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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 6 October 2023
Black Arrow Cyber Threat Intelligence Briefing 06 October 2023:
-Many Cyber Attacks Begin by Breaking Human Trust
-BYOD Should Stand for Bring Your Own Disaster, According to Microsoft Ransomware Data
-SME Cyber Security Knowledge Gap Widens
-UK Security Budgets Under Strain as Cyber Incidents Soar
-Cyber Leaders’ Confidence in Their Organisation’s Defences Plummets, But Costs Mount
-FBI Warns of Dual Ransomware as Data Destruction Dwell Times Hit Low of 24 Hours
-Tech-Savvy Young Workers Might Be the Biggest Cyber Liability to Your Business
-Half of Cyber Security Professionals Report Increase in Cyber Attacks, with 60% of Attacks Going Unreported
-Global Cyber Survey Finds 50% Rise in Cyber Insurance Premiums
-Evolving Conversations: Cyber Security as a Business Risk
-Threats in Cloud Top the List of Executive Cyber Concerns
-Over Half of Phishing Emails Now Use Obfuscation Tactics to Avoid Detection
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
Many Cyber Attacks Begin by Breaking Human Trust
One of the most visible cyber attacks in recent months has reminded us that we all play a role in security, and people remain a favourite route for attackers. In the recent attack on MGM Resorts, an employee unwittingly helped the attacker to access the organisation’s systems and information. The attack highlights the power of social engineering as an attack vector, and that any size of business can fall victim.
One of the ways organisations can help to protect themselves is to provide social engineering training to employees. This builds resilience by helping employees to understand, recognise and avoid becoming a victim, recognising that cyber security involves more than just technology.
Despite some improvements in awareness programs, organisations face hurdles including budget constraints, limited training time and understaffing. Training should be continuous and target major risk areas such as phishing, vishing and password management, while fostering a proactive security culture.
Black Arrow supports organisations of all sizes in designing and delivering proportionate user education and awareness programmes, including in-person and online training as well as simulated phishing campaigns. Our programmes ensure employee engagement and build a cyber security culture to protect the organisation.
Sources: [GovTech] [Bloomberg] [Security Week]
BYOD Should Stand for Bring Your Own Disaster, According to Microsoft Ransomware Data
Microsoft research says that 80-90 percent of ransomware attacks over the past year originated from unmanaged devices. Many organisations welcome a bring your own device (BYOD) policy, yet are not managing these devices effectively.
Without appropriate management of BYOD devices, organisations are allowing a number of unknown devices onto the corporate scene; these devices can be unpatched, unregulated and can lack adequate security measures, without the organisation even being aware.
Source: [The Register]
SME Cyber Security Knowledge Gap Widens
Recent findings underscore a growing concern: a significant cyber security knowledge gap among small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). The report found that 22% of employees are concerned their actions could contribute to a cyber attack or data breach. Alarmingly, more than three-quarters of senior executives are unable to identify cyber threats or distinguish phishing emails from legitimate ones.
Despite the clear risks, three out of four SMEs do not provide any form of cyber security training to their staff. This reveals a concerning disconnect: while the majority of business owners do not perceive their staff as potential cyber security risks, many employees themselves acknowledge that they could inadvertently cause such issues.
Adding to the concern, 60% of SMEs have no plans to increase their security budget in the coming year. Two-thirds of these businesses do not view cyber security as a priority. In fact, only one in five SMEs are even considering investing in cyber insurance. This widening knowledge gap in SME cyber security is indeed troubling and calls for immediate attention.
Sources: [Insurance Journal] [Dealer Support] [IT Security Guru]
UK Security Budgets Under Strain as Cyber Incidents Soar
A recent report found that UK businesses have suffered a 25% increase in cyber incidents in the last year, against a backdrop of budgetary constraints on implementing cyber security strategies. The report found that, despite spending more than £40,000 a year on cyber security protection, more than a quarter of organisations think their cyber security budget is inadequate to fully protect them from growing threats. This is as UK businesses have experienced, on average, 30 cyber incidents over the last 12 months, a 25% increase compared to last year.
The report identified that a lack of key skills remains one of the main concerns in tackling rising cyber threats. So much so that 30% of cyber staff admit to currently facing burnout. This pressure also means that less than half of companies are confident in their ability to handle the biggest threats facing organisations, including phishing (56%) and malware (55%).
Sources: [Silicon] [Verdict] [CSO Online]
Cyber Leaders’ Confidence in Their Organisation’s Defences Plummets, But Costs Mount
A recent EY survey of cyber security leaders reported that just 1 in 5 found their organisation’s approach to cyber defences to effective and just 36% are satisfied with the levels of best practices by teams outside the IT department. The report also found that despite higher levels of spending, the organisation’s cyber security detection and response appeared slow; 76% of respondents took six months or longer to detect and respond to an incident.
Source: [EY]
FBI Warns of Dual Ransomware as Data Destruction Dwell Times Hit Low of 24 Hours
The FBI has flagged dual ransomware attacks, where attackers will attack a company twice within a few hours, as an emerging trend. This comes as an increasing number of ransomware actors are deploying their ransomware within 24 hours of initial access, and in 10% of cases, within just a few hours. Comparing this to last year, where the median time was four and a half days, organisations have significantly less time to enact their response, if they have one.
Sources: [Tech Monitor] [The Cord] [Information Security] [Beta News] [Cision] [The Record] [Malware Bytes]
Tech-Savvy Young Workers Might Be the Biggest Cyber Liability to Your Business
A new report from Ivanti into hidden threats finds that one in three employees believe their actions do not impact their organisation's security. The research shows that Millennial and Gen Z office workers are more likely to have unsafe cyber security habits when compared to Gen X and older (those above 40 years of age). The report also finds that men and leaders are more comfortable contacting a security employee with a question or concern, with leaders at an organisation the most likely to reach out with a question at 72%.
The report also highlighted that phishing scams were found to be greatly underreported by those aged 40 and under, with 23% saying that they did not report the last phishing attempt they received, the most the most likely reason for this being “I didn’t think it was important”. In contrast, of the older demographic only 12% failed to report. Cyber security has only recently become the leading concern among C-suites and executives; however, security leaders need to enable all employees to play defence against threat actors and proactively build an open and welcoming security culture.
Sources: [Techradar] [Beta News] [HelpNet Security]
Half of Cyber Security Professionals Report Increase in Cyber Attacks, with 60% of Attacks Going Unreported
Over half (52%) of cyber security professionals are experiencing an increase in cyber attacks compared to a year ago, according to new research. Further findings revealed that only 40% of organisations conducted a cyber risk assessment annually. By conducting risk assessments, organisations are able to identify their vulnerabilities and address them, before an attacker gets the chance to exploit them.
Further, in a recent survey conducted by ISACA, which collated insights from over 2,000 security leaders globally, a significant 62% of respondents say that organisations are under-reporting cyber crime incidents. The report also revealed 59% indicate their cyber security teams are undermanned, and the challenge of retaining skilled cyber security professionals remains, with 56% experiencing retention issues.
Sources: [MSSP Alert] [Security Brief] [InfoSecurity Magazine ]
Global Cyber Survey Finds 50% Rise in Cyber Insurance Premiums
According to a recent survey, budgets for cyber security have grown 70% in the last five years and whilst these have risen, so have cyber insurance premiums (50%), due to the increase in ransomware attacks.
Insurance firms have not been able to sustain losses they were incurring without passing on these costs to their customers. At the same time, obtaining cyber insurance is getting exponentially harder, with more and more stringent controls and measures being mandated by insurance companies before underwriting to minimise their exposure.
Black Arrow supports business leaders in organisations of all sizes to demonstrate governance of their cyber security, by owning their cyber security strategy and leveraging their existing internal and external resources to build resilience against a cyber security incident.
Source: [Global Reinsurance]
Evolving Conversations: Cyber Security as a Business Risk
According to a report, only 53% of board members report having regular interactions with their cyber security experts, leaving nearly half without a strong and distinct Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) perspective in the decision making process.
By including CISOs or virtual CISOS (vCISOS) in board processes, the board can better understand the cyber implications of decisions, after all, you wouldn’t make a board-level financial decision without involving the CFO.
Source: [HelpNet Security]
Threats in Cloud Top the List of Executive Cyber Concerns
A recent report published by PwC has found that cloud-related threats are the top concern for organisations that have adopted the technology. These security concerns intensify for organisations with multiple clouds or hybrid infrastructures, with the report finding more than half of respondents citing cloud security as their most pressing concern.
The report highlighted that despite the focus on cloud security, nearly every organisation had risk management lapses. Nearly a third of respondents had yet to address disaster recovery and backup with their cloud service provider, and more than two in five pointed to in-house cloud skills gaps as a lingering risk factor.
Black Arrow works with organisations of all sizes and sectors to design and prepare for managing a cyber security incident; this can include an Incident Response Plan and an educational tabletop exercise for the leadership team that highlights the proportionate controls to help the organisation prevent and mitigate an incident.
Source: [CIO Dive]
Over Half of Phishing Emails Now Use Obfuscation Tactics to Avoid Detection
Recent research shows that hackers are increasingly using sophisticated tactics to get their phishing emails past companies’ cyber security defences. One key finding of the report is the percentage of phishing emails that use obfuscation techniques to avoid detection jumped by 24.4% in 2023. More than half of malicious emails, or 55.2%, now use such tactics. The report found that the most widely used obfuscation technique is HTML smuggling. This is the practice of hiding malicious raw code in a seemingly legitimate HTML page; the code only turns into malware after clearing the cyber security filtering.
The use of chatbots or large language models have lowered the barrier for entry to cyber crime, making it possible to create well-written phishing campaigns and generate malware that less capable coders could not produce alone. The reports found that tools designed to detect AI-generated phishing emails work unreliability or don’t work at all in 71.4% of cases.
Source: [Silicon Angle]
Governance, Risk and Compliance
Cyber security: Still No. 1 on Every CIO's Agenda (govtech.com)
Poor cyber security habits are common among younger employees - Help Net Security
Many Cyber Attacks Begin by Breaking Human Trust (govtech.com)
People Still Matter in Cyber security Management (darkreading.com)
UK businesses face tightening cyber security budgets as incidents spike | CSO Online
Threats in cloud top list of executive cyber concerns, PwC finds | CIO Dive
Ransomware Crisis, Recession Fears Leave CISOs in Tough Spot (darkreading.com)
Evolving conversations: Cyber security as a business risk - Help Net Security
Cyber security preparedness pays big dividends for businesses - Help Net Security
Breaches Are the Cost of Doing Business, but NIST Is Here to Help (darkreading.com)
Gartner: Spending On Cyber security Services Is Outpacing Expectations In 2023 | CRN
Cyber leaders’ confidence in their organisation’s defences plummets, but costs mount | EY - Global
CISO's compass: Mastering tech, inspiring teams, and confronting risk - Help Net Security
Gartner Forecasts Global Security and Risk Management Spending to Grow 14% in 2024 (darkreading.com)
High-business-impact outages are incredibly expensive - Help Net Security
78% of organisations under-report cyber attacks: ISACA (securitybrief.co.nz)
Moody’s cyber survey reveals growing budgets and improved governance - Reinsurance News
How To Talk To Your Board And C-suite About Cyber Preparedness | Scoop News
Threats
Ransomware, Extortion and Destructive Attacks
Moody’s global cyber survey finds 50% rise in cyber insurance premiums | Global Reinsurance
Ransomware is deployed faster as cyber criminals seek to avoid detection (betanews.com)
Microsoft: Human-operated ransomware attacks tripled over past year (therecord.media)
Bad BYOD facilitates most ransomware attacks, says Microsoft • The Register
Dual ransomware attacks: FBI warns of twin threat to businesses (techmonitor.ai)
Ransomware gangs destroying data, using multiple strains during attacks: FBI (therecord.media)
Why the public sector is an easy target for ransomware | TechCrunch
Banks beware: Why one ransomware victim decided to pay up | American Banker
LUCR-3: Scattered Spider Getting SaaS-y in the Cloud (thehackernews.com)
Feds hopelessly behind the times on ransomware trends • The Register
MOVEit cyber attacks: keeping tabs on the biggest data theft of 2023 - The Verge
Ransomware reinfections on the rise from improper remediation (malwarebytes.com)
Meet LostTrust ransomware — A likely rebrand of the MetaEncryptor gang (bleepingcomputer.com)
Ransomware gangs now exploiting critical TeamCity RCE flaw (bleepingcomputer.com)
Two hacker groups are back in the news, LockBit 3.0 Black and BlackCat/AlphV (securityaffairs.com)
Ransomware disrupts hospitality, healthcare in September | TechTarget
Ransomware Attacks: Bad for Hospitals, Deadly for Patients - Tradeoffs
Lorenz ransomware embroiled in its own two-year data leak • The Register
Ransomware Victims
LockBit crime spree includes FDF and UK law firm (techmonitor.ai)
Motel One discloses data breach following ransomware attack (bleepingcomputer.com)
MOVEit cyber attacks: keeping tabs on the biggest data theft of 2023 - The Verge
MGM Resorts Refused to Pay Ransom in Cyber attack on Casinos - WSJ
Ransomware attack on Johnson Controls may have exposed sensitive DHS data (securityaffairs.com)
South African insurance clients hit in massive global cyber attack (mybroadband.co.za)
Sony sent data breach notifications to about 6,800 individuals (securityaffairs.com)
Phishing & Email Based Attacks
Report: Over half of phishing emails now use obfuscation tactics to avoid detection - SiliconANGLE
Phishing, Smishing Surge Targets USPS - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)
Will generative AI really supercharge phishing attacks? - Tech Monitor
Other Social Engineering; Smishing, Vishing, etc
Many Cyber Attacks Begin by Breaking Human Trust (govtech.com)
MGM Cyber attack Shows How Hackers Deploy Social Engineering - Bloomberg
Casino Hackers Use Low-Tech Tricks to Exploit Corporate Targets (bloomberglaw.com)
Lazarus Group Impersonates Recruiter from Meta to Target Spanish Aerospace Firm (thehackernews.com)
USPS Anchors Snowballing Smishing Campaigns (darkreading.com)
Phishing, Smishing Surge Targets USPS - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)
Artificial Intelligence
Bing Chat's ads unleash malware mayhem: Users lured into dangerous websites - OnMSFT.com
Protecting against FraudGPT, ChatGPT's evil twin - Help Net Security
The top AI cyber crime threats and solutions | Inquirer Technology
Kaspersky Issues Crimeware Report, Uncovers “WormGPT” | MSSP Alert
The big debate: is AI a blessing or curse for cyber security? - Raconteur
Global internet freedoms fell again last year as the threat of AI looms (therecord.media)
LLMs lower the barrier for entry into cyber crime - Help Net Security
Will generative AI really supercharge phishing attacks? - Tech Monitor
Are we doomed to make the same security mistakes with AI? (securityintelligence.com)
AI facial recognition: Campaigners and MPs call for ban - BBC News
Malware
Hackers are spreading malware through Indeed job messages | Digital Trends
Cyber criminals Using New ASMCrypt Malware Loader Flying Under the Radar (thehackernews.com)
There's a dangerous new malware-as-a-service on the rise - here's what you need to know | TechRadar
North Korea's Lazarus Group upgrades its main malware • The Register
Prolific malware and botnet operator Qakbot still operating despite FBI takedown - SiliconANGLE
Hundreds of malicious Python packages found stealing sensitive data (bleepingcomputer.com)
Mobile
Bad BYOD facilitates most ransomware attacks, says Microsoft • The Register
Android's October 2023 Security Updates Patch Two Exploited Vulnerabilities - Security Week
Backdoored Android phones, TVs used for ad fraud - and worse! - Help Net Security
Are executives adequately guarding their gadgets? - Help Net Security
Botnets
Denial of Service/DoS/DDOS
Flights grounded by DDoS cyber attack on Russia's airports (techmonitor.ai)
Cloudflare DDoS protections ironically bypassed using Cloudflare (bleepingcomputer.com)
Royal Family's official website targeted in cyber attack | UK News | Sky News
Global events fuel DDoS attack campaigns - Help Net Security
BYOD
Bad BYOD facilitates most ransomware attacks, says Microsoft • The Register
Are executives adequately guarding their gadgets? - Help Net Security
Internet of Things – IoT
Backdoored Android phones, TVs used for ad fraud - and worse! - Help Net Security
Eyes everywhere: How to safely navigate the IoT video revolution - Help Net Security
FDA cyber mandates for medical devices goes into effect | CyberScoop
Data Breaches/Leaks
European Telecommunications Standards Institute Discloses Data Breach - Security Week
MOVEit cyber attacks: keeping tabs on the biggest data theft of 2023 - The Verge
SiegedSec Hacktivists Claim to Have Stolen 3,000 NATO Files in Second Attack | MSSP Alert
Blackbaud Pays $49.5M to Settle With State AGs in Breach (inforisktoday.com)
Sony confirms data breach impacting thousands in the US (bleepingcomputer.com)
DNA testing service 23andMe investigating theft of user data | CyberScoop
Organised Crime & Criminal Actors
Odds Are 1 in 4 Americans Will Fall Victim to Online Crime (prnewswire.com)
People Still Matter in Cyber security Management (darkreading.com)
Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain
Crypto firms beware: Lazarus’ new malware can now bypass detection (cointelegraph.com)
There's a dangerous new malware-as-a-service on the rise - here's what you need to know | TechRadar
The crypto market bears the scars of FTX's collapse | Reuters
Insider Risk and Insider Threats
Many Cyber Attacks Begin by Breaking Human Trust (govtech.com)
Tech-savvy young workers might be the biggest cyber liability to your business | TechRadar
Younger employees more likely to have unsafe cyber security habits (betanews.com)
Addressing the People Problem in Cyber security - Security Week
Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime
Online fraud can cost you more than money - Help Net Security
The crypto market bears the scars of FTX's collapse | Reuters
How to deal with your brand's doppelgangers | Kaspersky official blog
Visa Program Combats Friendly Fraud Losses For Small Businesses Globally (darkreading.com)
Impersonation Attacks
Lazarus Group Impersonates Recruiter from Meta to Target Spanish Aerospace Firm (thehackernews.com)
Supply Chain Attackers Escalate With GitHub Dependabot Impersonation (darkreading.com)
AML/CFT/Sanctions
Insurance
Moody’s global cyber survey finds 50% rise in cyber insurance premiums | Global Reinsurance
Insurance Companies Have a Lot to Lose in Cyber attacks (darkreading.com)
Supply Chain and Third Parties
Software Supply Chain
Software firms under cyber attack | Microscope (computerweekly.com)
Upstream Supply Chain Attacks Triple in a Year - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)
Supply Chain Attackers Escalate With GitHub Dependabot Impersonation (darkreading.com)
Cloud/SaaS
Threats in cloud top list of executive cyber concerns, PwC finds | CIO Dive
LUCR-3: Scattered Spider Getting SaaS-y in the Cloud (thehackernews.com)
AWS Using MadPot Decoy System to Disrupt APTs, Botnets - Security Week
Fast-Growing Dropbox Campaign Steals Microsoft SharePoint Credentials (darkreading.com)
EvilProxy uses indeed.com open redirect for Microsoft 365 phishing (bleepingcomputer.com)
Hybrid/Remote Working
Encryption
API
The Silent Threat of APIs: What the New Data Reveals About Unknown Risk (darkreading.com)
APIs: Unveiling the Silent Killer of Cyber Security Risk Across Industries (thehackernews.com)
Open Source
Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks
Biometrics
AI facial recognition: Campaigners and MPs call for ban - BBC News
The rise and fall of Clearview.AI and the evolution of facial recognition - SiliconANGLE
Social Media
Norway Urges Europe-Wide Ban on Meta's Targeted Ad Data Collection (darkreading.com)
Lazarus Group Impersonates Recruiter from Meta to Target Spanish Aerospace Firm (thehackernews.com)
Elon Musk ‘Cut Off Good Guys, Empowered Bad’: Stanford Cyber security Wonk - The Messenger
Malvertising
Training, Education and Awareness
Addressing the People Problem in Cyber security - Security Week
How to Improve Cyber security Awareness and Training (trendmicro.com)
Parental Controls and Child Safety
Regulations, Fines and Legislation
Cyber experts urge EU to rethink vulnerability disclosure plans | Computer Weekly
Companies are already feeling the pressure from upcoming US SEC cyber rules | CSO Online
Blackbaud Pays $49.5M to Settle With State AGs in Breach (inforisktoday.com)
Models, Frameworks and Standards
Breaches Are the Cost of Doing Business, but NIST Is Here to Help (darkreading.com)
What is Compliance as a Service (CaaS)? - Definition from WhatIs.com (techtarget.com)
Careers, Working in Cyber and Information Security
UK government plans 2,500 new tech recruits by 2025 with focus on cyber security | CSO Online
Up to 500,000 staff required to field off growing cyber security threat to Europe | Business Post
Blue teams on the edge: cyber pros seem to hate their jobs | Cybernews
Soft skills continue to challenge the cyber security sector - Help Net Security
Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs
Prolific malware and botnet operator Qakbot still operating despite FBI takedown - SiliconANGLE
UK student found guilty of 3D printing 'kamikaze' drone • The Register
Privacy, Surveillance and Mass Monitoring
Surge in workplace monitoring prompts new ICO guidelines on employee privacy | ITPro
AI facial recognition: Campaigners and MPs call for ban - BBC News
Norway Urges Europe-Wide Ban on Meta's Targeted Ad Data Collection (darkreading.com)
Misinformation, Disinformation and Propaganda
Nation State Actors, Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), Cyber Warfare and Cyber Espionage
Misc Nation State, Cyber Warfare and Cyber Espionage
Espionage fuels global cyber attacks - Microsoft On the Issues
Microsoft: Nation-state cyber espionage on rise in 2023 | Computer Weekly
The sixth domain: The role of the private sector in warfare - Atlantic Council
How this unassuming cable became the world’s most powerful weapon (telegraph.co.uk)
Russia
Russian Cyber Attacks in 2023: Shifting Patterns, Goals, and Capacities
Russian Hacktivism Takes a Toll on Organisations in Ukraine, EU, US (darkreading.com)
Russia-Ukraine war: Cyber space is the latest frontline | Semafor
Flights grounded by DDoS cyber attack on Russia's airports (techmonitor.ai)
Ukrainian Man Calls Russian Tech Support to Help With Captured Tank: Report (businessinsider.com)
China
Iran
North Korea
North Korea's Lazarus Group upgrades its main malware • The Register
Crypto firms beware: Lazarus’ new malware can now bypass detection (cointelegraph.com)
Lazarus Group Impersonates Recruiter from Meta to Target Spanish Aerospace Firm (thehackernews.com)
North Korea goes phishing in South’s shipyards • The Register
Vulnerability Management
Vulnerabilities
CISA Adds Two Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog, Removes Five KEVs | CISA
Exploit released for Microsoft SharePoint Server auth bypass flaw (bleepingcomputer.com)
Microsoft Edge, Teams get fixes for zero-days in open-source libraries (bleepingcomputer.com)
A new Chrome 0-day is sending the Internet into a new chapter of Groundhog Day | Ars Technica
Apple fixed the 17th zero-day flaw exploited in attacks (securityaffairs.com)
Apple Warns of Newly Exploited iOS 17 Kernel Zero-Day - Security Week
Move Over, MOVEit: Critical Progress Bug Infests WS_FTP Software (darkreading.com)
Mass exploitation attempts against WS_FTP have begun • The Register
Millions of Exim mail servers exposed to zero-day RCE attacks (bleepingcomputer.com)
Critical zero-days in Exim revealed, only 3 have been fixed - Help Net Security
Patch Confusion for Critical Exim Bug Puts Email Servers at Risk--Again (darkreading.com)
Microsoft won’t say if its products were exploited by spyware zero-days | TechCrunch
Companies Address Impact of Exploited Libwebp Vulnerability - Security Week
Zero-day in Arm GPU drivers exploited in targeted attacks (CVE-2023-4211) - Help Net Security
Arm warns of Mali GPU flaws likely exploited in targeted attacks (bleepingcomputer.com)
Qualcomm says hackers exploit 3 zero-days in its GPU, DSP drivers (bleepingcomputer.com)
Atlassian patches critical Confluence zero-day exploited in attacks (bleepingcomputer.com)
Vulnerabilities in Supermicro BMCs could allow for unkillable server rootkits | Ars Technica
Tools and Controls
Does your security program suffer from piecemeal detection and response? (securityintelligence.com)
The Silent Threat of APIs: What the New Data Reveals About Unknown Risk (darkreading.com)
APIs: Unveiling the Silent Killer of Cyber Security Risk Across Industries (thehackernews.com)
5 common browser attacks and how to prevent them | TechTarget
Rationalizing Your Hybrid Cloud Security Tools (securityintelligence.com)
Protecting your IT infrastructure with Security Configuration Assessment (SCA) (thehackernews.com)
The big debate: is AI a blessing or curse for cyber security? - Raconteur
Is your threat protection giving you a false sense of cyber security? | The Independent
Quash EDR/XDR Exploits With These Countermeasures (darkreading.com)
How to Improve Cyber security Awareness and Training (trendmicro.com)
Reports Published in the Last Week
Other News
Cyber attacks on UK pension funds on the rise – study | Pensions & Investments (pionline.com)
The trust deficit in CNI: How to address a growing concern | Computer Weekly
10 Emerging Cyber security Threats And Hacker Tactics In 2023 | CRN
Lyca Mobile UK Confirm Cyber Attack Responsible for Disruption - ISPreview UK
Global internet freedoms fell again last year as the threat of AI looms (therecord.media)
How Private Equity Firms Can Protect ‘Treasure Trove’ from Digital Threats (ai-cio.com)
10 Routine Security Gaffes the Feds Are Begging You to Fix (darkreading.com)
NSA: Here Are the Dumbest Cyber security Mistakes We See at Large Organisations (pcmag.com)
Edinburgh Trams websites targeted by 'potential cyber attack' - Edinburgh Live
Making Sense of Today's Payment Cyber security Landscape (darkreading.com)
GAO tears into State Department's cyber security management • The Register
First pan-European cyber analysis centre opens (airportsinternational.com)
Mobile customers unable to make or receive calls after firm hit by cyber attack - Mirror Online
Malicious HDMI Cables Steals Photos, Videos, and Location Data (gbhackers.com)
Sector Specific
Industry specific threat intelligence reports are available.
Contact us to receive tailored reports specific to the industry/sector and geographies you operate in.
· Automotive
· Construction
· Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)
· Defence & Space
· Education & Academia
· Energy & Utilities
· Estate Agencies
· Financial Services
· FinTech
· Food & Agriculture
· Gaming & Gambling
· Government & Public Sector (including Law Enforcement)
· Health/Medical/Pharma
· Hotels & Hospitality
· Insurance
· Legal
· Manufacturing
· Maritime
· Oil, Gas & Mining
· OT, ICS, IIoT, SCADA & Cyber-Physical Systems
· Retail & eCommerce
· Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)
· Startups
· Telecoms
· Third Sector & Charities
· Transport & Aviation
· Web3
As usual, contact us to help assess where your risks lie and to ensure you are doing all you can do to keep you and your business secure.
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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.
Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 21 October 2022
Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 21 October 2022:
-Gen Z, Millennials Really Doesn't Care About Workplace Cyber Security
-Supply Chain Attacks Increased Over 600% This Year and Companies Are Falling Behind
-Cyber-Enabled Crimes Are Biggest Police Concerns
-List of Common Passwords Accounts for Nearly All Cyber Attacks
-Shared Responsibility or Shared Fate? Decentralized IT Means We Are All Cyber Defenders
-Ukraine War Cuts Ransomware as Kremlin Co-Opts Hackers
-96% Of Companies Report Insufficient Security for Sensitive Cloud Data
-Your Microsoft Exchange Server Is a Security Liability
-Are Cyber Security Vendors Pushing Snake Oil?
-Ransomware Preparedness, What Are You Doing Wrong?
-NSA Cybersecurity Director's Six Takeaways from the War in Ukraine
-Microsoft Confirms Server Misconfiguration Led to 65,000+ Companies' Data Leak
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
Gen Z, Millennials Really Don’t Care About Workplace Cyber Security
When it comes to cyber security in the workplace, younger employees don’t really seem to care that much, which is putting their organisations in serious harm’s way, new research has claimed.
Surveying approximately 1,000 workers using devices issued by their employers, professional services firm EY found Gen Z enterprise employees were more apathetic about cyber security than their Boomer counterparts in adhering to their employer's safety policies.
This is despite the fact that four in five (83%) of all those surveyed claimed to understand their employer’s security protocol.
When it comes to implementing mandatory IT updates, for example, 58% of Gen Z’ers and 42% of millennials would disregard them for as long as possible. Less than a third (31%) of Gen X’ers, and just 15% of baby boomers said they do the same.
Apathy in the young extends to password reuse between private and business accounts. A third of Gen Z and millennial workers surveyed admitted to this, compared to less than a quarter of all Gen X’ers and baby boomers.
Some say the apathy of young people towards technology is down to their over-familiarity with technology, and never having been without it. Being too comfortable with tech undoubtedly makes an enterprise's younger employees a major target for cyber criminals looking to exploit any hole in security.
If an organisation's cyber security practices aren't upheld strongly, threat actors can compromise huge networks with simple social engineering attacks.
https://www.techradar.com/news/younger-workers-dont-care-about-workplace-cybersecurity
Supply Chain Attacks Increased Over 600% This Year and Companies Are Falling Behind
The number of documented supply chain attacks involving malicious third-party components has increased 633% over the past year, now sitting at over 88,000 known instances, according to a new report from software supply chain management company Sonatype. Meanwhile, instances of transitive vulnerabilities that software components inherit from their own dependencies have also reached unprecedented levels and plague two-thirds of open-source libraries.
“The networked nature of dependencies highlights the importance of having visibility and awareness about these complex supply chains” Sonatype said in its newly released State of the Software Supply Chain report. “These dependencies impact our software, so having an understanding of their origins is critical to vulnerability response. Many organisations did not have the needed visibility and continued their incident response procedures for Log4Shell well beyond the summer of 2022 as a result.”
Log4Shell is a critical vulnerability discovered in November 2021 in Log4j, a widely popular open-source Java library used for logging and bundled in millions of enterprise applications and software products, often as an indirect dependency. According to Sonatype’s monitoring, as of August 2022, the adoption rate for fixed versions of Log4j sits at around 65%. Moreover, this doesn’t even account for the fact that the Log4Shell vulnerability originated in a Java class called JndiManager that is part of Log4j-core, but which has also been borrowed by 783 other projects and is now found in over 19,000 software components.
Log4Shell served as a watershed moment, highlighting the inherent risks that exist in the open-source software ecosystem – which sits at the core of modern software development – and the need to manage them properly. It also led to several initiatives to secure the software supply chain by private organisations, software repository managers, the Linux Foundation, and government bodies. Yet, most organisations are far from where they need to be in terms of open-source supply chain management.
Cyber-Enabled Crimes Are Biggest Police Concerns
Cyber-related crimes such as money laundering, ransomware and phishing pose the biggest threat to society, according to the first ever Interpol Global Crime Trend report.
The inaugural study was compiled from data received from the policing organisation’s 195 member countries, as well as information and analysis from external sources.
Money laundering was ranked the number one threat, with 67% of respondents claiming it to be a “high” or “very high” risk. Ransomware came second (66%) but was the crime type that most (72%) expected to increase in the next 3–5 years.
Of the nine top crime trends identified in the report, six are directly cyber-enabled, including money laundering, ransomware, phishing, financial fraud, computer intrusion and child sexual exploitation.
Interpol warned that the pandemic had fomented new underground offerings like “financial crime-as-a-service,” including digital money laundering tools which help to lower the barrier to entry for criminal gangs. It also claimed that demand for online child sexual exploitation and abuse (OCSEA) content surged during the pandemic. Some 62% of respondents expect it to increase or significantly increase in the coming years.
The findings represent something of a turnaround from pre-pandemic times, when drug trafficking regularly topped the list of police concerns. Thanks to a surge in corporate digitalisation, home working and online shopping, there are now rich pickings to be had from targeting consumers and business users with cyber-scams and attacks, Interpol claimed.
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/cyberenabled-crimes-are-biggest/
List of Common Passwords Accounts for Nearly All Cyber Attacks
Half of a million passwords from the RockYou2021 list account for 99.997% of all credential attacks against a variety of honeypots, suggesting attackers are just taking the easy road.
Tens of millions of credential-based attacks targeting two common types of servers boiled down to a small fraction of the passwords that formed a list of leaked credentials, known as the RockYou2021 list.
Vulnerability management firm Rapid7, via its network of honeypots, recorded every attempt to compromise those servers over a 12-month period, finding that the attempted credential attacks resulted in 512,000 permutations. Almost all of those passwords (99.997%) are included in a common password list — the RockYou2021 file, which has 8.4 billion entries — suggesting that attackers, or the subset of threat actors attacking Rapid7's honeypots, are sticking to a common playbook.
The overlap in all the attacks also suggest attackers are taking the easy road, said Rapid7. "We know now, in a provable and demonstrable way, that nobody — 0% of attackers — is trying to be creative when it comes to unfocused, untargeted attacks across the Internet," they said. "Therefore, it's very easy to avoid this kind of opportunistic attack, and it takes very little effort to take this threat off the table entirely, with modern password managers and configuration controls."
Every year, security firms present research suggesting users are continuing to pick bad passwords. In 2019, an evaluation of passwords leaked to the Internet found that the top password was "123456," followed by "123456789" and "qwerty," and unfortunately things have not got much better since then.
https://www.darkreading.com/endpoint/a-common-password-list-accounts-for-nearly-all-cyberattacks
Shared Responsibility or Shared Fate? Decentralised IT Means We Are All Cyber Defenders
Does your organisation truly understand the shared responsibility model? Shared responsibility emerged from the early days of cloud computing as a way to delineate responsibilities between cloud providers and their customers, but often there's a gap between what shared responsibility means and how it is interpreted. With the decentralisation of IT, this gap is getting worse.
Applications, servers, and overall technology used to be under the purview and control of the IT department, yet with the shift to cloud, and specifically software-as-a-service (SaaS), this dynamic has changed. Whether it's the sales team bringing in a customer relationship management (CRM) system like Salesforce, or the HR department operating a human resources information system (HRIS) like Workday, there's a clear "expanding universe" of IT that no longer sits where it used to. Critical business workflows exist in separate business units far from IT and security and are managed as such. Our corporate IT footprints have become decentralised.
This is not some minor, temporary trend. With the ease and speed of adopting new SaaS applications and the desire to "lift and shift" code into cloud-based environments, this is the future. The future is decentralised.
The shift to business-owned and -operated applications puts security teams in a position where risk management is their responsibility; they are not even able to log into some of these critical systems. It's like asking your doctor to keep you healthy but not giving her access to your information or having regular check-ups. It doesn't work that way.
Beyond the challenging human skills gap, there's technical entropy and diversity everywhere, with different configuration settings, event logs, threat vectors, and data sensitivities. On the access side, there are different admins, users, integrations, and APIs. If you think managing security on Windows and Mac is a lot, try it across many huge applications.
With this reality, how can the security team be expected to combat a growing amount of decentralised business technology risk?
We must operate our technology with the understanding that shared responsibility is the vertical view between cloud provider and customer, but that enterprise-owned piece of shared responsibility is the burden of multiple teams horizontally across an organisation. Too often the mentality is us versus them, availability versus security, too busy to care about risk, too concerned with risk to understand "the business."
Ukraine War Cuts Ransomware as Kremlin Co-Opts Hackers
The Ukraine war has helped reduce global ransomware attacks by 10pc in the last few months, a British cyber security company has said.
Criminal hacking gangs, usually engaged in corporate ransomware activities, are increasingly being co-opted by the Russian military to launch cyber attacks on Ukraine, according to Digital Shadows. “The war is likely to continue to motivate ransomware actors to target government and critical infrastructure entities,” according to the firm. Such attacks partly contributed to a 10pc drop in the number of ransomware threats launched during the three months to September, said the London-based company.
The drop in ransomware may also partly be caused by tit-for-tat digital attacks between rival hacking gangs. Researchers said the Lockbit gang, who recently targeted LSE-listed car retailer Pendragon with a $60m (£53.85m) ransom demand, were the target of attacks from their underworld rivals. The group is increasingly inviting resentment from competing threat groups and possibly former members.
Some cyber criminals’ servers went offline in September after what appeared to be an attack from competitors. In the world of cyber criminality, it is not uncommon for tensions to flare among rival groups.
Officials from GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre have said ransomware is one of the biggest cyber threats facing the UK. Figures published by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport this year revealed the average costs to businesses caused by ransomware attacks is around £19,000 per incident.
US-based cyber security company Palo Alto Networks, however, warned that the average ransom payment it saw in the early part of this year was $925,000 (£829,000).
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/10/23/ukraine-war-cuts-ransomware-kremlin-co-opts-hackers/
96% Of Companies Report Insufficient Security for Sensitive Cloud Data
The vast majority of organisations lack confidence in securing their data in cloud, while many companies acknowledge they lack sufficient security even for their most sensitive data, according to a new report by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA).
The CSA report surveyed 1,663 IT and security professionals from organisations of various sizes and in various locations. "Only 4% report sufficient security for 100% of their data in the cloud. This means that 96% of organisations have insufficient security for at least some of their sensitive data," according to the report, which was sponsored by data intelligence firm BigID.
Apart from struggling with securing sensitive data, organisations are also having trouble tracking data in the cloud. Over a quarter of organisations polled aren’t tracking regulated data, nearly a third aren’t tracking confidential or internal data, and 45% aren’t tracking unclassified data, the report said.
“This suggests that organisations’ current methods of classifying data aren’t sufficient for their needs. However, if the tracking is this low, it could be a contributing factor to the issue of dark data. Organisations need to utilise data discovery and classification tools to properly understand the data they have and how to protect it,” the CSA study noted.
Your Microsoft Exchange Server Is a Security Liability
With endless vulnerabilities, widespread hacking campaigns, slow and technically tough patching, it's time to say goodbye to on-premise Exchange.
Once, reasonable people who cared about security, privacy, and reliability ran their own email servers. Today, the vast majority host their personal email in the cloud, handing off that substantial burden to the capable security and engineering teams at companies like Google and Microsoft. Now, cyber security experts argue that a similar switch is due - or long overdue - for corporate and government networks. For enterprises that use on-premise Microsoft Exchange, still running their own email machine somewhere in a closet or data centre, the time has come to move to a cloud service, if only to avoid the years-long plague of bugs in Exchange servers that has made it nearly impossible to keep determined hackers out.
The latest reminder of that struggle arrived earlier this week, when Taiwanese security researcher Orange Tsai published a blog post laying out the details of a security vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange. Tsai warned Microsoft about this vulnerability as early as June of 2021, and while the company responded by releasing some partial fixes, it took Microsoft 14 months to fully resolve the underlying security problem. Tsai had earlier reported a related vulnerability in Exchange that was massively exploited by a group of Chinese state-sponsored hackers known as Hafnium, which last year penetrated more than 30,000 targets by some counts. Yet according to the timeline described in Tsai’s post this week, Microsoft repeatedly delayed fixing the newer variation of that same vulnerability, assuring Tsai no fewer than four times that it would patch the bug before pushing off a full patch for months longer. When Microsoft finally released a fix, Tsai wrote, it still required manual activation and lacked any documentation for four more months.
Meanwhile, another pair of actively exploited vulnerabilities in Exchange that were revealed last month still remain unpatched after researchers showed that Microsoft’s initial attempts to fix the flaws had failed. Those vulnerabilities were just the latest in a years-long pattern of security bugs in Exchange’s code. And even when Microsoft does release Exchange patches, they’re often not widely implemented, due to the time-consuming technical process of installing them.
The result of those compounding problems, for many who have watched the hacker-induced headaches of running an Exchange server pile up, is a clear message: An Exchange server is itself a security vulnerability, and the fix is to get rid of it.
“You need to move off of on-premise Exchange forever. That’s the bottom line,” says Dustin Childs, the head of threat awareness at security firm Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), which pays researchers for finding and reporting vulnerabilities in commonly used software and runs the Pwn2Own hacking competition. “You’re not getting the support, as far as security fixes, that you would expect from a really mission-critical component of your infrastructure.”
https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-exchange-server-vulnerabilities/
Are Cyber Security Vendors Pushing Snake Oil?
Survey: 96 percent of cyber security decision makers confused by vendor marketing.
The availability of new security products increases, the amount of budget spent on cyber security grows, and the number of security breaches seems to outpace both. This basic lack of correlation between increasing cyber security spend and any clear increase in cyber security effectiveness is the subject of a new analytical survey from Egress.
With 52 million data breaches in Q2 2022 alone (Statista), Egress questioned 800 cyber security and IT leaders on why vendor claims and reality aren’t aligned. The headline response in the survey is that 91% of decision makers have difficulty in selecting cyber security vendors due to unclear marketing about their specific offerings.
The financial investment cycle doesn’t help in this. For many investors, the strength of the management team is more important than the product. The argument is not whether this product is a cyber security silver bullet, but whether this management can take the company to a point where it can exit with serious profits.
If investment is achieved, much of it will go into marketing. That marketing must compete against existing, established vendors – so it tends to be louder, more aggressive, and replete with hyperbole. Marketing noise can lead to increased valuation, which can lead to a successful and profitable exit by the investors.
Of course, this is an oversimplification and doesn’t always happen. The point, however, is that it does happen and has no relevance to the real effectiveness of the product in question. Without any doubt, there are many products that have been over-hyped by marketing funds provided by profit-driven investors.
https://www.securityweek.com/are-cybersecurity-vendors-pushing-snake-oil
Ransomware Preparedness: What Are You Doing Wrong?
Axio released its 2022 State of Ransomware Preparedness research report, revealing that although notable improvements have been made since Axio’s 2021 report, organisational ransomware preparedness continues to be insufficient to keep pace with new attack vectors.
The report reveals that the lack of fundamental cyber security practices and controls, including critical vulnerability patching and employee cyber security training, continues to undermine organisational attempts to improve ransomware defences.
“Ransomware continues to wreak havoc on global organisations, regardless of size or industry,” remarked the report’s co-author David White, President of Axio. “As the number of attacks will most likely continue on an exponential trajectory, it’s more important than ever for companies to re-evaluate their cyber security practices and make the needed improvements to help combat these attacks.”
The report identifies several emerging patterns that yield insights into why organisations are increasingly susceptible to ransomware attacks. In 2021, seven key areas where organisations were deficient in implementing and sustaining basic cyber security practices were identified, and these patterns dominated the 2022 study results as well:
Managing privileged access
Improving basic cyber hygiene
Reducing exposure to supply chain and third-party risk
Monitoring and defending networks
Managing ransomware incidents
Identifying and addressing vulnerabilities in a timely manner
Improving cyber security training and awareness
Overall, most organisations surveyed are not adequately prepared to manage the risk associated with a ransomware attack. Key data findings include:
The number of organisations with a functional privileged access management solution in place increased by 10% but remains low at 33% overall.
Limitations on the use of service and local administrator accounts remain average overall, with nearly 50% of organisations reporting implementing these practices.
Approximately 40% of organisations monitor third-party network access, evaluate third-party cyber security posture, and limit the use of third-party software.
Less than 50% of respondents implement basic network segmentation and only 40% monitor for anomalous connections.
Critical vulnerability patching within 24 hours was reported by only 24% of organisations.
A ransomware-specific playbook for incident management is in place for only 30% of organisations.
Active phishing training has improved but is still not practiced by 40% of organisations.
https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/10/20/insufficient-ransomware-preparedness/
NSA Cybersecurity Director's Six Takeaways from the War in Ukraine
From the warning banner ‘Be afraid and expect the worst’ that was shown on several Ukrainian government websites on January 13, 2022, after a cyber-attack took them down, the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) cybersecurity director, Rob Joyce, knew that something was going to be different, and very aggressive, between Ukraine and Russia, and that it would be happening in the cyber space as well.
Ten months on, he was invited to speak at one of Mandiant Worldwide Information Security Exchange's (mWISE) opening keynotes on October 18, 2022. Joyce shared six takeaways from the Russia-Ukraine cyber-conflict in terms of what we learned from it and its impact on how nations should protect their organisations.
Both espionage and destructive attacks will occur in conflict
The cyber security industry has unique insight into these conflicts
Sensitive intelligence can make a decisive difference
You can develop resiliency skills
Don’t try to go it alone
You have not planned enough yet for the contingencies
Toward the end of the keynote, Joyce suggested the audience simulate a scenario based on what happened in Ukraine with the China-Taiwan conflict escalating and see what they should put in place to better prepare for such an event.
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/nsa-6-takeaways-war-ukraine/
Microsoft Confirms Server Misconfiguration Led to 65,000+ Companies' Data Leak
Microsoft this week confirmed that it inadvertently exposed information related to thousands of customers following a security lapse that left an endpoint publicly accessible over the internet sans any authentication.
"This misconfiguration resulted in the potential for unauthenticated access to some business transaction data corresponding to interactions between Microsoft and prospective customers, such as the planning or potential implementation and provisioning of Microsoft services," Microsoft said in an alert.
Microsoft also emphasised that the B2B leak was "caused by an unintentional misconfiguration on an endpoint that is not in use across the Microsoft ecosystem and was not the result of a security vulnerability."
The misconfiguration of the Azure Blob Storage was spotted on September 24, 2022, by cyber security company SOCRadar, which termed the leak BlueBleed. Microsoft said it's in the process of directly notifying impacted customers.
The Windows maker did not reveal the scale of the data leak, but according to SOCRadar, it affects more than 65,000 entities in 111 countries. The exposure amounts to 2.4 terabytes of data that consists of invoices, product orders, signed customer documents, partner ecosystem details, among others.
https://thehackernews.com/2022/10/microsoft-confirms-server.html
Threats
Ransomware and Extortion
Сryptocurrency and Ransomware — The Ultimate Friendship (thehackernews.com)
Venus Ransomware targets publicly exposed Remote Desktop services (bleepingcomputer.com)
Pendragon being held to $60m ransom by dark web hackers – Car Dealer Magazine
Magniber Ransomware Is Targeting Home PC (informationsecuritybuzz.com)
Hackers exploit critical VMware flaw to drop ransomware, miners (bleepingcomputer.com)
Ransomware Now Deployed as a Precursor to Physical War - MSSP Alert
TommyLeaks and SchoolBoys: Two sides of the same ransomware gang (bleepingcomputer.com)
With Conti gone, LockBit takes lead of the ransomware threat landscape | CSO Online
Tactics Tie Ransom Cartel Group to Defunct REvil Ransomware (darkreading.com)
Wholesale giant METRO hit by IT outage after cyber attack (bleepingcomputer.com)
The link between Ransom Cartel and REvil ransomware gangs - Security Affairs
How Vice Society Got Away With a Global Ransomware Spree | WIRED
Defenders beware: A case for post-ransomware investigations - Microsoft Security Blog
Ransomware crews regrouping as LockBit rise continues (computerweekly.com)
Ransom Cartel linked to notorious REvil ransomware operation (bleepingcomputer.com)
Hackney Council Ransomware Attack £12m+ Recovery - IT Security Guru
Microsoft Warns of Novel Ransomware Attacking Ukraine, Poland - MSSP Alert
Prestige ransomware hits victims of HermeticWiper • The Register
New ransomware targets transportation sectors in Ukraine, Poland | SC Media (scmagazine.com)
Japanese tech firm Oomiya hit by LockBit 3.0 - Security Affairs
Ransomware attack halts circulation of some German newspapers (bleepingcomputer.com)
Ransomware Insurance Security Requirement Strategies (trendmicro.com)
Australian insurance firm Medibank confirms ransomware attack (bleepingcomputer.com)
BlackByte ransomware uses new data theft tool for double-extortion (bleepingcomputer.com)
Phishing & Email Based Attacks
Phishing works so well crims won't use deepfakes: Sophos • The Register
Phishing Mitigation Can Cost Businesses More Than $1M Annually (darkreading.com)
Securing your organisation against phishing can cost up to $85 per email | CSO Online
How phishing campaigns abuse Google Ad click tracking redirects - Help Net Security
Other Social Engineering; Smishing, Vishing, etc
Malware
VMware bug with 9.8 severity rating exploited to install witch’s brew of malware | Ars Technica
Microsoft’s out-of-date driver list left Windows PCs open to malware attacks for years - The Verge
Ursnif malware switches from bank account theft to initial access (bleepingcomputer.com)
Experts spotted a new undetectable PowerShell Backdoor - Security Affairs
Typosquat campaign mimics 27 brands to push Windows, Android malware (bleepingcomputer.com)
Thousands of GitHub repositories deliver fake PoC exploits with malware (bleepingcomputer.com)
Hackers use new stealthy PowerShell backdoor to target 60+ victims (bleepingcomputer.com)
Hijacking of Popular Minecraft Launcher by Rogue Developer Raises Malware Fears - IGN
URSNIF (aka Gozi) banking trojan morphs into backdoor • The Register
What is a RAT (Remote Access Trojan)? | Definition from TechTarget
Mobile
Internet of Things – IoT
Riskiest IoT Devices - Cameras, VoIP And Video Conferencing (informationsecuritybuzz.com)
Securing IoT devices against attacks that target critical infrastructure - Microsoft Security Blog
74% say connected cars and EV chargers need cyber security ratings | Ars Technica
Data Breaches/Leaks
The companies most likely to lose your data - Help Net Security
Fines are not enough! Data breach victims want better security - Help Net Security
Medibank hack turned into a data breach: The attackers are demanding money - Help Net Security
Mormon Church Hit By Cyber attack, Personal Data Exposed (informationsecuritybuzz.com)
Keystone Health Data Breach Impacts 235,000 Patients | SecurityWeek.Com
Fashion brand SHEIN fined $1.9m for lying about data breach – Naked Security (sophos.com)
Client Data Exfiltrated In Advanced NHS cyber Attack (informationsecuritybuzz.com)
Australian Wine Dealer Suffers Data Breach, 500,000 Customers May Be (informationsecuritybuzz.com)
Advocate Aurora Health in potential 3 million patient leak • The Register
Organised Crime & Criminal Actors
Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain
Why Crypto Winter is No Excuse to Let Your Cyber Defences Falter (thehackernews.com)
North Korea’s Lazarus Group Attacks Japanese Crypto Firms - Decrypt
Coinbase users scammed out of $21M in crypto sue company for negligence | Ars Technica
SIM Swappers Sentenced to Prison for Hacking Accounts, Stealing Cryptocurrency | SecurityWeek.Com
Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime
Financial losses to synthetic identity-based fraud to double by 2024 | CSO Online
AI is Key to Tackling Money Mules and Disrupting Fraud: Industry Group | SecurityWeek.Com
Deepfakes
Deepfakes: What they are and how to spot them - Help Net Security
Phishing works so well crims won't use deepfakes: Sophos • The Register
Insurance
Supply Chain and Third Parties
Software Supply Chain
Software Supply Chain Attacks Soar 742% In Three Years (informationsecuritybuzz.com)
SBOMs: An Overhyped Concept That Won't Secure Your Software Supply Chain (darkreading.com)
Denial of Service DoS/DDoS
Cloud/SaaS
Microsoft Data-Exposure Incident Highlights Risk of Cloud Storage Misconfiguration (darkreading.com)
3 cloud security posture questions CISOs should answer (techtarget.com)
Attack Surface Management
Identity and Access Management
Encryption
API
Open Source
New security concerns for the open-source software supply chain - Help Net Security
Python vulnerability highlights open source security woes (techtarget.com)
3 Ways to Help Customers Defend Against Linux-Based Cyber attacks - MSSP Alert
OldGremlin hackers use Linux ransomware to attack Russian orgs (bleepingcomputer.com)
Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks
Most People Still Reuse Their Passwords Despite Years Of Hacking (informationsecuritybuzz.com)
Password Report: Honeypot Data Shows Bot Attack Trends Against RDP, SSH | SecurityWeek.Com
Eight RTX 4090s Can Break Passwords in Under an Hour | Tom's Hardware (tomshardware.com)
Training, Education and Awareness
Security Awareness Urged to Grow Beyond Compliance (darkreading.com)
Raising cyber security awareness is good for everyone - but it needs to be done better | ZDNET
Millennials, Gen Z blamed for poor company security • The Register
Privacy, Surveillance and Mass Monitoring
Regulations, Fines and Legislation
Fines are not enough! Data breach victims want better security - Help Net Security
Fashion brand SHEIN fined $1.9m for lying about data breach – Naked Security (sophos.com)
New York fines EyeMed $4.5 million for 2020 email hack, data breach | SC Media (scmagazine.com)
Health insurer pays out $4.5m over bungled data security • The Register
Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs
INTERPOL-led Operation Takes Down 'Black Axe' Cyber Crime Organisation (thehackernews.com)
Law enforcement arrested 31 suspects for stealing cars by hacking key fobs - Security Affairs
Interpol is setting up its own metaverse to learn how to police the virtual world | Euronews
Brazilian Police Nab Suspected Member of Lapsus$ Group (darkreading.com)
Interpol Report: "Financial Crime-as-a-Service" an Emerging Threat - MSSP Alert
Spyware, Cyber Espionage & Cyber Warfare, including Russian Invasion of Ukraine
Ransomware Now Deployed as a Precursor to Physical War - MSSP Alert
US, China, Russia, more meet at Singapore infosec event • The Register
NSA cyber chief says Ukraine war is compelling more intelligence sharing with industry - CyberScoop
China-Linked Cyber-Espionage Team Homes In on Hong Kong Government Orgs (darkreading.com)
Microsoft Warns of Novel Ransomware Attacking Ukraine, Poland - MSSP Alert
Hackers target Asian casinos in lengthy cyber espionage campaign (bleepingcomputer.com)
Prestige ransomware hits victims of HermeticWiper • The Register
Pro-Russia Hackers DDoS Bulgarian Government - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)
Nation State Actors
Nation State Actors – Russia
Ukraine's cyber chief calls for global anti-fake news fight • The Register
German Cyber security Boss Sacked Over Kremlin Connection (darkreading.com)
New ransomware targets transportation sectors in Ukraine, Poland | SC Media (scmagazine.com)
Bulgaria hit by a cyber attack originating from Russia - Security Affairs
Nation State Actors – China
As China-Taiwan tensions mount, how's your cyber defence? • The Register
Chinese 'Spyder Loader' Malware Spotted Targeting Organisations in Hong Kong (thehackernews.com)
Hackers compromised Hong Kong govt agency network for a year (bleepingcomputer.com)
WIP19 Threat Group Cyber attacks Target IT Service Providers, Telcos - MSSP Alert
Nation State Actors – North Korea
Nation State Actors – Iran
Vulnerability Management
Vulnerabilities
45,654 VMware ESXi servers reached End of Life on Oct. 15 - Security Affairs
VMware bug with 9.8 severity rating exploited to install witch’s brew of malware | Ars Technica
Text message verification flaws in your Windows Active Directory (bleepingcomputer.com)
Apache Commons Vulnerability: Patch but Don't Panic (darkreading.com)
Zoom for Mac patches sneaky “spy-on-me” bug – update now! – Naked Security (sophos.com)
ProxyLogon researcher details new Exchange Server flaws (techtarget.com)
Exploited Windows zero-day lets JavaScript files bypass security warnings (bleepingcomputer.com)
Dozen High-Severity Vulnerabilities Patched in F5 Products | SecurityWeek.Com
Oracle Releases 370 New Security Patches With October 2022 CPU | SecurityWeek.Com
Palo Alto Networks fixed a high-severity flaw in PAN-OS - Security Affairs
Hackers exploit critical VMware flaw to drop ransomware, miners (bleepingcomputer.com)
Zimbra Patches Under-Attack Code Execution Bug | SecurityWeek.Com
WordPress Security Update 6.0.3 Patches 16 Vulnerabilities | SecurityWeek.Com
Python vulnerability highlights open source security woes (techtarget.com)
Other News
Zero trust is misused in security, say Cloudflare, Zscaler - Protocol
Cyber professional shortfall hits 3.4 million (computerweekly.com)
VPN use prevails despite interest in VPN alternatives (techtarget.com)
JP Morgan Bans Staff From Working Remotely In Hotels and Coffee Shops-But Not Airbnbs | Inc.com
Experts discovered millions of .git folders exposed to public - Security Affairs
Microsoft Defender is lacking in offline detection capabilities, says AV-Comparatives | TechSpot
Internet connectivity worldwide impacted by severed fiber cables in France (bleepingcomputer.com)
UK's Remote Shetland Mysteriously Lose Phone, Internet After Cable Cut (businessinsider.com)
CISOs, rejoice! Security spending is increasing - Help Net Security
Equifax surveilled 1,000 remote workers, fired 24 found juggling two jobs | Ars Technica
NATO Just Deployed Its First Killer Ground Robot (futurism.com)
Sector Specific
Industry specific threat intelligence reports are available.
Contact us to receive tailored reports specific to the industry/sector and geographies you operate in.
· Automotive
· Construction
· Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)
· Defence & Space
· Education & Academia
· Energy & Utilities
· Estate Agencies
· Financial Services
· FinTech
· Food & Agriculture
· Gaming & Gambling
· Government & Public Sector (including Law Enforcement)
· Health/Medical/Pharma
· Hotels & Hospitality
· Insurance
· Legal
· Manufacturing
· Maritime
· Oil, Gas & Mining
· OT, ICS, IIoT, SCADA & Cyber-Physical Systems
· Retail & eCommerce
· Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)
· Startups
· Telecoms
· Third Sector & Charities
· Transport & Aviation
· Web3
As usual, contact us to help assess where your risks lie and to ensure you are doing all you can do to keep you and your business secure.
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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.