to make it look as if Ukraine has provoked Russia into a conflict, thus justifying the Russian invasion.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-troops-told-to-exercise-restraint-to-avoid-provoking-russian-invasion-11645185631

TrickBot Malware Targeted Customers of 60 High-Profile Companies Since 2020

The notorious TrickBot malware is targeting customers of 60 financial and technology companies, including cryptocurrency firms, primarily located in the U.S., even as its operators have updated the botnet with new anti-analysis features.

TrickBot is a sophisticated and versatile malware with more than 20 modules that can be downloaded and executed on demand.

In addition to being both prevalent and persistent, TrickBot has continually evolved its tactics to go past security and detection layers. To that end, the malware's "injectDll" web-injects module, which is responsible for stealing banking and credential data, leverages anti-deobfuscation techniques to crash the web page and thwart attempts to scrutinize the source code.

Also put in place are anti-analysis guardrails to prevent security researchers from sending automated requests to command-and-control (C2) servers to retrieve fresh web injects.

https://thehackernews.com/2022/02/trickbot-malware-targeted-customers-of.html

Threats

Ransomware

BEC – Business Email Compromise

Phishing & Email

Malware

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

DoS/DDoS

Nation State Actors

Cloud

Privacy

Spyware, Espionage & Cyber Warfare

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 11 February 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 11 February 2022:

-UK, US, Australia Issue Joint Advisory: Ransomware on the Loose, Critical National Infrastructure Affected

-Ransomware Groups and APT Actors Laser-Focused on Financial Services

-Why the C-Suite Should Focus on Understanding Cybersecurity and Investing Appropriately

-Almost $1.3bn Paid to Ransomware Actors Since 2020

-Cyber Crooks Frame Targets by Planting Fabricated Digital Evidence

-Highly Evasive Adaptive Threats (HEAT) Bypassing Traditional Security Defenses

-LockBit, BlackCat, Swissport, Oh My! Ransomware Activity Stays Strong

-2021 Was The Most Prolific Year On Record For Data Breaches

-$1.3 Billion Lost to Romance Scams in the Past Five Years

-Cyber Security Compliance Still Not A Priority For Many

-The World is Falling Victim to the Growing Trickbot Attacks in 2022

-“We Absolutely Do Not Care About You”: Sugar Ransomware Targets Individuals

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

 UK, US, Australia Issue Joint Advisory: Ransomware on the Loose, Critical National Infrastructure Affected

Firms shelled out $5bn in Bitcoin in 6 months

Ransomware attacks are proliferating as criminals turn to gangs providing turnkey post-compromise services, Britain's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has warned.

In a joint UK-US-Australia advisory issued this week, the three countries said they had "observed an increase in sophisticated, high-impact ransomware incidents against critical infrastructure organisations globally."

The warning comes hot on the heels of several high-profile attacks against oil distribution companies and also businesses that operate ports in the West – though today's note insists there was a move by criminals away from "big game hunting" against US targets.

Among the main threats facing Western organisations were the use of "cybercriminal services-for-hire". These, as detailed in the advisory, include "independent services to negotiate payments, assist victims with making payments, and arbitrate payment disputes between themselves and other cyber criminals."

https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/09/uk_us_au_ransomware_warning/

Ransomware Groups and APT Actors Laser-Focused on Financial Services

Trellix released a report, examining cybercriminal behaviour and activity related to cyber threats in the third quarter (Q3) of 2021. Among its findings, the research reports that despite a community reckoning to ban ransomware activity from online forums, hacker groups used alternate personas to continue to proliferate the use of ransomware against an increasing spectrum of sectors – hitting the financial, utilities and retail sectors most often, accounting for nearly 60% of ransomware detections.

“While we ended 2021 focused on a resurgent pandemic and the revelations around the Log4j vulnerability, our third-quarter deep dive into cyber threat activity found notable new tools and tactics among ransomware groups and advanced global threat actors,” said Trellix.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/02/07/cyber-threats-q3-2021/

Why the C-Suite Should Focus on Understanding Cyber Security and Investing Appropriately

Trend Micro has published a research revealing that persistently low IT/C-suite engagement may imperil investments and expose organisations to increased cyber risk. Over 90% of the IT and business decision makers surveyed expressed particular concern about ransomware attacks.

Despite widespread concern over spiralling threats, the study found that only 57% of responding IT teams discuss cyber risks with the C-suite at least weekly.

Vulnerabilities used to go months or even years before being exploited after their discovery.

“Now it can be hours, or even sooner. More executives than ever understand that they have a responsibility to be informed, but they often feel overwhelmed by how rapidly the cyber security landscape evolves. IT leaders need to communicate with their board in such a way that they can understand where the organisation’s risk is and how they can best manage it.”

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/02/10/c-suite-engagement/

Almost $1.3bn Paid to Ransomware Actors Since 2020

Cryptocurrency experts have identified $602m of ransomware payments made in 2021, but warned the real figure will likely surpass the $692m paid to cybercrime groups in 2020.

The findings come from the Ransomware Crypto Crime Report produced by blockchain investigations and analytics company Chainalysis. It reveals some fascinating insight into current industry trends.

Average payment size has soared over recent years, from $25,000 in 2019 to $88,000 a year later and $118,000 in 2021. That’s due in part to a surge in targeted attacks on major organisations, known as “big-game hunting,” which can net threat actors tens of millions in a single compromise.

“This big-game hunting strategy is enabled in part by ransomware attackers’ usage of tools provided by third-party providers to make their attacks more effective,” the report explained. “Usage of these services by ransomware operators spiked to its highest ever levels in 2021.”

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/almost-13bn-paid-to-ransomware/

Cyber Crooks Frame Targets by Planting Fabricated Digital Evidence

The ‘ModifiedElephant’ threat actors are technically unimpressive, but they’ve evaded detection for a decade, hacking human rights advocates’ systems with dusty old keyloggers and off-the-shelf RATs.

Threat actors are hijacking the devices of India’s human rights lawyers, activists and defenders, planting incriminating evidence to set them up for arrest, researchers warn.

The actor, dubbed ModifiedElephant, has been at it for at least 10 years, and it’s still active. It’s been shafting targets since 2012, if not sooner, going after hundreds of groups and individuals – some repeatedly – according to SentinelLabs researchers.

The operators aren’t what you’d call technical prodigies, but that doesn’t matter. Threat researchers at SentinelOne, said that the advanced persistent threat (APT) group – which may be tied to the commercial surveillance industry – has been muddling along just fine using rudimentary hacking tools such as commercially available remote-access trojans (RATs)

https://threatpost.com/cybercrooks-frame-targets-plant-incriminating-evidence/178384/

Highly Evasive Adaptive Threats (HEAT) Bypassing Traditional Security Defences

Menlo Security announced it has identified a surge in cyberthreats, termed Highly Evasive Adaptive Threats (HEAT), that bypass traditional security defences.

HEAT attacks are a class of cyber threats targeting web browsers as the attack vector and employs techniques to evade detection by multiple layers in current security stacks including firewalls, Secure Web Gateways, sandbox analysis, URL Reputation, and phishing detection. HEAT attacks are used to deliver malware or to compromise credentials, that in many cases leads to ransomware attacks.

In an analysis of almost 500,000 malicious domains, the research team discovered that 69% of these websites used HEAT tactics to deliver malware. These attacks allow bad actors to deliver malicious content to the endpoint by adapting to the targeted environment. Since July 2021, there was a 224% increase in HEAT attacks.

“With the abrupt move to remote working in 2020, every organisation had to pivot to a work from an anywhere model and accelerate their migration to cloud-based applications. An industry report found that 75% of the working day is spent in a web browser, which has quickly become the primary attack surface for threat actors, ransomware and other attacks. The industry has seen an explosion in the number and sophistication of these highly evasive attacks and most businesses are unprepared and lack the resources to prevent them,” said Menlo Security.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/02/08/cyberthreats-bypass-security-defences/

LockBit, BlackCat, Swissport, Oh My! Ransomware Activity Stays Strong

However, groups are rebranding and recalibrating their profiles and tactics to respond to law enforcement and the security community’s focus on stopping ransomware attacks.

Law enforcement, C-suite executives and the cyber security community at-large have been laser-focused on stopping the expensive and disruptive barrage of ransomware attacks — and it appears to be working, at least to some extent. Nonetheless, recent moves from the LockBit 2.0 and BlackCat gangs, plus this weekend’s hit on the Swissport airport ground-logistics company, shows the scourge is far from over.

It’s more expensive and riskier than ever to launch ransomware attacks, and ransomware groups have responded by mounting fewer attacks with higher ransomware demands, Coveware has reported, finding that the average ransomware payment in the fourth quarter of last year climbed by 130 percent to reach $322,168. Likewise, Coveware found a 63 percent jump in the median ransom payment, up to $117,116.

“Average and median ransom payments increased dramatically during Q4, but we believe this change was driven by a subtle tactical shift by ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operations that reflected the increasing costs and risks previously described,” Coveware analysts said. “The tactical shift involves a deliberate attempt to extort companies that are large enough to pay a ‘big game’ ransom amount but small enough to keep attack operating costs and resulting media and law enforcement attention low.”

https://threatpost.com/lockbit-blackcat-swissport-ransomware-activity/178261/

2021 Was The Most Prolific Year On Record For Data Breaches

Spirion released a guide which provides a detailed look at sensitive data breaches in 2021 derived from analysis conducted against the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) database of publicly reported data breaches in the United States.

The guide is based on the analysis of more than 1,500 data incidents that occurred in the United States during 2021 that specifically involved sensitive data, including personally identifiable information (PII). The report identifies the top sensitive data breaches by the number of individuals impacted, number of records compromised, threat actor, exposure vector, and types of sensitive data exposed by industry sector.

2021 was the most prolific year on record for data breaches, surpassing 2017’s all-time high. Last year a total of 1,862 data compromises were reported by US organisations—a 68 percent increase over 2020. ITRC data revealed that 83% of the year’s incidents exposed 889 million sensitive data records that impacted more than 150 million individuals.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/02/09/2021-sensitive-data-breaches/

$1.3 Billion Lost to Romance Scams in the Past Five Years

Romance scams are reaching record-highs, regulators warn.

Netflix's new documentary, The Tinder Swindler, is a wild ride.

The show examines how an alleged fraudster impacted the lives of multiple women, matching with them on Tinder and treating them to expensive dates to gain their trust -- and eventually asking for huge sums of money.

While you may watch the show and wonder how someone -- no matter their gender -- could allow themselves to be swindled out of their savings, romance scams are common, breaking hearts and wiping bank balances around the world every day. 

We've moved on from the days of "lonely hearts" columns to dating apps, and they're popular channels to conduct fraud.

Fake profiles, stolen photos and videos, and sob stories from fraudsters (their car has broken down, they can't afford to meet a match, or, in The Tinder Swindler's case, their "enemies" are after them) are all weapons designed to secure interest and sympathy.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/1-3-billion-lost-to-romance-scams-in-the-past-five-years-ftc/

Cyber Security Compliance Still Not A Priority For Many

IBM survey suggests that cyber security still isn't a priority for many companies

The most consistent data point in the IBM i Marketplace Survey Results over recent years has been the ever-present cyber security threat. This year is no exception. The study shows that 62% of organisations consider cyber security a number one concern as they plan their IT infrastructure. 22% cite regulations and compliance in their top five. While companies that prioritise security seem to be implementing multiple solutions, it’s still alarming that nearly half of them do not plan to implement them.

The complexity of cyber security often leaves industry leaders confused and overwhelmed, unable to produce the sound, proactive stance that is so essential.

Cyber security standards can be confusing, but they are necessary. Tighter security can be encouraged with an understanding of cyber security guidelines

For many organisations, cyber security standards are just too complex to wrap their hands around, but that doesn’t mean it’s not necessary. Understanding how cyber security guidelines affect companies’ legal standing can help encourage tighter security.

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2022/02/07/cybersecurity-compliance-still-not-a-priority-for-many/

The World is Falling Victim to the Growing Trickbot Attacks in 2022

The malware goons are back again. The cybercrime operators behind the notorious TrickBot malware have once again upped the ante by fine-tuning its techniques by adding multiple layers of defence to slip past antimalware products.

TrickBot, which started out as a banking trojan, has evolved into a multi-purpose crimeware-as-a-service (CaaS) that’s employed by a variety of actors to deliver additional payloads such as ransomware. Over 100 variations of TrickBot have been identified to date, one of which is a “Trickboot” module that can modify the UEFI firmware of a compromised device. In the fall of 2020, Microsoft along with a handful of U.S. government agencies and private security companies teamed up to tackle the TrickBot botnet, taking down much of its infrastructure across the world in a bid to stymie its operations. But TrickBot has proven to be impervious to takedown attempts, what with the operators quickly adjusting their techniques to propagate multi-stage malware through phishing and malspam attacks, not to mention expanding their distribution channels by partnering with other affiliates like Shathak (aka TA551) to increase scale and drive profits.

Russian-based criminals behind the notorious malware known as Trickbot appear to be working overtime to upgrade the threat’s capabilities. Researchers announced last week the discovery of new malware components that enable monitoring and intelligence gathering on victims. The research findings include the detection of a VNC module that uses a custom communications protocol to obfuscate any data being transmitted between the command-and-control (C2) servers and the victims, making the attacks harder to find. The module is in active development and is being updated by criminals at a rapid pace.

https://www.analyticsinsight.net/the-world-is-falling-victim-to-the-growing-trickbot-attacks-in-2022/

“We Absolutely Do Not Care About You”: Sugar Ransomware Targets Individuals

Ransomware tends to target organisations. Corporations not only house a trove of valuable data they can’t function without, but they are also expected to cough up a considerable amount of ransom money in exchange for their encrypted files. And while corporations struggle to keep up with attacks, ransomware groups have left the average consumer relatively untouched—until now.

Sugar ransomware, a new strain recently discovered by the Walmart Security Team, is a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) that targets single computers and (likely) small businesses, too. Sugar, also known to many as Encoded01, has been in operation since November 2021.

https://blog.malwarebytes.com/ransomware/2022/02/we-absolutely-do-not-care-about-you-sugar-ransomware-targets-individuals/

Threats

Ransomware

Phishing

Other Social Engineering

Malware

Mobile

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Supply Chain

DoS/DDoS

Nation State Actors

Cloud

Privacy

Spyware, Espionage & Cyber Warfare

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 02 February 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 02 February 2022:

-Why Cyber Change Outpaces Boardroom Engagement

-NCSC Alerts UK Orgs To Brace For Destructive Russian Cyber Attacks

-Ransomware: Over Half Of Attacks Are Targeting These Three Industries

-Third of Employees Admit to Exfiltrating Data When Leaving Their Job

-Massive Social Engineering Waves Have Impacted Banks In Several Countries

-Ransomware Is Terrifying – But Never Underestimate The Damage An Employee With Unmonitored Access Can Do

-People Working In IT Related Roles Equally Susceptible To Phishing Attempts As The General Population

-FBI Says More Cyber Attacks Come From China Than Everywhere Else Combined

-Managing Detections Is Not the Same as Stopping Breaches

-From War to Web Security, Protect Your Attack Surface from the Weakest Link

-Number Of Data Compromises Reaching All-Time High

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

Cyber Change Outpaces Boardroom Engagement

We all know the story of the past two years. Mass digital investments in SaaS collaboration suites, cloud infrastructure and other tools helped to keep organisations operational when they needed it most. The money continues to flow today, as those same companies realize they must keep on pumping funds into digital to stay competitive amidst rising customer expectations. Gartner predicted public cloud spending growth would hit 23% year-on-year in 2021 and increase 20% this year to top $397bn.

From a cyber security perspective, these business decisions are loaded with risk if protections are not built into projects from the start. A recent global poll revealed that of 90% of business and IT decision makers are concerned about the impact of ransomware. It also found generally poor levels of cyber-awareness among board members. Less than half (46%) of respondents claimed concepts like “cyber risk” and “cyber risk management” were known extensively in their organisation.

The truth is that many board leaders do understand the need for greater investment in security as a strategic growth driver. But they find it hard to keep pace with a threat landscape that moves at the speed of light. Vulnerabilities used to go months or years before they were exploited, for example, but today threat actors are working on exploits for bugs like Log4Shell within hours of their discovery. That makes the fast-changing risk landscape difficult to grasp for even tech-savvy C-suite leaders. As a result, cyber risk continues to be managed reactively, which puts the organisation perpetually on the back foot.

https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/22/b/why-cyber-change-outpaces-boardroom-engagement.html

NCSC Alerts UK Orgs to Brace for Destructive Russian Cyber Attacks

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is urging organisations to bolster security and prepare for a potential wave of destructive cyber attacks after recent breaches of Ukrainian entities.

The NCSC openly warns that Russian state-sponsored threat actors will likely conduct the attacks and reminds of the damage done in previous destructive cyber attacks, like NotPetya in 2017 and the GRU campaign against Georgia in 2019.

These warnings come after Ukrainian government agencies and corporate entities suffered cyber attacks where websites were defaced, and data-wiping malware was deployed to destroy data and make Windows devices inoperable.

The cause for the resurgence of attacks is the tensions between Russia and Ukraine, and attempts to negotiate a way out of the Ukraine crisis have failed so far.

Ukraine and Russia have engaged in cyber warfare for many years, but recent Russian military mobilization was accompanied by new waves of attacks, with European countries and the USA expected to be targeted next.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ncsc-alerts-uk-orgs-to-brace-for-destructive-russian-cyberattacks/

Over Half of Ransomware Attacks are Targeting Financial Services, Utilities and Retail

Three sectors have been the most common target for ransomware attacks, but researchers warn "no business or industry is safe".

Over half of ransomware attacks are targeting one of three industries; banking, utilities and retail, according to analysis by cyber security researchers – but they've also warned that all industries are at risk from attacks.

The data has been gathered by Trellix – formerly McAfee Enterprise and FireEye – from detected attacks between July and September 2021, a period when some of the most high-profile ransomware attacks of the past year happened.

According to detections by Trellix, banking and finance was the most common target for ransomware during the reporting period, accounting for 22% of detected attacks. That's followed by 20% of attacks targeting the utilities sector and 16% of attacks targeting retailers. Attacks against the three sectors in combination accounted for 58% of all of those detected.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/ransomware-over-half-of-attacks-are-targeting-these-three-industries/

Third of Employees Admit to Exfiltrating Data When Leaving Their Job

Nearly one-third (29%) of employees admitted taking data with them when they leave their job, according to new research from Tessian.

The findings follow the ‘great resignation’ of 2021, when workers quit their jobs in huge waves following the COVID-19 pandemic. Unsurprisingly, close to three-quarters (71%) of IT leaders believe this trend has increased security risks in their organisations.

In addition, nearly half (45%) of IT leaders said they had seen incidents of data exfiltration increase in the past year due to staff taking data with them when they left.

The survey of 2000 UK workers also looked at employees' motives for taking such information. The most common reason was that the data would help them in their new job (58%). This was followed by the belief that the information belonged to them because they worked on the document (53%) and to share it with their new employer (44%).

The employees most likely to take data with them when leaving their job worked in marketing (63%), HR (37%) and IT (37%).

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/third-employees-exfiltrating-data/

Massive Social Engineering Waves Have Impacted Banks in Several Countries

A massive social engineering campaign has been delivered in the last two years in several countries, including Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, the UK, and France. According to Segurança Informática publication, the malicious waves have impacted banking organisations with the goal of stealing the users’ secrets, accessing the home banking portals, and also controlling all the operations on the fly via Command and Control (C2) servers geolocated in Brazil.

In short, criminal groups are targeting victims’ from different countries to collect their home banking secrets and payment cards. The campaigns are carried out by using social engineering schemas, namely smishing, and spear-phishing through fake emails.

Criminals obtain lists of valid and tested phone numbers and emails from other malicious groups, and the process is performed on underground forums, Telegram channels or Discord chats.

The spear-phishing campaigns try to lure victims with fake emails that impersonate the banking institutions. The emails are extremely similar to the originals, exception their content, mainly related to debts or lack of payments.

https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/127516/cyber-crime/massive-social-engineering-banks.html

Ransomware is Terrifying – But Never Underestimate the Damage an Employee with Unmonitored Access Can Do

Is the biggest threat to your data a mysterious ransomware merchant or an advanced persistent threat cartel?

Or is it a security system that will show you that data has been exfiltrated from your organisation – but only after the fact, leaving open the possibility that your valuable IP could have already been shared with unauthorized parties?

It was the latter scenario that allegedly resulted in 12,000 internal documents being lifted from Pfizer’s systems by a soon-to-depart employee last year. Those documents reportedly included details of COVID-19 vaccine research and a new melanoma drug.

The incident shows how today’s cloud infrastructure can exacerbate security gaps and why simply detecting a potential data leak isn’t enough. Companies need to have deep insight into what their employees are doing, as well as technology that can actively enforce policy and prevent unencrypted data from ever leaving the enterprise.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/03/ransomware_terrifying/

People Working in IT Related Roles Equally Susceptible to Phishing Attempts as the General Population

Phishing emails that mimic HR announcements or ask for assistance with invoicing get the most clicks from recipients, according to a study from F-Secure.

The study, which included 82,402 participants, tested how employees from four different organisations responded to emails that simulated one of four commonly used phishing tactics.

22% of recipients that received an email simulating a human resources announcement about vacation time clicked, making emails that mimic those sent by HR the most frequent source of clicks in the study.

An email asking the recipient to help with an invoice (referred to as CEO Fraud in the report) was the second most frequently engaged with email type, receiving clicks from 16% of recipients.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/02/03/phishing-emails-clicks/

FBI Says More Cyber Attacks Come from China than Everywhere Else Combined

US Federal Bureau of Investigation director Christopher Wray has named China as the source of more cyber-attacks on the USA than all other nations combined.

In a Monday speech titled Countering Threats Posed by the Chinese Government Inside the US, Wray said the FBI is probing over 2,000 investigations of incidents assessed as attempts by China's government "to steal our information and technology."

"The Chinese government steals staggering volumes of information and causes deep, job-destroying damage across a wide range of industries – so much so that, as you heard, we're constantly opening new cases to counter their intelligence operations, about every 12 hours or so."

Wray rated China's online offensive as "bigger than those of every other major nation combined," adding it has "a lot of funding and sophisticated tools, and often joining forces with cyber criminals – in effect, cyber mercenaries."

https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/03/fbi_china_threat_to_usa/

Managing Detections is Not the Same as Stopping Breaches

Enterprises interested in managed detection and response (MDR) services to monitor endpoints and workloads should make sure the providers have rock-solid expertise in detecting and responding to threats.

The fundamental challenge in cyber security is that adversaries move quickly. We know from observation that attackers go from initial intrusion to lateral movement in a matter of a couple hours or less.

If security teams are going to successfully stop a breach, they need to operate within the same timeframe, containing and remediating threats within minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Such constant vigilance can be challenging for in-house staff. This is why many organisations engage a provider of managed detection and response (MDR) security services, which monitors endpoints, workloads, and other systems to detect and monitor threats.

Unfortunately, even most managed services have several fundamental flaws that prevent them from executing on the core mission of stopping breaches.

https://www.darkreading.com/crowdstrike/managing-detections-is-not-the-same-as-stopping-breaches

From War to Web Security, Protect Your Attack Surface from the Weakest Link

With the rapid proliferation of data, increasing number of domains and subdomains as well as rise in third-party providers, the number of entry points through which attackers can infiltrate a company’s web environment is endless. Attacks are increasingly causing consequences felt beyond the perimeter of an organisation, as demonstrated earlier this year with the Colonial Pipeline breach, which caused fuel prices along the US East Coast to soar, and the attack on software provider Kaseya that forced hundreds of grocery stores in the Nordics to shut down business for days.

Security breaches often happen through an avenue that no one saw coming — a server no one knew existed, an old landing page, weak passwords or an application that was missing a patch. It’s perhaps never been clearer than today that a company is only as strong as the weakest link in its growing attack surface.

https://thenewstack.io/from-war-to-web-security-protect-your-attack-surface-from-the-weakest-link/

Number of Data Compromises Reaching All-Time High

According to an Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) report, the overall number of data compromises (1,862) is up more than 68 percent compared to 2020.

The new record number of data compromises is 23 percent over the previous all-time high (1,506) set in 2017. The number of data events that involved sensitive information (Ex: Social Security numbers) increased slightly compared to 2020 (83 percent vs. 80 percent). However, it remained well below the previous high of 95 percent set in 2017.

The number of victims continues to decrease (down five (5) percent in 2021 compared to the previous year) as identity criminals focus more on specific data types rather than mass data acquisition. However, the number of consumers whose data was compromised multiple times per year remains alarmingly high.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/01/31/data-compromises-up/

Threats

Ransomware

Phishing

Other Social Engineering

Malware

Data Breaches/Leaks

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Supply Chain

DoS/DDoS

CNI, OT, ICS, IIoT and SCADA

Nation State Actors

Cloud

Passwords & Credential Stuffing

Spyware, Espionage & Cyber Warfare

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 28 January 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 28 January 2022

-UK Warned To Bolster Defences Against Cyber Attacks As Russia Threatens Ukraine - BBC News

-Cyber Attacks And Ransomware Hit A New Record In 2021, Says Report

-Ransomware Families Becoming More Sophisticated With Newer Attack Methods

-More Than 90% Of Enterprises Surveyed Have Been Hit By Successful Cyberattacks

-Ransomware Gangs Increase Efforts To Enlist Insiders For Attacks

-Shipment-Delivery Scams Become the Favoured Way to Spread Malware

-Most Ransomware Infections Are Self-Installed

-Staff Negligence Is Now A Major Reason For Insider Security Incidents

-22 Cyber Security Myths Organisations Need To Stop Believing In 2022

-Android Malware Can Factory-Reset Phones After Draining Bank Accounts

-GDPR Fines Surged Sevenfold to $1.25 Billion in 2021: Study

-Cyber Security In 2022 – A Fresh Look At Some Very Alarming Stats

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

UK Warned To Bolster Defences Against Cyber Attacks As Russia Threatens Ukraine - BBC News

UK organisations are being urged to bolster their defences amid fears cyber attacks linked to the conflict in Ukraine could move beyond its borders.

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has issued new guidance, saying it is vital companies stay ahead of a potential threat.

The centre said it was unaware of any specific threats to UK organisations.

It follows a series of cyber attacks in Ukraine which are suspected to have involved Russia, which Moscow denies.

In December 2015, engineers in Ukrainian power stations saw cursors on their computer screens moving by themselves. They had been hacked. Hundreds of thousands of people lost power for hours.

It was the first time a power station had been taken offline, a sign that cyber intrusions were moving beyond stealing information into disrupting the infrastructure on which everyday life depends. Russia was blamed.

"It was a complex operation," says John Hultquist, an expert on Russian cyber operations at the US security firm Mandiant. "They even disrupted the telephone lines so that the engineers couldn't make calls."

Ukraine has been on the front line of a cyber conflict for years. But if Russia does invade the country soon, tanks and troops will still be at the forefront.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60158874

Cyber Attacks And Ransomware Hit A New Record In 2021, Says Report

Ransomware attacks have doubled for the past two years, says a new report—but a lot of people aren’t bothering to change their passwords.

Hackers made up for some lost time last year.

After seeing the number of data breaches decline in 2020, the Identity Theft Resource Center’s 16th Annual Data Breach Report says the number of security compromises was up more than 68% in 2021. That tops the all-time high by a shocking 23%.

All told, there were 1,862 breaches last year, says the ITRC, 356 more than in 2017, the previous busiest year on record.

“Many of the cyber attacks committed were highly sophisticated and complex, requiring aggressive defences to prevent them,” Eva Velasquez, ITRC president and CEO, said in a statement. “If those defences failed, too often we saw an inadequate level of transparency for consumers to protect themselves from identity fraud.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/90715622/cyberattacks-ransomware-data-breach-new-record-2021

Ransomware Families Becoming More Sophisticated With Newer Attack Methods

Ivanti, Cyber Security Works and Cyware announced a report which identified 32 new ransomware families in 2021, bringing the total to 157 and representing a 26% increase over the previous year.

The report also found that these ransomware groups are continuing to target unpatched vulnerabilities and weaponize zero-day vulnerabilities in record time to instigate crippling attacks. At the same time, they are broadening their attack spheres and finding newer ways to compromise organisational networks and fearlessly trigger high-impact assaults.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/01/28/new-ransomware-families/

More Than 90% Of Enterprises Surveyed Have Been Hit By Successful Cyber Attacks

Cyber attacks can impact any organisation, big or small. But large enterprises are often more tempting targets due to the vast amount of lucrative data they hold. A new report from cyber security firm Anomali reveals an increase in successful cyber attacks and offers ideas on how organisations can better protect themselves.

Published on Thursday, the "2022 Anomali Cyber security Insights Report" is based on a survey of 800 cyber security decision makers commissioned by Anomali and conducted by Harris between September 9 and October 13 of 2021. The survey elicited responses from professionals in the US, UK, Canada and other countries who work full time in such industries as manufacturing, telecommunications and financial services.

Among the respondents, 87% said that their organisations were victims of successful cyber attacks sometime over the past three years. In this case, a successful attack is one that caused damage, disruption or a data breach. Since the pandemic started almost two years ago, 83% of those polled have experienced an increase in attempted cyber attacks, while 87% have been hit with a rise in phishing emails, many of them exploiting coronavirus-related themes.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/more-than-90-of-enterprises-surveyed-have-been-hit-by-successful-cyberattacks/

Ransomware Gangs Increase Efforts To Enlist Insiders For Attacks

A recent survey of 100 large (over 5,000 employees) North American IT firms shows that ransomware actors are making greater effort to recruit insiders in targeted firms to aid in attacks.

The survey was conducted by Hitachi ID, which performed a similar study in November 2021. Compared to the previous survey, there has been a 17% rise in the number of employees offered money to aid in ransomware attacks against their employer.

Most specifically, 65% of the survey respondents say that they or their employees were approached between December 7, 2021, and January 4, 2022, to help hackers establish initial access.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ransomware-gangs-increase-efforts-to-enlist-insiders-for-attacks/

Shipment-Delivery Scams Become the Favoured Way to Spread Malware

Attackers increasingly are spoofing the courier DHL and using socially engineered messages related to packages to trick users into downloading Trickbot and other malicious payloads.

Threat actors are increasingly using scams that spoof package couriers like DHL or the U.S. Postal Service in authentic-looking phishing emails that attempt to dupe victims into downloading credential-stealing or other malicious payloads, researchers have found.

Researchers from Avanan, a Check Point company, and Cofense have discovered recent phishing campaigns that include malicious links or attachments aimed at infecting devices with Trickbot and other dangerous malware, they reported separately on Thursday.

The campaigns separately relied on trust in widely used methods for shipping and employees’ comfort with receiving emailed documents related to shipments to try to elicit further action to compromise corporate systems, researchers said.

https://threatpost.com/shipment-delivery-scams-a-fav-way-to-spread-malware/178050/

Most Ransomware Infections Are Self-Installed

New research from managed detection and response (MDR) provider Expel found that most ransomware attacks in 2021 were self-installed.

The finding was included in the company’s inaugural annual report on cyber security trends and predictions, Great eXpeltations, published on Thursday.

Researchers found eight out of ten ransomware infections occurred after victims unwittingly opened a zipped file containing malicious code. Abuse of third-party access accounted for 3% of all ransomware incidents, and 4% were caused by exploiting a software vulnerability on the perimeter.

The report was based on the analysis of data aggregated from Expel’s security operations center (SOC) concerning incidents spanning January 1 2021 to December 31 2021.

Other key findings were that 50% of incidents were BEC (business email compromise) attempts, with SaaS apps a top target.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/most-ransomware-infections-self/

Staff Negligence Is Now A Major Reason For Insider Security Incidents

Insider threats cost organisations approximately $15.4 million every year, with negligence a common reason for security incidents, new research suggests.

Enterprise players today are facing cyber security challenges from every angle. Weak endpoint security, unsecured cloud systems, vulnerabilities -- whether unpatched or zero-days -- the introduction of unregulated internet of things (IoT) devices to corporate networks and remote work systems can all become conduits for a cyber attack to take place.

When it comes to the human element of security, a lack of training or cyber security awareness, mistakes, or deliberate, malicious actions also needs to be acknowledged in managing threat detection and response.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/employee-contractor-negligence-is-now-a-major-reason-for-insider-security-incidents/

22 Cyber Security Myths Organisations Need To Stop Believing In 2022

Security teams trying to defend their organisations need to adapt quickly to new challenges. Yesterday’s buzzwords and best practices have become today’s myths.

The past few years have seen a dramatic shift in how organisations protect themselves against attackers. The hybrid working model, fast-paced digitalization, and increased number of ransomware incidents have changed the security landscape, making CISOs' jobs more complex than ever.

This convoluted environment requires a new mindset to defend, and things that might have held true in the past might no longer be useful. Can digital certificates' expiration dates still be managed in a spreadsheet? Is encryption 'magic dust'? And are humans actually the weakest link?

Security experts weigh in the 22 cyber security myths that we finally need to retire in 2022.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3648048/22-cybersecurity-myths-organisations-need-to-stop-believing-in-2022.html

Android Malware Can Factory-Reset Phones After Draining Bank Accounts

A banking-fraud trojan that has been targeting Android users for three years has been updated to create even more grief. Besides draining bank accounts, the trojan can now activate a kill switch that performs a factory reset and wipes infected devices clean.

Brata was first documented in a post from security firm Kaspersky, which reported that the Android malware had been circulating since at least January 2019. The malware spread primarily through Google Play but also through third-party marketplaces, push notifications on compromised websites, sponsored links on Google, and messages delivered by WhatsApp or SMS. At the time, Brata targeted people with accounts from Brazil-based banks.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/01/android-malware-can-factory-reset-phones-after-draining-bank-accounts/

GDPR Fines Surged Sevenfold to $1.25 Billion in 2021: Study

Fines issued for GDPR non-compliance increased sevenfold from 2020 to 2021, analysis shows

In its latest annual GDPR summary, international law firm DLA Piper focuses attention in two areas: fines imposed and the evolving effect of the Schrems II ruling of 2020. Fines are increasing and Schrems II issues are becoming more complex.

Fines issued for GDPR non-compliance increased significantly (sevenfold) in 2021, from €158.5 million (approximately $180 million) in 2020 to just under €1.1 billion (approximately $1.25 billion) in 2021. The largest fines came from Luxembourg against Amazon (€746 million / $846 million), and Ireland against WhatsApp (€225 million / $255 million). Both are currently being appealed.

The WhatsApp fine is interesting. The original fine proposed by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) was for €30 million to €50 million. However, other European regulators objected, and the European Data Processing Board (EDPB) adjudicated – instructing Ireland to increase the fine by 350%.

https://www.securityweek.com/gdpr-fines-surged-sevenfold-125-billion-2021-study

Cyber Security In 2022 – A Fresh Look At Some Very Alarming Stats

Last year Forbes wrote a couple of articles  that highlighted some of the more significant cyber statistics associated with our expanding digital ecosystem.  In retrospect, 2021 was a very trying year for cyber security in so many areas. There were high profile breaches such as Solar Winds, Colonial Pipeline and dozens of others that had major economic and security related impact.  Ransomware came on with a vengeance targeting many small and medium businesses.  

Perhaps most worrisome was how critical infrastructure and supply chains security weaknesses were targeted and exploited by adversaries at higher rates than in the past.  Since it is only January, we are just starting to learn of some of the statistics that certainly will trend in 2022.  By reviewing the topics below, we can learn what we need to fortify and bolster in terms of cyber security throughout the coming year.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckbrooks/2022/01/21/cybersecurity-in-2022--a-fresh-look-at-some-very-alarming-stats/

Buy now, pay later fraud, romance and cryptocurrency schemes top the list of threats this year

Experian released its annual forecast, which reveals five fraud threats for the new year. With consumers continuing to take a digital-first approach to everything from shopping, dating and investing, fraudsters are finding new and innovative ways to commit fraud.

The main areas they are predicting seeing rises in fraud are:

-Buy now, pay never

-Cryptocurrency scams

-Doubling ransomware attacks

-More increases in romance fraud

-Digital elder abuse will rise

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/01/26/fraud-threats-this-year/

Threats

Ransomware

Phishing

Other Social Engineering

Malware

Mobile

IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking

Supply Chain

DoS/DDoS

CNI, OT, ICS, IIoT and SCADA

Nation State Actors

Cloud

Privacy

Passwords & Credential Stuffing

Spyware, Espionage & Cyber Warfare

Vulnerabilities

Other News

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
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The Ukraine Crisis – The Overspill from Cyber Warfare Threatens Us All

The Ukraine Crisis – The Overspill from Cyber Warfare Threatens Us All

Over the past few weeks, the global media has been alerting us all to the prospect of aggressive action by Russia in Ukraine. The US has warned of imminent acts of provocation to create a pretext to invade Ukraine, and today the UK has started to withdraw embassy staff.

Conflict is no longer restricted to the physical world. We might think we are a safe distance away from the front line, but modern warfare does not care about international borders.

Over the past few weeks, the global media has been alerting us all to the prospect of aggressive action by Russia in Ukraine. The US has warned of imminent acts of provocation to create a pretext to invade Ukraine, and today the UK has started to withdraw embassy staff.

Conflict is no longer restricted to the physical world. We might think we are a safe distance away from the front line, but modern warfare does not care about international borders.

The last time Russia took aggressive action against Ukraine, companies across the world found themselves victim of an attack that got out of control. Russia was named by several intelligence agencies as having injected the NotPetya encrypting malware through a Ukrainian tax preparation software in 2017 to target Ukrainian assets. The situation eventually spiralled to infect thousands of businesses across the world, causing serious damage.

The situation could be more serious this time. The risk of damage to companies in the Channel Islands and UK from a Russian cyber attack increases further when sides are taken, with the US, UK and other allied nations likely to take up at least some degree of involvement. The British Government for example, plans to invest £5 billion in retaliatory cyber attacks, creating their very own “Cyber Force” to target hostile states.

We need to learn from this, and we advise you to ensure you have appropriate controls in place to help protect yourself and if necessary to be able to recover if you are affected by an attack. These controls must be across people, operations and technology; it is impossible for technology alone to give the necessary protection.

Contact us for help to understand your risks and your security gaps.

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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 21 January 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 21 January 2022

-Cyber Risks Top Worldwide Business Concerns In 2022

-Bosses Think That Security Is Taken Care Of: CISOs Aren't So Sure

-Fraud Is On the Rise, and It's Going to Get Worse

-Two-Fifths of Ransomware Victims Still Paying Up

-Less Than a Fifth of Cyber Leaders Feel Confident Their Organisation is Cyber-Resilient

-Endpoint Malware And Ransomware Detections Hit All-Time High

-End Users Remain Organisations' Biggest Security Risk

-Supply Chain Disruptions Rose In 2021

-Red Cross Begs Attackers Not to Leak Stolen Data for 515K People

-DHL Dethrones Microsoft As Most Imitated Brand In Phishing Attacks

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

Cyber Risks Top Worldwide Business Concerns In 2022

Cyber perils are the biggest concern for companies globally in 2022, according to the Allianz Risk Barometer. The threat of ransomware attacks, data breaches or major IT outages worries companies even more than business and supply chain disruption, natural disasters or the COVID-19 pandemic, all of which have heavily affected firms in the past year.

Cyber incidents tops the Allianz Risk Barometer for only the second time in the survey’s history (44% of responses), Business interruption drops to a close second (42%) and Natural catastrophes ranks third (25%), up from sixth in 2021. Climate change climbs to its highest-ever ranking of sixth (17%, up from ninth), while Pandemic outbreak drops to fourth (22%).

The annual survey incorporates the views of 2,650 experts in 89 countries and territories, including CEOs, risk managers, brokers and insurance experts. View the full global and country risk rankings.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/01/20/cyber-concern-2022/

Bosses Think That Security Is Taken Care Of: CISOs Aren't So Sure

The World Economic Forum warns about a significant gap in understanding between C-suites and information security staff - but it's possible to close the gap.

Organisations could find themselves at risk from cyberattacks because of a significant gap between the views of their own security experts and the boardroom.

The World Economic Forum's new report, The Global Cyber Security Outlook 2022, warns there are big discrepancies between bosses and information security personnel when it comes to the state of cyber resilience within organisations.

According to the paper, 92% of business executives surveyed agree that cyber resilience is integrated into enterprise risk management strategies – or in other words, protecting the organisation against falling victim to a cyberattack, or mitigating the incident so it doesn't result in significant disruption.

However, only 55% of security-focused executives believe that cyber resilience is integrated into risk management strategies – indicating a significant divide in attitudes to cyber security.

This gap can leave organisations vulnerable to cyberattacks, because boardrooms believe enough has been done in order to mitigate threats, while in reality there could be unconsidered vulnerabilities or extra measures put in place.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/managers-think-their-systems-are-unbreakable-cybersecurity-teams-arent-so-sure/

Fraud Is On the Rise, and It's Going to Get Worse

The acceleration of the digital transformation resulted in a surge of online transactions, greater adoption of digital payments, and increased fraud.

As more daily activities — work, education, shopping, and entertainment — shift online, fraud is also on the rise. A trio of recent reports paint a bleak picture, highlighting concerns that companies are experiencing increasing losses from fraud and that the situation will get worse over the coming year.

In KPMG's survey of senior risk executives, 67% say their companies have experienced external fraud in the past 12 months, and 38% expect the risk of fraud committed by external perpetrators to somewhat increase in the next year. External fraud, which includes credit card fraud and identity theft, is specifically referring to incidents perpetuated by individuals outside the company. For most of these respondents, there was a financial impact: Forty-two percent say their organisations experienced 0.5% to 1% of loss as a result of fraud and cybercrime.

https://www.darkreading.com/edge-articles/fraud-is-on-the-rise-and-its-going-to-get-worse

Two-Fifths of Ransomware Victims Still Paying Up

Two-fifths (39%) of ransomware victims paid their extorters over the past three years, with the majority of these spending at least $100,000, according to new Anomali research.

The security vendor hired The Harris Poll to complete its Cyber Resiliency Survey – interviewing 800 security decision-makers in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, India, New Zealand, the UAE, Mexico and Brazil.

Some 87% said their organisation had been the victim of a successful attack resulting in damage, disruption, or a breach since 2019. However, 83% said they’d experienced more attacks since the start of the pandemic.

Over half (52%) were ransomware victims, with 39% paying up. Of these, 58% gave their attackers between $100,000 and $1m, while 7% handed over more than $1m.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/two-fifths-ransomware-victims/

Less Than a Fifth of Cyber Leaders Feel Confident Their Organisation is Cyber-Resilient

Less than one-fifth (17%) of cyber leaders feel confident that their organisations are cyber-resilient, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s inaugural Global Cyber Security Outlook 2022 report.

The study, written in collaboration with Accenture, revealed there is a wide perception gap between business executives and security leaders on the issue of cyber security. For example, 92% of businesses believe cyber-resilience is integrated into their enterprise risk-management strategies, compared to just 55% of cyber leaders.

This difference in attitude appears to be having worrying consequences. The WEF said that many security leaders feel that they are not consulted in security decisions, and only 68% believe cyber-resilience forms a major part of their organisation’s overall corporate risk management.

In addition, over half (59%) of all cyber leaders admitted they would find it challenging to respond to a cyber security incident due to a shortage of skills within their team.

Supply chain security was another major concern among cyber leaders, with almost nine in 10 (88%) viewing SMEs as a key threat to supply chains.

Interestingly, 59% of cyber leaders said cyber-resilience and cyber security are synonymous, with the differences not well understood.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/cyber-leaders-organisation/

Endpoint Malware And Ransomware Detections Hit All-Time High

Endpoint malware and ransomware detections surpassed the total volume seen in 2020 by the end of Q3 2021, according to researchers at the WatchGuard Threat Lab. In its latest report, WatchGuard also highlights that a significant percentage of malware continues to arrive over encrypted connections.

While zero-day malware increased by just 3% to 67.2% in Q3 2021, the percentage of malware that arrived via Transport Layer Security (TLS) jumped from 31.6% to 47%. Data shows that many organisations are not decrypting these connections and therefore have poor visibility into the amount of malware hitting their networks.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/01/20/endpoint-malware-ransomware-detections-q3-2021/

End Users Remain Organisations' Biggest Security Risk

With the rapid adoption of hybrid working environments and increased attacks, IT and security professionals worry that future data breaches will most likely be the result of end users who are negligent of or break security policy, according to a recent Dark Reading survey. The percentage of respondents in Dark Reading's 2021 Strategic Security Survey who perceive users breaking policy as the biggest risk fell slightly, however, from 51% in 2020 to 48% in 2021. Other potential issues involving end users showed improvements as well, with social engineering falling in concern from 20% to 15% and remote work worries halving from 26% to 13%.

While this trend is positive, it's unclear where the increased confidence comes from, since more people now report ineffective end-user security awareness training (11%, to 2020's 7%).

Respondents shared their heightened concern about well-funded attacks. In 2021, 25% predicted an attack targeted at their organisations (a rise from 2020, when 20% said the same), and fear of a nation-state-sponsored action rose to 16% from 9% the year before. Yet only 16% reported sophisticated, automated malware as a top concern, a 10% drop from 2020, and fear of a gap between security and IT advances only merited 9%. A tiny 3% worried that their security tools wouldn't work well together, dropping from the previous year's 10%.

https://www.darkreading.com/edge-threat-monitor/despite-rise-of-third-party-concerns-end-users-still-the-biggest-security-risk

Supply Chain Disruptions Rose In 2021

56% of businesses experienced more supply chain disruptions in 2021 than 2020, a Hubs report reveals.

Last year was marked by a number of challenges, including computer chip shortages, port congestion, the ongoing impacts of COVID-19, logistics impediments, and energy crises, though with every hurdle faced, solutions are being sought. It is increasingly clear that while certain risks are hard to anticipate and difficult to plan for, it is possible to mitigate the effects of supply chain disruptions by establishing a robust and agile supply chain.

Over 98% of global companies are now planning to boost the resilience of their manufacturing supply chains, however, 37% have yet to implement any measures. As businesses develop long term strategies, over 57% of companies say diversification of their supply chains is the most effective way of building resilience. This report explores last year’s most disruptive events, how disruptions have changed over time, industry trends and strategies for strengthening manufacturing supply chains.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/01/19/supply-chain-disruptions-2021/

Red Cross Begs Attackers Not to Leak Stolen Data for 515K People

A cyber attack forced the Red Cross to shut down IT systems running the Restoring Family Links system, which reunites families fractured by war, disaster or migration. UPDATE: The ICRC says it’s open to confidentially communicating with the attacker.

The Red Cross is imploring threat actors to show mercy by abstaining from leaking data belonging to 515,000+ “highly vulnerable” people. The data was stolen from a program used to reunite family members split apart by war, disaster or migration.

“While we don’t know who is responsible for this attack, or why they carried it out, we do have this appeal to make to them,” Robert Mardini, the director general of the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), said in a release on Wednesday. “Your actions could potentially cause yet more harm and pain to those who have already endured untold suffering. The real people, the real families behind the information you now have are among the world’s least powerful. Please do the right thing. Do not share, sell, leak or otherwise use this data.”

https://threatpost.com/red-cross-begs-attackers-not-to-leak-515k-peoples-stolen-data/177799/

DHL Dethrones Microsoft As Most Imitated Brand In Phishing Attacks

DHL was the most imitated brand in phishing campaigns throughout Q4 2021, pushing Microsoft to second place, and Google to fourth.

This isn't surprising considering that the final quarter of every year includes the Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas shopping season, so phishing lures based on package deliveries naturally increase.

DHL is an international package delivery and express mail service, delivering over 1.6 billion parcels per year.

As such, phishing campaigns impersonating the brand have good chances of reaching people who are waiting for a DHL package to arrive during the holiday season.

The specific lures range from a package that is stuck at customs and requires action for clearance to supposed tracking numbers that hide inside document attachments or embedded links.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/dhl-dethrones-microsoft-as-most-imitated-brand-in-phishing-attacks/

Threats

Ransomware

BEC – Business Email Compromise

Phishing

Malware

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Insurance

CNI, OT, ICS, IIoT and SCADA

Nation State Actors

Cloud

Privacy

Passwords & Credential Stuffing

Spyware, Espionage & Cyber Warfare

Vulnerabilities

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 14 January 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 14 January 2022

-Businesses Suffered 50% More Cyber Attack Attempts per Week in 2021

-Cyber Attacks Against MSPs Jump 67%

-SMEs Still An Easy Target For Cyber Criminals

-World Economic Forum: Cyber Security Failures an Increasing Global Threat

-Microsoft Faces Wormable, Critical RCE Bug & 6 Zero-Days

-Russia Arrests REvil Ransomware Gang Responsible for High-Profile Cyber Attacks

-North Korea Hackers Stole $400m Of Cryptocurrency In 2021, Report Says

-No Lights, No Heat, No Money - That's Life In Ukraine During Cyber Warfare

-Ukrainian Police Arrest Five Members Of Ransomware Affiliate

-Fingers Point To Lazarus, Cobalt, Fin7 As Key Hacking Groups Attacking Finance Industry

-Ransomware, Supply Chain, And Deepfakes: The Top Threats The Finance Industry Needs To Prepare For

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

Businesses Suffered 50% More Cyber Attack Attempts per Week in 2021

Cyberattack attempts reached an all-time high in the fourth quarter of 2021, jumping to 925 a week per organisation, partly due to attempts stemming from the Log4j vulnerability, according to new data.

Check Point Research on Monday reported that it found 50% more attack attempts per week on corporate networks globally in calendar year 2021 compared with 2020.

The researchers define a cyberattack attempt as a single isolated cyber occurrence that could be at any point in the attack chain — scanning/exploiting vulnerabilities, sending phishing emails, malicious website access, malicious file downloads (from Web/email), second-stage downloads, and command-and-control communications.

https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/corporate-networks-saw-50-more-attacks-per-week-in-2021-

Cyber Attacks Against MSPs Jump 67%

Cyber attacks spiked by 50 percent in 2021 as compared to 2020, aided by millions of attacks in December by hackers attempting to exploit the Log4J vulnerability, according to a Check Point Software Technologies research report.

In terming 2021 a “record breaking year,” the security provider pointed to a worldwide peak of 925 cyber attacks per organisation weekly and an October 2021 measure that showed a 40 percent increase in cyberattacks, with one out of every 61 entities hit by ransomware each week. The number of cyberattacks on managed service providers (MSPs) and internet service providers (ISPs) rose by nearly 70 percent year over year.

https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-news/cyberattacks-vs-msps-skyrocket/

SMEs Still An Easy Target For Cyber Criminals

Cyber crime continues to be a major concern, with 51% of SMEs experiencing a cyber security breach, a Markel Direct survey reveals.

In this survey that polled 1000 respondents, Markel Direct explored the issue of cybercrime and its impact on the self-employed and SMEs. The survey found the most common cybersecurity attacks were malware/virus related (24%) followed by a data breach (16%) and phishing attack (15%), with 68% reporting the cost of their breach was up to £5,000.

This comes after the latest Quarterly Fraud and Cyber Crime Report revealed that Britons lost over £1 billion in the first six months of 2021, due to the considerable increase in fraudulent activity.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/01/12/smes-cybersecurity-breach/

World Economic Forum: Cyber Security Failures an Increasing Global Threat

Cybersecurity was once again identified as a major short and medium-term threat to the world in this year’s World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s) The Global Risk Report. The analysis was based on insights from nearly 1000 global experts and leaders who responded to the WEF’s Global Risks Perception Survey (GRPS).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, environmental issues like climate action failure and extreme weather ranked highest on the risks facing the world over the short (0-2 years), medium (2-5 years) and long-term (5-10 years). In addition, a number of challenges exacerbated by the pandemic, such as livelihood crises, infectious diseases and mental health deterioration, also scored highly. Overall, this added up to a pessimistic assessment, with 84.2% of respondents stating they were either “worried” or “concerned” about the global outlook.

Digital challenges, such as “cyber security failures,” were also viewed as a significant and growing problem to the world. Nearly one in five (19.5%) respondents believe cybersecurity failures will be a critical threat to the world in just the next 0-2 years, and 14.6% said it would be in 2-5 years

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/world-economic-forum-cybersecurity/

Microsoft Faces Wormable, Critical RCE Bug & 6 Zero-Days

Microsoft started 2022 with a large January Patch Tuesday update covering nine critical CVEs, including a self-propagator with a 9.8 CVSS score.

Microsoft has addressed a total of 97 security vulnerabilities in its January 2022 Patch Tuesday update – nine of them rated critical – including six that are listed as publicly known zero-days.

The fixes cover a swath of the computing giant’s portfolio, including: Microsoft Windows and Windows Components, Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based), Exchange Server, Microsoft Office and Office Components, SharePoint Server, .NET Framework, Microsoft Dynamics, Open-Source Software, Windows Hyper-V, Windows Defender, and Windows Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).

https://threatpost.com/microsoft-wormable-critical-rce-bug-zero-day/177564/

Russia Arrests REvil Ransomware Gang Responsible for High-Profile Cyber Attacks

In an unprecedented move, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), the country's principal security agency, on Friday disclosed that it arrested several members belonging to the notorious REvil ransomware gang and neutralized its operations.

The surprise takedown, which it said was carried out at the request of the US authorities, saw the law enforcement agency conduct raids at 25 addresses in the cities of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Leningrad and Lipetsk regions that belonged to 14 suspected members of the organised cyber crime syndicate.

"In order to implement the criminal plan, these persons developed malicious software, organised the theft of funds from the bank accounts of foreign citizens and their cashing, including through the purchase of expensive goods on the Internet," the FSB said in a statement.

In addition, the FSB seized over 426 million rubles, including in cryptocurrency, $600,000, €500,000, as well as computer equipment, crypto wallets used to commit crimes, and 20 luxury cars that were purchased with money obtained by illicit means.

https://thehackernews.com/2022/01/russia-arrests-revil-ransomware-gang.html

North Korea Hackers Stole $400m Of Cryptocurrency In 2021, Report Says

North Korean hackers stole almost $400m (£291m) worth of digital assets in at least seven attacks on cryptocurrency platforms last year, a report claims.

Blockchain analysis company Chainalysis said it was one of most successful years on record for cyber-criminals in the closed east Asian state.

The attacks mainly targeted investment firms and centralised exchanges.

North Korea has routinely denied being involved in hack attacks attributed to them.

"From 2020 to 2021, the number of North Korean-linked hacks jumped from four to seven, and the value extracted from these hacks grew by 40%," Chainalysis said in a report.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59990477

No Lights, No Heat, No Money - That's Life In Ukraine During Cyber Warfare

Hackers who defaced and interrupted access to numerous Ukrainian government websites on Friday could be setting the stage for more serious cyberattacks that would disrupt the lives of ordinary Ukrainians, experts said.

"As tensions grow, we can expect more aggressive cyber activity in Ukraine and potentially elsewhere," said John Hultquist, an intelligence analyst at US cyber security company Mandiant, possibly including "destructive attacks that target critical infrastructure."

"Organisations need to begin preparing," Hultquist added.

Intrusions by hackers on hospitals, power utility companies, and the financial system were until recently rare. But organised cyber criminals, many of them living in Russia, have gone after institutions aggressively in the past two years with ransomware, freezing data and computerized equipment needed to care for hospital patients.

In some cases, those extortion attacks have led to patient deaths, according to litigation, media reports and medical professionals.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/no-lights-no-heat-no-money-thats-life-ukraine-during-cyber-warfare-2022-01-14/

Ukrainian Police Arrest Five Members Of Ransomware Affiliate

Ukrainian police announced the arrest of five members of a ransomware affiliate on Thursday, noting that the group was behind attacks on more than 50 companies across Europe and the US.

In a statement, both the Ukrainian Security Service and Ukrainian Cyber Police said the group made at least $1 million through their attacks on the companies.

US and UK law enforcement officials worked with Ukrainian officials on the operation.

Officials said the leader of the group was a 36-year-old who worked with his wife and three other people out of Kyiv. The five are facing a variety of charges in Ukraine related to money laundering, hacking, and selling malware.

One of the people charged is wanted by law enforcement agencies in UK after "using a virus to obtain bank card details of the customers of British banks," according to the police statement.

The bank card details were used to buy things online that were then resold.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/ukrainian-police-arrest-members-of-ransomware-affiliate/

Fingers Point To Lazarus, Cobalt, Fin7 As Key Hacking Groups Attacking Finance Industry

The Lazarus, Cobalt, and FIN7 hacking groups have been labeled as the most prevalent threat actors striking financial organisations today.

According to "Follow the Money," a new report (.PDF) published on the financial sector by Outpost24's Blueliv on Thursday, members of these groups are the major culprits of theft and fraud in the industry today.

The financial sector has always been, and possibly always will be, a key target for cybercriminal groups. Organisations in this area are often custodians of sensitive personally identifiable information (PII) belonging to customers and clients, financial accounts, and cash.

They also often underpin the economy: if a payment processor or bank's systems go down due to malware, this can cause irreparable harm not only to the victim company in question, but this can also have severe financial and operational consequences for customers.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/fingers-point-to-lazarus-cobalt-fin7-as-key-hacking-groups-focused-on-finance-industry/

Ransomware, Supply Chain, And Deepfakes: The Top Threats The Finance Industry Needs To Prepare For

The finance industry is constantly targeted by numerous threat actors, and they are always innovating and trying new techniques (such as deepfakes) to outsmart security teams and breach an organisation’s network.

In addition to that, there is currently a huge demand for data and new tools on the dark web. In fact, users are selling access to point-of-sale (PoS) terminals and login details to the websites of financial services organisations all the time.

How can financial organisations protect themselves from existing threats and combat new ones at the same time?

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/01/12/finance-industry-threats/

Threats

Ransomware

Phishing

Malware

Mobile

IoT

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

DoS/DDoS

CNI, OT, ICS, IIoT and SCADA

Nation State Actors

Cloud

Passwords & Credential Stuffing

Parental Controls and Child Safety

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
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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 07 January 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 07 January 2022:

-Microsoft Sees Rampant Log4j Exploit Attempts, Testing

-Warning: Log4j Still Lurks Where Dependency Analysis Can’t Find It

-Hackers Sending Malware-Filled USB Sticks to Companies Disguised as Presents

-Patch Systems Vulnerable To Critical Log4j Flaws, UK And US Officials Warn

-‘Elephant Beetle’ Lurks For Months In Networks

-Sonicwall: Y2k22 Bug Hits Email Security, Firewall Products

-Hackers Use Video Player To Steal Credit Cards From Over 100 Sites

-Cyber World Is Starting 2022 In Crisis Mode With The Log4j Bug

-Everything You Need To Know About Ransomware Attacks and Gangs In 2022

-Why the Log4j Vulnerability Makes Endpoint Visibility and Zero Trust Security More Important Than Ever

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

Microsoft Sees Rampant Log4j Exploit Attempts, Testing

Microsoft says it’s only going to get worse: It’s seen state-sponsored and cyber-criminal attackers probing systems for the Log4Shell flaw through the end of December.

No surprise here: The holidays bought no Log4Shell relief.

Threat actors vigorously launched exploit attempts and testing during the last weeks of December, Microsoft said on Monday, in the latest update to its landing page and guidance around the flaws in Apache’s Log4j logging library.

“We have observed many existing attackers adding exploits of these vulnerabilities in their existing malware kits and tactics, from coin miners to hands-on-keyboard attacks,” according to Microsoft.

https://threatpost.com/microsoft-rampant-log4j-exploits-testing/177358/

Warning: Log4j Still Lurks Where Dependency Analysis Can’t Find It

The best programming practice to include a third-party library in source code is to use the import command. It is the easiest way to do it, and it is also the way that most dependency analysis programs work to determine if a vulnerable library is in play. But any time code is included without calling it as an external package, traditional dependency analysis might not be enough to find it — including when Java coders use a common trick to resolve conflicting dependencies during the design process.

A new study by jFrog found that 400 packages on repository Maven Central used Log4j code without calling it as an external package. Around a third of that came from fat jars — jar files that include all external dependencies to make a more efficient product. The remainder came from directly inserting Log4j code into the source code, including shading, a work-around used when two or more dependencies call different versions of the same library in a way that might conflict.

While 400 may not seem like a lot for Maven Central, where Google found 17,000 packages implementing the vulnerable Log4j library, some of the 400 packages unearthed by JFrog are widely used.

https://www.scmagazine.com/analysis/devops/warning-log4j-still-lurks-where-dependency-analysis-cant-find-it

Hackers Sending Malware-Filled USB Sticks to Companies Disguised as Presents

The "malicious USB stick" trick is old but apparently it's still wildly popular with the crooks.

Word to the wise: If a stranger ever offers you a random USB stick as a gift, best not to take it.

On Thursday, the FBI warned that a hacker group has been using the US mail to send malware-laden USB drives to companies in the defence, transportation and insurance industries. The criminals’ hope is that employees will be gullible enough to stick them into their computers, thus creating the opportunity for ransomware attacks or the deployment of other malicious software, The Record reports.

The hacker group behind this bad behaviour—a group called FIN7—has gone to great lengths to make their parcels appear innocuous. In some cases, packages were dressed up as if they were sent by the US Department of Health and Human Services, with notes explaining that the drives contained important information about COVID-19 guidelines. In other cases, they were delivered as if they had been sent via Amazon, along with a “decorative gift box containing a fraudulent thank you letter, counterfeit gift card, and a USB,” according to the FBI warning.

https://gizmodo.com/hackers-have-been-sending-malware-filled-usb-sticks-to-1848323578

Patch Systems Vulnerable To Critical Log4j Flaws, UK And US Officials Warn

One of the highest-severity vulnerabilities in years, Log4Shell remains under attack.

Criminals are actively exploiting the high-severity Log4Shell vulnerability on servers running VMware Horizon in an attempt to install malware that allows them to gain full control of affected systems, the UK’s publicly funded healthcare system is warning.

CVE-2021-44228 is one of the most severe vulnerabilities to come to light in the past few years. It resides in Log4J, a system-logging code library used in thousands if not millions of third-party applications and websites. That means there is a huge base of vulnerable systems. Additionally, the vulnerability is extremely easy to exploit and allows attackers to install Web shells, which provide a command window for executing highly privileged commands on hacked servers.

The remote-code execution flaw in Log4J came to light in December after exploit code was released before a patch was available. Malicious hackers quickly began actively exploiting CVE-2021-44228 to compromise sensitive systems.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/01/patch-systems-vulnerable-to-critical-log4j-flaws-uk-and-us-officials-warn/

‘Elephant Beetle’ Lurks For Months In Networks

The group blends into an environment before loading up trivial, thickly stacked, fraudulent financial transactions too tiny to be noticed but adding up to millions of dollars.

Researchers have identified a threat group that’s been quietly siphoning off millions of dollars from financial- and commerce-sector companies, spending months patiently studying their targets’ financial systems and slipping in fraudulent transactions amongst regular activity.

The Sygnia Incident Response team has been tracking the group, which it named Elephant Beetle, aka TG2003, for two years.

In a Wednesday report, the researchers called Elephant Beetle’s attack relentless, as the group has hidden “in plain sight” without the need to develop exploits.

https://threatpost.com/elephant-beetle-months-networks-financial/177393/

Sonicwall: Y2k22 Bug Hits Email Security, Firewall Products

SonicWall has confirmed today that some of its Email Security and firewall products have been hit by the Y2K22 bug, causing message log updates and junk box failures starting with January 1st, 2022.

The company says that email users and administrators will no longer be able to access the junk box or un-junk newly received emails on affected systems.

They will also no longer be able to trace incoming/outgoing emails using the message logs because they're no longer updated.

On January 2nd, SonicWall deployed updates to North American and European instances of Hosted Email Security, the company's cloud email security service.

It also released fixes for its on-premises Email Security Appliance (ES 10.0.15) and customers using firewalls with the Anti-Spam Junk Store functionality toggled on (Junk Store 7.6.9).

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/sonicwall-y2k22-bug-hits-email-security-firewall-products/

Hackers Use Video Player To Steal Credit Cards From Over 100 Sites

Hackers used a cloud video hosting service to perform a supply chain attack on over one hundred real estate sites that injected malicious scripts to steal information inputted in website forms.

These scripts are known as skimmers or formjackers and are commonly injected into hacked websites to steal sensitive information entered into forms. Skimmers are commonly used on checkout pages for online stores to steal payment information.

In a new supply chain attack discovered by Palo Alto Networks Unit42, threat actors abused a cloud video hosting feature to inject skimmer code into a video player. When a website embeds that player, it embeds the malicious script, causing the site to become infected.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-use-video-player-to-steal-credit-cards-from-over-100-sites/

Cyber World Is Starting 2022 In Crisis Mode With The Log4j Bug

The cyber security world is starting off 2022 in crisis mode.

The newest culprit is the log4j software bug, which cyber security and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly called “the most serious vulnerability I have seen in my decades-long career.” It forced many cyber security pros to work through the holidays to protect computer systems at Big Tech firms, large and small companies and government agencies.

But crises like log4j have become the norm rather than the exception during the past few years.

Last year kicked off with the SolarWinds hack — a Russian government operation that compromised reams of sensitive information from U.S. government agencies and corporations.

Digital threats of all sorts are growing far faster than the capability to defend against them. If past is prologue, 2022 is likely to be a year of big hacks, big threats and plenty more crises.

“We’re always in crisis is the long and short of it,” Jake Williams, a former National Security Agency (NSA) cyber operator and founder of the firm Rendition Infosec, told me. “Anyone looking for calm rather than the storm in cyber is in the wrong field.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/03/cyber-world-is-starting-2022-crisis-mode-with-log4j-bug/

Everything You Need To Know About Ransomware Attacks and Gangs In 2022

Ransomware is a lucrative business for criminals. It is paying off, and it is working.

According to a recent Trend Micro report, a staggering 84% of US organisations experienced either a phishing or ransomware attack in the last year. The average ransomware payment was over $500,000.

Bad actors want to keep cashing in. So they’re going as far as creating ransomware kits as a service (Ransomware as a Service) to be sold on the dark web and even setting up fake companies to recruit potential employees.

Many ransomware gangs function like real companies — with marketing teams, websites, software development, user documentation, support forums and media relations.

If the “companies” run by ransomware gangs can operate with minimal expenses and mind-blowing revenues, what’s stopping them from growing in number and size?

https://securityintelligence.com/articles/ransomware-attacks-gangs-2022/

Why the Log4j Vulnerability Makes Endpoint Visibility and Zero Trust Security More Important Than Ever

The Apache Log4j vulnerability is one of the most serious vulnerabilities in recent years—putting millions of devices at risk.

IT organisations worldwide are still reeling from the discovery of a major security vulnerability in Apache Log4j, an open-source logging utility embedded in countless internal and commercial applications.

By submitting a carefully constructed variable string to log4j, attackers can take control of any application that includes log4j. Suddenly, cyber criminals around the world have a blueprint for launching attacks on everything from retail store kiosks to mission-critical applications in hospitals.

If security teams overlook even one instance of log4j in their software, they give attackers an opportunity to issue system commands at will. Attackers can use those commands to install ransomware, exfiltrate data, shut down operations — the list goes on.

How should enterprises respond to this pervasive threat?

https://www.cio.com/article/302868/why-the-log4j-vulnerability-makes-endpoint-visibility-and-zero-trust-security-more-important-than-ever.html

Threats

Ransomware

Phishing

Malware

Mobile

IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

DoS/DDoS

OT, ICS, IIoT and SCADA

Nation State Actors

Privacy

Passwords & Credential Stuffing

Spyware and Espionage

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 31 December 2021

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 31 December 2021

-The Log4j Flaw Will Take Years to be Fully Addressed

-Copycat And Fad Hackers Will Be The Bane Of Supply Chain Security In 2022

-This Nightmare Incident Shows Why You Really Shouldn't Store Passwords In Your Browser

-Kaspersky Research: 47% of Incident Response Requests Linked to Ransomware

-Global Cyber Attacks from Nation-State Actors Posing Greater Threats

-Y2k22 Bug Is Causing Microsoft Exchange Server To Fail Worldwide: FIP-FS Scan Engine Failed To Load

-External Attackers Can Penetrate Most Local Company Networks

-The Have I Been Pwned Service Now Includes 441K Accounts Stolen By RedLine Malware

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

The Log4j Flaw Will Take Years to be Fully Addressed

More than 80% of Java packages affected by the vulnerability in the Apache Log4j library cannot be updated directly, and will require coordination between different project teams to address the flaw.

Shortly after the first vulnerability in the Apache Log4j library (CVE-2021-44228) was disclosed, Google's Open Source Insights Team surveyed all the Java packages in the Maven Central Repository "to determine the scope of the issue in the open source ecosystem of JVM based languages, and to track the ongoing efforts to mitigate the affected packages," say team members James Wetter and Nicky Ringland. The team estimates it could take years before the vulnerability is fully addressed within the Java ecosystem.

A significant part of the problem has to do with indirect dependencies. Direct dependencies, or the cases where package explicitly pulls log4j into the code, are relatively straightforward to fix, as the developer or project owner just has to update log4j to the latest version.

https://www.darkreading.com/tech-trends/the-log4j-flaw-will-take-years-to-be-fully-addressed

Copycat And Fad Hackers Will Be The Bane Of Supply Chain Security In 2022

Replicable attacks and a low barrier to entry will ensure the rate of supply chain attacks increases next year, cyber security researchers have warned.

The supply chain is a consistent attack vector for threat actors today. By compromising a centralized service, platform, or software, attackers can then either conduct widespread infiltration of the customers and clients of the original -- singular -- victim or may choose to cherry-pick from the most valuable potential targets.

This can save cyber criminals time and money, as one successful attack can open the door to potentially thousands of victims at once.

A ransomware attack levied against Kaseya in 2021 highlighted the disruption a supply chain-based attack can cause. Ransomware was deployed by exploiting a vulnerability in Kaseya's VSA software, leading to the compromise of multiple managed service providers (MSP) in Kaseya's customer base.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/copycat-and-fad-hackers-will-be-the-bane-of-supply-chain-security-in-2022/

This Nightmare Incident Shows Why You Really Shouldn't Store Passwords In Your Browser

An infostealer is scooping up passwords stored in browsers, experts warn

An unnamed company was recently breached after an employee stored their corporate account password in their web browser, a new report suggests.

According to research from security company AhnLab, the employee was working from home on a device shared with other household members, which was already infected with Redline Stealer, an infostealing malware.

Although the computer was equipped with antivirus software, the malware was able to evade detection, before stealing the passwords stored in the victim's browser.

https://www.techradar.com/news/this-simple-malware-shows-why-you-really-shouldnt-store-passwords-in-your-browser

Kaspersky Research: 47% of Incident Response Requests Linked to Ransomware

This year — 2021 — marked a “new era of ransomware,” said Vladimir Kuskov, head of threat exploration at Russian cyber security company Kaspersky. This is reflected in security incident requests handled by Kaspersky’s Global Emergency Response Team (GERT) between January and November 2021.

Kaspersky reported 46.7 percent of the security incidents that GERT handled in the first 11 months of 2021 were related to ransomware. Comparatively, Kaspersky attributed ransomware to 37.9 percent of security incidents that GERT handled for all of 2020 and 34 percent for 2019.

In addition, the government and industrial sectors have been the most common targets for ransomware attacks in 2021 to date, Kaspersky indicated. These industries accounted for nearly 50 percent of ransomware-related incident response requests that GERT has handled.

https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-research/kaspersky-research-47-of-incident-response-requests-linked-to-ransomware/

Global Cyber Attacks from Nation-State Actors Posing Greater Threats

Casey Ellis, CTO at Bugcrowd, outlines how international relations have deteriorated into a new sort of Cold War, with espionage playing out in the cyber-domain.

The macro-trend I’m most alarmed by today is the fact that attackers don’t seem to care about getting caught anymore. We have seen an increase in temerity of attacks by nation-states, such as the Russian attack on SolarWinds, and seen their attack tactics shift from targeted, stealthy operations into opportunistic hacks for potential future uses, such as the attacks attributed to Hafnium.

Such a brazen approach hasn’t been a common tactic of nation-states in the past, but now seems to be the status quo. In part, this trend may also be due to a destabilization of the international relations climate stemming from COVID-19, as well as work-from-home forcing core business services out onto the internet to facilitate employee access.

Broadly speaking, we should see China as a rising cyber security threat on the international stage. That has been the case for some time in terms of their economic, defense and military posture, but 2021 has quite clearly demonstrated that the relationship has deteriorated into a sort of Cold War, with espionage playing out in the cyber-domain.

https://threatpost.com/global-cyberattacks-nation-state-threats/177253/

Y2k22 Bug Is Causing Microsoft Exchange Server To Fail Worldwide: FIP-FS Scan Engine Failed To Load

Company admins are having their New Year’s celebrations interrupted by reports that their Exchange Servers are failing with the error “FIP-FS Scan Engine failed to load – Can’t Convert “2201010001” to long (2022/01/01 00:00 UTC)“.

The issue appears to be due to Microsoft using the first two numbers of the update version to denote the year of the update, which caused the “long” version of the date to overflow.

At present, it seems the main workaround is to disable the anti-malware scanner on the Exchange Server by using Set-MalwareFilteringServer -BypassFiltering $True -identity <server name> and restarting the Microsoft Exchange Transport service.

It appears Microsoft has not acknowledged the issue yet, but if you are affected some peer support is available at Reddit here.

Update: Microsoft has now acknowledged the issue and is working on a fix

https://mspoweruser.com/y2k22-bug-is-causing-microsoft-exchange-server-to-fail-worldwide/

External Attackers Can Penetrate Most Local Company Networks

In 93% of cases, external attackers can breach the organisation’s network perimeter and gain access to local network resources, and it takes an average of two days to penetrate the company’s internal network. In 100% of companies analysed, an insider can gain full control over the infrastructure.

These are the results of a new research report by Positive Technologies, analyzing results of the company’s penetration testing projects carried out in the second half of 2020 and first half of 2021.

The study was conducted among financial organizations (29%), fuel and energy organizations (18%), government (16%), industrial (16%), IT companies (13%), and other sectors.

During the assessment of protection against external attacks, Positive Technologies experts managed to breach the network perimeter in 93% of cases. According to the company’s researchers, this figure has remained high for many years, confirming that criminals are able to breach almost any corporate infrastructure.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2021/12/28/external-attackers-local-company-networks/

The Have I Been Pwned Service Now Includes 441K Accounts Stolen By RedLine Malware

The Have I Been Pwned data breach notification service now allows victims of the RedLine malware to check if their credentials have been stolen. The service now includes credentials for 441K accounts stolen by the popular info-stealer.

The RedLine malware allows operators to steal several information, including credentials, credit card data, cookies, autocomplete information stored in browsers, cryptocurrency wallets, credentials stored in VPN clients and FTP clients. The malicious code can also act as a first-stage malware.

Stolen data are stored in an archive (logs) before being uploaded to a server under the control of the attackers.

A few days ago the data breach hunter Bob Diachenko discovered an unsecured server exposing over 6 million RedLine logs containing data harvested between August and September 2021. The server is still accessible, but the researchers pointed out that threat actors abandoned it because the the number of logs is not increasing.

https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/126186/malware/redline-malware-hibp.html

Threats

Ransomware

Malware

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Scams, Fraud & Financial Crime

Nation State Actors

Passwords

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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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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