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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 9th June 2023

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 09 June 2023:

-74% of Breaches Involve Human Element- Make Employees Your Best Asset

-Cyber Security Agency Urges Vigilance as MOVEit Attack Impacts Major Companies Including British Airways, Boots and the BBC

-CISOs and IT Lack Confidence in Executives’ Cyber Defence Knowledge as the Spotlight Falls on the Boardroom

-Only 1 in 10 CISOs are Board-ready as Nearly Half of Boards Lack Cyber Expertise

-BEC Volumes and Ransomware Costs Double in a Year

-Hackers are Targeting C-Suite Executives Through Their Personal Email

-Proactive Detection is Crucial as Organisations Lack Effective Threat Research

-Number of Vulnerabilities Exploited Rose by 55%

-Ransomware Behind Most Cyber Attacks, with Record-breaking May

-4 Areas of Cyber Risk That Boards Need to Address

-North Korea Makes 50% of Income from Cyber Attacks

-Going Beyond “Next Generation” Network Security

-Worldwide 2022 Email Phishing Statistics and Examples

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

  • 74% of Breaches Involve Human Element- Make Employees Your Best Asset

Verizon’s recent data breach report analysed 16,312 security incidents and 5,199 breaches. A total of 74% of breaches involved a human element, highlighting the role of employees in achieving good cyber resilience. Organisations looking to improve their resilience should therefore consider how well and how frequently they train their users. In a recent report, Fortinet found that 90% of leaders believed that increasing their employee cyber security awareness would help decrease the occurrence of cyber attacks. Worryingly, despite 85% of leaders having an awareness and training programme in place, 50% believed their employees still lacked cyber security knowledge.

With an effective training programme, organisations can increase their employees’ cyber risk awareness and empower them in defending the organisation, laying the foundation for a strong cyber security culture.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/06/06/verizon-data-breach-investigations-report-2023-dbir/

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/06/09/employees-cybersecurity-knowledge/

  • Cyber Security Agency Urges Vigilance as MOVEit Attack Impacts Major Companies Including British Airways, Boots and the BBC

The recent cyber attacks on file transfer software MOVEit have impacted a number of major companies through their supply chain. The attack, which hit UK-based HR and payroll provider Zellis has had a huge knock-on effect, with major companies such as British Airways, Boots and the BBC suffering as a result of using Zellis in their supply chain. The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has emphasised the need for organisations to exercise heightened vigilance.

Organisations must be aware of supply chain risks, and how an attack on a supplier or service provider can impact their own organisation. It is important for organisations to manage supply chain security, assess third party risks, communicate with suppliers and keep on top of emerging threats; it’s no simple task.

https://www.securityweek.com/several-major-organizations-confirm-being-impacted-by-moveit-attack/

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/british-cybersecurity-agency-urges-vigilance-major-companies-fall-victim-software-hack-1716493

  • CISOs and IT Lack Confidence in Executives’ Cyber Defence Knowledge as the Spotlight Falls on the Boardroom

Nearly three-quarters of data breaches include an element of human failure, and senior business leaders were particularly at risk, according to a recent report. Not only do business leaders possess the most sensitive information, but they are often the least protected, with many organisations making security protocol exemptions for them. Such factors have pushed the boardroom into the spotlight more.

In another report, it was found that only 28% of IT professionals were confident in their executives’ ability to recognise a phishing email. The report found that as many as 71% of executives were reusing compromised passwords from personal accounts inside the company. Technology alone won’t solve the problem: user awareness training is required and this includes the boardroom.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3698708/cisos-it-lack-confidence-in-executives-cyber-defense-knowledge.html

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366539293/Cyber-spotlight-falls-on-boardroom-privilege-as-incidents-soar

  • Only 1 in 10 CISOs are Board-ready as Nearly Half of Boards Lack Cyber Expertise

A recent study has found that only 1 in 10 chief information security officers (CISOs) have all the key traits thought to be crucial for success on a corporate board, with many lacking governance skills and experience and other attributes needed for board readiness. Worryingly, nearly half of the 1,000 companies in the study lacked at least one director with cyber security expertise. This is concerning as good cyber security starts from the board: the board is responsible for understanding the business risks of a cyber incident and for endorsing whether the cyber controls in place have reduced those risks to a level that the board is happy with. Similarly, the board would not sign off financial risks without ensuring they had someone with financial experience and qualifications present. The Black Arrow vCISO service is ideal for organisations that need expertise in assessing and managing cyber risks, underpinned by governance reporting and metrics presented to enable the board to make educated and informed decisions.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3698291/only-one-in-10-cisos-today-are-board-ready-study-says

  • BEC Volumes and Ransomware Costs Double in a Year

The number of recorded business email compromise (BEC) attacks doubled over the past year, with the threat comprising nearly 60% of social engineering incidents studied by Verizon for its 2023 Data Breach Investigations Report. The report this year was based on analysis of 16,312 security incidents and 5,199 breaches over the past year.

Pretexting, which is commonly using in BEC attacks, is now more common than phishing in social engineering incidents, although the latter is still more prevalent in breaches, the report noted. The median amount stolen in pretexting attacks now stands at $50,000. The vast majority of attacks (97%) over the past year were motivated by financial gain rather than espionage.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/bec-volumes-ransomware-costs/

  • Hackers are Targeting C-Suite Executives Through Their Personal Email

As companies rely on chief financial officers (CFOs) to mitigate risk, cyber attacks and the costs associated with them are a major concern. Now there is also a growing trend of cyber criminals targeting C-suite executives in their personal lives, where it is easier to pull off a breach as there are fewer, if any, protections, instead of targeting them through their business accounts. Once attackers have access, they then try to use this to gain entry to the corporate systems. The report found that 42% of companies have experienced cyber criminal attacks on their senior-level corporate executives, which can compromise sensitive business data. The report found that 58% of respondents stated that cyber threat prevention for executives and their digital assets are not covered in their cyber, IT and physical securities strategies and budgets.

https://fortune.com/2023/06/08/hackers-targeting-c-suite-executives-personal-email-cybersecurity

  • Proactive Detection is Crucial as Organisations Lack Effective Threat Research

In a recent study, it was found that CISOs are spending significantly less time on threat research and awareness, despite 58% having an increase in their budget for cyber security; the same number reported that their team is so busy, they may not detect an attack. In a different report, keeping up with threat intelligence was identified as one of the biggest challenges faced.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/06/06/cisos-cybersecurity-spending/

  • Number of Vulnerabilities Exploited Rose by 55%

A recent report from Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 found that the number of vulnerabilities that attackers are exploiting has grown by 55% compared to 2021, with most of the increase resulting from supply chain vulnerabilities; along with this was a 25% rise in the number of CVE’s, the term used for identified vulnerabilities. Worryingly ChatGPT scams saw a 910% increase in monthly domain registrations, pointing to an exponential growth in fraudulent activities taking advantage of the widespread usage and popularity of AI-powered chatbots.

Such growth puts further strain on cyber security staff, making it even harder for organisations to keep up. A strong threat management programme is needed, to help organisations prioritise threats and use organisational resources effectively to address said threats.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/exploitation-vulnerabilities-grew/

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/cves-surge-25-2022-another-record/

  • Ransomware Behind Most Cyber Attacks, with Record-breaking May

2022 saw ransomware account for nearly one in four (24%) cyber attacks, with 95% of events resulting in a loss costing upwards of $2.25 million during 2021-2022. Ransomware remains a significant threat as evidenced by a different report, which stated that May 2023 saw a 154% spike in ransomware compared to May 2022. Other key findings include unreported attacks being five times more likely than reported attacks.

https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-research/ransomware-hit-new-attack-highs-in-may-2023-blackfog-report-says/

https://www.scmagazine.com/analysis/ransomware/ransomware-attacks-have-room-to-grow-verizon-data-breach-report-shows

  • 4 Areas of Cyber Risk That Boards Need to Address

As technological innovations such as cloud computing, the Internet of Things, robotic process automation, and predictive analytics are integrated into organisations, it makes them increasingly susceptible to cyber threats. This means that governing and assessing cyber risks becomes a prerequisite for successful business performance. This need for transparency has been recognised by the regulators and facilitated by the new cyber security rules to ensure companies maintain adequate cyber security controls and appropriately disclose cyber-related risks and incidents.

To ensure they fulfil the requirements, organisations should focus on the following areas: position security as a strategic business enabler; continuously monitor the cyber risk capability performance; align cyber risk management with business needs through policies and standards; and proactively anticipate the changing threat landscape by utilising threat intelligence sources for emerging threats.

https://hbr.org/2023/06/4-areas-of-cyber-risk-that-boards-need-to-address

  • North Korea Makes 50% of Income from Cyber Attacks

The North Korean regime makes around half of its income from cyber attacks on cryptocurrency and other targets. A 2019 UN estimate claimed North Korea had amassed as much as $2bn through historic attacks on crypto firms and traditional banks.

North Korean hackers have been blamed for some of the biggest ever heists of cryptocurrency, including the $620m stolen from Sky Mavis’ Ronin Network last year and the $281m taken from KuCoin in 2020 and $35m from Atomic Wallet just this last weekend.

They are using increasingly sophisticated techniques to get what they want. The 3CX supply chain attacks, in which backdoor malware was implanted into a legitimate-looking software update from the eponymous comms provider, is thought to have been a targeted attempt at hitting crypto exchanges.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/north-korea-makes-50-income/

  • Going Beyond “Next Generation” Network Security

Over a decade ago, the phrase “next generation” was used in the network security space to describe the introduction of application-layer controls with firewalls. It was a pivotal moment for the space, setting a new standard for how we protected the perimeter. A lot has happened in the last decade though, most notably, the rapid adoption of cloud and multicloud architectures and the loss of the “perimeter.” Today, 82% of IT leaders have adopted hybrid cloud architectures, and 58% of organisations use between two and three public Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds. On top of that, 95% of web traffic is encrypted which limits visibility. Applications are everywhere, access privileges are unstructured, increasing the attack surface, and businesses expect near-perfect availability and resilience. To make things more complicated, enterprises have tried to solve these challenges with disparate solutions, leading to vendor sprawl among security stacks and operational inefficiency. What was once considered “next-generation” network security no longer cuts it.

https://blogs.cisco.com/security/going-beyond-next-generation-network-security-cisco-platform-approach

  • Worldwide 2022 Email Phishing Statistics and Examples

Remote and hybrid work environments have become the new norm. The fact that email has become increasingly integral to business operations, has led malicious actors to favour email as an attack vector. According to a report by security company Egress, 92% of organisations have fallen victim to phishing attacks in 2022, a 29% increase in phishing incidents from 2021. Phishing attacks aimed at stealing info and data, also known as credential phishing, saw a 4% growth in 2022, with nearly 7 million detections. Rather worryingly, there was a 35% increase in the number of detections that related to business email compromise (BEC); these attacks mostly impersonated executives or high-ranking management personnel. With the increase in AI tools, it is expected that cyber criminals will be better able to create and deploy more sophisticated phishing attacks.

https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/ciso/23/e/worldwide-email-phishing-stats-examples-2023.html


Governance, Risk and Compliance


Threats

Ransomware, Extortion and Destructive Attacks

Ransomware Victims

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

BEC – Business Email Compromise

Other Social Engineering; Smishing, Vishing, etc

Artificial Intelligence

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

Insurance

Dark Web

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Software Supply Chain

Cloud/SaaS

Hybrid/Remote Working

Shadow IT

Encryption

API

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Training, Education and Awareness

Data Protection

Careers, Working in Cyber and Information Security

Privacy, Surveillance and Mass Monitoring




Vulnerability Management

Vulnerabilities


Tools and Controls




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 28 April 2023

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 28 April 2023:

- Navigating The Future of Cyber: Business Strategy, Cyber Security Training, and Digital Transformation Are Key

- Shadow IT, SaaS Pose Security Liability for Enterprises

- The Strong Link Between Cyber Threat Intelligence and Digital Risk Protection

- Weak Credentials, Unpatched Vulnerabilities, Malicious Open Source Packages Causing Cloud Security Risks

- Over 70 billion Unprotected Files Available on Unsecured Web Servers

- Cyber Thieves Are Getting More Creative

- Modernising Vulnerability Management: The Move Toward Exposure Management

- Almost Three-quarters of Cyber Attacks Involve Ransomware

- Corporate Boards Pressure CISOs to Step Up Risk Mitigation Efforts

- NSA Sees ‘Significant’ Russian Intel Gathering on European, US Supply Chain Entities

- Email Threat Report 2023: Key Takeaways

- 5 Most Dangerous New Attack Techniques

- Many Public Salesforce Sites are Leaking Private Data

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

  • Navigating the Future of Cyber: Business Strategy, Cyber Security Training, and Digital Transformation are Key

Cyber investments have become table stakes for businesses around the world. Cyber crime is increasing, with 91% of organisations reporting at least one cyber incident in the past year. Not only are they growing in numbers, but they are becoming more sophisticated and diverse, with new threats constantly emerging. According to the 2023 Deloitte Global Future of Cyber survey, business leaders are changing how they think of cyber, and it’s emerging as a larger strategic discussion tied to an organisation’s long-term success.

Cyber is about more than protecting information—risk management, incident response planning, threat intelligence and training can often be directly correlated to increasing trust within businesses.

Cyber security training is essential for employees to ensure the safety and security of a business. Employees are often the first line of defence against cyber-attacks and frequently the weakest link in an organisation's security posture. Cyber security training can help employees recognise and avoid common cyber threats, such as phishing attacks, malware, and social engineering. 89% of organisations cited as high-performing cyber organisations have implemented annual cyber awareness training among all employees. With increased digital dependency year over year—effective employee training can raise awareness, reduce risk, improve security posture, and support compliance.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/deloitte/2023/04/20/navigating-the-future-of-cyber-business-strategy-cybersecurity-training-and-digital-transformation-are-key/?sh=1ab15c2c29c1

  • Shadow IT, SaaS Pose Security Liability for Enterprises

There's no denying that software-as-a-service (SaaS) has entered its golden age. Software tools have now become essential to modern business operations and continuity. However, not enough organisations have implemented the proper procurement processes to ensure they're protecting themselves from potential data breaches and reputational harm.

A critical component contributing to concerns around SaaS management is the rising trend of shadow IT, which is when employees download and use software tools without notifying their internal IT teams. A recent study shows that 77% of IT professionals believe that shadow IT is becoming a major concern in 2023, with more than 65% saying their SaaS tools aren't being approved. Organisations are beginning to struggle with maintaining security as their SaaS usage continues to sprawl.

To combat shadow IT and the high risks that come along with it, organisations must gain greater visibility over their SaaS stacks and institute an effective procurement process when bringing on new software solutions.

https://www.darkreading.com/edge-articles/shadow-it-saas-pose-security-liability-for-enterprises

  • The Strong Link Between Cyber Threat Intelligence and Digital Risk Protection

While indicators of compromise and attackers’ tactics, techniques, and processes (TTPs) remain central to threat intelligence, cyber threat intelligence needs have grown over the past few years, driven by things like digital transformation, cloud computing and remote working. In fact, these changes have led to a cyber threat intelligence (CTI) subcategory focused on digital risk protection (DRP). DRP is broadly defined as, “telemetry, analysis, processes, and technologies used to identify and mitigate risks associated with digital assets”.

According to research provider ESG, the most important functions of DRP as part of a mature CTI programme are: vulnerability exploit intelligence, takedown services, leaked data monitoring, malicious mobile application monitoring, brand protection and attack surface management. It should be noted that a mature CTI programme can utilise service providers to help carry out threat intelligence, it doesn’t have to be spun up by the organisation from nothing. Regardless, an organisation employing these DRP functions as part of a CTI programme will be increasing its cyber resilience and reducing the chance of a cyber incident.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3693754/the-strong-link-between-cyber-threat-intelligence-and-digital-risk-protection.html

  • Weak Credentials, Unpatched Vulnerabilities, Malicious Open Source Packages Causing Cloud Security Risks

Threat actors are getting more adept at exploiting common everyday issues in the cloud, including misconfigurations, weak credentials, lack of authentication, unpatched vulnerabilities, and malicious open-source software (OSS) packages. Meanwhile, security teams take an average of 145 hours to solve alerts, with 80% of cloud alerts triggered by just 5% of security rules in most environments according to a recent report. The report, conducted by UNIT 42 analysed the workload of 210,000 cloud accounts across 1,300 organisations.

The report’s findings echoed similarities from the previous year, finding almost all cloud users, roles, services and resources grant excessive permissions. Some of the other key findings include as many as 83% of organisations having hard-coded credentials in their source control management systems, 53% of cloud accounts allowing weak password usage and 44% allowing password reuse and 71% of high or critical vulnerabilities exposed were at least two years old.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3693260/weak-credentials-unpatched-vulnerabilities-malicious-oss-packages-causing-cloud-security-risks.html

  • Over 70 Billion Unprotected Files Available on Unsecured Web Servers

A recent report found that more than 70 billion files, including intellectual property and financial information, are freely available and unprotected on unsecured web servers. Other key findings of the report included almost 1 in 10 of all detected internet-facing assets having an unpatched vulnerability, with the top 10 vulnerabilities found unpatched at least 12 million times each.

The report predicted that there will be a significant rise in information stealing malware; the report had found that 50% of emails associated with customers were plaintext and unencrypted. Additionally, there will be more incidents due to an increase in assets which are not known to IT, known as shadow IT.

Organisations should look to employ efficient patch management, have an up to date asset register, and use encryption to better increase their cyber defences.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/04/24/critical-cybersecurity-exposures/

  • Cyber Thieves Are Getting More Creative

Cyber criminals are constantly changing their tactics and finding new ways to steal money from organisations. An example of this can be seen where criminals are breaking into systems to learn who is authorised to send payments and what the procedures are. Eventually, this leads to the criminal instructing payment to their own account.

Unfortunately, it is only after such events that some organisations are taking actions, such as verifying payments through phone calls. Whilst it is important for organisations to learn from attacks, it is beneficial to take a pro-active approach and employ procedures such as call back procedures before an incident has occurred.

https://hbr.org/2023/04/cyber-thieves-are-getting-more-creative

  • Modernising Vulnerability Management: The Move Toward Exposure Management

Managing vulnerabilities in the constantly evolving technological landscape is a difficult task. Although vulnerabilities emerge regularly, not all vulnerabilities present the same level of risk. Traditional metrics such as CVSS score or the number of vulnerabilities are insufficient for effective vulnerability management as they lack business context, prioritisation, and understanding of attackers' motivations, opportunities and means. Vulnerabilities only represent a small part of the attack surface that attackers can leverage.

Exposures are broader and can encompass more than just vulnerabilities. Exposures can result from various factors, such as human error, improperly defined security controls, and poorly designed and unsecured architecture. Organisations should consider that an attacker doesn’t just look at one exposure; attackers will often use a combination of vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, permissions and other exposures to move across systems and reach valuable assets.

As such, organisations looking to improve their cyber resiliency should consider their vulnerability management system and assess both whether it is taking into account exposures and the context in relation to the organisation.

https://thehackernews.com/2023/04/modernizing-vulnerability-management.html

  • Two-thirds of Cyber Attacks Involve Ransomware

A report from Sophos focusing on recent incident response cases, found that 68.4% of incidents resulted from ransomware. This was followed by network breaches, accounting for 18.4%. Regarding threat actor access, the report found that unpatched vulnerabilities were the single most common access method, followed by compromised credentials.

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/365535467/Almost-three-quarters-of-cyber-attacks-involve-ransomware

  • Corporate Boards Pressure CISOs to Step Up Risk Mitigation Efforts

A recent report found that the top challenges when implementing an effective cyber/IT risk management programme include an increase in the quantity (49%) and severity (49%) of cyber threats, a lack of funding (37%) and a lack of staffing/cyber risk talent (36%).

Cyber attacks have been increasing for several years now and resulting data breaches cost businesses an average of $4.35 million in 2022, according to the annual IBM ‘Cost of a Data Breach’ report. Given the financial and reputational consequences of cyber attacks, corporate board rooms are putting pressure on CISOs to identify and mitigate cyber/IT risk.

When it came to reporting to the board, 30% of CIO and CISO respondents say they do not communicate risk around specific business initiatives to other company leaders, indicating they may not know how to share that information in a constructive way.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/04/26/effective-it-risk-management/

  • NSA Sees ‘Significant’ Russian Intel Gathering on European, US Supply Chain Entities

According to the US National Security Agency (NSA), Russian hackers could be looking to attack logistics targets more broadly. The NSA have noted a significant amount of intelligence gathering into western countries, including the UK and the US.

Although there is no indication yet regarding attacks from Russia in connection with the logistics related to Ukraine, organisations should be aware and look to improve their cyber security practices to be best prepared.

https://cyberscoop.com/nsa-russian-ukraine-supply-chain-ransomware/

  • Email Threat Report 2023: Key Takeaways

According to a recent report, email phishing made up 24% of all spam types in 2022, a significant increase in proportion from 11% in 2021. The finance industry was the most targeted by far, accounting for 48% of phishing incidents. It is followed by the construction sector at 17%, overtaking 2021’s second-place industry, e-commerce. Both the finance and construction industries saw an increase in phishing since last year. Of all the emails analysed in 2022, an enormous 90% were spam emails.

With phishing as prevalent as ever, organisations should look to implement training for their staff to not only be able to spot phishing emails, but to be able to report these and aid in improving the cyber security culture of their organisation.

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2023/04/27/email-threat-report-2023-key-takeaways/

  • 5 Most Dangerous New Attack Techniques

Experts from security training provider SANS Institute have revealed the 5 most dangerous new attack techniques: adversarial AI, ChatGPT-powered social engineering, third-party developer attacks (also known as software supply chain attacks), SEO, and paid advertising attacks.

The new techniques highlight the ever changing environment of the attack environment. SEO and paid advertising attacks are leveraging fundamental marketing strategies to gain initial access, heightening the importance for organisations to incorporate scalable user awareness training programmes, tailored to new threats.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3694892/5-most-dangerous-new-attack-techniques.html  

  • Many Public Salesforce Sites are Leaking Private Data

A shocking number of organisations — including banks and healthcare providers — are leaking private and sensitive information from their public Salesforce Community websites. The data exposures all stem from a misconfiguration in Salesforce Community that allows an unauthenticated user to access records that should only be available after logging in.

This included the US State of Vermont who had at least five separate Salesforce Community sites that allowed guest access to sensitive data, including a Pandemic Unemployment Assistance programme that exposed the applicant’s full name, social security number, address, phone number, email, and bank account number. Similar information was leaked by TCF Bank on their Salesforce Community Website.

It's not just Salesforce though; misconfigurations in general are responsible for a number of leaked documents and or exposures relating to an organisation.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/04/many-public-salesforce-sites-are-leaking-private-data/


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

Deepfakes

AML/CFT/Sanctions

Insurance

Dark Web

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Software Supply Chain

Cloud/SaaS

Containers

Attack Surface Management

Shadow IT

Identity and Access Management

Open Source

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Malvertising

Training, Education and Awareness

Digital Transformation

Parental Controls and Child Safety

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Governance, Risk and Compliance

Models, Frameworks and Standards

Careers, Working in Cyber and Information Security

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

Privacy, Surveillance and Mass Monitoring

Artificial Intelligence


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

Nation State Actors




Tools and Controls




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 14 October 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 14 October 2022:

-Ransomware Report: Most Organisations Unprepared for an Attack, Lack Incident Playbook, Research Finds

-LinkedIn Scams, Fake Instagram Accounts Hit Businesses, Execs

-Study Highlights Surge in Identity Theft and Phishing Attacks

-Increase in Cyber Liability Insurance Claims as Cyber Crime Skyrockets

-UK Government Urges Action to Enhance Supply Chain Security

-For Most Companies Ransomware Is the Scariest Of All Cyber Attacks

-EDR Is Not a Silver Bullet

-Attackers Use Automation to Speed from Exploit to Compromise

-Rising Premiums, More Restricted Cyber Insurance Coverage Poses Big Risk for Companies

-Why CISO Roles Require Business and Technology Savvy

-Wi-Fi Spy Drones Used to Snoop on Financial Firm

-Magniber Ransomware Attacking Individuals and Home Users

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 Report: Most Organisations Unprepared for an Attack, Lack Incident Playbook, Research Finds

Some organisations have made significant improvements to their ransomware readiness profile in the last year, Axio said in a newly released report. However, a lack of fundamental cyber security practices and controls, inadequate vulnerability patching and employee training continues to leave ransomware defences lacking in potency.

Axio’s report reveals that only 30% of organisations have a ransomware-specific playbook for incident management in place. In 2021’s report Axio, maker of a cloud-based cyber management software platform, identified seven key areas emerged where organisations were deficient in implementing and sustaining basic cyber security practices.

The same patterns showed up in the 2022 report:

  • Managing privileged access.

  • Improving basic cyber hygiene.

  • Reducing exposure to supply chain and third-party risk.

  • Monitoring and defending networks.

  • Managing ransomware incidents.

  • Identifying and addressing vulnerabilities in a timely manner.

  • Improving cyber security training and awareness.

Overall, most organisations surveyed are not adequately prepared to manage the risk associated with a ransomware attack. Key data findings include:

  • The number of organisations with a functional privileged access management solution in place increased by 10% but remains low at 33% overall.

  • Limitations on the use of service and local administrator accounts remain average overall, with nearly 50% of organisations reporting implementing these practices.

  • Approximately 40% of organisations monitor third-party network access, evaluate third-party cyber security posture, and limit the use of third-party software.

  • Less than 50% of respondents implement basic network segmentation and only 40% monitor for anomalous connections.

  • Critical vulnerability patching within 24 hours was reported by only 24% of organisations.

  • Active phishing training has improved but is still not practiced by 40% of organisations.

https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-research/most-organizations-unprepared-for-ransomware-attack-lack-incident-playbook-axio-reports/

  • LinkedIn Scams, Fake Instagram Accounts Hit Businesses, Execs

Business owners with public social media accounts are easy targets for scammers who lift information to create fake accounts. The arduous process for removing fraudulent accounts leaves victims frustrated and vulnerable to further data privacy issues. Victims say platform providers, particularly Facebook and Instagram, must improve their responses to reports of fraud.

Impersonation of a brand or executive contributed to more than 40% of all phishing and social media incidents in the second quarter, according to the Agari and Phish Labs Quarterly Threat Trends and Intelligence Report released in August. Q2 marks the second quarter that impersonation attacks have represented the majority of threats, despite a 6.1% decrease from Q1.

Executive impersonation has been on the rise over the past four quarters — representing more than 15% of attacks, according to the report — as impersonating a corporate figure or company on social media is simple and effective for threat actors.

Thom Singer, CEO for the Austin Technology Council and a public speaker, was recently impersonated on Instagram. A scammer created a fake Instagram account with his name and photos, creating a handle with an extra "r" at the end of Singer. That account appeared to amass over 2,300 followers – nearly as many as Singer's own account – lending to its appearance of authenticity.

He learned of the fake account from a contact who texted to ask if he'd reached out on Instagram, which wasn't a channel Singer typically uses to communicate. Singer reported the fraudulent account using the platform's report button and asked his followers to do the same.

"You can't reach anyone at these platforms, so it takes days to get a fake account removed," Singer said. "These social media sites have no liability, nothing to lose when fraud is happening. They need to up their game and have a better process to get [fraud] handled in a timely manner."

https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/feature/LinkedIn-scams-fake-Instagram-accounts-hit-businesses-execs

  • Study Highlights Surge in Identity Theft and Phishing Attacks

A new study from behavioural risk firm CybSafe and the National Cybersecurity Alliance (NCA) has been launched and it highlights an alarming surge in phishing and identity theft attacks.

The report, titled ‘Oh, Behave! The Annual Cybersecurity Attitudes and Behaviors report’, studied the opinions of 3,000 individuals across the US, the UK and Canada towards cyber security and revealed that nearly half (45%) of users are connected to the internet all the time, however, this has led to a surge in identity theft with almost 1 in 4 people being affected by the attack.

Furthermore, 1 in 3 (36%) respondents revealed they have lost money or data due to a phishing attack. Yet the study also revealed that 70% of respondents feel confident in their ability to identify a malicious email, but only 45% will confirm the authenticity of a suspicious email by reaching out to the apparent sender.

When it comes to implementing cyber security best practices, only 33% of respondents revealed they use a unique password for important online accounts, while only 16% utilise passwords of over 12 characters in length. Furthermore, only 18% of participants have downloaded a stand-alone password manager, while 43% of respondents have not even heard of multi-factor authentication.

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2022/10/12/study-highlights-surge-in-identity-theft-and-phishing-attacks/

  • Increase in Cyber Liability Insurance Claims as Cyber Crime Skyrockets

A cyber insurer, Acuity Insurance, is reporting an increased need for cyber liability insurance across both personal and business policyholders. From June 2021 to June 2022, the insurer saw cyber liability insurance claims on its commercial insurance policies increase by more than 50%. For personal policies, they saw more than a 90% increase in cyber claims being reported in 2021 compared with 2020.

Our lives, homes and businesses are more connected than ever before. Being connected leads to a greater risk of cyber attacks, which aren't covered under standard homeowners or business insurance policies.

The insurance experts caution that everyone is at risk — whether you are a small business owner or an individual — as cyber attacks continue to pose a serious financial threat. From 2019 to 2021, cyber attacks were up 50% from the previous year, according to recent research. Wire fraud and gift card scams are two of the most common types of cyber attacks impacting both businesses and individuals.

Scams involving social engineering are some of the easiest to fall for, as fraudsters exploit a person's trust to obtain money or personal information, which can then be used for unauthorised withdrawals of money. Cyber insurance can protect you from financial loss caused by wire transfer fraud, phishing attacks, cyber extortion, cyberbullying and more, Acuity reported.

While all cyber crimes have a financial impact, fraudulent wire transfers often come with greater losses. Banks are typically not responsible for funds lost as a result of a fraudulent wire transfer inadvertently authorised by the customer. Whether it's a wrongful money transfer by a business or an individual, cyber insurance can help mitigate some of the financial loss caused by these scams.

https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/acuity-reports-increase-in-cyber-liability-insurance-claims-as-cybercrime-skyrockets

  • UK Government Urges Action to Enhance Supply Chain Security

The UK government has warned organisations to take steps to strengthen their supply chain security.

New National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) guidance has been issued amid a significant increase in supply chain attacks in recent years, such as the SolarWinds incident in 2020. The NCSC cited official government data showing that just over one in 10 businesses review the risks posed by their immediate suppliers (13%), while the proportion covering the wider supply chain is just 7%.

Aimed at medium-to-large organisations, the document sets out practical steps to better assess cyber security across increasingly complex supply chains. This includes a description of typical supplier relationships and ways that organisations are exposed to vulnerabilities and cyber-attacks via the supply chain, and the expected outcomes and key steps needed to assess suppliers’ approaches to security.

The new guidance followed a government response to a call for views last year which highlighted the need for further advice. Supply chain attacks are a major cyber threat facing organisations and incidents can have a profound, long-lasting impact on businesses and customers. With incidents on the rise, it is vital organisations work with their suppliers to identify supply chain risks and ensure appropriate security measures are in place.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/uk-government-supply-chain-security/

  • For Most Companies Ransomware Is the Scariest Of All Cyber Attacks

SonicWall released the 2022 SonicWall Threat Mindset Survey which found that 66% of customers are more concerned about cyber attacks in 2022, with the main threat being focused on financially motivated attacks like ransomware.

“No one is safe from cyber attacks — businesses or individuals,” said SonicWall Executive Chairman of the Board Bill Conner. “Today’s business landscape requires persistent digital trust to exist. Supply-chain attacks have dramatically changed the attack surface of the typical enterprise in the past few years, with more suppliers and service providers touching sensitive data than ever before.

“It’s likely we’ll see continued acceleration and evolution of ransomware tactics, as well as other advanced persistent threats (APTs), as cyber crime continues to scale the globe seeking both valuable and weak targets.”

Companies are not only losing millions of dollars to unending malware and ransomware strikes, but cyber attacks on essential infrastructure are impacting real-world services. Despite the growing concern of cyber attacks, organisations are struggling to keep pace with the fast-moving threat landscape as they orient their business, networks, data and employees against unwavering cyber attacks.

“The evolving cyber threat landscape has made us train our staff significantly more,” said Stafford Fields, IT Director, Cavett Turner & Wyble. “It’s made us spend more on cyber security. And what scares me is that an end-user can click on something and bring all our systems down — despite being well protected.”

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/10/12/customers-concerned-ransomware/

  • EDR Is Not a Silver Bullet

Old lore held that shooting a werewolf, vampire, or even just your average nasty villain with a silver bullet was a sure-fire takedown: one hit, no more bad guy.

As cyber security professionals, we understand – much like folks in the Old West knew – that there are no panaceas, no actual silver bullets. Yet humans gravitate towards simple solutions to complex challenges, and we are constantly (if unconsciously) seeking silver bullet technology.

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tools have become Standard Operating Procedures for cyber security regimes. They are every CIO’s starting point, and there’s nothing wrong with this. In a recent study by Cymulate of over one million tests conducted by customers in 2021, the most popular testing vector was EDR.

Yet cyber security stakeholders should not assume that EDR is a silver bullet. The fact is that EDR’s efficacy and protective prowess as a standalone solution has been slowly diminished over the decade since the term was first coined by Gartner. Even as it became a mainstay of enterprise and SMB/SME security posture – attacks have skyrocketed in frequency, severity, and success. Today, EDR is facing some of its greatest challenges, including threats laser-targeting EDR systems like the highly-successful Grandoiero banking trojan.

While EDR should not be your only line of defence against advanced threats, including it in a defence solution array is paramount. It should be installed on all organisational servers – including Linux-based ones. Yet installation is not enough. Your organisation is at significant risk if the underlying OS and EDR are not both implemented and fine-tuned.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/10/11/edr-is-not-a-silver-bullet/

  • Attackers Use Automation to Speed from Exploit to Compromise

A report from Laceworks examines the cloud security threat landscape over the past three months and unveils the new techniques and avenues cyber criminals are exploiting for profit at the expense of businesses. In this latest edition, the Lacework Labs team found a significantly more sophisticated attacker landscape, with an increase in attacks against core networking and virtualisation software, and an unprecedented increase in the speed of attacks following a compromise. Key trends and threats identified include:

  • Increased speed from exposure to compromise: Attackers are advancing to keep pace with cloud adoption and response time. Many classes of attacks are now fully automated to capitalise on timing. Additionally, one of the most common targets is credential leakage. In a specific example from the report, a leaked AWS access key was caught and flagged by AWS in record time. Despite the limited exposure, an unknown adversary was able to log in and launch tens of GPU EC2 instances, underscoring just how quickly attackers can take advantage of a single simple mistake.

  • Increased focus on infrastructure, specifically attacks against core networking and virtualisation software: Commonly deployed core networking and related infrastructure consistently remains a key target for adversaries. Core flaws in infrastructure often appear suddenly and are shared openly online, creating opportunities for attackers of all kinds to exploit these potential targets.

  • Continued Log4j reconnaissance and exploitation: Nearly a year after the initial exploit, the Lacework Labs team is still commonly observing vulnerable software targeted via OAST requests. Analysis of Project Discovery (interact.sh) activity revealed Cloudflare and DigitalOcean as the top originators.

https://www.darkreading.com/cloud/attackers-use-automation-to-speed-from-exploit-to-compromise-according-to-lacework-labs-cloud-threat-report

  • Rising Premiums, More Restricted Cyber Insurance Coverage Poses Big Risk for Companies

Among the many consequences of the rising number of costly data breaches, ransomware, and other security attacks are pricier premiums for cyber security insurance. The rise in costs could put many organisations out of the running for this essential coverage, a risky proposition given the current threat landscape.

Cyber insurance is a type of specialty insurance that protects organisations against a variety of risks related to information security attacks such as ransomware and data breaches. Ordinarily, these types of risks aren’t included with traditional commercial general liability policies or are not specifically defined in these insurance plans.

Given the rise in attacks, the growing sophistication of these incidents and the potential financial impact, having cyber insurance coverage has become critical for many organisations. Premiums for these plans have been on the rise because of the increase in security-related losses and rising demand for coverage.

Cyber insurance premiums increased by an average of 28% in the first quarter of 2022 compared with the fourth quarter of 2021, according to the Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers (CIAB), an association for commercial insurance and employee benefits intermediaries.

Among the primary drivers for the continued price increases were a reduced carrier appetite for the risk and high demand for coverage, CIAB said. The high demand for cyber coverage is in part fueled by greater awareness among companies of the threat cyber risk poses for businesses of all sizes, it said.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/11/companies-are-finding-it-harder-to-get-cyber-insurance-.html

  • Why CISO Roles Require Business and Technology Savvy

Listening and communicating to both the technical and business sides is critical to successfully leading IT teams and business leaders to the same end-goal.

Of all the crazy postings that advertise for CISO jobs, the one asking for a CISO to code in Python was probably the most outrageous example of the disconnect about a CISO’s role, says Joe Head, CISO search director at UK-based search firm, Intaso. This was a few years ago, and one can only guess that the role had been created by a technologist who didn’t care about or didn’t understand the business — or, inversely by a businessperson who didn’t understand enough about technology.

In either case, the disconnect is real. However, Head and other experts say that when it comes to achieving the true, executive role and reporting to the CEO and board, business skills rule. That doesn’t mean, however, that most CISOs know nothing about technology, because most still start out with technology backgrounds.

In the 2022 CISO survey by executive placement firm, Heidrick & Struggles, most CISOs come from a functional IT background that reflects the issues of the time. For example, in 2022 10% of CISOs came from software engineering backgrounds, which tracks with the White House directive to protect the software supply chain. The report notes that the majority of CISOs have experience in the financial services industry, which has a low risk tolerance and where more money is spent on security.

The survey also indicates that only a small core of CISOs (working primarily for the Fortune 500) rise to the executive level with the combination of business and technical responsibilities that come with the role. In it, more than two-thirds of CISOs responding to the survey worked for companies worth over $5 billion. So, instead of bashing a CISO’s lack of IT skills, the real need lies in developing business skills for the technologists coming up the ranks.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3675952/why-ciso-roles-require-business-and-technology-savvy.html#tk.rss_news

  • Wi-Fi Spy Drones Used to Snoop on Financial Firm

Modified off-the-shelf drones have been found carrying wireless network-intrusion kit in a very unlikely place.

The idea of using consumer-oriented drones for hacking has been explored over the past decade at security conferences like Black Hat 2016, in both the US and in Europe, but now these sort of attacks are actually taking place. A security researcher recently recounted an incident that occurred over the summer at a US East Coast financial firm focused on private investment.

The hacking incident was discovered when the financial firm spotted unusual activity on its internal Atlassian Confluence page that originated from within the company's network. The company's security team responded and found that the user whose MAC address was used to gain partial access to the company Wi-Fi network was also logged in at home several miles away. That is to say, the user was active off-site but someone within Wi-Fi range of the building was trying to wirelessly use that user's MAC address, which is a red flag. The team then took steps to trace the Wi-Fi signal and used a Fluke system to identify the Wi-Fi device.

This led the team to the roof, where two modified commercially available consumer drones series were discovered. One drone was in fine condition and had a modified Wi-Fi Pineapple device, used for network penetration testing. The second drone was carrying a case that contained a Raspberry Pi, several batteries, a GPD mini laptop, a 4G modem, and another Wi-Fi device. It had landed near the building's heating and ventilation system and appeared to be damaged but still operable.

During their investigation, they determined that the first drone had originally been used a few days prior to intercept a worker's credentials and Wi-Fi, and this data was then hard coded into the tools that were deployed on the second drone.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/12/drone-roof-attack/

  • Magniber Ransomware Attacking Individuals and Home Users

A recent analysis shows that Magniber ransomware has been targeting home users by masquerading as software updates.

Reports have shown a ransomware campaign isolated by HP Wolf Security in September 2022 saw Magniber ransomware spread. The malware is known as a single-client ransomware family that demands $2,500 from victims. Magniber was previously primarily spread through MSI and EXE files, but in September 2022 HP Wolf Security began seeing campaigns distributing the ransomware in JavaScript files.

HP Wolf Security reported that some malware families rely exclusively on JavaScript, but have done so for some time. Currently, analysts are also seeing more HTML smuggling, such as with Qakbot and IcedID. This technique also makes use of JavaScript to decode malicious content. The only difference is that the HTML file is executed in the context of the browser and therefore usually requires further user interaction.

Remarkably, HP Wolf Security said, the attackers used clever techniques to evade detection, such as running the ransomware in memory, bypassing User Account Control (UAC) in Windows, and bypassing detection techniques that monitor user-mode hooks by using syscalls instead of standard Windows API libraries.

It appears that with the UAC bypass, the malware deletes the infected system’s shadow copy files and disables backup and recovery features, preventing the victim from recovering their data using Windows tools.

Having recently described the ransomware campaign in a recent interview, HP Wolf noted that the infection chain starts with a web download from an attacker-controlled website.

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2022/10/14/https-www-infosecurity-magazine-com-news-magniber-ransomware-adopts/


Threats

Ransomware and Extortion

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Other Social Engineering; Smishing, Vishing, etc

Malware

Mobile

Internet of Things – IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Deepfakes

AML/CFT/Sanctions

Insurance

Dark Web

Software Supply Chain

Denial of Service DoS/DDoS

Cloud/SaaS

Encryption

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Training, Education and Awareness

Parental Controls and Child Safety

Cyber Bullying and Cyber Stalking

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Backup and Recovery

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


Nation State Actors

Nation State Actors – Russia

Nation State Actors – China

Nation State Actors – North Korea

Nation State Actors – Misc





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 09 September 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 09 September 2022

-Why It’s Mission-critical That All-sized Businesses Stay Cyber Secure

-Half of Firms Report Supply Chain Ransomware Compromise

-Vulnerability Exploits, Not Phishing, Are the Top Cyber Attack Vector for Initial Compromise

-Uber’s Ex-Security Chief Faces Landmark Trial Over Data Breach That Hit 57m Users

-Over 10% of Enterprise IT Assets Found Missing Endpoint Protection

-Some Employees Aren't Just Leaving Companies — They're Defrauding Them

-Ransomware Gangs Switching to New Intermittent Encryption Tactic

-How Posting Personal and Business Photos Can Be a Security Risk

-Your Vendors Are Likely Your Biggest Cyber Security Risk

-A Recent Chinese Hack Is a Wake-up Call for the Security of the World’s Software Supply Chain

-Massive Hotels Group IHG Struck by Cyber Attack Which Disrupts Booking Systems

-London's Biggest Bus Operator Hit by Cyber "Incident"

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

Top Cyber Stories of the Last Week

  • Why It’s Mission-Critical That All-Sized Businesses Stay Cyber Secure

A study analysing millions of emails across thousands of companies found that on average, employees of small businesses with less than 100 employees experience 350% more social engineering attacks than employees of larger enterprises. 57% of these are phishing attacks – the most prevalent social engineering attack of 2021.

Add to the mix that the global average cost of a data breach for businesses has skyrocketed. According to IBM Security’s annual Cost of a Data Breach Report, the average global cost is now a phenomenal $4.35 million.

Generally, larger corporations tend to have bigger security budgets, making them less of a target than smaller businesses with lesser budgets, and as such, more attractive to cyber criminals. This means that for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) – with fewer resources and money – protection from cyber-attacks is now a matter of survival.

Ease of attack is not the only reason why criminals attack SMEs either. SMEs are often an entry point to target bigger organisations within the same supply chain. These larger corporations can either be crucial partners, suppliers, or customers, making SMEs prime targets.

But with efficient cyber security measures, every business regardless of size can keep themselves and their network safe.

https://informationsecuritybuzz.com/articles/why-its-mission-critical-that-all-sized-businesses-stay-cyber-secure/

  • Half of Firms Report Supply Chain Ransomware Compromise

Over half (52%) of global organisations know a partner that has been compromised by ransomware, yet few are doing anything to improve the security of their supply chain, according to Trend Micro.

The security vendor polled nearly 3,000 IT decision makers across 26 countries to produce its latest report, ‘Everything is connected: Uncovering the ransomware threat from global supply chains’.

It revealed that 90% of global IT leaders believe their partners and customers are making their own organisation a more attractive ransomware target.

That might be down in part to the fact that SMBs comprise a significant chunk of the supply chain for 52% of respondents. The security of SMBs is generally thought to be less effective than protection in larger, better resourced companies.

However, despite their concerns, less than half (47%) of respondents said they share knowledge about ransomware attacks with their suppliers, while a quarter (25%) claimed they don’t share potentially useful threat information with partners.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/half-firms-supply-chain-ransomware/

  • Vulnerability Exploits, Not Phishing, Are the Top Cyber Attack Vector for Initial Compromise

Breaches involving phishing and credential compromise have received a lot of attention in recent years because of how frequently threat actors have employed the tactics in executing both targeted and opportunistic attacks. But that doesn't mean that enterprise organisations can afford to lessen their focus on vulnerability patching one bit.

A report from Kaspersky this week identified more initial intrusions last year resulting from exploitation of vulnerabilities in Internet-facing applications than breaches involving malicious emails and compromised accounts combined. And data that the company has collected through the second quarter of 2022 suggests the same trend might be playing out this year as well.

Kaspersky's analysis of its 2021 incident-response data showed that breaches involving vulnerability exploits surged from 31.5% of all incidents in 2020 to 53.6% in 2021. Over the same period, attacks associated with the use of compromised accounts to gain initial access declined from 31.6% in 2020 to 17.9% last year. Initial intrusions resulting from phishing emails decreased from 23.7% to 14.3% during the same period.

https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-threats/vulnerability-exploits-phishing-top-attack-vector-initial-compromise

  • Uber’s Ex-Security Chief Faces Landmark Trial Over Data Breach That Hit 57m Users

Uber’s former security officer, Joe Sullivan, is standing trial this week in what is believed to be the first case of an executive facing criminal charges in relation to a data breach.

The US district court in San Francisco will start hearing arguments on whether Sullivan, the former head of security at the ride-share giant, failed to properly disclose a 2016 data breach affecting 57 million Uber riders and drivers around the world.

At a time when reports of ransomware attacks have surged and cyber security insurance premiums have risen, the case could set an important precedent regarding the culpability of US security staffers and executives for the way the companies they work for handle cyber security incidents.

The breach first came to light in November 2017, when Uber’s chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, revealed that hackers had gained access to the driver’s licence numbers of 600,000 US Uber drivers as well as the names, email addresses and phone numbers of as many as 57 million Uber riders and drivers.

Public disclosures like Khosrowshahi’s are required by law in many US states, with most regulations mandating that the notification be made “in the most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay”.

But Khosrowshahi’s announcement came with an admission: a whole year had passed since the information had been breached.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/sep/06/uber-joe-sullivan-trial-security-data-breach

  • Over 10% of Enterprise IT Assets Found With Missing Endpoint Protection

More than 10% of enterprise IT assets are missing endpoint protection and roughly 5% are not covered by enterprise patch management solutions.

The figures come from new research by Sevco Security, which the company has compiled in the State of the Cybersecurity Attack Surface report.

"Attackers are very adept at exploiting enterprise vulnerabilities. Security and IT teams already have their hands full mitigating the vulnerabilities that they know about, and our data confirms that this is just the tip of the iceberg," Sevco told Infosecurity Magazine.

The document analyses data aggregated from visibility into more than 500,000 IT assets, and underlines existential and underreported cyber security issues in relation to securing enterprises’ assets.

“The uncertainty of enterprise inventory – the elements that make up an organisation’s cyber security attack surface – upends the foundation of every major security framework and presents a challenge to security teams: it’s impossible to protect what you can’t see,” they said.

For instance, the data found that roughly 3% of all IT assets are “stale” in endpoint protection, while 1% are stale from the perspective of patch management coverage.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/enterprise-assets-miss-endpoint/

  • Some Employees Aren't Just Leaving Companies — They're Defrauding Them

Since the Great Resignation in 2021, millions of employees have left their roles with current employers in search of better ones. According to Microsoft, 40% of employees reported they are considering leaving their current roles by the end of 2022. With many still working in remote or hybrid positions due to the pandemic, larger businesses have started implementing measures to gain a better understanding of employee morale and sentiment to prevent turnover.

While most employees leave companies on good terms, some may become extremely unhappy or disgruntled prior to their departure and are more likely to defraud the company either before leaving or on their way out the door. The unfortunate reality is that no business is immune to fraud, but luckily, there are several steps you can take to prevent it from happening.

According to the Cressey Fraud Triangle, fraudulent behaviour often occurs due to three contributing factors. These include pressure or motive to commit a fraud (usually a personal financial problem), perceived opportunity within the organisation to commit a fraud (poor oversight or internal controls), and rationalisation (the ability to justify the crime to make it seem acceptable).

Very often, a fraudster needs all three sides of the triangle to successfully commit a crime. Therefore, it is extremely important for organisations to do their best to create controls and understand the risk associated with each of these areas. For example, an employee may be disgruntled and also have personal financial issues. However, if internal controls are robust and the employee doesn't have access to financial instruments, valuable assets or software systems, their ability to defraud the company is extremely limited or will get identified immediately.

https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-threats/some-employees-aren-t-just-leaving-companies-they-re-defrauding-them

  • Ransomware Gangs Switching to New Intermittent Encryption Tactic

A growing number of ransomware groups are adopting a new tactic that helps them encrypt their victims' systems faster while reducing the chances of being detected and stopped.

This tactic is called intermittent encryption, and it consists of encrypting only parts of the targeted files' content, which would still render the data unrecoverable without using a valid decryption key.

For example, by skipping every other 16 bytes of a file, the encryption process takes almost half of the time required for full encryption but still locks the contents for good.

Additionally, because the encryption is milder, automated detection tools that rely on detecting signs of trouble in the form of intense file IO operations are more likely to fail.

SentinelLabs has posted a report examining a trend started by LockFile in mid-2021 and now adopted by the likes of Black Basta, ALPHV (BlackCat), PLAY, Agenda, and Qyick.

These groups actively promote the presence of intermittent encryption features in their ransomware family to entice affiliates to join the RaaS operation.

"Notably, Qyick features intermittent encryption, which is what the cool kids are using as you read this. Combined with the fact that is written in Go, the speed is unmatched," describes a Qyick advertisement on hacking forums.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ransomware-gangs-switching-to-new-intermittent-encryption-tactic/

  • How Posting Personal and Business Photos Can Be a Security Risk

Image geotags, metadata, and location information can allow competitors, cyber criminals, and even nation-state threat actors to gain knowledge they can use against organisations.

Marketers in every industry enjoy evidencing their reach to their superiors and providing tangible examples of their width and breadth of influence via social networks, media, and other means of engagement. Photos of both customers and employees engaging at hosted social events, trade shows, conferences, and direct one-on-one encounters are often viewed as gold. Couple this with the individual employee’s or customer’s photos working their way onto social network platforms for others to see and admire, and the value of that gold increases, success being quantified by impressions, views and individual engagements.

The value of that gold doubles when not only does the company harvest data and call it a success, but their competitors also analyse such photos capturing a plethora of useful data points, including geotagged data, metadata of the photo, and identity of the individuals caught in the frame. They, too, call it a success. Yes, the digital engagement involving location data and or location hints within photos is a double-edged sword.

It isn’t just competitors who harvest the data. Criminal elements and nation-state intelligence and security elements do as well. Francis Bacon’s adage, “Knowledge itself is power,” applies. With location, time and place, and identity, competitors, criminals, and nation-states are given their initial tidbits of openly acquired information from which to begin to build their mosaic. 

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3672869/how-posting-personal-and-business-photos-can-be-a-security-risk.html#tk.rss_news

  • Your Vendors Are Likely Your Biggest Cyber Security Risk

As speed of business increases, more and more organisations are looking to either buy companies or outsource more services to gain market advantage. With organisations expanding their vendor base, there is a critical need for holistic third-party risk management (TPRM) and comprehensive cyber security measures to assess how much risk vendors pose.

While organisations assess and manage risk on a multitude of layers, none present bigger threats to business resiliency than third-party risk and a lack of robust cyber security controls. Breaches and service interruptions tied to these risk areas have brought down critical systems of major organisations. In 2021, 53% of CISOs surveyed by Black Kite reported being hit by at least one ransomware attack.

It bears repeating: Cyber security and third-party risk are the two biggest problems facing your long-term viability. Businesses need to be able to tackle these risk vectors individually to gain a complete view of their risk profile. A cross-functional process is essential to managing the overlap between these risk areas to better protect your organisation and increase workflow efficiency.

Ensuring that the cyber security practices of your vendors align with your organisation’s standards is critical to safeguarding your systems and data. In fact, it is just as important as how stable the business is or how well it delivers products and services.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/09/05/vendors-cybersecurity-risk/

  • A Recent Chinese Hack Is a Wake-up Call for the Security of the World’s Software Supply Chain

It’s perhaps only a coincidence that there’s a famous Chinese saying ‘No one knows, not even the ghosts’ that neatly summarises a recent hack on MiMi, a Chinese messaging app. According to recent reports, a Chinese state-backed hacking group inserted malicious code into this messaging app, essentially pulling off the equivalent of the infamous SolarWinds hack. Users of MiMi were served a version of the app with malicious code added, thanks to attackers taking control of the servers that delivered the app. In short, this was a software supply chain attack in which the software delivery pipeline was compromised.

Observers could be forgiven for thinking that this is just another hack. Chinese hacking groups, and those of Western countries too, have developed a reputation over the past two decades for spying, surveillance, and sabotage. But this attack is different than typical hacking fare because the attackers rode in on the back of a trusted piece of software. This is a software supply chain attack, where the attackers tamper with either source code, the software build system, or the software publishing pipeline, all of which have become essential to the functioning of the world’s digital economy.

Software supply chain attacks have been rapidly growing in frequency. Twenty years ago, there might have been one or two a year. These days, depending on the methodology, there are either hundreds or thousands a year, and that’s only counting the reported attacks. And increasingly anybody who depends upon software (read: everybody) is or shortly will be a victim: the U.S. government, Microsoft, thousands of other companies and, apparently in this MiMi attack, individuals.

https://thediplomat.com/2022/09/a-recent-chinese-hack-is-a-wake-up-call-for-the-security-of-the-worlds-software-supply-chain/

  • Massive Hotels Group IHG Struck by Cyber Attack Which Disrupts Booking Systems

InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), which owns brands such as InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, and many others, has had its IT systems breached by malicious hackers.

In a filing with the London Stock Exchange, the multinational hospitality company reported that "parts of the company's technology systems have been subject to unauthorised activity."

As a result, the company said, "IHG's booking channels and other applications have been significantly disrupted since [Monday], and this is ongoing."

The first indication that the company was experiencing problems appeared early on Monday morning UK time, when anyone who tried to book a hotel room via the company's website or app, or access their IHG One Rewards account was greeted by a maintenance message.

Although it has made no declaration regarding the nature of the security breach, in its filing with the London Stock Exchange, IHG mentioned they were "working to fully restore all systems". This would fit into the scenario of IHG having hit been hit with ransomware, which may not only have encrypted data - locking the company out of its systems and demanding a ransom be paid - but could have also caused even more problems.

https://www.bitdefender.com/blog/hotforsecurity/massive-hotels-group-ihg-struck-by-cyberattack-which-disrupts-booking-systems/

  • London's Biggest Bus Operator Hit by Cyber "Incident"

Travellers in London were braced for more delays last week after the city’s largest bus operator revealed it has been hit by a “cyber security incident,” according to reports.

Newcastle-based transportation group Go-Ahead shared a statement with the London Stock Exchange indicating “unauthorised activity” had been discovered on its network yesterday.

“Upon becoming aware of the incident, Go-Ahead immediately engaged external forensic specialists and has taken precautionary measures with its IT infrastructure whilst it continues to investigate the nature and extent of the incident and implement its incident response plans,” it stated. “Go-Ahead will continue to assess the potential impact of the incident but confirms that there is no impact on UK or International rail services which are operating normally.”

However, the same may not be true of its bus services. Sky News reported that bus and driver rosters may have been impacted by the attack, which could disrupt operations.

Go-Ahead operates multiple services in the South, South West, London, North West, East Anglia, East Yorkshire and its native North East. It is London’s largest bus company, operating over 2400 buses in the capital and employing more than 7000 staff.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/londons-biggest-bus-operator-hit/


Threats

Ransomware and Extortion

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Other Social Engineering; Smishing, Vishing, etc

Malware

Mobile

Internet of Things – IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

AML/CFT/Sanctions

Insurance

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Software Supply Chain

Denial of Service DoS/DDoS

Cloud/SaaS

Identity and Access Management

Encryption

API

Open Source

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Privacy

Parental Controls and Child Safety

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


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

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

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

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

Read More
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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 29 October 2021

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 29 October 2021

-Protect Your Passwords, Warns Spy Chief, As Ransomware Cyber Attacks Double

-Graff Multinational Jeweller Hit by Conti Gang, Data of its Rich Clients Are At Risk

-Business Email Compromise (BEC) Costs UK Firms £140M Over Past Year

-Ransomware: It's A 'Golden Era' For Cyber Criminals - And It Could Get Worse Before It Gets Better

-Despite Increased Cyber Threats, Many Organisations Have No Defence Plans In Place

-Serious Warning Issued For Millions Of Apple iPhone Users

-Ransomware Attacks Are Evolving. Your Security Strategy Should, Too

-Solarwinds Hackers Are Targeting The Global It Supply Chain, Microsoft Says

-Defenders Worry Orgs Are More Vulnerable Than Last Year

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

Protect Your Passwords, Warns Spy Chief, As Ransomware Cyber Attacks Double

Ransomware cyber attacks doubled in the past year, the chief of GCHQ has revealed - as he warned Britain must “pay attention” to attacks from China.

Sir Jeremy Fleming, director of the cyber spy agency, called for more action to "sort out" ransomware attacks across the UK, adding it was not "rocket science".

He said such attacks have doubled in the last year, with hackers using software to lock files on computers and stop victims from accessing their own data.

This essentially holds them hostage until the hackers receive payment and then give a decryption key to the victim, so they can regain access.

‘Criminals are making very good money from it’

Sir Jeremy said ransomware "just pays" and added that "criminals are making very good money from it and are often feeling that that's largely uncontested".

While cautious of “keeping up” with security challenges alongside European partners, he said the immediate priority was tackling “links between criminal and state actors” to defeat ransomware, which he said “is no mean feat in itself”. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/25/ransomware-cyber-attacks-double-year-reveals-spy-chief/

Graff Multinational Jeweller Hit by Conti Gang. Data of its Rich Clients Are At Risk, Including Trump and Beckham, as the Gang Threaten to Release Private Details of World Leaders, Actors and Tycoons

The latest attack of the Conti ransomware gang makes the headlines, the threat actors hit high society jeweller Graff and asked the payment of a multi-million ransom to avoid leaking details of world leaders, actors and tycoons.

The customers of the company are the richest people on the globe, including Donald Trump, David Beckham, Tom Hanks, Samuel L Jackson, Alec Baldwin, and Sir Philip Green.

As proof of the hack, the group already published on its leak site files related to purchases made by David Beckham, Oprah, and Donald Trump.

The Conti gang has already leaked 69,000 confidential documents, leaked files include customer lists, invoices, receipts, and credit notes. https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/123980/cyber-crime/conti-ransomware-graff-jeweller.html

Business Email Compromise (BEC) Costs UK Firms £140M Over Past Year

Reported business email compromise (BEC) incidents have hit 4600 cases over the past 12 months, costing individuals and businesses £138m in losses, according to new figures from the UK’s National Economic Crime Centre (NECC).

The government body is working with the National Crime Agency (NCA), City of London Police, banking group UK Finance and fraud prevention non-profit Cifas on a new campaign to raise awareness of the crime, also dubbed “mandate fraud” or “payment diversion fraud.”

It claimed that the average amount lost over those 4600 cases was £30,000, with criminals typically impersonating others and creating or amending invoices to trick victims into diverting money to accounts under their control. https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/bec-costs-uk-firms-140m-past-year/

Ransomware: It's A 'Golden Era' For Cyber Criminals - And It Could Get Worse Before It Gets Better

Ransomware is the most significant cybersecurity threat facing organisations today as increasingly professional and sophisticated cyber criminals follow the money in order to maximise the profit from illicit campaigns.

ENISNA, the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity, has released the latest edition of the ENISA Threat Landscape (ETL) report, which analyses cyber-criminal activity between April 2020 and July 2021. It warns of a surge in cyber criminality, much of it driven by the monetisation of ransomware attacks.

Although the paper warns that many different cybersecurity threats are on the rise, ransomware represents the 'prime threat' faced by organisations today, with a 150% rise in ransomware attacks during the reporting period. And there are fears that despite the problem of ransomware attracting the attention of world leaders, the problem will get worse before it gets better. https://www.zdnet.com/article/ransomware-its-a-golden-era-for-cyber-criminals-and-it-could-get-worse-before-it-gets-better/

Despite Increased Cyber Threats, Many Organisations Have No Defence Plans In Place

98% of US executives report that their organisations experienced at least one cyber event in the past year, compared to a slightly lower rate of 84% in non-US executives, according to a Deloitte survey.

Further, COVID-19 pandemic disruption led to increased cyber threats to US executives’ organisations (86%) at a considerably higher rate than non-US executives experienced (63%). Yet, 14% of US executives say their organisations have no cyber threat defence plans, a rate more than double that of non-US executives (6%).

The biggest fallout US execs report from cyber incidents or breaches at their organisations during the past year include operational disruption (28%), share price drop (24%), leadership change (23%), intellectual property theft (22%) and loss of customer trust (22%).

Increases in data management, perimeter and complexities (38%), inability to match rapid technology changes (35%) and a need for better prioritization of cyber risk across the enterprise (31%) all pose obstacles to US executives’ organisation-wide cybersecurity management programs.

“No CISO or CSO ever wants to tell organisational stakeholders that efforts to manage cyber risk aren’t keeping-up with the speed of digital transformations made, or bad actors’ improving tactics”. https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2021/10/28/threat-defence-plans/

Serious Warning Issued For Millions Of Apple iPhone Users

While iPhone 13 sales continue to soar, iPhones owners have faced growing security threats, multiple App Store scams, potential privacy violations and zero day hacks. Now a shocking account of extreme iPhone hacking has been revealed.

In a remarkable report, New York Times senior reporter Ben Hubbard has revealed how his iPhone was hacked multiple times over a period of several years, and without any human interaction or knowledge the attacks were taking place. And the experience results in a stark warning: “the spyware used against me makes us all vulnerable”.

“It’s like being robbed by a ghost,” explains Hubbard, recounting the experience. “I didn’t even have to click on a link for my phone to be infected.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2021/10/27/apple-iphone-warning-pegasus-hack-upgrade-ios-15-security/

Ransomware Attacks Are Evolving. Your Security Strategy Should, Too

Ransomware is an intensifying problem for all organisations, and it’s only going to get worse. What started as a floppy disk-based attack with a $189 ransom demands has grown from a minor inconvenience for organisations into a multi-billion dollar cyber crime industry.

The organisational threat of these types of attacks goes well beyond encryption of sensitive or mission-critical data – for many companies, the thought of a breach and data becoming publicly available on the internet makes a high ransom seem worth it. No wonder ransomware is on the rise: Organisations pay an average of $220,298 and suffer 23 days of downtime following an attack. https://threatpost.com/ransomware-attacks-evolving-security-strategy/175835/

Solarwinds Hackers Are Targeting The Global IT Supply Chain, Microsoft Says

The Russian-linked hacking group that’s been blamed for an attack on the US government and a significant number of private US companies last year is targeting key players in the global technology supply chain, according to cybersecurity experts at Microsoft.

Nobelium, as the hacking group is known, is infamous for the SolarWinds hack.

On Monday, Tom Burt, Microsoft corporate vice president of customer security and trust, said Nobelium has “been attempting to replicate the approach it has used in past attacks by targeting organisations integral to the global IT supply chain.”

“This time, it is attacking a different part of the supply chain: resellers and other technology service providers that customize, deploy and manage cloud services and other technologies on behalf of their customers” https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/25/solarwinds-hackers-targeting-global-it-supply-chain-microsoft-says.html

Defenders Worry Orgs Are More Vulnerable Than Last Year

Enterprise security defenders find themselves in a rough spot: The number of threats against their organisations is growing and that they're vulnerable to attacks. Data from Dark Reading's 2021 Strategic Security Survey suggest that even though most IT and security leaders are confident about the security defences they have implemented, they also believe their organisations are more vulnerable to attacks compared with a year ago.

The reasons for this pessimism vary. For 67% of respondents, the biggest concern lies in the fact that there are more attacks this year than there were last year. However, 56% say the increased sophistication of the threats they are facing is why their organisations are more vulnerable to compromise. Other reasons include the surge in ransomware attacks and shortage of skilled security professionals to detect and respond to threats. https://www.darkreading.com/edge-threat-monitor/defenders-worry-orgs-are-more-vulnerable-than-last-year


Threats

Ransomware

Phishing

Other Social Engineering

Malware

Mobile

IOT

Vulnerabilities

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Dark Web

Supply Chain

Nation State Actors



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 22 October 2021

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 22 October 2021

-Many Organisations Lack Basic Cyber Hygiene Despite High Confidence In Their Cyber Defences

-83% Of Ransomware Victims Paid Ransom: Survey

-Report: Ransomware Affected 72% Of Organizations In Past Year

-Ransomware: Looking For Weaknesses In Your Own Network Is Key To Stopping Attacks

-A Hacker Warns: Give Up Trying To Keep Me Out — And Focus On Your Data

-Cyber Risk Trends Driving The Surge In Ransomware Incidents

-US Ransomware Victims Paid $600 Million to Hackers in 1H of 2021

-Hacking Group Created Fake Cyber Security Companies To Hire Experts And Involve Them In Ransomware Attacks Tricking Them Of Conducting A Pentest

-Nearly Three-Quarters of Organizations Victimized by DNS Attacks in Past 12 Months

-Cyber Crime Matures As Hackers Are Forced To Work Smarter

-Hackers Stealing Browser Cookies to Hijack High-Profile YouTube Accounts

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


Top Cyber Stories of the Last Week

Many Organisations Lack Basic Cyber Hygiene Despite High Confidence In Their Cyber Defences

A new report released this week analysed IT security leaders’ perceived threat of ransomware attacks and the maturity of their cyber security defences. The report found that while 81% of those surveyed consider their security to be above average or exceptional, many lack basic cyber hygiene – 41% lack a password complexity requirement, one of the cheapest, easiest forms of protection, and only 55.6% have implemented multi-factor authentication (MFA). https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2021/10/21/organizations-cyber-hygiene/

83% Of Ransomware Victims Paid Ransom

A new survey of 300 US-based IT decision-makers found that 64% have been victims of a ransomware attack in the last 12 months, and 83% of those attack victims paid the ransom demand.

Cybersecurity company ThycoticCentrify released its "2021 State of Ransomware Survey & Report" on Tuesday, featuring the insights of IT leaders who have dealt with ransomware attacks over the last year. https://www.zdnet.com/article/83-of-ransomware-victims-paid-ransom-survey/

Ransomware Affected 72% Of Organisations In Past Year

72% of organisations were affected by ransomware at least once within the past twelve months, with 18% impacted more than six times in the past year. Organizations of all sizes were affected nearly to the same extent, with the exception of those with more than 25,000 employees. https://venturebeat.com/2021/10/20/report-ransomware-affected-72-of-organizations-in-past-year/

Ransomware: Looking For Weaknesses In Your Own Network Is Key To Stopping Attacks

Ransomware is a major cybersecurity threat to organisations around the world, but it's possible to reduce the impact of an attack if you have a thorough understanding of your own network and the correct protections are in place.

While the best form of defence is to stop ransomware infiltrating the network in the first place, thinking about how the network is put together can help slow down or stop the spread of an attack, even if the intruders have successfully breached the perimeter. https://www.zdnet.com/article/ransomware-looking-for-weaknesses-in-your-own-network-is-key-to-stopping-attacks/

A Hacker Warns: Give Up Trying To Keep Me Out — And Focus On Your Data

There is a misconceived notion that the security arena is a battlefield. It is not. It is a chess board and requires foresight and calculated pawn placement to protect the king — your data. If your main focus lies on keeping hackers out of your environment, then it’s already check mate. Your mission should be to buy time, slow hackers down and ultimately contain an attack.

Businesses must therefore make it as hard as possible for adversaries to exploit the relationships that allow them to move laterally through the corporate network. They can do this by distrusting anyone within their data’s environment and repeatedly corroborating that all users are who they say they are, and that they act like it too. That last part is crucial, because while identities are easy to compromise and imitate, behaviours are not. https://www.ft.com/content/93cec8b6-3fe9-4e9e-800a-62e13a0e2eac

Cyber Risk Trends Driving The Surge In Ransomware Incidents

During the COVID-19 crisis, another outbreak took place in the cyber space: a digital pandemic driven by ransomware. In a recent report, Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS) analyzes the latest risk developments around ransomware and outlines how companies can strengthen their defenses with good cyber hygiene and IT security practices

The increasing frequency and severity of ransomware incidents is driven by several factors:

·         Growing number of different attack patterns such as double and triple extortion campaigns

·         Criminal business model around ‘ransomware as a service’ and cryptocurrencies

·         Recent skyrocketing of ransom demands

·         Rise of supply chain attacks.

Not all attacks are targeted. Criminals also adopt a scattergun approach to exploit those businesses that aren’t addressing or understanding the vulnerabilities they may have. Businesses must understand the need to strengthen their controls.

Cyber intrusion activity globally jumped 125% in the first half of 2021 compared to the previous year, according to Accenture, with ransomware and extortion operations one of the major contributors behind this increase. According to the FBI, there was a 62% increase in ransomware incidents in the US in the same period that followed an increase of 20% for the full year 2020. https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2021/10/18/five-ransomware-trends/

US Ransomware Victims Paid $600 Million to Hackers in 1H of 2021

US Ransomware victims coughed up nearly $600 million to cyber hijackers in the first six months of 2021, further stamping cyber extortionists as an “increasing threat” to the U.S. financial, business and public sectors, a recent report released by the Treasury Department said.

Data gathered by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) derived from financial institutions’ Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) revealed that the 635 reports filed for the first six months of this year is already 30 percent greater than the 487 filed for all of last year. Some 458 financial transitions have been reported as of June 30, 2021 with the total value of suspicious activity reported in ransomware-related SARs during the first six months of 2021 amounting to $590 million, or 42 percent more than the $416 million filed for all of 2020. https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-research/victims-paid-600-millon-1h-2021/

Hacking Group Created Fake Cyber Security Companies To Hire Experts And Involve Them In Ransomware Attacks Tricking Them Of Conducting A Pentest

The FIN7 hacking group is attempting to enter in the ransomware business and is doing it with an interesting technique. The gang is creating fake cyber security companies that hire experts requesting them to carry out pen testing attacks under the guise of pentesting activities.

FIN7 is a Russian criminal group that has been active since mid-2015, it focuses on restaurants, gambling, and hospitality industries in the US to harvest financial information that was used in attacks or sold in cybercrime marketplaces.

One of the companies created by the cyber criminal organizations with this purpose is Combi Security, but researchers from Gemini Advisory discovered other similar organizations by analyzing the site of another fake cybersecurity company named Bastion Security. https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/123673/cyber-crime/fin7-fake-cybersecurity-firm.html

Nearly Three-Quarters of Organisations Victimized by DNS Attacks in Past 12 Months

Domain name system (DNS) attacks are impacting organizations at worrisome rates. According to a new survey from the Neustar International Security Council (NISC) conducted in September 2021, 72% of study participants reported experiencing a DNS attack within the last 12 months. Among those targeted, 61% have seen multiple attacks and 11% said they have been victimized regularly. While one-third of respondents recovered within minutes, 58% saw their businesses disrupted for more than an hour, and 14% took several hours to recover. https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/nearly-three-quarters-of-organizations-victimized-by-dns-attacks-in-past-12-months

Cyber Crime Matures As Hackers Are Forced To Work Smarter

An analysis of 500 hacking incidents across a wide range of industries has revealed trends that characterize a maturity in the way hacking groups operate today.

Researchers at Kaspersky have focused on the Russian cybercrime underground, which is currently one of the most prolific ecosystems, but many elements in their findings are common denominators for all hackers groups worldwide.

One key finding of the study is that the level of security on office software, web services, email platforms, etc., is getting better, browser vulnerabilities have reduced in numbers, and websites are not as easy to compromise and use as infection vectors today.

This has resulted in making web infections too difficult to pursue for non-sophisticated threat groups.

The case is similar with vulnerabilities, which are fewer and more expensive to discover.

Instead, hacking groups are waiting for a PoC or patch to be released, and then use that information to create their own exploits. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/cybercrime-matures-as-hackers-are-forced-to-work-smarter/

Hackers Stealing Browser Cookies to Hijack High-Profile YouTube Accounts

Since at least late 2019, a network of hackers-for-hire have been hijacking the channels of YouTube creators, luring them with bogus collaboration opportunities to broadcast cryptocurrency scams or sell the accounts to the highest bidder.

That's according to a new report published by Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG), which said it disrupted financially motivated phishing campaigns targeting the video platform with cookie theft malware. The actors behind the infiltration have been attributed to a group of hackers recruited in a Russian-speaking forum. https://thehackernews.com/2021/10/hackers-stealing-browser-cookies-to.html


Threats

Ransomware

BEC

Phishing

Malware

Mobile

Vulnerabilities

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Insider Threats

Dark Web

Supply Chain

OT, ICS, IIoT and SCADA

Nation State Actors

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