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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 10 May 2024

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Intelligence Briefing 10 May 2024:

-China Suspected of Hacking MoD, Through Its Payroll Provider

-Security Tools Fail to Translate Risks for Executives

-Gang Accused of MGM Hack Shifts Attacks to Finance Sector

-Are SMEs Paving the Way for Cyber Attacks on Larger Companies?

-Misconfigurations Drive 80% of Security Exposure, Report Finds

-Only 45% of Organisations Employ MFA Protections

-You Cannot Protect What You Do Not Know You Have, as Criminals are Exploiting Vulnerabilities Faster Than Ever

-The Rise and Stealth of The Socially Engineered Insider

-Over 70% of Staff Use AI At Work, But Only 30% of European Organisations Provide AI Training

-Don't Be the Weakest Link – You and Your Team's Crucial Role in Cyber Security

-Ransomware Activity Thrives, Despite Law enforcement Efforts

-NATO Warns of Russian Hybrid Warfare

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

China Suspected of Hacking UK Ministry of Defence, Through Its Payroll Provider

UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps has confirmed that over 270,000 personal details have been leaked after the MoD was hacked through its third-party payroll provider, SSCL. The affected systems have been pulled offline since the attack. SSCL’s website describes that it manages HR for the armed forces, the Metropolitan Police and other areas of British government. The commercial supply chain, and in particular HR and payroll providers, is increasing being used as the soft underbelly to attack larger and better protected organisations.

Sources: [LBC] [The Register] [Sky News]

Security Tools Fail to Translate Risks for Executives

Organisations are struggling with internal communication barriers, hindering their ability to address and mitigate cyber security threats, according to a report which found that seven out of 10 C-suite executives said their security teams talk in technical terms without providing business context. However, in contrast, 75% of CISO’s highlight the issue is rooted in security tools that cannot generate the insights C-level executives and boards can use to understand business implications. The role of a good CISO should be to take the output of these tools and turn that data into metrics the Boards can understand.

The issues highlight the necessity for organisations to have someone in their organisation, whether an employee or a third-party, who is able to ingest technical results and translate them into a style that the C-suite can understand for business risk management.

Source: [Help Net Security]

Gang Accused of MGM Hack Shifts Attacks to Finance Sector

The hacking group responsible for the infamous hack on MGM and Caesar’s Palace resorts is engaged in a new campaign targeting the financial sector. The group known as Scattered Spider has targeted 29 companies since 20 April this year, compromising at least 2 insurance companies so far. The research has stated that the attackers are purchasing lookalike domains that match the name of target companies, hosting fake log-in pages. Links to these are sent to employees, in an attempt to direct them there. The most recent attack took place just days ago, with more expected.

Sources: [Bloomberg Law] [Claims Journal]

Are SMEs Paving the Way for Cyber Attacks on Larger Companies?

A recent study highlights the escalating cyber threats facing businesses, particularly SMEs and supply chains. The study found that 32% of UK businesses, including 69% of large and 59% of mid-sized organisations, suffered a cyber attack last year. The situation is worse for SMEs, with weaker security systems and 77% lacking in-house cyber security. SMEs can become entry points for hackers targeting larger partners through interconnected supply chains. Meanwhile, Verizon’s latest data breaches report revealed a 68% increase in supply chain breaches, accounting for 15% of all breaches in 2023, up from 9% in 2022. These breaches are primarily driven by third-party software vulnerabilities exploited in ransomware and extortion attacks. Experts emphasise proactive cyber policies, vulnerability scans, and employee education for SMEs to bolster defences. They also urge organisations to consider third-party bugs as both vulnerability and vendor management problems, make better vendor choices, and use external signals like SEC disclosures in the United States to guide decisions. These measures can help prevent SMEs from becoming gateways for larger attacks and manage the rising threat of supply chain breaches.

Sources: [Insurance Times] [Dark Reading]

Misconfigurations Drive 80% of Security Exposure, Report Finds

A recent report has found that 80% of security exposures are caused by identity and credential misconfigurations, with a third of these putting critical assets at risk of a breach. According to the report, the majority of this is within an organisation’s network user management (Active Directory) and 56% of breaches that impact critical assets are within cloud platforms. There is often the misconception that cloud-based environments are secure by default, but misconfigurations can undo any security benefits and still leave you exposed. Just because someone else built and maintains your house, it is still your responsibility to lock the doors and windows.

Sources: [Security Magazine]

Only 45% of Organisations Employ MFA Protections

A recent report of IT decision-makers has found that 97% are facing challenges with identity verification and 52% are very concerned about credential compromise, followed by account takeover (50%). When it comes to reinforcing identity verification, only 45% used multi-factor authentication (MFA). By using MFA, organisations are forcing two identification verifications: simply knowing a username and password is not enough, especially given the speeds with which attackers can crack passwords, with average 8 character passwords able to be cracked in less than a minute. Whilst no control is 100% impenetrable, enabling MFA will aid in increasing your organisation's cyber resilience.

Source: [Help Net Security]

You Cannot Protect What You Do Not Know You Have, as Criminals are Exploiting Vulnerabilities Faster Than Ever

For many organisations, visibility of their information assets can be incredibly hard to obtain and maintain, with different tools, under-reporting and shadow IT contributing to the problem. Unfortunately, cyber criminals are getting faster at exploiting vulnerabilities, and if you do not know you have the vulnerability in your estate then you cannot patch against it. In their recent report, Fortinet found that attacks started on average 4.76 days after new exploits were publicly disclosed.

Interestingly though, while zero-day threats garner much attention (these are ‘new’ vulnerabilities that are being exploited by attackers but for which there are no security patches yet available), one third of all exploits are for older vulnerabilities. This highlights the need for a comprehensive and robust approach to network security and vulnerability management, beyond simply patching what Microsoft puts out once a month. To have effective patch management, organisations must know what they need to patch and therefore must have visibility of the corporate environment. A good starting block is the creation of a robust information asset register.

Sources: [Security Brief] [Help Net Security] [IT Security Guru]

The Rise and Stealth of The Socially Engineered Insider

Social engineering has become increasingly prevalent as the preferred tactic for foreign adversaries. Insiders are prime targets due to their privileged access to sensitive data. This is particularly affecting the technology, pharma, and critical infrastructure sectors. Advances in AI and social platforms have made it easier to exploit these vulnerabilities. These advances allow threat actors to tailor attacks with unprecedented speed and realism. Using methods like coercion or deception, these actors exploit employees to gain high-value data that can be weaponised. As a result, the threat landscape has become more complex, blurring the lines between internal and external risks. To bolster their defences, organisations are now investing in insider risk management and AI. They are also emphasising employee education and cross-sector collaboration.

Source: [Forbes]

Over 70% of Staff Use AI At Work, But Only 30% of European Organisations Provide AI Training

An ISACA study and the AI Security & Governance Report reveal a complex landscape of AI adoption and security. 73% of European organisations and 54% of global organisations use AI, with 79% increasing their AI budgets, however training and policy development lag behind. Only 30% offer limited training, 40% provide none, and a mere 17% have a comprehensive AI policy. Despite AI’s potential, 80% of data experts find it complicates security, with concerns high around generative AI exploitation (61% of respondents) and AI-powered attacks (over 50% of business leaders). Data poisoning and privacy issues persist, yet 85% of leaders express confidence in their data security strategies, with 83% revising privacy and governance guidelines. With 86% recognising a need for AI training within two years, the call for dynamic governance strategies and formal education is clear to manage evolving threats.

Sources: [Help Net Security] [IT Security Guru]

Don't Be the Weakest Link – You and Your Team's Crucial Role in Cyber Security

Cyber security success depends on more than just technology. Bad actors are always looking for the easiest entry point, meaning that employees’ everyday actions are crucial, when even one careless click or a weak password can be an open door for hackers. However, empowered with the right knowledge and tools, staff can become a robust defence. Nearly 80% of organisations have reported an increase in phishing attacks, but training programs like role-playing exercises and phishing simulations significantly reduce these risks. Effective cyber security also hinges on C-suite leaders promoting a security-first culture, ensuring all employees understand the risks and follow strict protocols like MFA and strong password policies. Consistent training and open communication are vital in fostering a resilient, security-aware workforce.

Source: [JDSupra]

Ransomware Activity Thrives, Despite Law enforcement Efforts

Despite the recent law enforcement takedowns on ransomware groups, ransomware remains rife. Whilst the takedown of a group can come as an initial relief in that the group has gone, it simply forces ransomware affiliates to diversify. This is reflected in ransomware continuing its growth in the first quarter of 2024, with 18 new leak sites, the largest number in a single quarter, emerging over this period. When comes to those at risk, both financial services and healthcare remain a prominent target.

Sources: [Help Net Security ] [Infosecurity Magazine] [Help Net Security]

NATO Warns of Russian Hybrid Warfare

NATO has issued a statement in which it describes it is “deeply concerned about Russia's hybrid actions and the threat that they constitute to NATO security”.  The actions are described to include sabotage, acts of violence, cyber and electronic interference, and disinformation campaigns. This comes as many countries including the UK and US are due to have elections this year.

Sources: [EU Reporter] [Financial Times]

Threats

Ransomware, Extortion and Destructive Attacks

Ransomware Victims

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Other Social Engineering

Artificial Intelligence

2FA/MFA

Malware

Mobile

Denial of Service/DoS/DDOS

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Cloud/SaaS

Encryption

Linux and Open Source

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Training, Education and Awareness

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Models, Frameworks and Standards

Data Protection

Careers, Working in Cyber and Information Security

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

Nation State Actors, Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), Cyber Warfare, Cyber Espionage and Geopolitical Threats/Activity

Cyber Warfare and Cyber Espionage

Nation State Actors

China

Russia

Iran

North Korea

Other Nation State Actors, Hacktivism, Extremism, Terrorism and Other Geopolitical Threat Intelligence

Tools and Controls

Reports Published in the Last Week

Sector Specific

Industry specific threat intelligence reports are available.

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

·         Automotive

·         Construction

·         Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)

·         Defence & Space

·         Education & Academia

·         Energy & Utilities

·         Estate Agencies

·         Financial Services

·         FinTech

·         Food & Agriculture

·         Gaming & Gambling

·         Government & Public Sector (including Law Enforcement)

·         Health/Medical/Pharma

·         Hotels & Hospitality

·         Insurance

·         Legal

·         Manufacturing

·         Maritime

·         Oil, Gas & Mining

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

·         Retail & eCommerce

·         Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)

·         Startups

·         Telecoms

·         Third Sector & Charities

·         Transport & Aviation

·         Web3

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

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

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

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

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Black Arrow Admin Black Arrow Admin

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 26 April 2024

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Intelligence Briefing 26 April 2024:

-Coalition Finds More Than Half of Cyber Insurance Claims Originate in the Email Inbox

-Unmasking the True Cost of Cyber Attacks: Beyond Ransom and Recovery

-Why Cyber Security Should Be Driving Your Enterprise Risk Management Strategy

-Ransomware Double-Dip - Re-Victimisation in Cyber Extortion

-AI is a Major Threat and Many Financial Organisations Are Not Doing Enough to Fight the Threat

-6 out of 10 Businesses Struggle to Manage Cyber Risk

-'Junk Gun' Ransomware: New Low-Cost Cyber Threat Targets SMBs

-Penetration Testing Infrequency Leaves Security Gaps

-Bank Prohibited from Opening New Accounts After Regulators Lose Patience With Poor Cyber Security Governance

-The Psychological Impact of Phishing Attacks on Your Employees

-Where Hackers Find Your Weak Spots

-The Role of Threat Intelligence in Financial Data Protection

-Government Cannot Protect Business and Services from Cyber Attack, Decision Makers Say

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

Coalition Finds More Than Half of Cyber Insurance Claims Originate in the Email Inbox

The 2024 Cyber Claims Report by insurer Coalition reveals critical vulnerabilities and trends affecting cyber insurance policyholders. Notably, over half of the claims in 2023 stemmed from funds transfer fraud (FTF) and business email compromise (BEC), underlining the critical role of email security in cyber risk management. The report also indicated heightened risks associated with boundary devices like firewalls and VPNs, particularly if they are exposed online and have known vulnerabilities. Additionally, the overall claims frequency and severity rose by 13% and 10% respectively, pushing the average loss to $100,000. These insights emphasise the necessity of proactive cyber security measures and the valuable role of cyber insurance in mitigating financial losses from cyber incidents.

Sources: [IT Security Guru] [Emerging Risks]

Unmasking the True Cost of Cyber Attacks: Beyond Ransom and Recovery

The global cost of cyber crime is expected to soar to $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, a steep rise from $3 trillion in 2015, underscoring a significant improvement in the methods of cyber criminals, according to Cybersecurity Ventures. Beyond direct financial losses like ransomware payments, the hidden costs of cyber attacks for businesses include severe operational disruptions, lost revenue, damaged reputations, strained customer relationships, and regulatory fines. These incidents, further exacerbated by increased insurance premiums, collectively contribute to substantial long-term financial burdens. The report indicates that 88% of data breaches are attributable to human error, underscoring the importance of comprehensive employee training alongside technological defences. To combat these evolving cyber threats effectively, organisations must adopt a multi-pronged strategy that includes advanced security technologies, regular system updates, employee education, and comprehensive security audits.

According to another report from SiliconAngle, cyber insurance claims increased 13% year-over-year in 2023, with the 10% rise in overall claims severity attributed to mounting ransomware attack claims.

Sources: [The Hacker News] [Huntress] [SC Media]

Why Cyber Security Should Be Driving Your Enterprise Risk Management Strategy

Cyber security has transformed from a secondary concern into the cornerstone of corporate risk management. The historical view of cyber security as merely a component of broader risk strategies is outdated; it now demands a central role in safeguarding against operational, financial, and reputational threats. Many businesses, recognising the vital role of technology in all operations, have begun elevating the position of Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) to integrate cyber security into their overall enterprise risk frameworks. This shift not only enhances visibility and strategic alignment at the highest organisational levels but also fosters more robust defences against cyber threats. As such, adopting a cyber security-centric approach is crucial for compliance and long-term resilience in the face of growing digital threats.

Source: [Forbes]

Ransomware Double-Dip: Re-Victimisation in Cyber Extortion

A recent cyber security study reveals a troubling trend of re-victimisation among organisations hit by cyber extortion or ransomware attacks. Analysis of over 11,000 affected organisations shows recurring victimisation due to repeated attacks, data reuse among criminal affiliates, or cross-affiliate data sharing. Notably, cyber extortion incidents have surged by 51% year-on-year. Additionally, a separate study reports payments exceeding $1 billion and a 20% increase in ransomware attack victims since early 2023. These findings underscore the increasing sophistication and persistence of cyber criminals. Despite law enforcement efforts, adaptable cyber crime groups swiftly resume operations, complicating effective threat mitigation. Organisations must enhance their cyber security measures to avoid becoming repeated targets.

Sources: [Security Magazine] [The Hacker News] [SC Media]

AI is a Major Threat and Many Financial Organisations Are Not Doing Enough

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a major concern for organisations, especially for the financial services sector due to the information they hold. Recent reports have found that AI has driven phishing up by 60% and AI tools have been linked to data exposure in 1 in 5 UK organisations. But it is not just attackers utilising AI: a separate report found that 20% of employees have exposed data via AI.

Currently, many financial organisations are not doing enough to secure themselves to fight AI. In a recent survey, 69% of fraud-management decision makers, AML professionals, and risk and compliance leaders reported that criminals are more advanced at using AI for financial crime than firms are in defending against it.

Sources: [Verdict] [Beta News] [Infosecurity Magazine] [TechRadar] [Security Brief]

[Biometric Update]

6 out of 10 Businesses Struggle to Manage Cyber Risk

A report has found that 6 in 10 businesses are struggling to manage their cyber risk and just 43% have confidence in their ability to address cyber risk. Further, 35% of total respondents worry that senior management does not see cyber attacks as a significant risk; the same percentage also reported a struggle in hiring skilled professionals. When it came to implementing their security policy, half of respondents found difficulty, and when it came to securing the supply chain, a third reported worries.

Given the inevitability of a cyber attack, organisations need to prepare themselves. Those that struggle to manage their cyber risk and/or hire skilled professions will benefit from outsourcing to skilled, reputable cyber security organisations who can guide them through the process.

Sources: [PR Newswire] [Beta News]

'Junk Gun' Ransomware: New Low-Cost Cyber Threat Targets SMBs

Sophos’ research reveals a concerning trend: ‘junk gun’ ransomware variants are now traded on the dark web. Rather than going the traditional route of selling or buying ransomware to or as an affiliate, attackers have now begun creating and selling unsophisticated ransomware variants for a one-time cost. Priced at a median of $375, they attract lower-skilled attackers, especially those targeting small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). As major ransomware players fade, these variants pose significant threats, accounting for over 75% of cyber incidents affecting SMBs in 2023.

Source: [Security Brief] [Tripwire]

Penetration Testing Infrequency Leaves Security Gaps

Many organisations are struggling to maintain the balance between penetration testing and IT changes within the organisation, leaving security gaps according to a recent report. The report found that 73% of organisations reported changes to their IT environments at least quarterly, however only 40% performed penetration testing at the same frequency.

The issue arises where there is a significant duration during which changes have been implemented without undergoing assessment, leaving organisations open to risk for extended periods of time. Consider the situation in which an organisation moves their infrastructure from on-premise to the cloud: they now have a different IT environment, and with that, new risks.

Black Arrow always recommends that a robust penetration test should be conducted whenever changes to internet facing infrastructure have been made, and at least annually.

Source: [MSSP Alert]

Bank Prohibited from Opening New Accounts After Regulators Lose Patience with Poor Cyber Security Governance

A bank in India has been banned from signing up new customers, and instructed to focus on improving its cyber security after “serious deficiencies and non-compliances” were found within their IT environment. The compliances provided by the bank were described as “inadequate, incorrect or not sustained”. The bank is now subject to an external audit, which if passed, will consider the lifting of the restrictions placed upon them.

Source: [The Register]

The Psychological Impact of Phishing Attacks on Your Employees

Phishing remains one of the most prevalent attack vectors for bad actors, and its psychological impact on employees can be severe, with many employees facing a loss in confidence and job satisfaction as well as an increase in anxiety. In a study by Egress, it was found that 74% of employees were disciplined, dismissed or left voluntarily after suffering a phishing incident, which can cause hesitation when it comes to reporting phishing.

Phishing incidents and simulations where employees have clicked should be seen as an opportunity to learn, not to blame, and to understand why a phish was successful and what can be done in future to prevent it. Organisations should perform security education and awareness training to help employees lessen their chance of falling victim, as well as knowing the reporting procedures.

Source: [Beta News]

Where Hackers Find Your Weak Spots

A recent analysis highlights social engineering as a primary vector for cyber attacks, emphasising its reliance on meticulously gathered intelligence to exploit organisational vulnerabilities. Attackers leverage various intelligence sources; Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) for public data, Social Media Intelligence (SOCMINT) for social media insights, Advertising Intelligence (ADINT) from advertising data, Dark Web Intelligence (DARKINT) from the DarkWeb, and the emerging AI Intelligence (AI-INT) using artificial intelligence. These methods equip cyber criminals with detailed knowledge about potential victims, enabling targeted and effective attacks. The report underscores the critical importance of robust information management and employee training to mitigate such threats, specifically advocating for regular training, AI-use policies, and proactive intelligence gathering by organisations to protect against the substantial risks posed by social engineering.

Source: [Dark Reading]

The Role of Threat Intelligence in Financial Data Protection

The financial industry’s reliance on digital processes has made it vulnerable to cyber attacks. Criminals target sensitive customer data, leading to financial losses, regulatory fines, and reputational damage. To combat these threats such as phishing, malware, ransomware, and social engineering, financial institutions must prioritise robust cyber security measures. One effective approach is threat intelligence, which involves ingesting reliable threat data, customised to your sector and the technology you have in place, and dark web monitoring.

Source: [Security Boulevard]

Government Cannot Protect Business and Services from Cyber Attack, Decision Makers Say

According to a recent report, 66% of surveyed IT leaders expressed a lack of confidence in their government’s ability to defend people and enterprises from cyber attacks, especially those from nation state actors. This scepticism arises from the growing complexity of threats and the rapid evolution of cyber warfare. While governments play a critical role in national security, their agility in adapting to the ever-changing digital landscape leaves organisations finding themselves increasingly responsible for their own protection.

Source: [TechRadar] [Security Magazine]

Governance, Risk and Compliance

Threats

Ransomware, Extortion and Destructive Attacks

Ransomware Victims

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

BEC

Other Social Engineering

Artificial Intelligence

2FA/MFA

Malware

Mobile

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Insurance

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Cloud/SaaS

Identity and Access Management

Encryption

Linux and Open Source

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Malvertising

Training, Education and Awareness

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Models, Frameworks and Standards

Data Protection

Careers, Working in Cyber and Information Security

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

Misinformation, Disinformation and Propaganda

Nation State Actors, Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), Cyber Warfare, Cyber Espionage and Geopolitical Threats/Activity

Cyber Warfare and Cyber Espionage

China

Russia

Iran

North Korea

Other Nation State Actors, Hacktivism, Extremism, Terrorism and Other Geopolitical Threat Intelligence

Vulnerability Management

Vulnerabilities

Tools and Controls

Other News

Sector Specific

Industry specific threat intelligence reports are available.

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

·         Automotive

·         Construction

·         Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)

·         Defence & Space

·         Education & Academia

·         Energy & Utilities

·         Estate Agencies

·         Financial Services

·         FinTech

·         Food & Agriculture

·         Gaming & Gambling

·         Government & Public Sector (including Law Enforcement)

·         Health/Medical/Pharma

·         Hotels & Hospitality

·         Insurance

·         Legal

·         Manufacturing

·         Maritime

·         Oil, Gas & Mining

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

·         Retail & eCommerce

·         Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)

·         Startups

·         Telecoms

·         Third Sector & Charities

·         Transport & Aviation

·         Web3

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

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

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

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

Read More
Black Arrow Admin Black Arrow Admin

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 12 April 2024

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Intelligence Briefing 12 April 2024:

-UK Cyber Breaches Survey Finds Business Falling Short on Cyber, as Half Suffer Breach and Many Fail to Report

-The Cyber Attack Stopped by a Microsoft Engineer Was Scarier Than We Realise

-UK Government Urged to Get on ‘Front Foot’ with Ransomware Instead of ‘Absorbing the Punches’

-74% of Employees Falling Victim to Phishing Attacks Hit with Disciplinary Actions; Egress Reveals

-Why Are Many Businesses Turning to Third-Party Security Partners?

-60% of SMBs and 74% of Businesses with up to 500 Employees are Concerned About Cyber Security as Attacks Rise

-Cyber Attacks Cost Financial Firms $12bn Says IMF

-LastPass: Hackers Targeted Employee in Failed Deepfake CEO Call

-Most Cyber Criminal Threats are Concentrated in Just a Few Countries

-Why Incident Response is the Best Cyber Security ROI

-Ransomware Attacks are the Canaries in the Cyber Coal Mine

-Cyber Security is Crucial, but What is Risk and How do You Assess it?

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 Cyber Breaches Survey Finds Business Falling Short on Cyber, as Half Suffer Breach and Many Fail to Report

Half of UK businesses experienced a cyber breach last year, according to a survey by the UK Government. The figure could be much higher however, as the survey found only 34% report breaches externally.

It is said that a cyber incident is a matter of when, not if. Nonetheless, 78% of organisations lack a dedicated response plan outlining actions to be taken in the event of a cyber incident and only 11% review their immediate suppliers for risks. To improve cyber resilience, there needs to be a paradigm shift.

Sources: [Computer Weekly] [Computing] [Infosecurity Magazine] [Info Risk Today]

Cyber Attacks Cost Financial Firms $12bn Says IMF

A recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) report has highlighted significant financial losses in the financial services sector, totalling $12 billion over the last two decades due to cyber attacks, with losses accelerating post-pandemic. The number of incidents and the scale of extreme losses have sharply increased, prompting the IMF to urge enhanced cross-border cooperation to uphold the stability of the global financial system.

The report underscores the critical threat that cyber attacks pose to financial stability, particularly for banks in advanced economies which are more exposed to such risks. With major institutions like JP Morgan facing up to 45 billion cyber threats daily, the IMF emphasises the need for international collaboration to effectively manage and mitigate these risks.

Source: [Finextra]

The Cyber Attack Stopped by a Microsoft Engineer Was Scarier Than We Realise

A critical security breach was narrowly avoided when a Microsoft developer detected suspicious activity in XZ Utils, an open-source library crucial to internet infrastructure. This discovery revealed that a new developer had implanted a sophisticated backdoor in the software, potentially giving unauthorised access to millions of servers worldwide. This incident has intensified scrutiny on the vulnerabilities of open-source software, which is largely maintained by unpaid or underfunded volunteers and serves as a backbone for the internet economy. The situation has prompted discussions among government officials and cyber security experts about enhancing the protection of open-source environments. This close call, described by some as a moment of "unreasonable luck," underscores the pressing need for sustainable support and rigorous security measures in the open-source community.

Source: [Inc.com]

UK Government Urged to Get on ‘Front Foot’ with Ransomware Instead of ‘Absorbing the Punches’

Amidst a rising tide of ransomware attacks affecting wide range of UK services, officials in Westminster are being pressured to enhance funding for operations aimed at disrupting ransomware gangs. The current strategy focuses on bolstering organisational cyber security and recovery preparedness, a stance under the second pillar of the UK's National Cyber Strategy known as resilience. However, this approach has not curbed the frequency of incidents, which have steadily increased over the past five years, impacting sectors including the NHS and local governments. In contrast to the proactive disruption efforts seen in the US, the UK has yet to allocate new funds for such measures, despite successful disruptions like the recent takedown of the LockBit gang by the US National Crime Agency, which underscored the potential benefits of increased resources for cyber crime disruption.

Source: [The Record Media]

74% of Employees Falling Victim to Phishing Attacks Hit with Disciplinary Actions

The Egress 'Email Threat Landscape 2024' report reveals a surge in phishing attacks, with 94% of companies falling victim to this type of crime in this past year alone, leading to increasingly complex cyber security challenges. According to the report, 96% of these companies suffered significant repercussions, including operational disruption and data breaches, with common attack vectors being malicious URLs, and malware or ransomware attachments.

The human cost is also notable, with 74 per cent of employees involved in attacks having faced disciplinary actions, dismissals, or voluntary departures, underscoring the severity of the issue and the heightened vigilance among companies in addressing the phishing threat. Financial losses primarily stem from customer churn, which accounts for nearly half of the total impact. Amidst rising attacks through compromised third-party accounts, Egress advocates for stronger monitoring and defence strategies to protect critical data and reduce organisational and individual hardships.

Source: [The Fintech Times]

Why Are Many Businesses Turning to Third-Party Security Partners?

In 2023, 71% of organisations reported being impacted by a cyber security skills shortage, leading many to scale back their cyber security initiatives amid escalating threats. To bridge the gap, businesses are increasingly turning to third-party security partnerships, reflecting a shift towards outsourcing crucial cyber security operations to handle complex challenges more efficiently. This approach is driven by the need to fill technical and resource gaps in the face of a severe workforce shortfall, with an estimated 600,000 unfilled security positions in the US alone. Moreover, these strategic partnerships allow organisations to leverage external expertise for scalable and effective security solutions, alleviating the burden of staying updated with the rapidly evolving threat landscape.

Source: [Help Net Security]

74% of Businesses with up to 500 Employees are Concerned About Cyber Security as Attacks Rise

According to a recent poll by the US Chamber of Commerce, 60% of small businesses expressed concerns about threats, with 58% concerned about a supply chain breakdown. The highest concern came from businesses with 20-500 employees (74%). Despite such concern, only 49% had trained staff on cyber security. When it came to the impact of a cyber event, 27% of respondents say they are one disaster or threat away from shutting down their business.

Sources: [Malwcv arebytes][Marketplace] [US Chamber]

LastPass: Hackers Targeted Employee in Failed Deepfake CEO Call

LastPass recently reported a thwarted voice phishing attack targeting one of its employees using deepfake audio technology to impersonate CEO Karim Toubba. The attack, conducted via WhatsApp, was identified by the employee as suspicious due to the unusual communication channel and clear signs of social engineering, such as forced urgency. Despite the failure of this particular attempt, LastPass has shared the incident publicly to highlight the growing use of AI-generated deepfakes in executive impersonation schemes. This incident underscores a broader trend, as indicated by alerts from both the US Department of Health and Human Services and the FBI, pointing to an increase in sophisticated cyber attacks employing deepfake technology for fraud, social engineering, and potential influence operations.

Source: [Bleepingcomputer]

Most Cyber Criminal Threats are Concentrated in Just a Few Countries

Oxford researchers have developed the world's first cyber crime index to identify global hotspots of cyber criminal activity, ranking countries based on the prevalence and sophistication of cyber threats. The index reveals that a significant portion of cyber threats is concentrated in a few countries, with Russia and Ukraine positioned at the top, with the USA and the UK also ranking prominently. The results indicate that countries like China, Russia, Ukraine, the US, Romania, and Nigeria are among the top hubs for activities ranging from technical services to money laundering. This tool aims to refine the focus for cyber crime research and prevention efforts, although the study acknowledges the need for a broader and more representative sample of expert opinions to enhance the accuracy and applicability of the findings. The index underscores that while cyber crime may appear globally fluid, it has pronounced local concentrations.

Sources: [ThisisOxfordshire] [Phys Org]

Why Incident Response is the Best Cyber Security ROI

The Microsoft Incident Response Reference Guide predicts that most organisations will encounter one or more major security incidents where attackers gain administrative control over crucial IT systems and data. While complete prevention of cyber attacks may not be feasible, prompt and effective incident response is essential to mitigate damage and protect reputations. However, many organisations may not be adequately budgeting for incident response, and the recent UK Government report found that 78% of organisations do not have formalised incident response plans, risking prolonged recovery and increased costs. Cyber crime damages hit $23b in 2023, but the true costs of incidents includes non-financial damage such as reputational harm. If a cyber incident is a matter of when, not if, then a prepared incident response plan is the best cyber security ROI.

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: [CSO Online]

Ransomware Attacks are the Canaries in the Cyber Coal Mine

A recent report has found that ransomware attacks were up 110% compared to the prior month, stating that unreported attacks were up to 6 times higher. The report found that tactics are increasingly using data extortion, with 92% of attacks utilising this method.

Sources: [Silicon Republic] [The Hill]

Cyber Security is Crucial, but What is Risk and How do You Assess it?

Cyber security is an increasingly sophisticated game of cat and mouse, where the landscape is constantly shifting. Your cyber risk is the probability of negative impacts stemming from a cyber incident, but how do you assess risk?

One thing to understand is that there are a multitude of risks: risks from phishing, risks from insiders, risks from network attacks, risks of supply chain compromise, and of course, nation states. To understand risk, an organisation must first identify the information that it needs to protect, to avoid only learning of the information asset’s existence from a successful attacker. Once all assets are identified, then organisations should conduct risk assessments to identify threats and an evaluation the potential damage that can be done.

Sources: [Security Boulevard] [International Banker]

Governance, Risk and Compliance

Threats

Ransomware, Extortion and Destructive Attacks

Ransomware Victims

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Other Social Engineering

Artificial Intelligence

2FA/MFA

Malware

Mobile

Denial of Service/DoS/DDOS

Internet of Things – IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Insurance

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Encryption

Linux and Open Source

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Models, Frameworks and Standards

Backup and Recovery

Data Protection

Careers, Working in Cyber and Information Security

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

Misinformation, Disinformation and Propaganda

Nation State Actors, Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), Cyber Warfare, Cyber Espionage and Geopolitical Threats/Activity

Nation State Actors

China

Russia

Other Nation State Actors, Hacktivism, Extremism, Terrorism and Other Geopolitical Threat Intelligence

Vulnerability Management

Vulnerabilities

Other News

Sector Specific

Industry specific threat intelligence reports are available.

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

·       Automotive

·       Construction

·       Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)

·       Defence & Space

·       Education & Academia

·       Energy & Utilities

·       Estate Agencies

·       Financial Services

·       FinTech

·       Food & Agriculture

·       Gaming & Gambling

·       Government & Public Sector (including Law Enforcement)

·       Health/Medical/Pharma

·       Hotels & Hospitality

·       Insurance

·       Legal

·       Manufacturing

·       Maritime

·       Oil, Gas & Mining

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

·       Retail & eCommerce

·       Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)

·       Startups

·       Telecoms

·       Third Sector & Charities

·       Transport & Aviation

·       Web3

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

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

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

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

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Black Arrow Cyber Advisory 28 March 2023 – DEV-1101 Automated AiTM Phishing Campaigns Bypassing MFA

Black Arrow Cyber Advisory 28 March 2023 – DEV-1101 Automated AiTM Phishing Campaigns Bypassing MFA

Executive Summary

Microsoft Threat intelligence team has recently exposed the activities of a threat actor named DEV-1101. This threat actor advertises an open-source phishing kit that can be deployed to automate Adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) campaigns. The phishing kit has the capability to circumvent multifactor authentication (MFA), evade detection through an antibot database, manage the phishing activity through telegram bots, and mimics services such as Microsoft Office or Outlook.

What’s the risk to me or my business?

If an AiTM phishing campaign is successful, the actor can set up a malicious site that will act as the intended valid website such as Microsoft Office or Microsoft Outlook. Here it can steal the credentials of the user and steal the authenticated session tokens of the MFA. In the most severe situations this can lead to a loss of confidentiality, integrity or availability of affected systems as the attacker has free access to perform any further criminal activity such as stealing, corrupting or and deleting data. Alongside the impact of the compromise, this can also lead to reputational damage and potentially financial penalties.

What can I do?

Black arrow recommends that you always deploy and maintain MFA where possible. While certain certain attacks may be able to circumvent MFA, it is important to remember that strong cyber security controls involve having layers of defences, in this case Conditional Access could be used to supplement the MFA control could reduce the risk of compromise. Organisations should also look to implement continuous monitoring for suspicious and anomalous activity to identify indicators of compromise. Other actions can be to ensure software and operating systems are up to date to avoid common vulnerabilities to be exploited.  It is also vital that this is supplemented with end-user training including phishing simulations as this is the ingress point for this type of attack. Users should be encouraged to report any instances of interactions with emails that do not seem right.

Further information on the attack method can be found here:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2023/03/13/dev-1101-enables-high-volume-aitm-campaigns-with-open-source-phishing-kit/

Need help understanding your gaps, or just want some advice? Get in touch with us.

#threatadvisory #threatintelligence #cybersecurity

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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 17 March 2023

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 17 March 2023:

-Almost Half of IT Leaders Consider Security as an Afterthought

-Over $10bn Lost To Online Frauds, with Pig Butchering and Investment Scams Accounting for $3B, Overtaking BEC – FBI Report Says

-Over 721 Million Passwords Were Leaked in 2022

-How Much of a Cyber Security Risk are Suppliers?

-90% of £5m+ Businesses Hit by Cyber Attacks

-Rushed Cloud Migrations Result in Escalating Technical Debt

-17 European Nations Targeted by Russia in 2023 as Espionage Ramping Up

-Microsoft Warns of Large-Scale Use of Phishing Kits

-BEC Volumes Double on Phishing Surge

-The Risk of Pasting Confidential Company Data in ChatGPT

-Ransomware Attacks have Entered a New Phase

-MI5 Launches New Agency to Tackle State-Backed Attacks

-Why Cyber Awareness Training is an Ongoing Process

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

  • Almost Half of IT Leaders Consider Security as an Afterthought

A recent industry report found that security is an afterthought for almost half of UK IT leaders, despite 92% of respondents agreeing that security risks had risen in the last five years. Additionally, 48% of respondents felt that the rapid development of new tools had caused challenges around security. The concept of security as an afterthought is worrying when considering that 39% of UK businesses identified a cyber attack within the past 12 months.

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2023/03/14/almost-half-of-it-leaders-consider-security-as-an-afterthought-research-reveals

  • Over $10bn Lost to Online Frauds, with Pig Butchering and Investment Scams Accounting for $3B, Overtaking BEC – FBI Report Says

According to the latest FBI crime report pig butchering now accounts for $3 billion of the $10 billion total lost to online fraud. Pig butchering is a rising investment scam that uses the promise of romance and the lure of making easy cryptocurrency profit against its unsuspecting targets. The concept of pig butchering is to “fatten up” the victim, with small returns on cryptocurrency and personal interactions, often with an element of romance; eventually, the victim is lured into making a larger investment with the scammer. In addition to pig butchering, other investment scams are growing in provenance and are set to overtake Business Email Compromise (BEC) as a major earner for cyber criminals.

https://www.darkreading.com/application-security/pig-butchering-investment-scams-3b-cybercrime-threat-overtaking-bec

  • Over 721 Million Passwords were Leaked in 2022

A report published this week discovered 721.5 million exposed credentials online in 2022. Additionally, the report identified 72% of users reusing previously compromised passwords. The study also uncovered 8.6 billion personally identifiable information assets, including 67 million credit card numbers which were publicly available.

https://www.neowin.net/news/study-over-721-million-passwords-were-leaked-in-2022/

  • How Much of a Cyber Security Risk are Suppliers?

When your business is digitally connected to a service provider, you need to understand how a cyber security attack on their business can affect yours. You can have all the right measures in place to manage your own cyber risks, but this doesn’t matter if there are undiscovered vulnerabilities in your supply chain. Organisations need to audit the cyber security of suppliers at several stages of their relationship; you may benefit from specialist cyber security support if you can’t do this in-house. Ask hard questions and consider advising your suppliers that if their cyber security is not enough then you may take your business elsewhere. Many businesses now require suppliers to be certified to schemes such as ISO 27001; demonstrating your security posture to your customers is an important ticket to trade.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-much-of-a-cybersecurity-risk-are-my-suppliers-mqbwcf7p2

  • 90% of £5m+ Businesses Hit by Cyber Attacks

A study from Forbes found that 57% of small and medium-sized enterprises had suffered an online attack. Businesses with an annual turnover in excess of £5 million were even more likely to experience a cyber crime with the figure rising to nearly 90% of firms of this size suffering a cyber attack. To make matters worse, the study found that a significant proportion of British businesses are without any form of protection against online attacks.

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2023/03/13/nine-in-10-5m-businesses-hit-by-cyber-attacks/

  • Rushed Cloud Migrations Result in Escalating Technical Debt

A cloud service provider found 83% of CIO’s are feeling pressured to stretch their budgets even further than before. 72% of CIOs admitted that they are behind in their digital transformation because of technical debt and 38% believed the accumulation of this debt is largely because of rushed cloud migrations. Respondents believed these rushed migrations caused for miscalculations in the cloud budget, which resulted in significant overspend.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/03/16/managing-cloud-costs/

  • Microsoft: 17 European Nations Targeted by Russia in 2023 as Espionage Ramping Up

According to an intelligence report from Microsoft, Russia has been ramping up its cyber espionage operations and this now includes 17 European nations. Of all 74 countries targeted, the UK ranked third, after the US and Poland.

https://www.securityweek.com/microsoft-17-european-nations-targeted-by-russia-in-2023-as-espionage-ramping-up/

  • Microsoft Warns of Large-Scale Use of Phishing Kits

Microsoft have found that phishing kits are being purchased and used to perform millions of phishing emails every day. In their report, Microsoft found the availability of purchasing such phishing kits was part of the industrialisation of the cyber criminal economy and lowered the barrier of entry for cyber crime. Microsoft identified phishing kits which had the capability to bypass multi factor authentication selling for as little as $300. The emergence of AI is only going to compound this.

https://thehackernews.com/2023/03/microsoft-warns-of-large-scale-use-of.html

  • BEC Volumes Double on Phishing Surge

The number of Business Email Compromise (BEC) incidents doubled last year according to security provider Secureworks. In their report, they found that the main initial access vectors for BEC were phishing and systems with known vulnerabilities, with each accounting for a third of initial accesses.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/bec-volumes-double-on-phishing/

  • The Risk of Pasting Confidential Company Data in ChatGPT

Researchers analysed the use of artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT and found that 4.9% of employees have provided company data to the tool; ChatGPT builds its knowledge on this and in turn, this knowledge is shared publicly. The risk is serious, with employees putting their organisation at risk of leaking sensitive and confidential information. The research found that 0.9% of employees are responsible for 80% of leaks caused by pasting company data into ChatGPT and this number is expected to rise.

https://securityaffairs.com/143394/security/company-data-chatgpt-risks.html

  • Ransomware Attacks have Entered a Heinous New Phase

With an increasing amount of victims refusing to pay, cyber criminal gangs are now resorting to new techniques; this includes the recent release of stolen naked photos of cancer patients and sensitive student records. Where encryption and a demand for payment were previously the de facto method for cyber criminals, this has now shifted to pure exfiltration. In a report, the FBI highlighted evolving and increasingly aggressive extortion behaviour, with actors increasingly threatening to release stolen data.

https://www.wired.com/story/ransomware-tactics-cancer-photos-student-records/

  • MI5 Launches New Agency to Tackle State-Backed Attacks

British intelligence agency MI5 have announced the creation of the National Protective Security Authority (NPSA), created as part of a major review of government defences. The NPSA is to operate out of MI5 and absorb and extend the responsibilities for the protection of national infrastructure. The NPSA will work with existing agencies such as the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the Counter Terrorism Security Office (CTSO) to provide defensive advice to UK organisations.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/mi5-new-agency-tackle-statebacked/

  • Why Cyber Awareness Training is an Ongoing Process

A survey conducted by Hornetsecurity found that 80% of respondents believed remote working introduced extra cyber security risks and 75% were aware that personal devices are used to access sensitive data, fuelling the need for employees to be cyber aware. Where IT security training is only undertaken once, for example in block training, it is likely that participants will have forgotten a lot of the content after as little as a week; this means that for organisations to get the most out of training, they need to conduct frequent awareness training. By conducting frequent training there is more chance of trainees retaining the training content and allowing the organisation to shape a culture of cyber security.

https://www.hornetsecurity.com/en/security-information/why-cyber-awareness-training-is-an-ongoing-process/

Threats

Ransomware, Extortion and Destructive Attacks

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

BEC – Business Email Compromise

2FA/MFA

Malware

Mobile

Botnets

Denial of Service/DoS/DDOS

Internet of Things – IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Impersonation Attacks

Deepfakes

AML/CFT/Sanctions

Dark Web

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Software Supply Chain

Cloud/SaaS

Hybrid/Remote Working

Attack Surface Management

Identity and Access Management

Encryption

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Malvertising

Training, Education and Awareness

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Governance, Risk and Compliance

Models, Frameworks and Standards

Data Protection

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

Privacy, Surveillance and Mass Monitoring

Artificial Intelligence

Misinformation, Disinformation and Propaganda

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

Nation State Actors

Vulnerabilities

Sector Specific

Industry specific threat intelligence reports are available.

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

·       Automotive

·       Construction

·       Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)

·       Defence & Space

·       Education & Academia

·       Energy & Utilities

·       Estate Agencies

·       Financial Services

·       FinTech

·       Food & Agriculture

·       Gaming & Gambling

·       Government & Public Sector (including Law Enforcement)

·       Health/Medical/Pharma

·       Hotels & Hospitality

·       Insurance

·       Legal

·       Manufacturing

·       Maritime

·       Oil, Gas & Mining

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

·       Retail & eCommerce

·       Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)

·       Startups

·       Telecoms

·       Third Sector & Charities

·       Transport & Aviation

·       Web3

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

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

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

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

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Black Arrow Cyber Advisory 07/09/2022 – Phishing-as-a-Service Platform that bypasses MFA lets all hackers use advanced phishing tactics (Updated 25/11/2022)

Black Arrow Cyber Advisory 07/09/2022 – Phishing-as-a-Service Platform that bypasses MFA lets all hackers use advanced phishing tactics

Update: 25/11/2022: There has been a number of sources that have noted a steady increase in these attacks.

Executive Summary

EvilProxy, a Phishing-as-a-Service (PaaS) platform allows low-skill malicious actors to bypass Multi-Factor Authentication from multiple different service providers, using techniques similar to those outlined in the previous cyber advisory on 19/07/2022, where Microsoft detected a new phishing campaign that had the potential to bypass MFA if additional controls were not in place. Malicious actors can pay for the service via a subscription model that allows them to setup and manage phishing campaigns in a similar fashion to phishing simulation training.

What’s the risk to me or my business?

As advanced phishing techniques become available to low-skill threat actors, it is expected that there will be an increase in phishing campaigns going forward. These particular campaigns are more dangerous as they have the potential to bypass security controls such as Multi-Factor Authentication.

What can I do?

Continue to follow the advice issued with the previous threat alert: Black Arrow Cyber Advisory 19/07/2022 – Microsoft identifies Phishing campaign which can bypass MFA. As this platform can be used against different services including Apple and Google, it is important to have these controls in place across the business estate where possible.

A full breakdown of this particular phishing platform is available here: New EvilProxy service lets all hackers use advanced phishing tactics (bleepingcomputer.com)

Update: Microsoft Detection and Response Team (DART) has provided an updated blog post on how these attacks have increased and evolved over time, with the focus being on stealing cookies in comparison to stealing credentials. Recommended protections include management and oversight on end user devices to ensure that they are kept up to date with patches and anti-virus definitions, reducing the lifetime of authenticated sessions and the implementation of Conditional Access application control. Further information can be found here: Token tactics: How to prevent, detect, and respond to cloud token theft - Microsoft Security Blog

Need help understanding your gaps, or just want some advice? Get in touch with us.

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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 19 August 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 19 August 2022:

-Businesses Found to Neglect Cyber Security Until it is Too Late

-Cyber Tops Staff Retention as Biggest Business Risk

-Cyber Criminals Weaponising Ransomware Data for BEC Attacks

-Callback Phishing Attacks See Massive 625% Growth Since Q1 2021

-Credential Phishing Attacks Skyrocketing, 265 Brands Impersonated in H1 2022

-Are Cloud Environments Secure Enough for Today’s Threats?

-Most Q2 Attacks Targeted Old Microsoft Vulnerabilities

-Cyber Resiliency Isn't Just About Technology, It's About People

-The “Cyber Insurance Gap” Is Threatening Most Companies

-Easing the Cyber-Skills Crisis with Staff Augmentation

-Mailchimp Suffers Second Breach In 4 Months

-Firm Told It Can't Claim Full Cyber Crime Insurance After Social Engineering Attack

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 Found to Neglect Cyber Security Until it is Too Late

Businesses only take cyber security seriously after falling victim to an attack, according to a report published by the UK's Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) this week.

For the research, the UK government surveyed IT professionals and end users in 10 UK organisations of varying sizes that have experienced cyber security breaches in the past three years. This analysed their existing level of security prior to a breach, the business impacts of the attack and how cyber security arrangements changed in the wake of the incident.

Nearly all respondents said their organisation took cyber security much more seriously after experiencing a breach, including reviewing existing practices and significantly increased investment in technology solutions.

While there was a consensus among participants that there is a greater need for vigilance and investment in cyber security, there was significant variation between organisations’ practices in this area. Medium and large organisations tended to have formal plans in place and budget allocated for further cyber security investment, but smaller businesses mostly did not due to resource constraints.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/cybersecurity-seriously-breach/

  • Cyber Tops Staff Retention as Biggest Business Risk

Cyber security concerns represent the most serious risk facing organisations, beating inflation, talent acquisition/retention and rising production costs, according to a new PwC study.

The PwC Pulse: Managing business risks in 2022 report was compiled from interviews with 722 US C-suite executives.

Two-fifths (40%) ranked cyber-attacks as a serious risk, rising to 51% of board members. PwC said boardrooms may be getting more attuned to cyber risk after new SEC proposals were published in March that would require directors to oversee cyber security risk and be more transparent about their cyber expertise.

In fact, executives appear to be getting more proactive with cyber security on a number of fronts.

Some 84% said they are taking action or monitoring closely policy areas related to cyber security, privacy and data protection. A further 79% said they’re revising or enhancing their cyber risk management approaches, and half (49%) pointed to increased investments in cyber security and privacy.

By way of comparison, 53% said they’re increasing investment in digital transformation and 52% in IT.

Cyber security is a strategic business enabler – technology is the central nervous system of many companies – and confirming its data is secure and protected can be brand defining.

There’s now heightened attention from a wider range of business leaders and corporate directors as they recognise that cyber security and data privacy should be part of not only a risk management strategy, but also a broader corporate strategy. C-suite and boards are actively taking steps to better understand the global threat landscape, confirm a foundational cyber security program is in place, and manage these risks to create opportunities.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/cyber-tops-staff-retention-biggest/

  • Cyber Criminals Weaponising Ransomware Data for BEC Attacks

Cyber criminals and other threat actors are increasingly using data dumped from ransomware attacks in secondary business email compromise (BEC) attacks, according to new analysis by Accenture Cyber Threat Intelligence.

The ACTI team analysed data from the 20 most active ransomware leak sites, measured by number of featured victims, between July 2021 and July 2022. Of the 4,026 victims (corporate, non-governmental organisations, and governmental entities) uncovered on various ransomware groups’ dedicated leak sites, an estimated 91% incurred subsequent data disclosures, ACTI found.

Dedicated leak sites most commonly provide financial data, followed by employee and client personally identifiable information and communication documentation. The rise of double extortion attempts – where attack groups use ransomware to exfiltrate data and then publicise the data on dedicated leak sites – has made large amounts of sensitive corporate data available to any threat actor. The most valuable types of data most useful for conducting BEC attacks are financial, employee, and communication data, as well as operational documents. There is a significant overlap between the types of data most useful for conducting BEC attacks and the types of data most commonly posted on these ransomware leak sites, ACTI said.

The data is a “rich source for information for criminals who can easily weaponise it for secondary BEC attacks,” ACTI said. “The primary factor driving an increased threat of BEC and VEC attacks stemming from double-extortion leaks is the availability of [corporate and communication data].”

https://www.darkreading.com/edge-threat-monitor/cybercriminals-weaponizing-ransomware-data-for-bec-attacks

  • Callback Phishing Attacks See Massive 625% Growth Since Q1 2021

Hackers are increasingly moving towards hybrid forms of phishing attacks that combine email and voice social engineering calls as a way to breach corporate networks for ransomware and data extortion attacks.

According to Agari's Q2 2022 cyber-intelligence report, phishing volumes have only increased by 6% compared to Q1 2022. However, the use of 'hybrid vishing' is seeing a massive 625% growth.

Vishing, "voice phishing," involves some form of a phone call to perform social engineering on the victim. Its hybrid form, called "callback phishing," also includes an email before the call, typically presenting the victim with a fake subscription/invoice notice.

The recipient is advised to call on the provided phone number to resolve any issues with the charge, but instead of a real customer support agent, the call is answered by phishing actors.

The scammers then offer to resolve the presented problem by tricking the victim into disclosing sensitive information or installing remote desktop tools on their system. The threat actors then connect to the victim's device remotely to install further backdoors or spread to other machines.

These callback phishing attacks were first introduced by the 'BazarCall/BazaCall' campaigns that appeared in March 2021 to gain initial access to corporate networks for ransomware attacks.

The attacks work so well that multiple ransomware and extortion gangs, such as Quantum, Zeon, and Silent Ransom Group, have adopted the same technique today to gain initial network access through an unsuspecting employee.

"Hybrid Vishing attacks reached a six-quarter high in Q2, increasing 625% from Q1 2021. This threat type also contributed to 24.6% of the overall share of Response-Based threats," details the Agari report.

"While this is the second quarter hybrid vishing attacks have declined in share due to the overall increase of response-based threats, vishing volume has steadily increased in count over the course of the year."

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/callback-phishing-attacks-see-massive-625-percent-growth-since-q1-2021/

  • Credential Phishing Attacks Skyrocketing, 265 Brands Impersonated in H1 2022

Abnormal Security released a report which explores the current email threat landscape and provides insight into the latest advanced email attack trends, including increases in business email compromise, the evolution of financial supply chain compromise, and the rise of brand impersonation in credential phishing attacks.

The research found a 48% increase in email attacks over the previous six months, and 68.5% of those attacks included a credential phishing link. In addition to posing as internal employees and executives, cyber criminals impersonated well-known brands in 15% of phishing emails, relying on the brands’ familiarity and reputation to convince employees to provide their login credentials. Most common among the 265 brands impersonated in these attacks were social networks and Microsoft products.

“The vast majority of cyber crime today is successful because it exploits the people behind the keyboard,” said Crane Hassold, director of threat intelligence at Abnormal Security.

“By compromising people rather than networks, it’s easier for attackers to circumvent conventional security measures. This is especially true with brand impersonation, where attackers use urgency and fear to encourage their targets to provide usernames and passwords.”

LinkedIn took the top spot for brand impersonation, but Outlook, OneDrive and Microsoft 365 appeared in 20% of all attacks. What makes these attacks particularly dangerous is that phishing emails are often the first step to compromising employee email accounts. Acquiring Microsoft credentials enables cyber criminals to access the full suite of connected products, allowing them to view sensitive data and use the account to send business email compromise attacks.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/08/15/landscape-email-threat/

  • Are Cloud Environments Secure Enough for Today’s Threats?

Cyber security is a major problem right now. Not only is it the highest priority of any given business to keep their own data and their customers’ and clients’ data secure, but changes in the workplace have had a knock-on effect on cyber security. The concept of working from home has forced businesses all around the world to address old and new cyber security threats. People taking their laptops, and therefore their data, home to public networks that can be hacked or leaving access details like passwords scribbled on notebooks has meant that access to a business and therefore their customers’ data is a lot more accessible.

The saving grace was said to be the cloud. Beyond retraining cyber security in staff workforces, the practical solution was to move data into the cloud. But we’re now a few years from the point when the cloud really gained popularity. Is it still the answer to all our cyber security problems? Is there a chance of risk to using the cloud?

Cloud data breaches do happen and misconfiguration is a leading cause of them, mainly due to businesses inadequate cyber security strategies. This is due to several factors, such as the fundamental nature of the cloud designed to be easy for anyone to access, and businesses unable to completely see or control the cloud’s infrastructure and therefore relying on the cyber security controls that are provided by the cloud service provider (or CSP).

Unauthorised access is also a risk. The internet, which is a readily available public resource to most of the world, makes it easy for hackers to access data if they have the credentials to get past the cyber security set up by the individual business. This is where the ugliness of internal cloud breaches happens. If security is not configured well or credentials like passwords and secret questions are compromised, an attacker can easily access the cloud.

However, it’s not only through an employee that hackers access credentials. Phishing is a very common means of gaining information that would allow access to a customer or business data.

Plus, the simple nature of sharing data can easily backfire on a company. A lot of data access is granted with a link to someone external, which can then be forwarded, either sold or stolen, to an attacker to access the cloud’s data.

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2022/08/16/are-cloud-environments-secure-enough-for-todays-threats/

  • Most Q2 Attacks Targeted Old Microsoft Vulnerabilities

Attacks targeting a remote code execution vulnerability in Microsoft's MSHTML browser engine — which was patched last September — soared during the second quarter of this year, according to a Kaspersky analysis.

Researchers from Kaspersky counted at least 4,886 attacks targeting the flaw (CVE-2021-40444) last quarter, an eightfold increase over the first quarter of 2022. The security vendor attributed the continued adversary interest in the vulnerability to the ease with which it can be exploited.

Kaspersky said it has observed threat actors exploiting the flaw in attacks on organisations across multiple sectors including the energy and industrial sectors, research and development, IT companies, and financial and medical technology firms. In many of these attacks, the adversaries have used social engineering tricks to try and get victims to open specially crafted Office documents that would then download and execute a malicious script. The flaw was under active attack at the time Microsoft first disclosed it in September 2021.

Attacks targeting a remote code execution vulnerability in Microsoft's MSHTML browser engine — which was patched last September — soared during the second quarter of this year, according to a Kaspersky analysis. Researchers from Kaspersky counted at least 4,886 attacks targeting the flaw last quarter, an eightfold increase over the first quarter of 2022. The security vendor attributed the continued adversary interest in the vulnerability to the ease with which it can be exploited. According to Kaspersky, exploits for Windows vulnerabilities accounted for 82% of all exploits across all platforms during the second quarter of 2022. While attacks on the MSHTML vulnerability increased the most dramatically, it was by no means the most exploited flaw, which was a remote code execution vulnerability in Microsoft Office that was disclosed and patched four years ago that was attacked some 345,827 times last quarter.

https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/most-attacks-in-q2-targeted-old-microsoft-vulnerabilities

  • Cyber Resiliency Isn't Just About Technology, It's About People

Cyber attacks are on the rise — but if we're being honest, that statement has been true for quite a while, given the acceleration of cyber incidents over the past several years. Recent research indicates that organisations experienced 50% more attack attempts per week on corporate networks in 2021 than they did in 2020, and tactics such as phishing are becoming increasingly popular as attackers refine their tried-and-true methods to more successfully entice unsuspecting targets.

It's no surprise, then, that cyber resiliency has been a hot topic in the cyber security world. But although cyber resiliency refers broadly to the ability of an organisation to anticipate, withstand, and recover from cyber security incidents, many experts make the mistake of applying the term specifically to technology. And while it's true that detection and remediation tools, backup systems, and other resources play an important role in cyber resiliency, organisations that focus exclusively on technology risk are overlooking an equally important element: people.

People are often thought of as the weak link in cyber security. It's easy to understand why. People fall for phishing scams. They use weak passwords and procrastinate on installing security updates. They misconfigure hardware and software, leave cloud assets unsecured, and send confidential files to the wrong recipient. There's a reason so much cyber security technology is moving toward automation: removing people from the equation is seen as one of the most obvious ways to improve security. To many security experts, that's just common sense.

Except — is it, really? It's true that people make mistakes — it's called "human error" for a reason, after all — but many of those mistakes come when employees aren't put in a position to succeed. Phishing is a great example. Most people are familiar with the concept of phishing, but many may not be aware of the nefarious techniques that today's attackers deploy. If employees have not been properly trained, they may not be aware that attackers often impersonate real people within the organisation, or that the CEO asking them to buy gift cards "for a company happy hour" probably isn't legit. Organisations that want to build strong cyber-resiliency cannot pretend that people don't exist. Instead, they need to prioritise the resiliency of their people just as highly as the resiliency of their technology.

Training the organisation to recognise the signs of common attack tactics, practice better password and cyber hygiene, and report signs of suspicious activity can help ease the burden on IT and security personnel by providing them better information in a more timely manner. It also avoids some of the pitfalls that create a drain on their time and resources. By ensuring that people at every level of the business are more resilient, today's organisations will discover that their overall cyber-resiliency will improve significantly.

https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-threats/cyber-resiliency-isn-t-just-about-technology-it-s-about-people

  • The “Cyber Insurance Gap” Is Threatening Most Companies

A new study by BlackBerry and Corvus Insurance confirms a “cyber insurance gap” is growing, with a majority of businesses either uninsured or under insured against a rising tide of ransomware attacks and other cyber threats.

  • Only 19% of all businesses surveyed have ransomware coverage limits above the median ransomware demand amount ($600,000)

  • Among SMBs with fewer than 1,500 employees, only 14% have a coverage limit in excess of $600,000

  • 37% of respondents with cyber insurance do not have any coverage for ransomware payment demands

  • 43% of those with a policy are not covered for auxiliary costs such as court fees or employee downtime

  • 60% say they would reconsider entering into a partnership or agreement with another business or supplier if the organisation did not have comprehensive cyber insurance

  • Endpoint detection and response (EDR) software is frequently a key component to obtaining a policy

  • 34% of respondents have been previously denied cyber coverage by insurance providers due to not meeting EDR eligibility requirements

https://informationsecuritybuzz.com/expert-comments/the-cyber-insurance-gap-is-threatening-most-companies/

  • Easing the Cyber-Skills Crisis with Staff Augmentation

Filling cyber security roles can be costly, slow, and chancy. More firms are working with third-party service providers to quickly procure needed expertise.

There are many possible solutions to the cyber security skills shortage, but most of them take time. Cyber security education, career development tracks, training programs, employer-sponsored academies, and internships are great ways to build a talent pipeline and develop skill sets to meet organisational needs in years to come.

But sometimes the need to fill a gap in capability is more immediate.

An organisation in the entertainment industry recently found itself in such a position. Its primary cyber security staff member quit suddenly without notice, taking along critical institutional knowledge and leaving various projects incomplete. With its key defender gone, the organisation's environment was left vulnerable. In a scarce talent market, the organisation faced a long hiring process to find a replacement — too long to leave its digital estate unattended. It needed expertise, and quickly.

According to a 2021 ESG report, 57% of organisations have been impacted by the global cyber security skills crisis. Seventy-six percent say it's difficult to recruit and hire security professionals. The biggest effects of this shortage are increasing workloads, positions open for weeks or months, and high cyber security staff burnout and attrition.

In this climate, more companies are turning to third parties for cyber security staff reinforcement. According to a NewtonX study, 56% of organisations are now subcontracting up to a quarter of their cyber security staff. Sixty-nine percent of companies rely on third-party expertise to assist in mitigating the risk of ransomware — up from 58% in 2017 — per a study by Ponemon and CBI, a Converge Company.

One way that companies gain this additional support is via third-party staff augmentation and consulting services. Cyber security staff augmentation, or strategic staffing, entails trained external consultants acting as an extension of an organisation's security team in a residency. Engagements can be anywhere from a few weeks to a few years, and roles can range from analysts and engineers to architects, compliance specialists, and virtual CISOs.

https://www.darkreading.com/operations/easing-the-cyber-skills-crisis-with-staff-augmentation

  • Mailchimp Suffers Second Breach In 4 Months

Mailchimp suffered another data breach earlier this month, and this one cost it a client.

In a statement Friday, Mailchimp disclosed that a security incident involving phishing and social engineering tactics had targeted cryptocurrency and blockchain companies using the email marketing platform. It was the second Mailchimp breach to target cryptocurrency customers in a four-month span.

Though Mailchimp said it has suspended accounts where suspicious activity was detected while an investigation is ongoing, it did not reveal the source of the breach or scope of the attack.

More details were provided Sunday by one of the affected customers, DigitalOcean, which cut ties with Mailchimp on Aug. 9.

The cloud hosting provider observed suspicious activity beginning Aug. 8, when threat actors used its Mailchimp account for "a small number of attempted compromises" of DigitalOcean customer accounts -- specifically cryptocurrency platforms.

While it is not clear whether any DigitalOcean accounts were compromised, the company did confirm that some email addresses were exposed. More importantly, the statement attributed a potential source of the most recent Mailchimp breach.

https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/news/252523911/Mailchimp-suffers-second-breach-in-4-months

  • Firm Told It Can't Claim Full Cyber Crime Insurance After Social Engineering Attack

A Minnesota computer store suing its cyber insurance provider has had its case dismissed, with the courts saying it was a clear instance of social engineering, a crime for which the insurer was only liable to cover a fraction of total losses.

SJ Computers alleged in a November lawsuit that Travelers Casualty and Surety Co. owed it far more than paid on a claim for nearly $600,000 in losses due to a successful business email compromise (BEC) attack.

According to its website, SJ Computers is a Microsoft Authorised Refurbisher, reselling Dell, HP, Lenovo and Acer products, as well as providing tech services including software installs and upgrades.

Travelers, which filed a motion to dismiss, said SJ's policy clearly delineated between computer fraud and social engineering fraud. The motion was granted with prejudice last Friday.

In the dismissal order, the US District Court for Minnesota found that the two policy agreements are mutually exclusive, as well as finding SJ's claim fell squarely into its social engineering fraud agreement with Travelers, which has a cap of $100,000.

When SJ filed its claim with Travelers, the court noted, it did so only under the social engineering fraud agreement. After realising the policy limit on computer fraud was 10 times higher, "SJ Computers then made a series of arguments – ranging from creative to desperate – to try to persuade Travelers that its loss was not the result of social-engineering-fraud (as SJ Computers itself had initially said) but instead the result of computer fraud," the district judge wrote in the order.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/16/social_engineering_cyber_crime_insurance/

Threats

Ransomware

BEC – Business Email Compromise

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Other Social Engineering; SMishing, Vishing, etc

Malware

Mobile

Internet of Things – IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

AML/CFT/Sanctions

Insurance

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Denial of Service DoS/DDoS

Cloud/SaaS

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Privacy

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

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

Sector Specific

Industry specific threat intelligence reports are available.

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

·       Automotive

·       Construction

·       Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)

·       Defence & Space

·       Education & Academia

·       Energy & Utilities

·       Estate Agencies

·       Financial Services

·       FinTech

·       Food & Agriculture

·       Gaming & Gambling

·       Government & Public Sector (including Law Enforcement)

·       Health/Medical/Pharma

·       Hotels & Hospitality

·       Insurance

·       Legal

·       Manufacturing

·       Maritime

·       Oil, Gas & Mining

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

·       Retail & eCommerce

·       Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)

·       Startups

·       Telecoms

·       Third Sector & Charities

·       Transport & Aviation

·       Web3

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

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

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

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

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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 05 August 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 05 August 2022

-Average Cost of Data Breaches Hits Record High of $4.35 Million: IBM

-Researchers Warns of Large-Scale Adversary-in-the-Middle (AiTM) Attacks Targeting Enterprise Users

-UK NHS Suffers Outage After Cyber Attack on Managed Service Provider

-A Third of Organisations Experience a Ransomware Attack Once a Week

-Ransomware Products, Services Ads on Dark Web Show Clues to Danger

-Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing, How Malware Tricks Users and Antivirus

-Microsoft Accounts Targeted with New MFA-Bypassing Phishing Kit

-Cyber Attack Prevention Is Cost-Effective, So Why Aren’t Businesses Investing to Protect?

-Securing Your Move to the Hybrid Cloud

-Lessons from the Russian Cyber Warfare Attacks

-Four Sneaky Attacker Evasion Techniques You Should Know About

-Zero-Day Defence: Tips for Defusing the Threat

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

  • Average Cost of Data Breaches Hits Record High of $4.35 Million: IBM

The global average cost of data breaches reached an all-time high of $4.35 million in 2022 compared with $4.24 million in 2021, according to a new IBM Security report. About 60% of the breached organisations raised product and services prices due to the breaches.

The annual report, conducted by Ponemon Institute and analysed and sponsored by IBM Security, is based on the analysis of real-world data breaches experienced by 550 organisations globally between March 2021 and March 2022.

According to the report, about 83% of the organisations have experienced more than one breach in their lifetime, with nearly half of the costs reported to be incurred more than a year after the breach.

The report revealed that ransomware and destructive attacks represented 28% of breaches among the critical infrastructure organisations studied, indicating that threat actors are specifically targeting the sector to disrupt global supply chains. The critical infrastructure sector includes financial services, industrial, transportation, and healthcare companies.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3668655/average-cost-of-data-breaches-hits-record-high-of-435-million-ibm.html#tk.rss_news

  • Researchers Warns of Large-Scale Adversary-in-the-Middle (AiTM) Attacks Targeting Enterprise Users

A new, large-scale phishing campaign has been observed using adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) techniques to get around security protections and compromise enterprise email accounts.

It uses a technique capable of bypassing multi-factor authentication. The campaign is specifically designed to reach end users in enterprises that use Microsoft's email services.

Prominent targets include fintech, lending, insurance, energy, manufacturing, and federal credit union verticals located in the US, UK, New Zealand, and Australia.

This is not the first time such a phishing attack has come to light. Last month, Microsoft disclosed that over 10,000 organisations had been targeted since September 2021 by means of AitM techniques to breach accounts secured with multi-factor authentication (MFA).

The ongoing campaign, effective June 2022, commences with an invoice-themed email sent to targets containing an HTML attachment, which includes a phishing URL embedded within it.

https://thehackernews.com/2022/08/researchers-warns-of-large-scale-aitm.html

  • UK NHS Suffers Outage After Cyber Attack on Managed Service Provider

The UK National Health Service (NHS) 111 emergency services were affected by a significant and ongoing outage triggered by a cyber attack that hit the systems of British managed service provider (MSP) Advanced.

Advanced's Adastra client patient management solution, which is used by 85% of NHS 111 services, was hit by a major outage together with several other services provided by the MSP, according to a status page.

"There was a major outage of a computer system that is used to refer patients from NHS 111 Wales to out-of-hours GP providers," the Welsh Ambulance Services said. "This system is used by Local Health Boards to coordinate these services for patients. The ongoing outage is significant and has been far-reaching, impacting each of the four nations in the UK."

The UK public was advised to access the NHS 111 emergency services using the online platform until the incident is resolved.

While no details were provided regarding the nature of the cyber attack, based on the wording, it is likely that this was a ransomware or data extortion attack.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/uk-nhs-suffers-outage-after-cyberattack-on-managed-service-provider/

  • A Third of Organisations Experience a Ransomware Attack Once a Week

Ransomware attacks show no sign of slowing. According to new research published by Menlo Security, a third of organisations experience a ransomware attack at least once a week, with one in 10 experiencing them more than once a day.

The research, conducted among 500+ IT security decision makers at US and UK organisations with more than 1,000 employees, highlights the impact this is having on security professionals’ own wellbeing. When asked what keeps them awake at night, 41% of respondents say they worry about ransomware attacks evolving beyond their team’s knowledge and skillset, while 39% worry about them evolving beyond their company’s security capabilities.

Their biggest concern, however, is the risk of employees ignoring corporate security advice and clicking on links or attachments containing malware (46%). Respondents worry more about this than they do their own job security, with just a quarter (26%) of respondents worried about losing their job.

According to the report, around half of organisations (61% US and 44% UK) have been the victim of a successful ransomware attack in the last 18 months, with customers and prospects the most likely entry point for an attack.

Partners/suppliers and employees/contractors are also seen as serious security risks, although one in 10 admit they are unable to identify how the attacks got in. The top three ransomware attack vectors are email (54%), web browsers via a desktop or laptop (49%) and mobile devices (39%).

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/08/04/organizations-experience-ransomware-attack/

  • Ransomware Products and Services Ads on Dark Web Show Clues to Danger

Why is ransomware’s destructive potential so daunting? Some clues are in the “for sale” ads. In an examination of some 35 million dark web URLs, a provider of machine identity management and a forensic specialist found some 475 web pages peddling sophisticated ransomware products and services with a number of high profile crews hawking ransomware-as-a-service.

The work is a joint effort between the Salt Lake City-based Venafi and Forensic Pathways, which took place between November 2021 and March 2022. Researchers used Forensic’s Dark Search Engine to carry out the investigation.

Here are some of the research findings:

  • 87% of the ransomware found on the dark web has been delivered via malicious macros to infect targeted systems.

  • 30 different “brands” of ransomware were identified within marketplace listings and forum discussions.

  • Many strains of ransomware being sold — such as Babuk, GoldenEye, Darkside/BlackCat, Egregor, HiddenTear and WannaCry — have been successfully used in high-profile attacks.

  • Ransomware strains used in high-profile attacks command a higher price for associated services. For example, the most expensive listing was $1,262 for a customised version of Darkside ransomware, which was used in the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack.

  • Source code listings for well-known ransomware generally command higher price points. For example, Babuk source code is listed for $950 and Paradise source code is selling for $593.

Ransomware Sold for as Little as $1: In addition to a variety of ransomware at various price points, a wide range of services and tools that help make it easier for attackers with minimal technical skills to launch ransomware attacks are for sale on the dark web, Venafi said. Services with the greatest number of listings include those offering source code, build services, custom development services and ransomware packages that include step-by-step tutorials.

https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-breaches-and-attacks/ransomware/ransomware-products-services-ads-on-dark-web-show-clues-to-danger/

  • Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing: How Malware Tricks Users and Antivirus

One of the primary methods used by malware distributors to infect devices is by deceiving people into downloading and running malicious files, and to achieve this deception, malware authors are using a variety of tricks.

Some of these tricks include masquerading malware executables as legitimate applications, signing them with valid certificates, or compromising trustworthy sites to use them as distribution points.

According to VirusTotal, a security platform for scanning uploaded files for malware, some of these tricks are happening on a much larger scale than initially thought.

The platform has compiled a report presenting stats from January 2021 until July 2022, based on the submission of two million files daily, illustrating trends in how malware is distributed.

  • Abusing legitimate domains: Distributing malware through legitimate, popular, and high-ranking websites allows threat actors to evade IP-based blocklists, enjoy high availability, and provide a greater level of trust.

  • Using stolen code-signing certificates: Signing malware samples with valid certificates stolen from companies is a reliable way to evade AV detection and security warnings on the host. Of all the malicious samples uploaded to VirusTotal between January 2021 and April 2022, over a million were signed, and 87% used a valid certificate.

  • Disguised as popular software: Masquerading a malware executable as a legitimate, popular application has seen an upward trend in 2022. Victims download these files thinking they’re getting the applications they need, but upon running the installers, they infect their systems with malware. The most mimicked applications are Skype, Adobe Acrobat, VLC, and 7zip.

  • Lacing legitimate installers - Finally, there’s the trick of hiding malware inside legitimate application installers and running the infection process in the background while the real apps execute in the foreground. Based on VirusTotal stats, this practice also appears to be on the rise this year, using Google Chrome, Malwarebytes, Windows Updates, Zoom, Brave, Firefox, ProtonVPN, and Telegram as lures.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/wolf-in-sheep-s-clothing-how-malware-tricks-users-and-antivirus/

  • Microsoft Accounts Targeted with New MFA-Bypassing Phishing Kit

A new large-scale phishing campaign targeting credentials for Microsoft email services use a custom proxy-based phishing kit to bypass multi-factor authentication.

Researchers believe the campaign's goal is to breach corporate accounts to conduct BEC (business email compromise) attacks, diverting payments to bank accounts under their control using falsified documents.

The phishing campaign's targets include fin-tech, lending, accounting, insurance, and Federal Credit Union organisations in the US, UK, New Zealand, and Australia.

The campaign was discovered by Zscaler's ThreatLabz researchers, who report that the operation is still ongoing, and the phishing actors register new phishing domains almost daily.

Starting in June 2022, Zscaler's analysts noticed a spike in sophisticated phishing attempts against specific sectors and users of Microsoft email services.

Some of the newly registered domains used in the campaign are typo-squatted versions of legitimate domains.

Notably, many phishing emails originated from the accounts of executives working in these organisations, whom the threat actors most likely compromised earlier.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/microsoft-accounts-targeted-with-new-mfa-bypassing-phishing-kit/

  • Cyber Attack Prevention Is Cost-Effective, So Why Aren’t Businesses Investing to Protect?

Cyber attacks like ransomware, BEC scams and data breaches are some of the key issues businesses are facing today, but despite the number of high-profile incidents, many boardrooms are reluctant to free up budget to invest in the cyber security measures necessary to avoid becoming the next victim.

In a Help Net Security interview, Former Pentagon Chief Strategy Officer Jonathan Reiber, VP Cyber security Strategy and Policy, AttackIQ, discusses how now, more than ever, companies need to protect themselves from cyber threat actors. He offers insight for CISOs, from talking to the Board to proper budget allocation.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/08/01/cyberattack-prevention-investing/

  • Securing Your Move to the Hybrid Cloud

The combination of private and public cloud infrastructure, which most organisations are already using, poses unique security challenges. There are many reasons why organisations adopt the public cloud, from enabling rapid growth without the burden of capacity planning to leveraging flexibility and agility in delivering customer-centric services. However, this use can leave companies open to threats.

Since regulatory requirements or other preferences dictate that certain applications remain on private (on-prem) infrastructure, many organisations choose to maintain a mix of private and public infrastructure. Additionally, organisations typically use multiple cloud providers simultaneously or preserve the option to move between providers. However, this hybrid approach presents unique and diverse security challenges. Different cloud providers and private cloud platforms may offer similar capabilities but different ways of implementing security controls, along with disparate management tools.

The question then becomes: How can an organisation maintain consistent governance, policy enforcement and controls across different clouds? And how can it ensure that it maintains its security posture when moving between them? Fortunately, there are steps professionals can take to ensure that applications are continuously secure, starting from the early stages of development and extending throughout the lifecycle.

https://threatpost.com/secure-move-cloud/180335/

  • Lessons from the Russian Cyber Warfare Attacks

Cyber warfare tactics may not involve tanks and bombs, but they often go hand-in-hand with real combat.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a prime example. Before Russian troops crossed the border, Russian hackers had already taken down Ukrainian government websites. And after the conflict started, the hacktivist group Anonymous turned the tables by hacking Russian media to shut down propaganda about the war.

In these unprecedented times of targeted attacks against governments and financial institutions, every organisation should be on heightened alert about protecting their critical infrastructure and digital attack surface.

With the Russia-Ukraine conflict as a backdrop, two Trend Micro security experts recently discussed cyber warfare techniques and how they’re an important reminder for every business to proactively manage cyber risk.

https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/ciso/22/h/russian-cyber-warfare-attacks.html

  • Four Sneaky Attacker Evasion Techniques You Should Know About

Remember those portrayals of hackers in the 80s and 90s where you just knew when you got pwned? A blue screen of death, a scary message, a back-and-forth text exchange with a hacker—if you got pwned in a movie in the 80s and 90s, you knew it right off the bat.

What a shame that today’s hackers have learned to be quiet when infiltrating an environment. Sure, “loud” attacks like ransomware still exist, but threat actors have learned that if they keep themselves hidden, they can usually do far more damage. For hackers, a little stealth can go a long way. Some attack tactics are inherently quiet, making them arguably more dangerous as they can be harder to detect. Here are four of these attack tactics you should know about.

  1. Trusted Application Abuse: Attackers know that many people have applications that they inherently trust, making those trusted applications the perfect launchpad for cyber attacks. Threat actors know that defenders and the tools they use are often on the hunt for new malware presenting itself in environments. What isn’t so easy to detect is when the malware masquerades under legitimate applications.

  2. Trusted Infrastructure Abuse: Much like trusted application abuse, trusted infrastructure abuse is the act of using legitimate, publicly hosted services and toolsets (such as Dropbox or Google Drive) as part of the attack infrastructure. Threat actors know that people tend to trust Dropbox and Google Drive. As a result, this makes these tools a prime means for threat actors to carry out malicious activity. Threat actors often find trusted infrastructure abuse easy because these services aren’t usually blocked at an enterprise’s gateway. In turn, outbound communications can hide in plain sight.

  3. Obfuscation: Although cyber security has more than its fair share of tedious acronyms, the good news is that many terms can be broken down by their generic dictionary definitions. According to dictionary.com, this is what obfuscate means: “To make something unclear, obscure or difficult to understand.” And that’s exactly what it means in cyber security: finding ways to conceal malicious behaviour. In turn, this makes it more difficult for analysts and the tools they use to flag suspicious or malicious activity.

  4. Persistence: Imagine writing up documentation using your computer, something you may well do in your role. You’ve spent a ton of time doing the research required, finding the right sources and compiling all your information into a document. Now, imagine not hitting save on that document and losing it as soon as you reboot your computer. Sound like a nightmare—or perhaps a real anxiety-inducing experience you’ve been through before? Threat actors agree. And that’s why they establish persistence. They don’t want all of their hard work to get into your systems in the first place to be in vain just because you restart your computer. They establish persistence to make sure they can still hang around even after you reboot.

https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-guests/four-sneaky-attacker-evasion-techniques-you-should-know-about/

  • Zero-Day Defence: Tips for Defusing the Threat

Because they leave so little time to patch and defuse, zero-day threats require a proactive, multi-layered approach based on zero trust.

The recent Atlassian Confluence remote code execution bug is just the latest example of zero-day threats targeting critical vulnerabilities within major infrastructure providers. The specific threat, an Object-Graph Navigation Language (OGNL) injection, has been around for years but took on new significance given the scope of the Atlassian exploit. And OGNL attacks are on the rise.

Once bad actors find such a vulnerability, proof-of-concept exploits start knocking at the door, seeking unauthenticated access to create new admin accounts, execute remote commands, and take over servers. In the Atlassian case, Akamai's threat research team identified that the number of unique IP addresses attempting these exploits grew to more than 200 within just 24 hours.

Defending against these exploits becomes a race against time worthy of a 007 movie. The clock is ticking and you don't have much time to implement a patch and "defuse" the threat before it's too late. But first you need to know that an exploit is underway. That requires a proactive, multi-layered approach to online security based on zero trust.

What do these layers look like? There are a number of different practices that security teams — and their third-party Web application and infrastructure partners — should be aware of.

https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/zero-day-defense-tips-for-defusing-the-threat

Threats

Ransomware

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Other Social Engineering; SMishing, Vishing, etc

Malware

Mobile

Internet of Things – IoT

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

AML/CFT/Sanctions

Dark Web

Software Supply Chain

Cloud/SaaS

Open Source

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Privacy

Cyber Bullying and Cyber Stalking

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

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

Sector Specific

Industry specific threat intelligence reports are available.

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

·       Automotive

·       Construction

·       Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)

·       Defence & Space

·       Education & Academia

·       Energy & Utilities

·       Estate Agencies

·       Financial Services

·       FinTech

·       Food & Agriculture

·       Gaming & Gambling

·       Government & Public Sector (including Law Enforcement)

·       Health/Medical/Pharma

·       Hotels & Hospitality

·       Insurance

·       Legal

·       Manufacturing

·       Maritime

·       Oil, Gas & Mining

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

·       Retail & eCommerce

·       Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)

·       Startups

·       Telecoms

·       Third Sector & Charities

·       Transport & Aviation

·       Web3

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.

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Black Arrow Cyber Advisory 21/07/2022 – Cyber Insurance Policies: Misrepresentation and Ransomware pay-outs

Black Arrow Cyber Advisory 20/07/2022 – Cyber Insurance Policies: Misrepresentation and Ransomware pay-outs

Executive Summary

Ransomware attacks are becoming more prevalent and the costs for insurers are increasing. Traditionally, ransomware groups have encrypted an organisation’s data and demanded a ransom for the decryption key. However, in the last year, there has been a growing shift by the ransomware community towards exfiltration and then a threat to release the stolen data to extort money from their victims.. These factors have increased the financial pressure that cyber insurance companies are currently experiencing, which in turn has caused them to reconsider their obligations for settling claims. There are currently two significant court cases relating to ransomware insurance claims involving the Travelers insurance company.

The first case relates to Graff, a UK-based jeweller who paid a ransom of $7.5M to prevent the Russian-based ransomware gang Conti from releasing 69,000 confidential documents it had stolen. Graff published the following public statement regarding the dispute with their insurer: “We are extremely frustrated and disappointed by Travelers’ attempt to avoid settlement of this insured risk. They have left us with no option but to bring these recovery proceedings at the High Court.”

The second involves a filing with the US District court requesting  a declaration that Travellers insurance contract with International Control Services (ICS) is invalid due to misrepresentation of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) controls on the company’s  application for its cyber insurance policy. The application stated that MFA was used for administrative or privileged access. Subsequently, ICS were victim to a ransomware attack that resulted in a claim against their cyber insurance policy. As the insurer, Travelers conducted an investigation which revealed that ICS “only used MFA to protect its firewall, and did not use MFA to protect any other digital assets.”

What’s the risk to me or my business?

With the evolving threat of ransomware being ever prominent, it is critical that an organisation considers appropriate cyber controls across people, operations and technology to manage and effectively reduce its risk. Organisations often rely on cyber insurance to provide cover when these controls  fail, however insurers are now demanding more evidence of robust cyber controls as they begin to better manage their own exposure to the increasing risks.

What can I do?

Ensure that leadership have an understanding of key cyber controls and what is covered within a cyber insurance policy. When considering ransomware payments, it should be clear what the policy will cover. Any declaration of cyber security controls should be informed by an appropriate cyber security expert with knowledge of what controls the organisation has in place, to ensure that the facts are correctly represented and are less likely to be used in a misrepresentation defence.

Further information on the above cases can be found here:

Need help understanding your gaps, or just want some advice? Get in touch with us.

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Black Arrow Cyber Advisory 19/07/2022 – Microsoft identifies Phishing campaign which can bypass MFA if additional controls are not in place

Black Arrow Cyber Advisory 19/07/2022 – Microsoft identifies Phishing campaign which can bypass MFA if additional controls are not in place

Executive Summary

Microsoft has released information on a new phishing campaign involving “adversary-in-the-middle” AiTM techniques, which has affected more than 10,000 organisations since September 2021. What is unique about this particular attack method is that it has the potential to bypass Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). It is important to note that this attack does not make use of a vulnerability within MFA, and that MFA is still a key control in preventing credential compromise.

What’s the risk to me or my business?

As more organisations implement security controls such as MFA, malicious actors will be looking into possibilities of targeting these controls. This particular attack technique involves a proxy server being deployed in between the recipient and a valid targeted website. In short, a targeted user would receive a phishing email, the link to the phishing email would resolve in a valid website, with the traffic being re-directed through the server of a malicious actor. This allows the malicious actor to steal “authenticated session cookies”, after the user has logged into the valid website. The malicious actor can then use the authenticated session cookies to access the valid website with the targeted users credentials, which can then lead to further attacks such as Business Email Compromise as shown in the diagram below.

Figure 1: Overview of AiTM phishing campaign and follow-on BEC (Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team, 2022)

What can I do?

Microsoft recommends implementing conditional access policies, which can limit user access in different scenarios, such as only allowing access to trusted locations, compliant devices or trusted IP addresses. This would prevent a stolen session cookie from granting access to an account outside of these conditions. Anti-Phishing solutions can also be used to block phishing emails from arriving in end-users inboxes, however it is worth noting that these solutions may not be able to block every threat. Where possible, security monitoring should be in place to detect suspicious sign-in attempts, and unusual mailbox activities including external forwarding, rule creation and access from untrusted IP addresses or devices.

It is also critically important that technical controls such as MFA are supplemented with end-user training, including Phishing simulations as it is the primary ingress point for this type of attack.

Technical Summary

Microsoft has published a full breakdown of sample attacks that they have monitored. So far they have followed the following process:

1.       An attacker sends emails containing an HTML file attachment, stating that a voicemail has been received on their Microsoft account. This email follows the same template which is received when a user receives a voicemail via Microsoft Teams.

2.       The user clicks on the HTML attachment, which takes them to a website displaying the mp3 file being downloaded. No actual download takes place, but a progress bar is updated.

3.       The user is then re-directed to a gatekeeper, which confirms that the user has clicked on the html attachment.

4.       The user arrives at a proxied version of the Microsoft Azure Active Directory login page. It is important to note that if an organisation has customised this landing page with their corporate logo then this will also be displayed, making the website seem even more legitimate.

5.       The user enters their credentials which are then authenticated by Microsoft. If MFA is enabled, the user would be prompted for MFA at this stage.

6.       The user is re-directed to the official Microsoft 365 website, while the authenticated session cookies are captured by the attacker, also allowing them into the official Microsoft 365 website.

7.       Microsoft’s research has then shown that the stolen session is used for Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks, targeting finance related emails within the targeted users inbox to request fraud payments. At this stage however a malicious attacker also has potential to access any 365 service which the targeted user has access to.

Appropriate conditional access controls could prevent an attacker at step 6 from using the stolen cookies to access the targeted users Microsoft 365 account.

A full breakdown of this particular phishing campaign is available here: From cookie theft to BEC: Attackers use AiTM phishing sites as entry point to further financial fraud - Microsoft Security Blog

Need help understanding your gaps, or just want some advice? Get in touch with us.

References

Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team. (2022, 07 19). From cookie theft to BEC: Attackers use AiTM phishing sites as entry point to further financial fraud. Retrieved from Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team Security Blog: https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2022/07/12/from-cookie-theft-to-bec-attackers-use-aitm-phishing-sites-as-entry-point-to-further-financial-fraud/

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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.

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LinkedIn breach reportedly exposes data of 92% of users, including inferred salaries

LinkedIn breach reportedly exposes data of 92% of users, including inferred salaries

A second massive LinkedIn breach reportedly exposes the data of 700M users, which is more than 92% of the total 756M users. The database is for sale on the dark web, with records including phone numbers, physical addresses, geolocation data, and inferred salaries.

A second massive LinkedIn breach reportedly exposes the data of 700M users, which is more than 92% of the total 756M users. The database is for sale on the dark web, with records including phone numbers, physical addresses, geolocation data, and inferred salaries.

The hacker who obtained the data has posted a sample of 1M records, and checks confirm that the data is both genuine and up-to-date.

Reports indicate that the hacker appears to have misused the official LinkedIn API to download the data, the same method used in a similar breach back in April.

On June 22nd, a user of a popular hacker advertised data from 700 Million LinkedIn users for sale. The user of the forum posted up a sample of the data that includes 1 million LinkedIn users. The sample was examined and found to contain the following information:

·      Email Addresses

·      Full names

·      Phone numbers

·      Physical addresses

·      Geolocation records

·      LinkedIn username and profile URL

·      Personal and professional experience/background

·      Genders

·      Other social media accounts and usernames

Based on analysis by researchers and cross-checking data from the sample with other publicly available information, it appears all data is authentic and tied to real users. Additionally, the data does appear to be up to date, with samples from 2020 to 2021.

No passwords are included, but as the site notes, this is still valuable data that can be used for identity theft and convincing-looking phishing attempts that can themselves be used to obtain login credentials for LinkedIn and other sites.

Although passwords were not included we still recommend you change your LinkedIn password and enable MFA (we strongly recommend MFA on any and all accounts you access online). We also recommend vigilance against social engineering attempts using information gleaned from this breach.

Original post: LinkedIn breach reportedly exposes data of 92% of users

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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 18 June 2021

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 18 June 2021: Ransomware Now Ranks As UK’s Top Cyber Security Danger; 54% of all employees reuse passwords across accounts; Most Firms Face Second Ransomware Attack After Paying Off First; Bad Cyber Security Behaviours Plaguing The Remote Workforce; VPN Attacks Up Nearly 2000% As Companies Embrace A Hybrid Workplace; Over 65,000 Ransomware Attacks Expected In 2021; Business Leaders Now Feel More Vulnerable To 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

Ransomware Now Ranks As UK’s Top Cyber Security Danger

Ransomware hackers are now the biggest cyber security threat in the UK for the majority of individuals and businesses in the region, Lindy Cameron, chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), said in a speech. “For the vast majority of UK citizens and businesses, and indeed for the vast majority of critical national infrastructure providers and government service providers, the primary key threat is not state actors but cyber criminals,” Cameron said in the speech at the second annual cyber security meeting at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the oldest independent defense and security think tank worldwide.

https://www.pymnts.com/news/security-and-risk/2021/ransomware-now-ranks-as-uks-top-cybersecurity-danger/

54% of all employees reuse passwords across multiple work accounts

Results of a study into current attitudes and adaptability to at-home corporate cyber security, employee training, and support in the current global hybrid working era revealed some interesting results. The report surveyed 3,006 employees, business owners, and C-suite executives at large organisations (250+ employees), who have worked from home and use work issued devices in the UK, France and Germany.

According to the findings 54% of all employees use the same passwords across multiple work accounts. 22% of respondents still keep track of passwords by writing them down, including 41% of business owners and 32% of C-level executives.

42% of respondents admit to using work-issued devices for personal reasons daily while working from home. Of these, 29% are using work devices for banking and shopping, and 7% admit to watching illegal streaming services. Senior workers are among the biggest offenders, as 44% of business owners and 39% of C-level executives admit to performing personal tasks on work-issued devices every day since working from home, with 23% of business owners and 15% of C-level respondents using them for illegal streaming/watching TV.

A year after the pandemic began and work-from-home policies were implemented, 37% of all employees across all sectors are yet to receive cyber security training to work from home, leaving businesses largely exposed to evolving risks. 43% of all employees suggest that cyber security isn’t the responsibility of the workforce, with 60% believing this should be handled by IT teams.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2021/06/10/employees-reuse-passwords-across-multiple-work-accounts/

VPN Attacks Up Nearly 2000% As Companies Embrace A Hybrid Workplace

In Q1 2021, there was a 1,916% increase in attacks against Fortinet’s SSL-VPN and a 1,527% increase in Pulse Connect Secure VPN. These vulnerabilities allow a threat actor to gain access to a network. Once they are in, they can exfiltrate information and deploy ransomware. “2020 was the era of remote work and as the workforce adjusted, information technology professionals scrambled to support this level of remote activity by enabling a wide variety of remote connectivity methods,” said J.R. Cunningham, CSO at Nuspire. “This added multiple new attack vectors that enabled threat actors to prey on organisations, which is what we started to see in Q1 and are continuing to see today.”

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2021/06/15/vpn-attacks-up/

Most Firms Face Second Ransomware Attack After Paying Off First

Most businesses that choose to pay to regain access to their encrypted systems experience a subsequent ransomware attack. And almost half of those that pay up say some or all their data retrieved were corrupted. Some 80% of organisations that paid ransom demands experienced a second attack, of which 46% believed the subsequent ransomware to be caused by the same hackers. Amongst those that paid to regain access to their systems, 46% said at least some of their data was corrupted, according to a survey released Wednesday. The study polled 1,263 security professionals in seven markets worldwide, including 100 in Singapore, as well as respondents in Germany, France, the US, and UK.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/most-firms-face-second-ransomware-attack-after-paying-off-first/

Over 65,000 Ransomware Attacks Expected In 2021: Former Cisco CEO

U.S. companies are expected to endure over 65,000 ransomware attacks this year — and that's “a conservative number,” according to John Chambers, former CEO of Cisco Systems. With McDonald’s, JBS, and Colonial Pipeline Co. all recently coming under cyber attacks, Chambers does not foresee an end to the onslaught of cyber security threats anytime soon. He estimated that the number of ransomware attacks in 2021 could end up being as high as 100,000, with each one costing companies an average of $170,000. In the case of Colonial, just one password was needed for hackers to compromise the entire company’s IT infrastructure. This led to Colonial and JBS paying a combined $15 million in ransom against FBI advice.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/over-65000-ransomware-attacks-expected-in-2021-former-cisco-ceo-125100793.html

Business Leaders Now Feel More Vulnerable To Cyber Attacks

Geographically speaking, 55% of US and 49% of UK respondents have experienced the most severe impact to their network security due to these attacks (suggesting that their businesses are more of a target than those in continental Europe) which, in turn, has resulted in a clear majority of respondents (60%) increasing their investment in this area. A sizeable 68% of leaders said their company has experienced a DDoS attack in the last 12 months with the UK (76%) and the US (73%) experiencing a significantly higher proportion compared to 59% of their German and 56% French counterparts. Additionally, over half of the leaders who participated in the survey confirmed that they specifically experienced a DDoS ransom or extortion attack in that time, with a large number of them (65%) targeted at UK companies, compared with the relatively low number in France (38%).

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2021/06/14/business-leaders-feel-vulnerable-cyber-attacks/

Ransomware Gang Turns To Revenge Porn

At least one ransomware gang has taken a rare and highly invasive step in order to convince its victims to pay: leaking nude images allegedly uncovered as part of their hack of a target company. The news presents an escalation in the world of ransomware and digital extortion, and comes as the U.S. government and other countries discuss new measures to curb the spike in ransomware incidents. Ransomware groups have recently targeted, and in some cases extracted payment from, the Colonial Pipeline Company, meat producer JBS, and the Irish healthcare system. Locking down computers with ransomware can already have a substantial impact on business operations; leaking information on top of that can present victims with another risk. But posting nude images publicly on the internet threatens to make extortion of organisations a much more personal matter.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3xzby/ransomware-gang-revenge-porn-leaks-nude-images

Bank Of America Spends Over $1 Billion Per Year On Cyber Security

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said Monday that the company has ramped its cyber security spending to over $1 billion a year. “I became CEO 11 and a half years ago, and we probably spent three to $400 million [per year] and we’re up over a billion now,” Moynihan said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “The institutions around us, other institutions and my peers, spend like amounts, and our contracting parties spend like amounts,” he added. “In other words, we cause spending in third parties that provide services to us to protect us in the same way. So there’s a lot of money being spend on this, and I think one of the things our industry has done a great job of is work together.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/14/bank-of-america-spends-over-1-billion-per-year-on-cybersecurity.html

Bad Cyber Security Behaviours Plaguing The Remote Workforce

According to the report, younger employees are most likely to admit they cut cyber security corners, with 51% of 16-24 year olds and 46% of 25-34 year olds reporting they’ve used security workarounds. In addition, 39% say the cyber security behaviours they practice while working from home differ from those practiced in the office, with half admitting it’s because they feel they were being watched by IT departments. IT leaders are optimistic about the return to office, with 70% believing staff will more likely follow company security policies around data protection and privacy. However, only 57% of employees think the same.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2021/06/16/cybersecurity-behaviors/

Threats

Ransomware

BEC

Phishing

Malware

Vulnerabilities

Data Breaches

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency

Supply Chain

OT, ICS, IIoT and SCADA

Nation State Actors

Denial of Service

Cloud

Privacy

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 weekly ‘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 14 May 2021

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 14 May 2021: Two Thirds Of CISOs Expect Damaging Cyber Attack In Next 12 Months; Ransomware - Don't Pay, It Just Shows Cyber Criminals That Attacks Work; Most Significant Cyber Attacks 2006-2020; The Shape Of Fraud And Cyber Crime, 10 Things We Learned From 2020; US Pipeline Ransomware Serves As Warning To Persistent Corporate Inertia Over Security; Ransomware Attackers Now Using Triple Extortion Tactics; AXA Pledges To Stop Reimbursing French Ransomware Victims; Cyber Experts Warn Over Online Wine Scams

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

Two Thirds Of CISOs Across World Expect Damaging Cyber Attack In Next 12 Months

More than 1,000 CISOs around the world have expressed concerns about the security ramifications of the massive shift to remote work since the beginning of the pandemic. One hundred CISOs from the US, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Japan, and Singapore were interviewed for the report, with many highlighting significant problems in the current cyber security landscape.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/two-thirds-of-cisos-across-world-expect-damaging-cyberattack-in-next-12-months/

Ransomware: Don't Pay Up, It Just Shows Cyber Criminals That Attacks Work, Warns Home Secretary

For victims of ransomware attacks, paying the ransom does not guarantee that their network will be restored – and handing money to criminals only encourages them to try their luck infecting more companies with the file-encrypting malware. The impact of ransomware attacks continues to rise as cyber criminals encrypt networks, while also blackmailing victims with the prospect of stolen data being published, to generate as much money as possible from extortion.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/ransomware-dont-pay-the-ransom-it-just-encourage-cyber-criminals-that-attacks-work-warns-home-secretary/

The Most Significant Cyber Attacks From 2006-2020, By Country

Committing a cyber crime can have serious consequences. In the US, a cyber criminal can receive up to 20 years in prison for hacking into a government institution if it compromises national security. Yet, despite the consequences, cyber criminals continue to wreak havoc across the globe. But some countries seem to be targeted more than others. Using data from SpecOps Software, this graphic looks at the countries that have experienced the most significant cyber attacks over the last two decades.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cyber-attacks-worldwide-2006-2020/

The Shape Of Fraud And Cyber Crime: 10 Things We Learned From 2020

While it remains true that the older you are, the greater the financial loss, why would fraudsters target the young, who are arguably less well off? The answer lies in volume. Criminals have been offsetting higher monetary gain for higher attack rates, capitalising on the fact that the young are perhaps both more liberal with personal information (and privacy in general) and, at the same time, heavy digital users (social media, surveys, games, and so on). In fact, it is scary to see how much value the humble email address can have for criminals. We often forget that once obtained, it can be used further down the line to commit more fraud.

https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/The-shape-of-fraud-and-cyber-crime-10-things-we-learned-from-2020

Is Third-Party Software Leaving You Vulnerable To Cyber Attacks?

When companies buy digital products, they expect them to be secure. In most cases, they do not test for vulnerabilities down the digital supply chain — and do not even have adequate processes or tools to do so. Hackers have taken note, and incidents of supply chain cyber attacks, which exploit weaknesses within the digital supply chain to break into organisations’ internal networks, are on the rise. As a result, there have been many headline incidents that not only bring shame to the companies involved, but rachet up the visibility of these threats to top executives who want to know their offerings are secure.

https://hbr.org/2021/05/is-third-party-software-leaving-you-vulnerable-to-cyberattacks

US Pipeline Ransomware Attack Serves As Fair Warning To Persistent Corporate Inertia Over Security

Organisations that continue to disregard the need to ensure they have adopted basic cyber security hygiene practices should be taken to task. This will be critical, especially as cyber criminals turn their attention to sectors where cyber threats can result in real-world risks, as demonstrated in the US Colonial Pipeline attack. In many of my conversations with cyber security experts, there is a shared sense of frustration that businesses still are failing to get some of the most basic things right. Default passwords are left unchanged, frontline staff and employees are still falling for common scams and phishing attacks, and major businesses think nothing of using technology that are decades old.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-pipeline-ransomware-attack-serves-as-fair-warning-to-persistent-corporate-inertia-over-security/

Ransomware Attackers Are Now Using Triple Extortion Tactics

The number of organisations affected by ransomware so far this year has more than doubled, compared with the same period in 2020, according to the report. Since April, Check Point researchers have observed an average of 1,000 organisations impacted by ransomware every week. For all of 2020, ransomware cost businesses worldwide around $20 billion, more than 75% higher than the amount in 2019. The healthcare sector has been seeing the highest volume of ransomware with around 109 attacks per organization each week. Amid news of a ransomware attack against gas pipeline company Colonial Pipeline, the utilities sector has experienced 59 attacks per organization per week. Organisations in the insurance and legal sector have been affected by 34 such attacks each week.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/ransomware-attackers-are-now-using-triple-extortion-tactics/

AXA Pledges To Stop Reimbursing Ransom Payments For French Ransomware Victims

Insurance company AXA has revealed that, at the request of French government officials, it will end cyber insurance policies in France that pay ransomware victims back for ransoms paid out to cyber criminals. While unconfirmed, the Associated Press reported that the move was an industry first. AXA is one of the five biggest insurers in Europe and made the decision as ransomware attacks become a daily occurrence for organisations across the world.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/axa-pledges-to-stop-reimbursing-ransom-payments-for-french-ransomware-victims/

The Dystopic Future Of Cyber Security And The Importance Of Empowering CISOs

Over a decade ago, in 2007, the first iPhone was released and with it emerged an ecosystem of apps that continues to expand to this day. This was a watershed moment, not solely for the technology industry, but civilization. It was a catalyst for what was to come. Suddenly, every consumer could access the internet at a touch of a button, and the accumulation of their data by private companies began en masse. It was at this point that data was established as an increasingly valuable commodity, and in turn, became a heightened exploitation risk. It also instigated a wave of innovation that has yet to break and is only growing rapidly in pace. In this state, technology providers, users, and manufacturers get excited about new functionalities, new features, new developments, while little thought is given to the negative consequences that could arise as a result. Indeed, fear has no place in the state of innovation as it is this primal thinking that inhibits creativity.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/blogs/the-dystopic-future-of/

Cyber Security Experts Warn Over Online Wine Scams

Online wine scams became a bigger threat as cyber criminals sought to take advantage of more people and businesses organising virtual drinks and ordering bottles on the internet in the wake of Covid-19 restrictions, suggests the report. So-called ‘phishing emails’ were a particular concern, according to findings published in April by US-based group Recorded Future in partnership with Area 1 Security. From January 2020 onwards, the authors found a significant rise in legitimate wine-themed web domain registrations using terms like Merlot, Pinot, Chardonnay or Vino.

https://www.decanter.com/wine-news/cyber-security-experts-warn-over-online-wine-scams-457647/

Threats

Ransomware

BEC

Phishing

Other Social Engineering

Malware

Mobile

IOT

Vulnerabilities

Data Breaches

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Supply Chain

Nation State Actors

Privacy

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 weekly ‘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 16 April 2021

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 16 April 2021: 61% Of Employees Fail Basic Cyber Security Quiz; More Than 1,900 Hacking Groups Active Today; Ransomware Crisis Worsens; Enterprise Security Attackers Are One Password Away From Your Worst Day; Microsoft’s April Update Patches 114 Bugs; Nation-State Attacks Targeting Businesses Rise; Criminals Installing Cryptojacking Malware On Unpatched Exchange Servers; Network Vulns Affect Over 100 Million Devices; Brits Still Confused By Multi-Factor Authentication

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

61 Percent Of Employees Fail Basic Cyber Security Quiz

Nearly 70% of employees polled in a new survey said they recently received cyber security training from their employers, yet 61% nevertheless failed when asked to take a basic quiz on the topic. This was one of the leading findings of a research study that sought to understand the cyber security habits of some 1,200 workers, as well as their knowledge of best practices and ability to recognize security threats.

https://www.scmagazine.com/home/security-news/61-percent-of-employees-fail-basic-cybersecurity-quiz/

More Than 1,900 Distinct Hacking Groups Are Active Today

There are currently more than 1,900 distinct hacking groups that are active today, a number that grew from 1,800 groups recorded at the end of 2019. In its yearly cyber crime report, the company said it discovered 650 new threat actors during 2020, but new evidence also allowed it to remove 500 groups from its threat actor tracker due to overlaps in activity and hacking infrastructure with previously known clusters.

https://therecord.media/fireeye-more-than-1900-distinct-hacking-groups-are-active-today/

Ransomware: The Internet's Biggest Security Crisis Is Getting Worse

Organisations continue to fall victim to ransomware, and yet progress on tackling these attacks, which now constitute one of the biggest security problems on the internet, remains slow. From small companies to councils, government agencies and big business, the number and range of organisations hit by ransomware is rising. One recent example; schools with 36,000 students have been hit, leaving pupils without access to email as attempts were made to get systems back online. That is at least four chains of schools attacked in the last month.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/ransomware-the-internets-biggest-security-crisis-is-getting-worse-we-need-a-way-out/?&web_view=true

Enterprise Security Attackers Are One Password Away From Your Worst Day

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome, then one might say the cyber security industry is insane.

Criminals continue to innovate with highly sophisticated attack methods, but many security organisations still use the same technological approaches they did 10 years ago. The world has changed, but cyber security hasn’t kept pace.

Distributed systems, with people and data everywhere, mean the perimeter has disappeared. And the hackers couldn’t be more excited. The same technology approaches, like correlation rules, manual processes and reviewing alerts in isolation, do little more than remedy symptoms while hardly addressing the underlying problem.

Credentials are supposed to be the front gates of the castle, but as the SOC is failing to change, it is failing to detect. The cyber security industry must rethink its strategy to analyse how credentials are used and stop breaches before they become bigger problems.

https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/16/enterprise-security-attackers-are-one-password-away-from-your-worst-day/

Microsoft’s April Update Patches 114 Bugs—Half Of Which Allow Remote Code Execution

The fourth Patch Tuesday of 2021 is another big one. Today, Microsoft revealed 114 vulnerabilities fixed in the monthly security, over half of which could potentially be exploited for remote code execution by attackers. Of the 55 remote execution bugs, over half were tied to Windows’ Remote Procedure Call (RPC) interface. Four more were Microsoft Exchange bugs (all urgent fixes) reported to Microsoft by the National Security Agency. In addition, six Chrome vulnerabilities that were previously addressed by Google are included in the roll-up.

https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2021/04/13/microsofts-april-update-patches-114-bugs-more-than-half-of-which-allow-remote-code-execution/

Nation-State Cyber Attacks Targeting Businesses Are On The Rise

Businesses are increasingly coming under fire from nation state-backed hackers as governments around the world engage in attacks to steal secrets or lay the foundations for future attacks. Nation States, Cyberconflict and the Web of Profit, a study by cyber security researchers at HP and criminologists at the University of Surrey, warns that the number of key nation-state attacks has risen significantly over the past three years – and that enterprises and businesses are increasingly being targeted. An analysis of nation-state cyber attacks between 2017 and 2020 reveals that just over a third of organisations targeted were businesses: cyber defence, media, government, and critical infrastructure are all also common targets in these attacks, but enterprise has risen to the top of the list.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/nation-state-cyber-attacks-targeting-businesses-are-on-the-rise/

Cyber Criminals Are Installing Cryptojacking Malware On Unpatched Microsoft Exchange Servers

Cyber criminals are targeting vulnerable Microsoft Exchange servers with cryptocurrency mining malware in a campaign designed to secretly use the processing power of compromised systems to make money. Zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server were detailed last month when Microsoft released critical security updates to prevent the exploitation of vulnerable systems. Cyber attackers ranging from nation-state-linked hacking groups to ransomware gangs have rushed to take advantage of unpatched Exchange servers -- but they are not the only ones.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/free-money-cyber-criminals-are-installing-cryptojacking-malware-on-unpatched-microsoft-exchange-servers/

NAME:WRECK DNS Vulnerabilities Affect Over 100 Million Devices

Security researchers have disclosed nine vulnerabilities affecting network communication stacks running on at least 100 million devices. Collectively referred to as NAME: WRECK, the flaws could be leveraged to take offline affected devices or to gain control over them. The vulnerabilities were found in a wide range of products, from high-performance servers and networking equipment to operational technology (OT) systems that monitor and control industrial equipment. According to researchers threat actors could exploit NAME:WRECK vulnerabilities to deal significant damage to government or enterprise servers, healthcare facilities, retailers, or companies in the manufacturing business by stealing sensitive data, modifying or taking equipment offline for sabotage purposes.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/name-wreck-dns-vulnerabilities-affect-over-100-million-devices/

Brits Still Confused By Multi-Factor Authentication

The British public are still woefully underinformed and unaware of the security benefits of multi-factor authentication (MFA). The industry association, founded in 2012 to promote authentication standards and reduce global reliance on passwords, recently polled over 4000 consumers in the UK, France, Germany, and the US. It revealed that half (49%) UK consumers have had their social media accounts compromised or know a friend or family member who has. However, despite a continued number of high-profile account takeovers, 43% said this does not make them enhance security on their accounts, even though they “feel like” they should. Part of the problem seems to be a general lack of understanding about the benefits of MFA in protecting account holders from phishing, as well as credential stuffing and other brute force attack types. Although such features are offered by all social media companies today, over a quarter (26%) of respondents said they were not using or didn’t know about them.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/brits-still-confused-by/

623K Payment Cards Stolen From Cyber Crime Forum

The Swarmshop cyber underground “card shop” has been hit by hackers, who lifted the site’s database of stolen payment-card data and leaked it online. That is according to researchers, who said that the database was posted on a rival underground forum. Card shops, are online cyber criminal forums where stolen payment-card data is bought and sold. Researchers said the database in question contains 623,036 payment-card records from card-issuers in Brazil, Canada, China, France, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the U.K., and the U.S.

https://threatpost.com/623m-payment-cards-stolen-from-cybercrime-forum/165336/

Threats

Ransomware

Phishing

Other Social Engineering

Malware

Mobile

Vulnerabilities

Data Breaches

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Nation State Actors

Privacy

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 weekly ‘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

Cyber Weekly Flash Briefing 17 July 2020: Major US Twitter accounts hacked, Malware in Chinese Tax Software, NK steals $2bn through cyber heists, Counterfeit Cisco kit, Windows DNS vulns, Citrix vuln

Cyber Weekly Flash Briefing 17 July 2020: Major US Twitter accounts hacked, Malware in Chinese Tax Software, NK steals $2bn through cyber heists, Counterfeit Cisco kit, Windows DNS vulns, Citrix vulns, Iranian Spies Accidentally Leaked Videos of Themselves Hacking, Malicious Router Log-Ins Soar Tenfold in Botnet Battle

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.

Major US Twitter accounts hacked in Bitcoin scam

Billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates are among many prominent US figures targeted by hackers on Twitter in an apparent Bitcoin scam.

The official accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Kanye West also requested donations in the cryptocurrency.

"Everyone is asking me to give back," a tweet from Mr Gates' account said. "You send $1,000, I send you back $2,000."

The US Senate Commerce committee has demanded Twitter brief it about the incident next week.

Twitter said it was a "co-ordinated" attack targeting its employees "with access to internal systems and tools".

"We know they [the hackers] used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf," the company said in a series of tweets.

It added that "significant steps" had been taken to limit access to such internal systems and tools while the company's investigation was ongoing.

The firm has also blocked users from being able to tweet Bitcoin wallet addresses for the time being.

Read more here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-53425822

More Malware Found Hidden in Chinese Tax Software

A malware campaign hiding backdoors in mandatory Chinese corporate tax software is far more extensive than at first thought, according to researchers from Trustwave.

The vendor warned last month that it discovered several clients had unwittingly installed the GoldenSpy backdoor after agreeing to download the Intelligent Tax software product, produced by Aisino Corporation.

China’s banks require all companies to download software from either Aisino or Baiwang to comply with its Golden Tax VAT scheme, indicating that the malware campaign has either direct sponsorship from the government, or is happening with its blessing.

Soon after Trustwave reported on the powerful GoldenSpy backdoor, which it said could not be removed, an uninstaller appeared out of the blue which directly negates the threat.

Now the vendor has discovered a second piece of malware, dubbed GoldenHelper, which dates back to before GoldenSpy. It’s found in the Golden Tax Invoicing Software (Baiwang edition), which is digitally signed by a subsidiary of Aisino, Nou Nou Technologies.

The malware, while functionally different to GoldenSpy, has a similar delivery mechanism and it utilises three DLL files to: interface with the Golden Tax software; bypass Windows security and escalate privileges; and download and execute arbitrary code with system-level privileges.

It also uses multiple techniques to hide its presence and activity, including randomization of name whilst in transit and of file system location, timestomping, IP-based Domain Generation Algorithm (DGA), and UAC bypass and privilege escalation.

Read more here: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/more-malware-hidden/

How North Korea’s army of hackers stole $2bn through cyber bank heists

Towards the end of last year, a series of seemingly innocuous LinkedIn messages were sent to employees of aerospace and military companies in the UK, Europe and the Middle East. Curious engineers who replied to the job offers were sent further messages urging them to download files to find out more about the opportunities.

The file contained a list of available jobs and the salaries for each role. While recipients read through the list of highly paid positions, their computers were silently taken over by hackers who implanted software that allowed them to peer through all of their files and emails.

The lucrative jobs weren’t real, and neither were the recruiters. Instead the messages were sent by Lazarus, a notorious North Korean hacking group, which in 2014 had managed to break into the servers of Sony Pictures and in 2017 brought parts of the NHS to a standstill during the WannaCry ransomware attack.

Once the hackers had gained access to their target’s computer, the fake LinkedIn profiles vanished.

One hacker then used his access to a victim’s email account to find an outstanding invoice. He sent an email to another business demanding payment, but asked for the money to be sent to a new bank account controlled by the hacking group.

This cyber attack is a typical example of North Korea’s unique approach to hacking. As well as attacks to make political statements, the country uses its legions of hackers to generate billions of dollars for the regime through a series of audacious cyber bank heists.

A United Nations report published last year estimated that North Korean hackers have stolen more than $2bn (£1.5bn) and said the money was being funneled into the regime’s missile development programmes.

Cut off from almost all of the world’s financial systems, North Korea has for years relied on a series of illegal activities to bolster its income. As well as thriving drug trafficking and counterfeiting schemes, the regime has also funded hundreds of its own digital bank heists.

Read more here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/07/12/north-koreas-army-hackers-stole-2bn-cyber-bank-heists/

UK ‘on alert for China cyber attack’ in retaliation for Hong Kong

The government must be alert to potential cyber attacks from countries such as China, ministers have said as tensions increase between London and Beijing.

Last month relations between the UK and China soured after Boris Johnson pledged to offer refuge to millions of Hong Kong citizens if the country implements its planned national security law. The government is also reported to have ‘changed its view’ on plans for Chinese tech company Huawei to play a role in developing the UK’s 5G network due to growing unease over security risks.

Now senior sources claim the worsening ties could see Britain be targeted by Chinese-backed hackers in a so-called ‘cyber 9/11’. This could damage computer networks, cause power and phone blackouts and bring hospitals, government and businesses to a standstill.

Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre says it is not ‘expecting’ a rise in attacks. However, one senior minister said the threat was ‘obviously part of conversations’, but added that ‘all risk must be looked at in the round’.

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2020/07/12/ministers-fear-cyber-attack-uk-relations-worsen-china-12978970/

Ransomware warning: Now attacks are stealing data as well as encrypting it

There's now an increasing chance of getting your data stolen, in addition to your network being encrypted, when you are hit with a ransomware attack – which means falling victim to this kind of malware is now even more dangerous.

The prospect of being locked out of the network by cyber criminals is damaging enough, but by leaking stolen data, hackers are creating additional problems. Crooks use the stolen data as leverage, effectively trying to bully organisations who've become infected with ransomware into paying up – rather than trying to restore the network themselves – on the basis that if no ransom is paid, private information will be leaked.

Ransomware groups like those behind Maze and Sodinokibi have already shown they'll go ahead and publish private information if they're not paid and now the tactic is becoming increasingly common, with over one in ten attacks now coming with blackmail in addition to extortion.

Organisations in the legal, healthcare and financial sectors are among the most targeted by these campaigns, based on the assumption that they hold the most sensitive data.

Read more here: https://www.zdnet.com/article/ransomware-warning-now-attacks-are-stealing-data-as-well-as-encrypting-it/

Stop Ignoring Two-Factor Authentication Just Because You’re Lazy

A large number of people and businesses are missing out on a simple, effective online security solution by ignoring two-factor authentication (2FA), also called multi-factor authentication (MFA). The only requirement is to enter a code or press a button on a separate device from the one being used, yet for many, that effort seems too great. Laziness literally becomes the weakest point in their data protection systems.

If this sounds familiar, it’s time to change, as 2FA strengthens the security of all-important apps, including those where you share financial details such as banking and shopping apps – but to work, it has to be used.

Read more here: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/opinions/authentication-lazy/

Russian hackers ‘try to steal vaccine research’ in cyber attack on labs

Hackers linked to Russian intelligence agencies are targeting British scientists seeking to develop a coronavirus vaccine, spooks in the US, UK and Canada have warned.

In a joint statement Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the US National Security Agency and the Canadian Communication Security Establishment, said that the APT29 hacking group, also known as the ‘Dukes’ or ‘Cozy Bear’ has been hitting medical organisations and universities with cyber attacks which they believe have had the Kremlin’s blessing.

These attacks are part of a global campaign to steal research secrets of research. While the institutions targeted have not been revealed, the UK is home to two of the world’s leading coronavirus vaccine development programmes based at Oxford University and Imperial College London.

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2020/07/16/russian-hackers-launch-cyber-attack-uk-vaccine-researchers-12998769/

Counterfeit Cisco switches raise network security alarms

In a disconcerting event for IT security professionals, counterfeit versions of Cisco Catalyst 2960-X Series switches were discovered on an unnamed business network, and the fake gear was found to be designed to circumvent typical authentication procedures, according to a report.

researcher say their investigators found that while the counterfeit Cisco 2960-X units did not have any backdoor-like features, they did employ various measures to fool security controls. For example, one of the units exploited what F-Secure believes to be a previously undiscovered software vulnerability to undermine secure boot processes that provide protection against firmware tampering.

Read more: https://www.networkworld.com/article/3566705/counterfeit-cisco-switches-raise-network-security-alarms.html

Vulnerability in Windows DNS servers

Microsoft has reported a critical vulnerability in Windows DNS server under CVE-2020-1350.

Bad news: The vulnerability scored 10 on the CVSS scale, which means it’s critical. Good news: Cyber criminals can exploit it only if the system is running in DNS server mode; in other words, the number of potentially vulnerable computers is relatively small. Moreover, the company has already released patches and a workaround.

The vulnerability lets a malefactor force DNS servers running Windows Server to execute malicious code remotely. In other words, the vulnerability belongs to the RCE class. To exploit CVE-2020-1350, one just has to send a specially generated request to the DNS server.

Installing the Microsoft patch modifies the method of handling requests by DNS servers. The patch is available for Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server version 1903, Windows Server version 1909, and Windows Server version 2004.

Read more here: https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/cve-2020-1350-dns-rce/36366/

Threat actors are scanning the Internet for Citrix systems affected by the recently disclosed vulnerabilities.

This week Citrix has addressed 11 vulnerabilities affecting the ADC, Gateway, and SD-WAN WANOP networking products. The vulnerabilities could be exploited by attackers for local privilege escalation, to trigger a DoS condition, to bypass authorization, to get code injection, and to launch XSS attacks.

Some of the addressed flaws could be exploited only if the attackers have access to the targeted system and request user interaction, or other conditions must be verified. For this reason, Citrix believes the flaws are less likely to be exploited.

Now, hackers are scanning the web for systems affected by the recently disclosed Citrix vulnerabilities.

Read more here: https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/105776/hacking/vulnerable-citrix-systems-scan.html

Iranian Spies Accidentally Leaked Videos of Themselves Hacking

A security team obtained five hours of Iranian state actor group APT35 hacking operations, showing exactly how the group steals data from email accounts—and who it’s targeting.

Normally security researchers need to painstakingly piece together the blow-by-blow of a state-sponsored hacking operation, they're usually following a thin trail of malicious code samples, network logs, and connections to faraway servers. That detective work gets significantly easier when hackers record what they’re doing and upload the video to an unprotected server on the open internet. Which is precisely what a group of Iranian hackers may have unwittingly done.

Read more here: https://www.wired.com/story/iran-apt35-hacking-video/

Amazon-Themed Phishing Campaigns Swim Past Security Checks

A pair of recent campaigns aim to lift credentials and other personal information under the guise of Amazon package-delivery notices.

Amazon in the era of COVID-19 has become a staple of many people’s lives, as they order everything from sourdough starter to exercise equipment. Cybercrooks have latched onto the delivery behemoth as a lure for phishing emails, knowing that plenty of legitimate delivery messages are also making it into people’s inboxes and offering cover.

Researchers recently spotted a pair of savvy campaigns leveraging Amazon: A credential-phishing attempt using a purported Amazon delivery order failure notice; and a voice phishing (vishing) attempt also using Amazon delivery order. Both are examples of the ever-more sophisticated phishing efforts being developed by fraudsters that are aimed at gaming traditional email security efforts, researchers said.

Read more here: https://threatpost.com/amazon-phishing-campaigns-security-checks/157495/

Malicious Router Log-Ins Soar Tenfold in Botnet Battle

Home users are being urged to ensure their routers are adequately protected after experts revealed a tenfold spike in brute force log-in attempts.

According to the latest research from Trend Micro “Worm War: The Botnet Battle for IoT Territory”, describes a threat landscape in which rival cyber-criminals are competing against each other in a race to compromise as many devices as possible, to conscript into botnets.

The vendor claimed that automated log-in attempts against routers rose from 23 million in September to nearly 249 million attempts in December 2019. As recently as March this year, it detected almost 194 million brute force logins.

The report also revealed an uptick in routers attempting to open telnet sessions with other devices. As telnet is unencrypted it’s a favorite way for hackers or their botnets to sniff user credentials and therefore infect more routers or IoT devices.

Nearly 16,000 devices attempted to open telnet sessions with other IoT devices in a single week in mid-March, according to the data.

The report warned that these mass compromises could cause serious disruption for home networks at a time when many global users are being forced to work and study from home.

Read more here: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/malicious-router-logins-soar/

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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Antony Cleal Antony Cleal

Week in review 06 October 2019: top 10 cyber myths, security breaches inevitable, employee negligence contribute to data breaches, UK local authorities hit with hundreds of cyberattacks every hour

Week in review 06 October 2019: top 10 cyber myths, security breaches inevitable, employee negligence contribute to data breaches, UK local authorities hit with hundreds of cyberattacks every hour

Round up of the most significant open source stories of the last week

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.

Top 10 Cyber Security Myths

SecurityBoulevard.com have a list of the top 10 cyber security myths that criminals love, including the Number 1 ‘This can’t happen to me’ and a few other prime examples that we do hear in conversation quite often.

Read the full list here: https://securityboulevard.com/2019/10/10-cybersecurity-myths-that-criminals-love/

A security breach is inevitable, IT leaders warned

No matter how much IT security tech and training is in place, sophisticated, targeted attacks are going to breach company defences, Carbon Black warns

A survey by security vendor Carbon Black, as part of their Global threat series study, reported that 84% of UK organisations participating in the study said they have suffered one or more breaches in the past 12 months due to external cyber attacks.

The survey reported that the average number of breaches in affected organisations was 2.89, a reduction from the 3.67 seen in the January 2019 report, with more than half (51.5%) of respondents saying they had been breached only once.

Carbon Black said the number of businesses identifying just a single breach has grown from the previous research, where only 15% had suffered only a single breach. This may indicate that businesses are responding more robustly to breach incidents to ensure that frequency is reduced.

At the other end of the scale, 5.5% of the businesses surveyed admitted they had been breached 10 or more times, and 3% said they didn’t know how many times they had been breached.

The study found that among the IT leaders who took part in the research, 84% reported an increase in cyber attacks in the past 12 months, with nine in 10 saying the attacks they face are becoming more sophisticated. This compares with 87% in the previous report and 82% in the summer of 2018.

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252471594/A-security-breach-is-inevitable-IT-leaders-warned

Employee negligence can be a leading contributor to data breaches

Two thirds (68%) of businesses reported their organisation has experienced at least one data breach in the past 12 months, and nearly three in four (69%) of those data breaches involved the loss or theft of paper documents or electronic devices containing sensitive information, according to a report conducted by the Ponemon Institute.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2019/10/01/workplace-data-breaches-risk/

UK local authorities hit with hundreds of cyberattacks every hour

Councils across the UK have suffered 263 million attacks in the first six months of the year - equivalent to 800 attacks an hour, or 13 attacks every minute. This is according to a new report by Gallagher, based on a Freedom of Information (FoI) request made towards the councils, with 203 of them answering, and another 204 councils who did not respond so the actual number of attacks could more than double the above, exceeding 500 million in the first half of the year. This gives an idea of the sheer scale and number of attacks going on all the time against all organisations.

https://www.itproportal.com/news/uk-local-authorities-hit-with-hundreds-of-cyberattacks-every-hour/

Microsoft: Any form of MFA takes users out of reach of most attacks

There have been several reports in the media regarding SIM hijacking attacks and the ease with which these types of attacks are being perpetrated, and these reports have raised some doubts or concerns about the security of multi-factor authentication.

This article does a good job of explaining how not all MFA solutions are created equally but the overarching message is that any MFA implementation, anything beyond just a username and password, significantly increases the amount of work for an attacker and as a result accounts with MFA represent less than 0.1% of all attacks.

FBI Stance on Whether Firms Should Pay Ransomware

The FBI in the US came out with hard hitting advice telling firms not to pay ransoms, but to inform the FBI in the event that a firm in the US did decide to pay a ransom.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/fbis-new-ransomware-warning-dont-pay-up-but-if-you-do-tell-us-about-it/

They then softened their stance with an updated version of their guidance including a section discussing the option of paying the hackers to get data decrypted.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/03/fbi_softens_stance_on_ransomware/

Best practice around ransomware is always to ensure you have sufficient backups, both online and offline, such that you can restore your data in the event you get hit with ransomware. Firms need to ensure they have tested recovering their data to make sure they could recover if they needed to. It is too late when trying to recover for real to discover the backup doesn’t work or the wrong directory was being backed up.

Do not rely on cloud storage as being sufficient backup as often any ransomware attack will synchronise with files stored in the cloud before the infection is detected.

More Attacks Seen Using ‘Island Hopping’ (using targets with less security to leverage attacks against targets with more security)

Recent attacks, especially recent attacks against the aerospace and defence industries, have seen an increase in ‘island hopping’, where a bigger group or better defended target is attacked indirectly, through its network of weaker, less defended partner companies. These attacks are carried out in a more ‘horizontal' way rather than the more traditional 'vertical' methods.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-new-hacking-group-is-using-island-hopping-to-target-victims/

In addition to the recent aerospace attacks island hopping is also becoming more frequently used to attack financial services.

https://www.itpro.co.uk/security/33946/50-of-cyber-attacks-now-use-island-hopping

Half a million British Airways customers have been given the go-ahead to sue the airline over its cybersecurity breach last summer

On Friday a High Court judge granted a group litigation order, paving the way for a mass legal action enabling some 500,000 people affected by a series of breaches between April and September last year.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/half-a-million-customers-can-sue-ba-over-huge-data-breach-n8z0rxpsk 

Cybersecurity breaches to increase nearly 70% in next 5 years

New analysis from Juniper Research has found that the cost of data breaches will rise from $3 trillion each year to over $5 trillion in 2024, an average annual growth of 11%.

 This will primarily be driven by increasing fines for data breaches as regulation tightens, as well as a greater proportion of business lost as enterprises become more dependent on the digital realm.

The new research in The Future of Cybercrime & Security: Threat Analysis, Impact Assessment & Mitigation Strategies 2019-2024 whitepaper noted that while the cost per breach will steadily rise in the future, the levels of data disclosed will make headlines but not impact breach costs directly, as most fines and lost business are not directly related to breach sizes.

https://www.uktech.news/news/cybersecurity-breaches-to-increase-nearly-70%25-in-next-5-years-20191002

Sophisticated tools provide false sense of cyber-security: Survey

Are you confident that your firm is cyber-threat-proof? A Forrester survey among over 250 senior security decision-makers in North America and Europe found that most of them are confident in their firms’ security measures. However, threats to cyber-security remain strong, said the research.

"The abundance of technology investments gives firms a false sense of confidence in their security posture. Their challenges reveal a different story," said the report.

Security executives currently employ a variety of tools and technologies to identify risks and test the effectiveness of their security controls. As a result, they are left with point-in-time assessments that require them to cobble together data from disparate systems to truly understand the organisation’s security posture. This approach is reactive, labour-intensive, and insufficient in scale, explained the report.

https://www.scmagazineuk.com/sophisticated-tools-provide-false-sense-cyber-security-survey/article/1660872 

Fileless Malware on the Rise

According to reports analysing the state of the threat landscape, fileless malware incidents are up to some 265% in the first half of 2019 when compared to the same period in 2018. Fileless malware sometimes has been referred to as a zero-footprint attack or non-malware attack. However, fileless malware may be the best name for the attack method, as the attack is not dependent on end users downloading and running malware via compromised files. Rather, fileless malware executes malicious scripts by piggybacking on legitimate software packages. More often than not, the malware resides in the computer’s random access memory (RAM), not installed on the hard drive.

https://securityboulevard.com/2019/10/fileless-malware-on-the-rise/

 

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