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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 15 March 2024

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Intelligence Briefing 15 March 2024:

-Mind The Gap - Mimecast Report Finds Humans Are Biggest Security Flaw

-Three-Quarters of Cyber Victim Are SMBs - Why SMBs are Becoming More Vulnerable

-Cyber Security Skills Gap and Lack of Boardroom Engagement Invite Hacker Havoc

-UK Government’s Ransomware Failings Leave Country ‘Exposed and Unprepared’

-Data Breaches up 72% to New Record High: Cyber Security Incidents Rank as #1 Global Business Threat in 2024

-Finance Sector Facing Huge Number of Cyber Attacks That Could Leave It On its Knees, Highlights the Need to Build a Robust Security Culture

-Microsoft Confirms Russian Hackers Stole Source Code, Some Customer Secrets

-Independent Cyber Security Audits Are Powerful Tools for Boards

-Navigating Cyber Security in The Era of Mergers

-Phishing Tactics Evolve as Sophisticated Vishing and Image-based Phishing Take World by Storm

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

Mind The Gap: Mimecast Report Finds Humans Are Biggest Security Flaw

A global report from Mimecast has found that 74% of all cyber breaches are caused by human factors, including errors, misuse of access privileges or social engineering. Email remains the primary attack vector for cyber threats. Further, 67% of respondents expect AI-driven attacks to soon be the norm and 69% believe their company will be harmed by an attack.

No matter the size, sector or budget of an organisation, people remain a consistent risk factor. Even with strong technology controls, people can still be the risk that brings down the organisation. It is therefore important for organisations to integrate people into their cyber security investments. This should include awareness and education training, and fostering a cyber secure culture in the organisation.

Sources: [IT Security Guru] [Beta News] [Verdict]

Three-Quarters of Cyber Victim Are SMBs: Why SMBs are Becoming More Vulnerable

According to a recent Sophos report, over three-quarters of cyber incidents impacted smaller businesses in 2023, with ransomware having the largest impact. The research also found that in 90% of attacks, data or credential theft was involved and in 43%, data theft was the main focus.

The report found significant usage of initial access brokers; these are attackers whose speciality is to break into computer networks and sell ready-to-go access to other attackers. In fact, the report found that almost half of all malware detected in SMBs were malicious programs used to steal sensitive data and login credentials. Unfortunately, many SMBs struggle to keep up due to a lack of resources and budget; instead, they must be able to prioritise their cyber security efforts to get the most return on investment.

Sources: [Infosecurity Magazine]  [Help Net Security] [TechRadar] [Nairametrics] [TechTarget]

Cyber Security Skills Gap and Lack of Boardroom Engagement Invite Hacker Havoc

The Ipsos report on Cyber Security Skills in the UK Labour Market 2023 sheds light on the persistent challenges faced in recruiting, training, and retaining cyber security professionals across various domains. With approximately 739,000 businesses lacking basic cyber skills and 487,000 facing advanced skills gaps, the demand for trained professionals is escalating. The shortage of incident response skills highlights the need for comprehensive education and training programs. Senior management and board-level executives must also be equipped with the knowledge to manage incidents effectively, emphasising reporting, seeking external assistance, and maintaining a no-blame culture. Understanding cyber risks at the business level is crucial, as cyber crime has evolved into a well-organised industry with distinct roles and profit-sharing mechanisms among cyber criminal groups. Conducting tabletop incident response exercises can effectively prepare senior leadership for cyber incidents, ensuring a proactive and coordinated response to mitigate risks and safeguard organisational resilience.

Source: [TechRadar]

UK Government’s Ransomware Failings Leave Country ‘Exposed and Unprepared’

The recent response from the British government to warnings about the looming ransomware threat has sparked criticism, with accusations of adopting an "ostrich strategy" by downplaying the severity of the national cyber threat. Despite alarming assessments from the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy (JCNSS) regarding the high risk of a catastrophic ransomware attack, the government's formal response has been met with scepticism. Key recommendations, such as reallocating responsibility for tackling ransomware away from the Home Office, were rejected, with the government arguing that its existing regulations and the current National Cyber Strategy were sufficient. This argument has raised concerns about the government's preparedness and resource allocation. With ransomware attacks escalating in the UK, the Committee underscores the urgency for a proactive national security response to mitigate the potentially devastating impacts on the economy and national security.

Source: [The Record Media]

Data Breaches up 72% to New Record High: Cyber Security Incidents Rank as #1 Global Business Threat in 2024

Research conducted by the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) found that 2023 set an all time high in data breaches, 72% more than the prior year. Separately, the Allianz Risk Barometer identified cyber incidents as the biggest global business threat for 2024, ranking above regulatory concerns, climate change and a shortage of skilled workers. It is crucial that the severity of this risk is reflected in the actions taken by organisations, who must effectively govern and implement their cyber security strategy.

Sources: [JDSupra]

Finance Sector Facing Huge Number of Cyber Attacks That Could Leave It On its Knees, Highlights the Need to Build a Robust Security Culture

Cyber security has become a pressing issue on financial institutions due to the rise in cyber attacks, as highlighted by the February attack on Bank of America via a third-party service. The involvement of the LockBit ransomware group underlines the persistent nature of these threats, particularly targeting the financial sector. These attacks disrupt services and undermine trust in the financial system, necessitating robust cyber security frameworks. The new US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rule requiring immediate disclosure of cyber security incidents presents both benefits and challenges, calling for clear guidelines and industry-wide collaboration. BlackBerry’s Global Threat Intelligence Report revealed a staggering million attacks globally in just 120 days last year. These attacks, often using commodity malware, make up almost two-thirds of all industry-related incidents. The 27% increase in novel malware samples highlights the need for improved defences. These findings emphasise the need for AI-driven detection and defence strategies. While critical infrastructure remains a primary focus, commercial enterprises must remain vigilant, with a third of threats targeting various sectors, emphasising the pervasive nature of cyber threats across industries.

Source:[ SC Media] [TechRadar]

Microsoft Confirms Russian Hackers Stole Source Code, Some Customer Secrets

In a recent revelation, Microsoft disclosed that the Kremlin-backed threat group known as Midnight Blizzard successfully accessed some of Microsoft’s source code repositories and internal systems following a hack in January 2024. The breach, believed to have originally occurred in November 2023, exploited a legacy test account lacking multi-factor authentication by employing a password spray attack. Microsoft assured no compromise to customer-facing systems but warned of ongoing attempts by Midnight Blizzard to exploit stolen corporate email data. The extent of the breach remains under investigation, with concerns raised over the potential accumulation of attack vectors by the threat actor. The incident underscores the escalating sophistication of nation-state cyber threats and prompts a re-evaluation of security measures, highlighting the imperative for robust defences against such adversaries.

Source: [The Hacker News]

Independent Cyber Security Audits Are Powerful Tools for Boards

Board members are increasingly held accountable for their organisation's cyber posture, facing personal liability for lapses. To gain insight and demonstrate proactive leadership, independent cyber security audits have become indispensable. These audits not only aid in regulatory compliance but also uncover blind spots in the organisation's security measures. Recent regulations, such as by  the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) underscore the imperative for robust cyber security oversight at the board level. The audit process involves defining the scope, conducting assessments, validating findings through simulations, and presenting comprehensive reports to leadership. By embracing cyber security audits, boards can fulfil their duty of overseeing and enhancing the organisation's cyber resilience in an ever-evolving threat landscape.

Source: [Bloomberg Law]

Navigating Cyber Security in The Era of Mergers

In today's landscape of frequent mergers and acquisitions (M&A), organisations grapple with the challenge of aligning cyber security measures across subsidiaries, posing a risk to overall security. According to an IBM survey, over one in three executives attribute data breaches to M&A activity during integration. This complexity arises as security teams may lack insight into subsidiary infrastructure, hindering risk assessment and mitigation efforts. Historical incidents like the NotPetya attack on Merck and the Talk Talk hack highlight vulnerabilities post-acquisition, emphasising the need for a proactive approach to subsidiary cyber security. To address these challenges, organisations must conduct comprehensive risk assessments, standardise security protocols, foster collaboration, and consider unified security platforms. By proactively addressing visibility gaps and implementing standardised protocols, organisations can fortify their defences against evolving cyber threats amidst M&A activities.

Source: [Forbes]

Phishing Tactics Evolve as Sophisticated Vishing and Image-based Phishing Take World by Storm

According to a recent report, 76% of organisations were compromised by QR-code phishing in the last 12 months. Along with this, there has also been a rise in the number of sophisticated vishing attacks, with recent attacks costing organisations millions. The introduction of artificial intelligence has only added fuel to this fire already impacting security controls such as call-back procedures. With the tactics of phishing evolving, organisations need to ensure they are up-to-date and that employees are trained effectively to mitigate the risk of these.

Sources: [Help Net Security] [Dark Reading]

Threats

Ransomware, Extortion and Destructive Attacks

Ransomware Victims

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Other Social Engineering

Artificial Intelligence

2FA/MFA

Malware

Mobile

Denial of Service/DoS/DDOS

Internet of Things – IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Insurance

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Cloud/SaaS

Encryption

Linux and Open Source

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Training, Education and Awareness

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Models, Frameworks and Standards

Backup and Recovery

Data Protection

Careers, Working in Cyber and Information Security

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

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

Nation State Actors

China

Russia

North Korea

Vulnerability Management

Vulnerabilities

Sector Specific

Industry specific threat intelligence reports are available.

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

·         Automotive

·         Construction

·         Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)

·         Defence & Space

·         Education & Academia

·         Energy & Utilities

·         Estate Agencies

·         Financial Services

·         FinTech

·         Food & Agriculture

·         Gaming & Gambling

·         Government & Public Sector (including Law Enforcement)

·         Health/Medical/Pharma

·         Hotels & Hospitality

·         Insurance

·         Legal

·         Manufacturing

·         Maritime

·         Oil, Gas & Mining

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

·         Retail & eCommerce

·         Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)

·         Startups

·         Telecoms

·         Third Sector & Charities

·         Transport & Aviation

·         Web3

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

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

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

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

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Black Arrow Admin Black Arrow Admin

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 12 January 2024

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Intelligence Briefing 12 January 2024:

-Boardrooms on Notice: Cyber Security Oversight More Important Than Ever

-Ransomware Incidents Reported to UK Financial Regulator Doubled in 2023

-Businesses Can’t Survive Without Their IT Systems – and They’re Under Attack More Than Ever

-Cyber Insecurity and Misinformation Top WEF Global Risk List

-Why Effective Cyber Security and Risk Management are Crucial for Business Growth

-The Cost of Dealing with a Cyber Attack Doubled Last Year

-Merck Settles NotPetya Insurance Claim – Leaving Cyber Warfare Definition Unresolved

-Mandiant, SEC Lose Control of X Accounts Without 2FA

-If you Prepare, a Data Security Incident Should Not Cause an Existential Crisis

-82% of Companies Struggle to Manage Security Exposure, with 28,000 New Vulnerabilities Reported Last Year

-Cyber Security is the Number One Priority for the Financial Sector Again

-Cyber Crime Marketplaces Soar in 2024: All Threats Now Available ‘As-a-Service’

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

Boardrooms on Notice: Cyber Security Oversight More Important Than Ever

In 2023, the rise in security breaches and cyber attacks caused cyber security to transcend its usual confines and emerge as a critical boardroom concern, prompting executives to recognise the need for proactive engagement. The current landscape has necessitated executive decision-makers to proactively engage in cyber security, instead of just passively observing. It is no surprise that in a survey from KMPG of over 300 CEO’s, dealing with cyber risk was designated as the top priority for the foreseeable three to five years.

When a company faces a substantial fine or penalty from a breach, it serves two crucial purposes. Firstly, it sets a precedent for ensuring companies across the board understand the repercussions of lax cyber security measures and secondly, it pushes organisations towards proactive investment in robust cyber security frameworks. Many organisations are beginning to realise that the cost of a breach, both financial and reputational, far outweighs that of prevention. Furthermore, many frameworks are now placing the board as directly responsible.

Sources: [Lexology] [Security Brief]

Ransomware Incidents Reported to UK Financial Regulator Doubled in 2023

Ransomware reported to the UK financial regulator in 2023 doubled, and the impact is clear. In a survey of CISOs based in the UK, one-third confessed to paying ransomware groups millions in recent years in a bid to alleviate the impact of an attack. The minimum ransom paid by UK businesses across a five year period stood at around $250,000, the study found. Ransomware is the dominant threat that continues to plague organisations, and it is important that your organisation is doing all it can to prevent such an attack, and has plans in place to recover when such an attack happens.

Sources: [Data Breaches] [UK mortgage news] [The Hacker News]

Businesses Can’t Survive Without Their IT Systems – and They’re Under Attack More Than Ever

As organisations find themselves more and more reliant on digital technology than ever before, the impact of not having it becomes greater and greater. As reliance on these systems grows, the level of cyber threat grows as well. A recent report found 68% of those surveyed believed they would not survive more than a single day without their IT systems, up from 46% in 2017. The report found that 54% of organisations said they experienced some form of cyber attack last year, with ransomware cited as the most disruptive.

Source: [TechRadar]

Cyber Insecurity and Misinformation Top WEF Global Risk List

In the latest report by the World Economic Forum, misinformation and disinformation have emerged as the most severe global risk anticipated over the next two years, with the risk becoming more likely as elections in several economies take place this year. As artificial intelligence models become easier to use and more accessible to the general population, this will enable an explosion of false information and synthetic content such as cloned voices and fake websites.

Another top concern identified in the report is the risk of cyber attacks and cyber insecurities. Currently the production of AI technologies is highly concentrated; this creates a significant supply chain risk, as the reliance of one or two models could give rise to systemic cyber vulnerabilities, paralysing critical infrastructure.

Source: [Infosecurity Magazine]

Why Effective Cyber Security and Risk Management are Crucial for Business Growth

Technology has changed, enhanced and transformed how business is conducted. However, these new advancements such as cloud, IoT and AI have introduced a range of new cyber security risks. It is crucial for leaders to grasp the accompanying risks to ensure the safety of their organisations, customers and products. Given the inevitability of business risk, particularly cyber risk, leaders should focus on managing it by identifying mission-critical aspects of their organisation and then determining how best to protect them. The first step to a proactive approach to cyber security is to devise a robust and tailored cyber security strategy aligned to the organisation’s risk profile. This not only improves the safety and security of the organisation, but also the trust of its customers and products in an increasingly digital world.

Source: [World Economic Forum]

The Cost of Dealing with a Cyber Attack Doubled Last Year

New research by Dell claims that the cost of global cyber attacks reached a new high in 2023, topping out at $1.41 million per attack, up $660,000 from the previous year. It was found that almost half (48%) of UK based organisations reported suffering either a cyber attack or incident that prevented access to company data.

Over half of global respondents report that malicious links in spam or phishing emails, hacked devices, and stolen credentials are the most common entry points for cyber attacks.

Source: [TechRadar]

Merck Settles NotPetya Insurance Claim – Leaving Cyber Warfare Definition Unresolved

Merck’s long legal battle with its insurers over the damage caused by the infamous NotPetya attack has finally come to an end, with the Merck agreeing to settle with their insurer providers who had refused to pay $699 million of the $1.4 million that was claimed in damages.

The legal battle began when Merck, who did not have cyber insurance, had made a claim under its ‘all-risks’ coverage. In 2022, it was stated that the NotPetya attack “is not sufficiently linked to a military action or objective as it was a non-military cyber attack against an accounting software provider” and in May 2023, this decision was upheld, forcing the insurers to settle.

Source: [Security Week] [Dark Reading]

Mandiant, SEC Lose Control of X Accounts Without 2FA

While security teams are focused on preventing the gamut of different levels of cyber attack sophistication, it can be easy for even the sharpest teams to overlook the simple stuff. This was recently seen when Google’s cyber security operation, Mandiant, temporarily lost control of its account on X (formerly known as Twitter) due to not having two-factor authentication (2FA). A separate high-profile incident also occurred this week, as the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) account on X was hijacked to post a fake announcement about bitcoin, raising its value by 5%.

In March of 2023, X changed the way multi-factor authentication (MFA) worked, so that only premium subscribers have access to it. The two high-profile attacks, which were due to accounts not having MFA, show that cyber criminals are taking advantage of these changes. These incidents serve as a clear reminder that organisations must prioritise even the most fundamental security practices, such as MFA, to protect their digital assets.

Further, the attack on the SEC has opened them to criticism from firms such as SolarWinds who the SEC had previously reprimanded for cyber security failures.

Source: [Dark Reading]

If you Prepare, a Data Security Incident Should Not Cause an Existential Crisis

A question to ask is why, in the event of a data security incident, is there an overwhelming feeling that the company is doomed? Yet when there are other issues, such as internal investigations, the feeling is not as strong. For a lot of companies, these cyber incidents are the first time that their cyber response plan (if they have one at all) is enacted and it is this lack of preparation that causes such a feeling.  Companies looking to increase their cyber resilience should look to have and regularly test a cyber incident response plan; you do not want to be in the position of having to learn your plan and deal with a cyber incident at the same time.

Source: [Help Net Security]

82% of Companies Struggle to Manage Security Exposure, with 28,000 New Vulnerabilities Reported Last Year

A substantial 82% of companies have reported a widening gap between security exposures and their ability to manage them according to a recent report. For many, the issue is caused by a lack of proper remediation solutions; this formed part of the reason why 87% of surveyed organisations reported plans to enhance vulnerability and exposure remediation within the next year. The need increases when considering last year there were more than 28,000 new vulnerabilities; that is the equivalent of nearly 80 every day.

Sources: [Infosecurity Magazine] [SecurityWeek]

Cyber Security is the Number One Priority for the Financial Sector Again

In Softcat's annual Business Tech Priorities Report, the financial sector's tech investments for the coming year have been unveiled. Notably, cyber security remains the top priority for the sector with 55% prioritising cyber security before anything else, reflecting the critical need to protect against the escalating threat landscape. It's important to understand that cyber security is not merely an IT problem; it is a business imperative. As consumers increasingly embrace digital banking, the impact of digitalisation on the financial sector is evident. With cyber incidents on the rise, investment in cyber security, including zero-trust security and AI threat hunting, is imperative for safeguarding not only data but the entire business.

Sources: [The Fintech Times] [Islamic Finance News]

Cyber Crime Marketplaces Soar in 2024: All Threats Now Available ‘As-a-Service’

In 2024, cyber crime marketplaces are expected to surge even more, transitioning every cyber threat further into the “as-a-service” model. The term “as-a-service” refers to the provision of specific functionalities or tools as a service, typically offered on a subscription or pay-as-you-go basis. This allows malicious actors with limited technical skills to launch sophisticated attacks. This trend was already being spotted at the end of 2023 as a report found that 73% of all internet traffic is currently composed of malicious bots and related fraud farm activities. This highlights the need for organisations to have accurate threat intelligence and analysis to understand the digital terrain ahead of these continued and expanding “as-a-service” threats.

Source: [Security Boulevard]

Governance, Risk and Compliance

Threats

Ransomware, Extortion and Destructive Attacks

Ransomware Victims

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Artificial Intelligence

2FA/MFA

Malware

Mobile

Internet of Things – IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Insurance

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Cloud/SaaS

Identity and Access Management

Linux and Open Source

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Malvertising

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Models, Frameworks and Standards

Data Protection

Careers, Working in Cyber and Information Security

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

Misinformation, Disinformation and Propaganda

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

Cyber Warfare and Cyber Espionage

Nation State Actors

China

Russia

Iran

North Korea

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

Vulnerability Management

Vulnerabilities

Other News

Sector Specific

Industry specific threat intelligence reports are available.

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

·         Automotive

·         Construction

·         Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)

·         Defence & Space

·         Education & Academia

·         Energy & Utilities

·         Estate Agencies

·         Financial Services

·         FinTech

·         Food & Agriculture

·         Gaming & Gambling

·         Government & Public Sector (including Law Enforcement)

·         Health/Medical/Pharma

·         Hotels & Hospitality

·         Insurance

·         Legal

·         Manufacturing

·         Maritime

·         Oil, Gas & Mining

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

·         Retail & eCommerce

·         Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)

·         Startups

·         Telecoms

·         Third Sector & Charities

·         Transport & Aviation

·         Web3

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

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

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

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

Read More
Black Arrow Admin Black Arrow Admin

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 30 June 2023

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 30 June 2023:

-Zurich Insurance Group Secures Data Leak After Leaving Sensitive Data Publicly Accessible

-Employees Worry Less About Cyber Security Best Practices in the Summer

-Businesses are Ignoring Third-Party Security Risks

-Fear Trumps Anger When It Comes to Data Breaches – Angry Customers Vent, But Fearful Customers Don’t Come Back

-Over 130 Organisations and Millions of Individuals Believed to Be Impacted by MOVEit Hack, it Keeps Growing

-Widespread BEC Attacks Threaten European Organisations

-Lloyd’s Syndicates Sued Over Cyber Insurance

-95% Fear Inadequate Cloud Security Detection and Response

-The Growing Use of Generative AI and the Security Risks They Pose

-The CISO’s Toolkit Must Include Political Capital Within The C-Suite

-Microsoft Warns of Widescale Credential Stealing Attacks by Russian Hackers as War Ministers Reliant on Cyber Crime

-SMBs Plagued by Exploits, Trojans and Backdoors

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

  • Zurich Insurance Group Secures Data Leak After Leaving Sensitive Data Publicly Accessible

Zurich Insurance Group is a major player in the insurance game, with over 55 million clients. They have recently just fixed a sensitive file that they had left publicly accessible. The file in question contained a range of credentials including database credentials, admin credentials, credentials for the actively exploited MOVEit software, credentials for their HR system and more. All of which could be utilised by threat actors to inflict serious damage. This was not the only vulnerability stemming from the insurance group; researchers found that Zurich were also running an outdated website, which contained a large number of vulnerabilities.

The case is alarming as Zurich Insurance Group provides cyber insurance and the instance above reinforces the need for organisations to be proactive in identifying cyber risks in their environment; it is simply not enough to rely on having insurance or meeting insurance requirements.

https://cybernews.com/zurich-insurance-data-leak/

  • Employees Worry Less About Cyber Security Best Practices in the Summer

IT teams are struggling to monitor and enforce BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policies during summer months according to a new report. The report found that 55% of employees admitted to relying solely on their mobile devices while working remotely in the summer. 25% of all respondents claim that they aren’t concerned about ensuring network connections are secure when accessing their company’s data.

In the same report, 45% of employees in the US and UK said no specific measures to educate and remind employees on security best practices are taken during the summer, with only 24% of UK respondents receiving access to online cyber security training and guides and even less (17%) in the US. This comes as a separate report found that the number of phishing sites targeting mobile devices increased from 75% to 80% year-on-year in 2022, and this is likely to continue rising. Worryingly, it was also found that the average user is between six and ten times more likely to fall for an SMS phishing attack than email.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/06/30/summer-byod-policies/

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/mobile-malware-and-phishing-surge/

  • Businesses are Ignoring Third-Party Security Risks

With 58% of companies managing over 100 vendors, 8% of which manage over 1,000, the need for a robust Third-Party Security Risk Management process becomes abundantly clear. Despite this, only 13% of organisations continuously monitor the security risks of their third parties. This is worrying, when considering the knock-on effects of third party breaches from the likes of Capita, SolarWinds and 3CX, and the recent MOVEit attack, impacting organisations whose only relationship with MOVEit was that their supplier used it.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/06/30/third-party-relationships-risks/

  • Fear Trumps Anger When It Comes to Data Breaches – Angry Customers Vent, But Fearful Customers Don’t Come Back

When a person is notified of a data breach involving their personal information, if they react with a feeling of fear, as opposed to anger, they’re more likely to stop using the site. A report found that positive attitudes toward the website before the breach did not meaningfully affect whether consumers reengaged with the website after the breach, as some prior research has indicated. Instead, the emotional response of fear weighed heavily on customers and outweighed any earlier positive sentiment towards the organisation.

When a company has been breached in the past they have dealt with angry customers and negative press. To do so, companies may engage crisis managers to contain the damage, partner with identity protection services, pay fines or settlements, or try to lure back customers with free services. However, the study shows that companies need to address fearful customers differently after a data breach has occurred if they want to avoid customer loss. To do this, companies can work with their IT departments to identify customers who are no longer active after a breach and then reach out to them directly to assuage their fears.

https://theconversation.com/fear-trumps-anger-when-it-comes-to-data-breaches-angry-customers-vent-but-fearful-customers-dont-come-back-203109

  • Over 130 Organisations and Millions of Individuals Believed to be Impacted by MOVEit Hack, it Keeps Growing

The dramatic fallout continues in the mass exploitation of a critical vulnerability in a widely used file-transfer program, with at least three new victims coming to light in the past few days. They include the New York City Department of Education and energy companies Schneider Electric and Siemens Electric. These join others, including PwC, Sony and EY. If the attack has shown us one thing, it’s that any organisation can be a victim.

https://www.securityweek.com/over-130-organizations-millions-of-individuals-believed-to-be-impacted-by-moveit-hack/

https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/06/casualties-keep-growing-in-this-months-mass-exploitation-of-moveit-0-day/

  • Widespread BEC Attacks Threaten European Organisations

Based on an analysis of email attack trends between June 2022 and May 2023, total email attacks in Europe increased by 7 times and the US 5 times. For business email compromise (BEC) specifically, Europe saw an alarming 10 times the amount it had previously and the US saw a 2 times increase.

BEC continues to remain a high priority threat for many organisations and if someone already has a legitimate business email which they have compromised to use for BEC attacks on your organisation, it is very likely that your technical processes will be ineffective, leaving your people and operational processes to stop an attack. Is your organisation cyber aware? Are they undergoing regular awareness training?

This is one of many areas that Black Arrow can help improve your organisation’s security through robust employee cyber security Awareness Behaviour and Culture training.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/06/27/bec-attacks-frequency/

  • Lloyd’s Syndicates Sued Over Cyber Insurance

The University of California (UCLA) is suing a number of insurance firms for refusing to pay out on cyber policies nearly 10 years after hackers breached data on millions of patients at its health system. The dispute is over a cyber attack from 2014 through 2015 that exposed personal information of patients at UCLA Health.

UCLA Health allege that the syndicates refused to engage in dispute resolution by asserting that the statue of limitations applying to the claims had expired. The insurers, who could not be named, are said to have refused every claim saying that UCLA Health failed to satisfy cyber security requirements under the contract terms. It’s important for organisations with cyber insurance to understand their insurance in detail and to know where they stand in the event of a cyber incident.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/university-of-california-sues-lloyds-syndicates-over-cyber-insurance-da4675f5

  • 95% Fear Inadequate Cloud Security Detection and Response

A recent report found 95% of respondents expressed concern in their organisation’s ability to detect and respond to a security event in their cloud environment. The same study also found that 50% of total respondents had reported a data breach due to unauthorised access to their cloud environment.

It is often the case that issues in the cloud come from the perception of the responsibility of the cloud environment. Organisations must realise that they share responsibility for securing their cloud environment, including its configuration. The report found that, despite the number of breaches and concerns in their organisation’s ability, more than 80% of respondents still felt their existing tooling and configuration would sufficiently cover their organisation from an attack. Organisations must ask themselves what they are doing to protect their cloud environment.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/06/27/cloud-environment-security/

  • The Growing Use of Generative AI and the Security Risks They Pose

A recent survey by Malwarebytes revealed 81% of people are concerned about the security risks posed by ChatGPT and generative AI, and 52% of respondents are calling for a pause on ChatGPT for regulations to catch up, while 7% think it will improve internet security. A key concern about the data produced by generative AI platforms is the risk of "hallucinations" whereby machine learning models produce untruths. This becomes a serious issue for organisations if its content is heavily relied upon to make decisions, particularly those relating to threat detection and response.

Another recent report on the risks brought by Large Language Model AIs showed that the rise in opensource AI adoption is developed insecurely; this results in an increased threat with substantial security risks to organisation.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/643516/survey-reveals-mass-concern-over-generative-ai-security-risks.html

https://www.darkreading.com/operations/malwarebytes-chatgpt-survey-reveals-81-are-concerned-by-generative-ai-security-risks

https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-threats/generative-ai-projects-cybersecurity-risks-enterprises

  • The CISO’s Toolkit Must Include Political Capital Within The C-Suite

Over the past 18 months, there has been a sea change in the chief information security officer (CISO) role. Fundamentally, the CISO is responsible for the protection of an entity's information. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued a proposed rule change on cyber security risk management, strategy, governance, and incident response disclosure by public companies that requires publicly traded companies to provide evidence of the board's oversight of cyber security risk. Couple this with the former CISO of Uber being found guilty on charges of "obstruction of the proceedings of the Federal Trade Commission" and it is clear that the hand at the helm must be able to navigate all types of seas in their entity's political milieu. In this regard, the CISO needs to acquire political capital. CISO’s should have the capability to talk in understandable terms and clearly demonstrate value to the other board members.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/643199/the-cisos-toolkit-must-include-political-capital-within-the-c-suite.html

  • Microsoft Warns of Widescale Credential Stealing Attacks by Russian Hackers as War Ministers Reliant on Cyber Crime

Russia's diminishing position on the world stage has limited its physical options on the ground, leaving Putin's regime increasingly reliant on cyber crime to carry out its oppositional activities against Ukraine and Europe. Microsoft has disclosed that it has detected a spike in credential-stealing attacks conducted by the Russian state-affiliated hacker group known as Midnight Blizzard.

This comes as Switzerland's Federal Intelligence Service (FIS) released its 2023 security assessment, predicting that Russia will increasingly launch cyber attacks as part of its war strategy not just in Ukraine, but against NATO member states as well.

https://www.darkreading.com/threat-intelligence/russia-reliant-on-cybercrime-as-international-pariah

https://thehackernews.com/2023/06/microsoft-warns-of-widescale-credential.html

  • SMB’s Plagued as Cyber Attackers Still Rely on Decades Old Security Weaknesses and Tactics

Despite best cyber security efforts, small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) continue to struggle to thwart attacks and harden defences in response to remote working and other newer challenges.

This future focus can lead to a neglection of older weaknesses. Cyber attackers are typically relying on tried-and-tested tactics and old security weaknesses to target organisations, a recent Barracuda threat spotlight found. Hackers are returning to proven methods to gain remote control of systems, install malware, steal information and disrupt or disable business operations through denial-of-service attacks, Barracuda reports. The report found that between February to April 2023, the top malicious tactics found to be used were vulnerabilities from 2008.

The report highlights the fact that there are no cutoff dates for vulnerabilities and attackers will use whatever is at their disposal to try and infiltrate your organisation. This can be protected by having strong policies and controls in place alongside frequent penetration testing to ensure these vulnerabilities are being patched.

https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-research/cyberattackers-still-rely-on-decades-old-security-weaknesses-tactics-barracuda-reports/

https://www.scmagazine.com/news/malware/smbs-plagued-by-exploits-trojans-and-backdoors

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

Denial of Service/DoS/DDOS

Internet of Things – IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Deepfakes

Insurance

Dark Web

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Cloud/SaaS

Identity and Access Management

Encryption

Open Source

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Travel

Cyber Bullying, Cyber Stalking and Sextortion

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Models, Frameworks and Standards

Careers, Working in Cyber and Information Security

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

Privacy, Surveillance and Mass Monitoring

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

Russia

China

Iran

North Korea

Misc/Other/Unknown

Vulnerability Management

Vulnerabilities

Sector Specific

Industry specific threat intelligence reports are available.

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

·       Automotive

·       Construction

·       Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)

·       Defence & Space

·       Education & Academia

·       Energy & Utilities

·       Estate Agencies

·       Financial Services

·       FinTech

·       Food & Agriculture

·       Gaming & Gambling

·       Government & Public Sector (including Law Enforcement)

·       Health/Medical/Pharma

·       Hotels & Hospitality

·       Insurance

·       Legal

·       Manufacturing

·       Maritime

·       Oil, Gas & Mining

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

·       Retail & eCommerce

·       Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)

·       Startups

·       Telecoms

·       Third Sector & Charities

·       Transport & Aviation

·       Web3

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

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

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

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

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Black Arrow Admin Black Arrow Admin

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 12 May 2023

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 12 May 2023:

-79% of Cyber Pros Make Decisions Without Threat Intelligence

-61% of Business Leadership Overlook the Role of Cyber Security as a Business Enabler and as being Key to Business Success

-Risk Managers Warn Cyber Insurance Could Become ‘Unviable Product’

-Small and Medium-Sized Businesses: Don’t Give up on Cyber Security

-AI Has Been Dubbed a 'Nuclear' Threat to Cyber Security, but It Can Also Be Used for Defence

-Paying Cyber Hijackers’ Ransoms Doubles Cost of Recovery, Sophos Study Shows

-Majority of US, UK CISOs Unable to Protect Company 'Secrets'

-Company Executives Can’t Afford to Ignore Cyber Security Anymore

-BEC Campaign via Israel Spotted Targeting Multinational Companies

-CISOs Worried About Personal Liability for Breaches

-UK, US and International Allies Uncover Russian Snake Malware Network in 50+ Countries

-Plug-and-Play Microsoft 365 Phishing Tool 'Democratizes' Attack Campaigns

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

  • 79% of Cyber Pros Make Decisions Without Threat Intelligence

In a recent report, 79% of security pros say they make decisions without adversary insights “at least the majority of the time.” Why aren’t companies effectively leveraging threat intelligence? And does the C-Suite know this is going on?

Threat intelligence helps organisations stay informed about the latest cyber threats and vulnerabilities. By gathering and analysing information about potential attacks, threat intelligence can provide organisations with valuable insights into the tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) used by cyber criminals.

Given the deep value provided by threat intelligence, why aren’t more cyber pros taking advantage of it?

https://securityintelligence.com/articles/79-percent-of-cyber-pros-make-decisions-without-threat-intelligence/

  • 61% of Business Leadership Overlook the Role of Cyber Security as a Business Enabler and as being Key to Business Success

A recent report found only 39% of respondents think their company's leadership has a sound understanding of cyber security's role as a business enabler. Cyber security can be a huge business enabler; executive leaders need to think of cyber security in terms of the value it can deliver at a more strategic level.

https://www.darkreading.com/risk/global-research-from-delinea-reveals-that-61-of-it-security-decision-makers-think-leadership-overlooks-the-role-of-cybersecurity-in-business-success

  • Risk Managers Warn Cyber Insurance Could Become ‘Unviable Product’

The Federation of European Risk Management Associations (FERMA), an umbrella body representing 22 trade associations, said the cyber insurance market is “evolving in isolation from the industries it serves”.

It highlighted a move by Lloyd’s of London, the specialist insurance market and hub for cyber insurance, demanding that standard cyber policies have an exemption for big state-backed attacks.

“Without a more collaborative approach to cyber balancing the risk appetite of the insurance market with the coverage requirements of the corporate buyers, there is a risk that cyber insurance becomes an unviable product for many organisations,” FERMA said in a statement shared with the Financial Times.

The intervention is the strongest yet by the business lobby over the controversial exemption and wider concerns about cyber insurance.

https://www.ft.com/content/401629cc-e68a-41a4-8d50-e7c0d3e27835

  • Small and Medium-Sized Businesses: Don’t Give up on Cyber Security

In today’s increasingly hostile environment, every enterprise, big or small, should be concerned about cyber security and have access to protection from hackers, scammers, phishers, and all the rest of the host of bad actors who seem to be sprouting up around the world.

Yet time and again, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are left out in the cold, an unaddressed market segment that finds real protection either too expensive or far too complex to adopt. Thus, cyber security becomes an “afterthought” or “add when we can” kind of service that leaves SMBs far more vulnerable than the corporate giants — just reading the news every day shows even they aren’t immune to ransomware, intrusions, and data theft. If you haven’t already, start thinking about security now.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3695593/small-and-medium-sized-businesses-don-t-give-up-on-cybersecurity.html

  • AI Has Been Dubbed a 'Nuclear' Threat to Cyber Security, but It Can Also Be Used for Defence

Hackers using ChatGPT are faster and more sophisticated than before, and cyber security analysts who don’t have access to similar tools can very quickly find themselves outgunned and outsmarted by these AI-assisted attackers. However, corporations are stumbling to figure out governance around AI, and while they do so, their employees are clearly defying rules and possibly jeopardising company operations. According to a study of 1.6 million workers, 3.1% input confidential company information into ChatGPT. Although the number seems small, 11% of users' questions include private information. This is a fatal flaw for corporate use considering how hackers can manipulate the system into giving them previously hidden information. In another study, it was found that 80% of security professionals used AI, with 46% of these giving specialised capabilities as a reason.

https://www.euronews.com/2023/05/04/ai-has-been-dubbed-a-nuclear-threat-to-cybersecurity-but-it-can-also-be-used-for-defence

  • Paying Cyber Hijackers’ Ransoms Doubles Cost of Recovery, Sophos Study Shows

In three out of four cyber attacks, the hijackers succeeded in encrypting victims’ data, cyber security provider Sophos said in its newly released State of Ransomware 2023 report.

The rate of data encryption amounted to the highest from ransomware since Sophos first issued the report in 2020. Overall, roughly two-thirds of the 3,000 cyber security/IT leaders’ organisations were infected by a ransomware attack in the first quarter of 2023, or the same percentage as last year.

Much advice has been doled out by cyber security providers and law enforcement urging organisations to not pay a ransom. According to Sophos’ survey, the data shows that when organisations paid a ransom to decrypt their data, they ended up doubling their recovery costs. On average, those organisations paying ransoms for decryption forked out $750,000 in recovery costs versus $375,000 for organisations that used backups to recover their data.

Moreover, paying the ransom usually meant longer recovery times, with 45% of those organisations that used backups recovering within a week, compared to 39% of those that paid the ransom.

https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-research/paying-cyber-hijackers-ransoms-doubles-cost-of-recovery-sophos-study-shows/

  • Majority of US, UK CISOs Unable to Protect Company 'Secrets'

A recent study found 75% of organisations have experienced a data leak involving company secrets, including API keys, usernames, passwords, and encryption keys, in the past. It was found that about 52% of chief information and security officers (CISOs) in the US and UK organisations are unable to fully secure their company secrets. The study showed that a huge chunk of the IT sector realises the danger of exposed secrets. Seventy-five percent said that a secret leak has happened in their organisation in the past, with 60% acknowledging it caused serious issues for the company, employees, or both. The report has pointed out that even though secrets management practice across the US and the UK has seen some maturity, it still needs to go a long way.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3695583/majority-of-us-uk-cisos-unable-to-protect-company-secrets-report.html

  • Company Executives Can’t Afford to Ignore Cyber Security Anymore

In a recent survey, when asked about the Board and C-Suite‘s understanding of cyber security across the organisation, only 36% of respondents believe that it is considered important only in terms of compliance and regulatory demands, while 17% said it is not seen as a business priority. The disconnect between business and security goals appears to have caused at least one negative consequence to 89% of respondents’ organisations, with 26% also reporting it resulted in an increased number of successful cyber attacks at their company. On the misalignment of cyber security goals, respondents believed it contributed to delays in investments (35%), delays in strategic decision making (34%), and unnecessary increases in spending (27%).

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/05/10/cybersecurity-business-goals-alignment/

  • BEC Campaign via Israel Spotted Targeting Multinational Companies

An Israel-based threat group was discovered carrying out a business email compromise (BEC) campaign primarily targeting large and multinational enterprises. The group has conducted 350 BEC campaigns since February 2021, with email attacks targeting employees from 61 countries across six continents. The group operate through two personas — a CEO and an external attorney and spoofed email addresses using real domains.

https://www.darkreading.com/remote-workforce/bec-attacks-out-of-israel-target-multinational-corporations

  • CISOs Worried About Personal Liability for Breaches

Over three-fifths (62%) of global CISOs are concerned about being held personally liable for successful cyber attacks that occur on their watch, and a similar share would not join an organisation that fails to offer insurance to protect them, according to Proofpoint annual ‘Voice of the CISO’ survey for 2023. The security vendor polled 1600 CISOs from organisations of 200 employees or more across different industries in 16 countries to compile the report.

It revealed that CISOs in sectors with high volumes of sensitive data and/or heavy regulation such as retail (69%), financial services (65%) and manufacturing (65%) are most likely to demand insurance coverage.

Such concerns only add to the mental load on corporate IT security bosses. A combination of high-stress working environments, shrinking budgets and personal liability could be harming CISOs’ quality of life. Some 60% told Proofpoint they’ve experienced burnout in the past 12 months.

CISOs are most likely to experience burnout in the retail (72%) and IT, technology and telecoms (66%) industries.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/cisos-worried-personal-liability/

  • UK, US and International Allies Uncover Russian Snake Malware Network in 50+ Countries

The UK NCSC along with the US National Security Agency (NSA) and various international partner agencies have discovered infrastructure connected with the sophisticated Russian cyber-espionage tool Snake in over 50 countries worldwide. Snake operations have been attributed to a specific unit within Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Center 16.

Cyber criminals reportedly used Snake to retrieve and remove confidential documents related to international relations and diplomatic communications.

According to an advisory published by the agencies on Tuesday, the FSB targeted various industries, including education, small businesses, media, local government, finance, manufacturing and telecommunications. The Snake malware is installed on external infrastructure nodes for further exploitation.

According to the NSA Russian government actors have used this tool for years for intelligence collection and it is hoped that the technical details shared in the advisory will help many organisations find and shut down the malware globally.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/nsa-uncovers-russian-snake-malware/

  • Plug-and-Play Microsoft 365 Phishing Tool 'Democratizes' Attack Campaigns

A new phishing-as-a-service tool called "Greatness" is being used in attacks targeting manufacturing, healthcare, technology, and other sectors.

Researchers at Cisco Talos detailed their findings on "Greatness," a one-stop-shop for all of a cyber criminal's phishing needs. With Greatness, anyone with even rudimentary technical chops can craft compelling Microsoft 365-based phishing lures, then carry out man-in-the-middle attacks that steal authentication credentials — even in the face of multifactor authentication (MFA) — and much more.

The tool has been in circulation since at least mid-2022 and has been used in attacks against enterprises in manufacturing, healthcare, and technology, among other sectors. Half of the targets thus far have been concentrated in the US, with further attacks occurring around Western Europe, Australia, Brazil, Canada, and South Africa.

https://www.darkreading.com/cloud/plug-and-play-microsoft-365-phishing-tool-democratizes-attacks

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

Insurance

Dark Web

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Software Supply Chain

Cloud/SaaS

Hybrid/Remote Working

Attack Surface Management

Identity and Access Management

Asset Management

Encryption

API

Open Source

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Parental Controls and Child Safety

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Governance, Risk and Compliance

Models, Frameworks and Standards

Data Protection

Careers, Working in Cyber and Information Security

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

Privacy, Surveillance and Mass Monitoring

Artificial Intelligence

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 03 February 2023

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 03 February 2023:

-Business Leaders Need a Hands-on Approach to Stop Cyber Crime, Says Spy Chief

-Rising ‘Firebrick Ostrich’ BEC Group Launches Industrial Scale Cyber Attacks

-The Corporate World is Losing its Grip on Cyber Risk

-Microsoft Reveals Over 100 Threat Actors are Deploying Ransomware in Attacks

-Greater Incident Complexity, a Shift in How Threat Actors Use Stolen Data Will Drive the Cyber Threat Landscape in 2023

-The Threat from Within: 71% of Business Leaders Surveyed Think Next Cyber Security Breach Will come from the Inside

-98% of Organisations Have a Supply Chain Relationship That Has Been Breached

-New Survey Reveals 40% of Companies Experienced a Data Leak in the Past Year

-Russian Hackers Launch Cyber Attack on Germany in Leopard Tank Retaliation

-Financial Services Targeted in 28% of UK Cyber Attacks Last Year

-Phishing Attacks are Getting Scarily Sophisticated. Here’s what to Watch Out For

-City of London on High Alert After Ransomware Attack

-Ransomware Conversations: Why the CFO is Pivotal to Discussing and Preparing for Risk

-JD Sports Warns of 10 Million Customers Put at Risk in Cyber Attack

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

Top Cyber Stories of the Last Week

  • Business Leaders Need a Hands-on Approach to Stop Cyber Crime, Says Spy Chief

Business leaders must not see cyber crime as “just a technical issue” that can be left up to IT departments, said Lindy Cameron, chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).  Ms Cameron later commented that “In the world of cyber security, the new year has brought with it some sadly familiar themes - a continuation of cyber incidents affecting organisations large and small as well as the British public”.

Along with this, came the urge for business leaders to step up their efforts in combating cyber crime by taking an active interest and educating themselves on the subject.  When commenting upon board members’ level of understanding, Ms Cameron said “I’d also encourage board members to develop a basic understanding of cyber security, which can help when seeking assurances from IT teams about the resilience of an organisation - in a similar way that leaders have a certain level of understanding of finance to assess financial health”.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/01/28/business-leaders-need-hands-on-approach-stop-cyber-crime-says/

  • Rising ‘Firebrick Ostrich’ BEC Group Launches Industrial Scale Cyber Attacks

Business email compromise (BEC) has become one of the most popular methods of financially motivated hacking. And over the past year, one group in particular has demonstrated just how quick, easy, and lucrative it really is.

"Firebrick Ostrich" is a threat actor that's been performing BEC at a near-industrial scale. Since April 2021, the group has carried out more than 350 BEC campaigns, impersonating 151 organisations and utilising 212 malicious domains in the process. This volume of attacks is made possible by the group's wholesale gunslinging approach. Firebrick Ostrich doesn't discriminate much when it comes to targets, or gather exceptional intelligence in order to craft the perfect phishing bait. It throws darts at a wall because, evidently, when it comes to BEC at scale, that's enough.

BEC is attractive to bad actors due to the lower barriers to entry than malware, less risk, faster scaling opportunities, and way more profit potential to higher echelons than other methods of attack. These factors may explain why such attacks are absolutely the emerging trend, potentially even leaving even ransomware in the dust. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of these groups out there.

https://www.darkreading.com/remote-workforce/rising-firebrick-ostrich-bec-group-launches-industrial-scale-cyberattacks

  • The Corporate World is Losing its Grip on Cyber Risk

Lloyd's of London’s insurance market prides itself on being able to put a price on anything, from Tina Turner’s legs or Bruce Springsteen’s vocal cords, to the risk that a bounty hunter might claim the reward from Cutty Sark Whisky in the 1970s for capturing the Loch Ness monster.

But from the end of March, there will be something it won’t price: systemic cyber risk, or the type of major, catastrophic disruption caused by state-backed cyber warfare. In one sense, this isn’t surprising. Insurance policies typically exclude acts of war. Russia’s NotPetya attack on Ukraine in 2017 showed how state-backed cyber assaults can surpass traditional definitions of armed conflict and overspill their sovereign target to hit global businesses. It caused an estimated $10bn in damages and years of wrangling between companies like pharma group Merck and snack maker Mondelez and their insurers.

But the move is prompting broader questions about the growing pains in this corner of the insurance world. “Cyber insurance isn’t working anywhere at the moment as a public good for society,” says Ciaran Martin, former head of the UK National Cyber Security Centre. “It has a huge role to play in improving defences in a market-based economy and it has been a huge disappointment in that sense so far.”

The Lloyd’s move is designed, say insurers, to clarify rather than restrict coverage. Whether it succeeds is another matter: this is a murky world, where cyber crime groups operate with impunity in certain jurisdictions.

https://www.ft.com/content/78bfdf29-1e20-4c12-a348-06e98d5ae906

  • Microsoft Reveals Over 100 Threat Actors are Deploying Ransomware in Attacks

Microsoft revealed this week that its security teams are tracking over 100 threat actors deploying ransomware during attacks. In all, the company says it monitors over 50 unique ransomware families, with some of the most prominent ransomware payloads in recent campaigns including Lockbit, BlackCat (aka ALPHV), Play, Vice Society, Black Basta, and Royal.

Microsoft said that defence strategies should focus less on payloads themselves but more on the chain of activities that lead to their deployment, since ransomware gangs are still targeting servers and devices not yet patched against common or recently addressed vulnerabilities.

Furthermore, while new ransomware families launch all the time, most threat actors utilise the same tactics when breaching and spreading through networks, making the effort of detecting such behaviour even more helpful in thwarting their attacks.

Attackers are increasingly relying on tactics beyond phishing to conduct their attacks, with threat actors for example capitalising on recently patched Exchange Server vulnerabilities to hack vulnerable servers and deploy Cuba and Play ransomware.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/microsoft-over-100-threat-actors-deploy-ransomware-in-attacks/

  • Ransomware Conversations: Why the CFO is Pivotal to Discussing and Preparing for Risk

With the amount of cyber attacks in all industries, organisations are beginning to grasp the significance of cyber risk and how it is integral to protecting and maintaining an efficient business. In fact, the first half of 2022 alone saw 236.1 million cases of ransomware.

Whilst the expectation for responsibility has typically fallen on Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs), Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) are just as vital in managing cyber risk, which is now inherently also business risk.  The CFO plays an important part in determining whether cyber security incidents will become material and affect the business more seriously. Their insight is critical across many areas which include ransomware, cyber insurance, regulatory compliance and budget management.

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2023/02/02/ransomware-conversations-why-the-cfo-is-pivotal-to-discussing-and-preparing-for-risk

  • Greater Incident Complexity, a Shift in How Threat Actors Use Stolen Data Will Drive the Cyber Threat Landscape in 2023

Insurance provider Beazley released their Cyber Services Snapshot Report which claims the cyber security landscape will be influenced by greater complexity and the way threat actors use stolen data. The report also found that as a category, fraudulent instruction experienced a growth as a cause of loss in 2022, up 13% year-over year. 

In response to vulnerabilities such as fraudulent instructions, the report suggests organisations must get smarter about educating users to spot things such as spoofed emails or domain names. The report also cautions organisations to watch for social engineering, spear phishing, bypassing of multi-factor authentication (MFA), targeting of managed service providers (MSP) and the compromise of cloud environments as areas of vulnerability.

https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/greater-incident-complexity-a-shift-in-the-way-threat-actors-use-stolen-data-and-a-rise-in-us-class-actions-will-drive-the-cyber-threat-landscape-in-2023-according-to-beazley-report

  • The Threat from Within: 71% of Business Leaders Surveyed Think Next Cyber Security Breach Will Come from the Inside

A survey conducted by IT provider EisnerAmper found that 71% of business executives worry about accidental internal staff error as one of the top threats facing their organisation and 23% of these worried about malicious intent by an employee. In comparison, 75% of business executives had concerns about external hackers. The survey also asked about current safety measures, with 51% responding that they were “somewhat prepared”. Despite this, only 50% of respondents reported conducting regular cyber security training. 

https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-threats/the-threat-from-within-71-of-business-leaders-surveyed-think-next-cybersecurity-breach-will-come-from-the-inside

  • 98% of Organisations Have a Supply Chain Relationship That Has Been Breached

A report from SecurityScorecard found that 98% of organisations have a relationship with at least one third party that has experienced a breach in the last two years, while more than 50% have an indirect relationship with more than 200 fourth parties that have been breached. Of course, this is keeping in mind that not all organisations disclose or even know they have been breached.

https://www.securityweek.com/98-of-firms-have-a-supply-chain-relationship-that-has-been-breached-analysis/

  • New Survey Reveals 40% of Companies Experienced a Data Leak in the Past Year

Software provider SysKit has published a report on the effects of digital transformation on IT administrators and the current governance landscape. The report found that 40% of organisations experienced a data leak in the previous year. A data leak can have severe consequences on an organisation's efficiency and the impact can lead to large fines, downtime, and loss of business-critical certifications and customers.

In addition, the Survey found that the biggest challenge for IT administrators was a lack of understanding from superiors, huge workloads and misalignment of IT and business strategies.

https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/new-survey-reveals-40-of-companies-experienced-a-data-leak-in-the-past-year

  • Russian Hackers Launch Cyber Attack on Germany in Leopard Tank Retaliation

The websites of key German administrations, including companies and airports, have been targeted by cyber attacks, the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) stated.

The BSI commented they had been informed of DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks “currently in progress against targets in Germany". This was followed by the statement that “Individual targets in the financial sector” and federal government sites were also attacked, with some websites becoming temporarily unavailable.  It is believed that this is due to the approved deployment of Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, with Russian hacker site Killnet taking credit.

https://www.euronews.com/2023/01/26/russian-hackers-launch-cyberattack-on-germany-in-leopard-retaliation

  • Financial Services Targeted in 28% of UK Cyber Attacks Last Year

Based on data from security provider Imperva, security researchers have identified that over a quarter (28%) of all cyber attacks in the UK hit the financial services and insurance (FSI) industry in the last 12 months. The data also found that Application Programme Interface (API) attacks, malicious automated software and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks were the most challenging for the industry. In addition, the data found that roughly 40% of all account takeover attempts were targeted at the FSI industry.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/quarter-cyber-attacks-uk-financial/

  • Phishing Attacks are Getting Scarily Sophisticated. Here’s What to Watch Out For

Hackers are going to great lengths, including mimicking real people and creating and updating fake social media profiles, to trick victims into clicking phishing links and handing over usernames and passwords. The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) warns that these phishing attacks are targeting a range of sectors.

The NCSC has also released mitigation advice to help organisations and individuals protect themselves online. The mitigation advice included the use of strong passwords, separate to other accounts; enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA); and applying the latest security updates.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/phishing-attacks-are-getting-scarily-sophisticated-heres-what-to-watch-out-for/

  • City of London on High Alert After Ransomware Attack

A suspected ransomware attack on a key supplier of trading software to the City of London this week appears to have disrupted activity in the derivatives market. The company impacted, Ion Cleared Derivatives, is investigating. It is reported that 42 clients were impacted by the attack.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/city-of-london-high-alert/

  • JD Sports Warns of 10 Million Customers Put at Risk in Cyber Attack

Sportswear retailer JD Sports said it was the victim of a cyber attack that exposed the data of 10 million customers, in the latest spate of hacks on UK companies.

JD Sports explained that the attack involved unauthorised access to a system that contained “the name, billing address, delivery address, phone number, order details and the final four digits of payment cards”. The data related to customers’ orders made between November 2018 and October 2020, with outdoor gear companies Millets and Blacks also impacted. A full review with cyber security and external specialists is underway.

https://www.ft.com/content/afe00f2f-afcd-478f-9e4d-1cf9c943fa79

Threats

Ransomware, Extortion and Destructive Attacks

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

BEC – Business Email Compromise

Other Social Engineering; Smishing, Vishing, etc

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

AML/CFT/Sanctions

Insurance

Dark Web

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Cloud/SaaS

Containers

Encryption

API

Open Source

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Malvertising

Training, Education and Awareness

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Governance, Risk and Compliance

Careers, Working in Cyber and Information Security

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

Privacy, Surveillance and Mass Monitoring

Artificial Intelligence

Misinformation, Disinformation and Propaganda

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 – Iran

Nation State Actors – Misc

Vulnerability Management

Vulnerabilities

Tools and Controls

Other News

Sector Specific

Industry specific threat intelligence reports are available.

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

·       Automotive

·       Construction

·       Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)

·       Defence & Space

·       Education & Academia

·       Energy & Utilities

·       Estate Agencies

·       Financial Services

·       FinTech

·       Food & Agriculture

·       Gaming & Gambling

·       Government & Public Sector (including Law Enforcement)

·       Health/Medical/Pharma

·       Hotels & Hospitality

·       Insurance

·       Legal

·       Manufacturing

·       Maritime

·       Oil, Gas & Mining

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

·       Retail & eCommerce

·       Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)

·       Startups

·       Telecoms

·       Third Sector & Charities

·       Transport & Aviation

·       Web3

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

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

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

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

Read More
Black Arrow Admin Black Arrow Admin

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 30 December 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 30 December 2022:

-Cyber Attacks Set to Become ‘Uninsurable’, Says Zurich Chief

-Your Business Should Compensate for Modern Ransomware Capabilities Right Now

-Reported Phishing Attacks Have Quintupled

-Ransomware, DDoS See Major Upsurge Led by Upstart Hacker Group

-Videoconferencing Worries Grow, With SMBs in Cyber Attack Crosshairs

-Will the Crypto Crash Impact Cyber Security in 2023? Maybe.

-The Worst Hacks of 2022

-Geopolitical Tensions Expected to Further Impact Cyber Security in 2023

-Fraudsters’ Working Patterns Have Changed in Recent Years

-Hacktivism is Back and Messier Than Ever

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

Top Cyber Stories of the Last Week

  • Cyber Attacks Set to Become ‘Uninsurable’, Says Zurich Chief

The chief executive of one of Europe’s biggest insurance companies has warned that cyber attacks, rather than natural catastrophes, will become “uninsurable” as the disruption from hacks continues to grow.

Insurance executives have been increasingly vocal in recent years about systemic risks, such as pandemics and climate change, that test the sector’s ability to provide coverage. For the second year in a row, natural catastrophe-related claims are expected to top $100bn. 

But Mario Greco, chief executive at insurer Zurich, told the Financial Times that cyber was the risk to watch. “What will become uninsurable is going to be cyber,” he said. “What if someone takes control of vital parts of our infrastructure, the consequences of that?” Recent attacks that have disrupted hospitals, shut down pipelines and targeted government departments have all fed concern about this expanding risk among industry executives. Focusing on the privacy risk to individuals was missing the bigger picture, Greco added: “First off, there must be a perception that this is not just data . . . this is about civilisation. These people can severely disrupt our lives.” 

Spiralling cyber losses in recent years have prompted emergency measures by the sector’s underwriters to limit their exposure. As well as pushing up prices, some insurers have responded by tweaking policies so clients retain more losses. There are exemptions written into policies for certain types of attacks. In 2019, Zurich initially denied a $100mn claim from food company Mondelez, arising from the NotPetya attack, on the basis that the policy excluded a “warlike action”. The two sides later settled. In September, Lloyd’s of London defended a move to limit systemic risk from cyber attacks by requesting that insurance policies written in the market have an exemption for state-backed attacks.

https://www.ft.com/content/63ea94fa-c6fc-449f-b2b8-ea29cc83637d

Your Business Should Compensate for Modern Ransomware Capabilities Right Now

The “if, not when” mentality surrounding ransomware may be the biggest modern threat to business longevity. Companies of all sizes and across all industries are increasingly common targets for ransomware attacks, and we know that 94% of organisations experienced a cyber security incident last year alone. Yet, many enterprises continue to operate with decades-old security protocols that are unequipped to combat modern ransomware. Leaders have prioritised improving physical security measures in light of the pandemic — so why haven’t ransomware protections improved?

Maybe it’s the mistaken notion that ransomware attacks are declining. In reality, Q1 of 2022 saw a 200% YoY increase in ransomware incidents. Meanwhile, the rise in Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) offerings suggests that cyber threats have become a commodity for bad actors.

The RaaS market presents a new and troubling trend for business leaders and IT professionals. With RaaS — a subscription ransomware model that allows affiliates to deploy malware for a fee — the barrier to entry for hackers is lower than ever. The relatively unskilled nature of RaaS hackers may explain why the average ransomware downtime has plummeted to just 3.85 days (compared to an average attack duration of over two months in 2019).

While the decrease in attack duration is promising, the rise of RaaS still suggests an inconvenient truth for business leaders: All organisations are at risk. And in time, all organisations will become a target, which is why it’s time for IT and business leaders to implement tough cyber security protocols.

https://venturebeat.com/security/your-business-should-compensate-for-modern-ransomware-capabilities-right-now/

  • Reported Phishing Attacks Have Quintupled

In the third quarter of 2022, the international Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) consortium observed 1,270,883 total phishing attacks; the worst quarter for phishing that APWG has ever observed. The total for August 2022 was 430,141 phishing sites, the highest monthly total ever reported to APWG.

Over recent years, reported phishing attacks submitted to APWG have more than quintupled since the first quarter of 2020, when APWG observed 230,554 attacks. The rise in Q3 2022 was attributable, in part, to increasing numbers of attacks reported against several specific targeted brands. These target companies and their customers suffered from large numbers of attacks from persistent phishers.

Threat researchers at the cyber security solution provider Fortra noted a 488 percent increase in response-based email attacks in Q3 2022 compared to the prior quarter. While every subtype of these attacks increased compared to Q2, the largest increase was in Advance Fee Fraud schemes, which rose by a staggering 1,074 percent.

In the third quarter of 2022, APWG founding member OpSec Security found that phishing attacks against the financial sector, which includes banks, remained the largest set of attacks, accounting for 23.2 percent of all phishing. Attacks against webmail and software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers remained prevalent as well. Phishing against social media services fell to 11 percent of the total, down from 15.3 percent.

Phishing against cryptocurrency targets — such as cryptocurrency exchanges and wallet providers — fell from 4.5 percent of all phishing attacks in Q2 2022 to 2 percent in Q3. This mirrored the fall in value of many cryptocurrencies since mid-year.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/12/28/reported-phishing-attacks-quintupled/

  • Ransomware, DDoS See Major Upsurge Led by Upstart Hacker Group

Cyber threat actors Cuba and Royal are driving a 41% boom in ransomware and other attacks hitting industry and consumer goods and services.

According to the Global Threat Intelligence team of information assurance firm NCC Group, November saw a 41% increase in ransomware attacks from 188 incidents to 265. In its most recent Monthly Threat Pulse, the group reported that the month was the most active for ransomware attacks since April this year.

Key takeaways from the study:

  • Ransomware attacks rose by 41% in November.

  • Threat group Royal (16%) was the most active, replacing LockBit as the worst offender for the first time since September 2021.

  • Industrials (32%) and consumer cyclicals (44%) remain the top two most targeted sectors, but technology experienced a large 75% increase over the last month.

  • Regional data remains consistent with last month — North America (45%), Europe (25%) and Asia (14%)

  • DDoS attacks continue to increase.

Recent examples in the services sector include the Play ransomware group’s claimed attack of the German H-Hotels chain, resulting in communications outages. This attack reportedly uses a vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange called ProxyNotShell, which as the name implies, has similarities to the ProxyShell zero-day vulnerability revealed in 2021.

Also, back on the scene is the TrueBot malware downloader (a.k.a., the silence.downloader), which is showing up in an increasing number of devices. TrueBot Windows malware, designed by a Russian-speaking hacking group identified as Silence, has resurfaced bearing Ransom.Clop, which first appeared in 2019. Clop ransomware encrypts systems and exfiltrates data with the threat that if no ransom is forthcoming, the data will show up on a leak site.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/ransomware-ddos-major-upsurge-led-upstart-hacker-group/

  • Videoconferencing Worries Grow, With SMBs in Cyber Attack Crosshairs

Securing videoconferencing solutions is just one of many IT security challenges small businesses are facing, often with limited financial and human resources.

It's no secret that the acceleration of work-from-home and distributed workforce trends — infamously spurred on by the pandemic — has occurred in tandem with the rise of video communications and collaboration platforms, led by Zoom, Microsoft, and Cisco.

But given that videoconferencing now plays a critical role in how businesses interact with their employees, customers, clients, vendors, and others, these platforms carry significant potential security risks, researchers say.

Organisations use videoconferencing to discuss M&A, legal, military, healthcare, intellectual property and other topics, and even corporate strategies. A loss of that data could be catastrophic for a company, its employees, its clients, and its customers.

However, a recent report on videoconferencing security showed that 93% of IT professionals surveyed acknowledged security vulnerabilities and gaping risks in their videoconferencing solutions.

Among the most relevant risks is the lack of controlled access to conversations that could result in disruption, sabotage, compromise, or exposure of sensitive information, while use of nonsecure, outdated, or unpatched videoconferencing applications can expose security flaws.

The risks include the potential for interruptions, unauthorised access, and perhaps most concerning, the opportunity for a bad actor to acquire sensitive information.

https://www.darkreading.com/application-security/videoconferencing-worries-grow-with-smbs-in-cyberattack-crosshairs

  • Will the Crypto Crash Impact Cyber Security in 2023? Maybe.

With the implosion of the FTX exchange putting a punctuation mark on the cryptocurrency crash of 2022, one of the natural questions for those in the cyber security world is, how will this rapid decline of cryptocurrency valuations change the cyber crime economy?

Throughout the most recent crypto boom, and even before then, cyber criminals have used and abused cryptocurrency to build up their empires. The cryptocurrency market provides the extortionary medium for ransomware; it's a hotbed of scams against consumers to steal their wallets and accounts. Traditionally, it's provided a ton of anonymous cover for money laundering on the back end of a range of cyber criminal enterprises.

Even so, according to cyber security experts and intelligence analysts, while there certainly have been some shifts in trends and tactics that they believe are loosely tied to the crypto crash, the jury's still out on long-term impacts.

Regardless of crypto values, cyber criminals this year have definitely become more sophisticated in how they use cryptocurrencies to monetise their attacks including the use by some ransomware groups taking advantage of yield farming within decentralised finance (DeFi), as an example.

The concept of yield farming is the same as lending money, with a contract in place that clearly shows how much interest will need to be paid. The advantage for ransomware groups is that the 'interest' will be legitimate proceeds, so there will be no need to launder or hide it.

Threat actors are increasingly turning toward 'stablecoins,' which are usually tied to fiat currencies or gold to stem their volatility. In many ways, the downturn in crypto values has increased the risk appetite of cyber criminals and is spurring them into more investment fraud and cryptocurrency scams.

https://www.darkreading.com/threat-intelligence/crypto-crash-impact-cybersecurity-2023-maybe

  • The Worst Hacks of 2022

The year was marked by sinister new twists on cyber security classics, including phishing, breaches, and ransomware attacks.

With the pandemic evolving into an amorphous new phase and political polarisation on the rise around the world, 2022 was an uneasy and often perplexing year in digital security. And while hackers frequently leaned on old chestnuts like phishing and ransomware attacks, they still found vicious new variations to subvert defences.

Technology magazine Wired looked back on the year's worst breaches, leaks, ransomware attacks, state-sponsored hacking campaigns, and digital takeovers. If the first years of the 2020s are any indication, the digital security field in 2023 will be more bizarre and unpredictable than ever. Stay alert, and stay safe out there.

Russia Hacking Ukraine

For years, Russia has pummelled Ukraine with brutal digital attacks causing blackouts, stealing and destroying data, meddling in elections, and releasing destructive malware to ravage the country's networks. Since invading Ukraine in February, though, times have changed for some of Russia's most prominent and most dangerous military hackers. Shrewd long-term campaigns and grimly ingenious hacks have largely given way to a stricter and more regimented clip of quick intrusions into Ukrainian institutions, reconnaissance, and widespread destruction on the network—and then repeated access over and over again, whether through a new breach or by maintaining the old access.

Twilio and the 0ktapus Phishing Spree

Over the summer, a group of researchers dubbed 0ktapus went on a massive phishing bender, compromising nearly 10,000 accounts within more than 130 organisations. The majority of the victim institutions were US-based, but there were dozens in other countries as well.

Ransomware Still Hitting the Most Vulnerable Targets

In recent years, countries around the world and the cyber security industry have increasingly focused on countering ransomware attacks. While there has been some progress on deterrence, ransomware gangs were still on a rampage in 2022 and continued to target vulnerable and vital social institutions, including health care providers and schools. The Russian-speaking group Vice Society, for example, has long specialised in targeting both categories, and it focused its attacks on the education sector this year.

The Lapsus$ Rampage Continues

The digital extortion gang Lapsus$ was on an intense hacking spree at the beginning of 2022, stealing source code and other sensitive information from companies like Nvidia, Samsung, Ubisoft, and Microsoft and then leaking samples as part of apparent extortion attempts. Lapsus$ has a sinister talent for phishing, and in March, it compromised a contractor with access to the ubiquitous authentication service Okta.

LastPass

The beleaguered password manager giant LastPass, which has repeatedly dealt with data breaches and security incidents over the years, said at the end of December that a breach of its cloud storage in August led to a further incident in which hackers targeted a LastPass employee to compromise credentials and cloud storage keys.

Vanuatu

At the beginning of November, Vanuatu, an island nation in the Pacific, was hit by a cyber attack that took down virtually all of the government's digital networks. Agencies had to move to conducting their work on paper because emergency systems, medical records, vehicle registrations, driver's license databases, and tax systems were all down.

Honourable Mention: Twitter-Related Bedlam

Twitter has been in chaos mode for months following Elon Musk's acquisition of the company earlier this year. Amidst the tumult, reports surfaced in July and then again in November of a trove of 5.4 million Twitter users' data that has been circulating on criminal forums since at least July, if not earlier. The data was stolen by exploiting a vulnerability in a Twitter application programming interface, or API.

https://www.wired.com/story/worst-hacks-2022/

  • Geopolitical Tensions Expected to Further Impact Cyber Security in 2023

Geopolitics will continue to have an impact on cyber security and the security posture of organisations long into 2023.

The impact of global conflicts on cyber security was thrust into the spotlight when Russia made moves to invade Ukraine in February 2022. Ukraine’s Western allies were quick to recognise that with this came the threat of Russian-backed cyber-attacks against critical national infrastructure (CNI), especially in retaliation to hefty sanctions. While this may not have materialised in the way many expected, geopolitics is still front of mind for many cyber security experts looking to 2023.

Russia has always been among a handful of states recognised for their cyber prowess and being the source of many cyber criminal gangs. As previously mentioned, we have failed to see a significant cyber-attack, at least one comparable to the Colonial Pipeline incident, in 2022. However the cyber security services provider, e2e-assure, warned: “We have underestimated Russia’s cyber capability. There is a wide view that Russian cyber activity leading up to and during their invasion of Ukraine indicated that they aren’t the cyber power we once thought. Patterns and evidence will emerge in 2023 that shows this wasn’t the case, instead Russia was directing its cyber efforts elsewhere, with non-military goals (financial and political).”

NordVPN, the virtual private network (VPN) provider, warns that the cyber-war is only just starting: “With China’s leader securing his third term and Russia’s war in Ukraine, many experts predict an increase in state-sponsored cyber-attacks. China may increase cyber-attacks on Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other countries opposing the regime. Meanwhile, Russia is predicted to sponsor attacks on countries supporting Ukraine.”

We are used to seeing cyber-attacks that encrypt data and ask for ransom, but it is likely in this era of nation-state sponsored attacks we could experience attacks for the sake of disruption.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/geopolitical-tensions-impact/

  • Fraudsters’ Working Patterns Have Changed in Recent Years

Less sophisticated fraud — in which doctored identity documents are readily spotted — has jumped 37% in 2022, according to the identify verfication provider Onfido. Fraudsters can scale these attacks on an organisation’s systems around the clock.

It is estimated that the current global financial cost of fraud is $5.38 trillion (£4.37 trillion), which is 6.4% of the world’s GDP. With most fraud now happening online (80% of reported fraud is cyber-enabled), Onfido’s Identity Fraud Report uncovers patterns of fraudster behaviour, attack techniques, and emerging tactics.

Over the last four years, fraudsters’ working patterns have dramatically changed. In 2019, attacks mirrored a typical working week, peaking Monday to Friday and dropping off during the weekends. Yet over the last three years, fraudulent activity started to shift so that levels of fraud span every day of the week.

In 2022, fraud levels were consistent across 24 hours, seven days a week. With technology, fraudsters are more connected across the globe and are able to traverse regions and time zones, and can easily take advantage of businesses’ closed hours when staff are likely offline. This hyperconnectivity means there are no more ‘business hours’ for fraudsters and sophisticated fraud rings — they will scam and defraud 24/7.

“As criminals look to take advantage of digitisation processes, they’re able to commit financial crimes with increasing efficiency and sophistication, to the extent that financial crime and cyber crime are now invariably linked,” said Interpol. “A significant amount of financial fraud takes place through digital technologies, and the pandemic has only hastened the emergence of digital money laundering tools and other cyber-enabled financial crimes.”

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/12/29/less-sophisticated-fraud/

  • Hacktivism is Back and Messier Than Ever

Throughout 2022, geopolitics has given rise to a new wave of politically motivated attacks with an undercurrent of state-sponsored meddling.

During its brutal war in Ukraine, Russian troops have burnt cities to the ground, raped and tortured civilians, and committed scores of potential war crimes. On November 23, lawmakers across Europe overwhelmingly labelled Russia a “state sponsor” of terrorism and called for ties with the country to be reduced further. The response to the declaration was instant. The European Parliament’s website was knocked offline by a DDoS attack.

The unsophisticated attack—which involves flooding a website with traffic to make it inaccessible—disrupted the Parliament’s website offline for several hours. Pro-Russian hacktivist group Killnet claimed responsibility for the attack. The hacktivist group has targeted hundreds of organisations around the world this year, having some limited small-scale successes knocking websites offline for short periods of time. It’s been one player in a bigger hacktivism surge.

Following years of sporadic hacktivist activity, 2022 has seen the re-emergence of hacktivism on a large scale. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine spawned scores of hacktivist groups on both sides of the conflict, while in Iran and Israel, so-called hacktivist groups are launching increasingly destructive attacks. This new wave of hacktivism, which varies between groups and countries, comes with new tactics and approaches and, increasingly, is blurring lines between hacktivism and government-sponsored attacks.

https://www.wired.com/story/hacktivism-russia-ukraine-ddos/

Threats

Ransomware, Extortion and Destructive Attacks

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Other Social Engineering; Smishing, Vishing, etc

Malware

Mobile

Denial of Service/DoS/DDOS

Internet of Things – IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Insurance

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Software Supply Chain

Cloud/SaaS

Identity and Access Management

Encryption

API

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Biometrics

Social Media

Malvertising

Privacy

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Governance, Risk and Compliance

Secure Disposal

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

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 18 November 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 18 November 2022:

-Amid Legal Fallout, Cyber Insurers Redefine State-Sponsored Attacks as Act of War

-Supply Chains Need Shoring Up Against Cyber Attacks, C-Suite Executives Say

-Is Your Board Prepared for New Cyber Security Regulations?

-Unwanted Emails Steadily Creeping into Inboxes

-People Are Still Using the Dumbest Passwords Available

-Zero-Trust Initiatives Stall, as Cyber Attack Costs Rocket to $1M per Incident

-44% of Financial Institutions Believe Their Own IT Teams Are the Main Risk to Cloud Security

-MFA Fatigue Attacks Are Putting Your Organisation at Risk

-Cyber Security Training Boosts Risk Posture, Research Finds

-MI5 Chief: UK will have to tackle Russian Aggression ‘for Years to Come’

-Offboarding Processes Pose Security Risks as Job Turnover Increases: Report

-Do Companies Need Cyber Insurance?

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

  • Amid Legal Fallout, Cyber Insurers Redefine State-Sponsored Attacks as Act of War

As carriers rewrite their act-of-war exclusions following the NotPetya settlement between Mondelez and Zurich, organisations should read their cyber insurance policies carefully to see what is still covered.

The consequences from NotPetya, which the US government said was caused by a Russian cyber attack on Ukraine in 2017, continue to be felt as cyber insurers modify coverage exclusions, expanding the definition of an "act of war." Indeed, the 5-year-old cyber attack appears to be turning the cyber insurance market on its head.

Mondelez International, parent of such popular brands as Cadbury, Oreo, Ritz, and Triscuit, was hit hard by NotPetya, with factories and production disrupted. It took days for the company's staff to regain control of its computer systems. The company filed a claim with its property and casualty insurer, Zurich American, for $100 million in losses. After initially approving a fraction of the claim — $10 million — Zurich declined to pay, stating the attack was an act of war and thus excluded from the coverage. Mondelez filed a lawsuit.

Late last month Mondelez and Zurich American reportedly agreed to the original $100 million claim, but that wasn't until after Merck won its $1.4 billion lawsuit against Ace American Insurance Company in January 2022 for its NotPetya-related losses. Merck's claims also were against its property and casualty policy, not a cyber insurance policy.

Back in 2017, cyber insurance policies were still nascent, and so many large corporations filed claims for damages related to NotPetya — the scourge that caused an estimated $10 billion in damage worldwide — against corporate property and casualty policies.

What's Changed? The significance of these settlements illustrates an ongoing maturation of the cyber insurance market, says Forrester Research.

Until 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, cyber insurance policies were sold in a fashion akin to traditional home or auto policies, with little concern for a company's cyber security profile, the tools it had in place to defend its networks and data, or its general cyber hygiene.

Once a large number of ransomware attacks occurred that built off of the lax cyber security many organisations demonstrated, insurance carriers began tightening the requirements for obtaining such policies.

https://www.darkreading.com/edge-articles/amid-notpetya-fallout-cyber-insurers-define-state-sponsored-attacks-as-act-of-war

  • Is Your Board Prepared For New Cyber Security Regulations?

Boards are now paying attention to the need to participate in cyber security oversight. Not only are the consequences sparking concern, but the new regulations are upping the ante and changing the game.

Boards have a particularly important role to ensure appropriate management of cyber risk as part of their fiduciary and oversight role. As cyber threats increase and companies worldwide bolster their cyber security budgets, the regulatory community, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), is advancing new requirements that companies will need to know about as they reinforce their cyber strategy.

Most organisations focus on cyber protection rather than cyber resilience, and that could be a mistake. Resiliency is more than just protection; it’s a plan for recovery and business continuation. Being resilient means that you’ve done as much as you can to protect and detect a cyber incident, and you have also done as much as you can to make sure you can continue to operate when an incident occurs. A company who invests only in protection is not managing the risk associated with getting up and running again in the event of a cyber incident.

Research indicates that most board members believe it is not a matter of if, but when, their company will experience a cyber event. The ultimate goal of a cyber-resilient organisation would be zero disruption from a cyber breach. That makes the focus on resilience more important.

In March 2022, the SEC issued a proposed rule titled Cybersecurity Risk Management, Strategy, Governance, and Incident Disclosure.  In it, the SEC describes its intention to require public companies to disclose whether their boards have members with cyber security expertise: “Cyber security is already among the top priorities of many boards of directors and cyber security incidents and other risks are considered one of the largest threats to companies. Accordingly, investors may find disclosure of whether any board members have cyber security expertise to be important as they consider their investment in the registrant as well as their votes on the election of directors of the registrant.”

The SEC will soon require companies to disclose their cyber security governance capabilities, including the board’s oversight of cyber risk, a description of management’s role in assessing and managing cyber risks, the relevant expertise of such management, and management’s role in implementing the registrant’s cyber security policies, procedures, and strategies. Specifically, where pertinent to board oversight, registrants will be required to disclose:

  • whether the entire board, a specific board member, or a board committee is responsible for the oversight of cyber risks,

  • the processes by which the board is informed about cyber risks, and the frequency of its discussions on this topic,

  • whether and how the board or specified board committee considers cyber risks as part of its business strategy, risk management, and financial oversight.

https://hbr.org/2022/11/is-your-board-prepared-for-new-cybersecurity-regulations

  • Unwanted Emails Steadily Creeping into Inboxes

A research from cloud security provider Hornetsecurity has revealed that 40.5% of work emails are unwanted. The Cyber Security Report 2023, which analysed more than 25 billion work emails, also reveals significant changes to the nature of cyber attacks in 2022 – indicating the constant, growing threats to email security, and need for caution in digital workplace communications.

Phishing remains the most common style of email attack, representing 39.6% of detected threats. Threat actors used the following file types sent via email to deliver payloads: Archive files (Zip, 7z, etc.) sent via email make up 28% of threats, down slightly from last year’s 33.6%, with HTML files increasing from 15.3% to 21%, and DOC(X) from 4.8% to 12.7%.

This year’s cyber security report shows the steady creep of threats into inboxes around the world. The rise in unwanted emails, now found to be nearly 41%, is putting email users and businesses at significant risk.

HornetSecurity’s analysis identified both the enduring risk and changing landscape of ransomware attacks – highlighting the need for businesses and their employees to be more vigilant than ever.

New cyber security trends and techniques for organisations to watch out for were also tracked. Since Microsoft disabled macros settings in Office 365, there has been a significant increase in HTML smuggling attacks using embedded LNK or ZIP files to deliver malware. Microsoft 365 makes it easy to share documents, and end users often overlook the ramifications of how files are shared, as well as the security implications. Hornetsecurity found 25% of respondents were either unsure or assumed that Microsoft 365 was immune to ransomware threats.

For these attackers, every industry is a target. Companies must therefore ensure comprehensive security awareness training while implementing next-generation preventative measures to ward off threats.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/11/14/email-security-threats/

  • People Are Still Using the Dumbest Passwords Available

If you were thinking that most people would have learned by now not to use “password” as the password for their sensitive systems, then you would be giving too much credit to the general scrolling public.

Cyber security researchers from Cybernews and password manager company NordPass both independently reported this week on data surrounding the most commonly-used passwords. Trying to discern the frequently used words, phrases, and numbers among the general public wouldn’t be simple if it weren’t for the troves of leaked passwords being sold on the dark web.

Cybernews said it based its data on a list of 56 million breached or leaked passwords in 2022 found via databases in darknet and clearnet hacker forums. Some of the most-used passwords were exactly what you expect, easy-to-remember junk passwords for company accounts, including “123456,” “root,” and “guest” all looking pretty in the top three.

NordPass, on the other hand, listed its top passwords by country and the supposed gender of the user. In their case, “password” sat in the number one spot for most-used password throughout the globe. Some countries had very specific passwords that were commonly used, such as “liverpool” being the number 4 most-used password in the UK despite it being 197 in the world. The number 2 most-used password for Brazil accounts is “Brasil” while in Germany, number 5 is “hallo.”

NordPass said the list of passwords was built by a team of independent researchers who compiled 3TB of data from listings on the dark web, including some data that was leaked in data breaches that occurred in 2022. The company noted that some data might be from late 2021, though the passwords were listed on the dark web in the new year.

https://gizmodo.com/passwords-hacker-best-passwords-cybersecurity-1849792818

  • Zero-Trust Initiatives Stall, as Cyber Attack Costs Rocket to $1M per Incident

Researchers find current data protection strategies are failing to get the job done, and IT leaders are concerned, while a lack of qualified IT security talent hampers cyber-defence initiatives.

Organisations are struggling with mounting data losses, increased downtime, and rising recovery costs due to cyber attacks — to the tune of $1.06 million in costs per incident. Meanwhile, IT security teams are stalled on getting defences up to speed.

That's according to the 2022 Dell Global Data Protection Index (GDPI) survey of 1,000 IT decision-makers across 15 countries and 14 industries, which found that organisations that experienced disruption have also suffered an average of 2TB data loss and 19 hours of downtime.

Most respondents (67%) said they lack confidence that their existing data protection measures are sufficient to cope with malware and ransomware threats. A full 63% said they are not very confident that all business-critical data can be reliably recovered in the event of a destructive cyber attack.

Their fears seem founded: Nearly half of respondents (48%) experienced a cyber attack in the past 12 months that prevented access to their data (a 23% increase from 2021) — and that's a trend that will likely continue.

The growth and increased distribution of data across edge, core data centre and multiple public cloud environments are making it exceedingly difficult for IT admins to protect their data.

On the protection front, most organisations are falling behind; for instance, 91% are aware of or planning to deploy a zero-trust architecture, but only 12% are fully deployed.

And it's not just advanced defence that's lacking: Keegan points out that 69% of respondents stated they simply cannot meet their backup windows to be prepared for a ransomware attack.

https://www.darkreading.com/endpoint/zero-trust-initiatives-stall-cyberattack-costs-1m-per-incident

  • 44% of Financial Institutions Believe Their Own IT Teams Are the Main Risk to Cloud Security

Netwrix, a cyber security vendor, today announced additional findings for the financial and banking sector from its global 2022 Cloud Security Report.

Compared to other industries surveyed, financial institutions are much more concerned about users who have legitimate access to their cloud infrastructure. Indeed, 44% of respondents in this sector say their own IT staff poses the biggest risk to data security in the cloud and 47% worry about contractors and partners, compared to 30% and 36% respectively in other verticals surveyed.

Financial organisations experience accidental data leakage more often than companies in other verticals: 32% of them reported this type of security incident within the last 12 months, compared to the average of 25%. This is a good reason for them to be concerned about users who might unintentionally expose sensitive information. To address this threat, organisations need to implement a zero-standing privilege approach in which elevated access rights are granted only when they are needed and only for as long as needed. Cloud misconfigurations are another common reason for accidental data leakage. Therefore, security teams must continually monitor the integrity of their cloud configurations, ideally with a dedicated solution that automates the process.

All sectors say phishing is the most common type of attack they experience. However, 91% of financial institutions say they can spot phishing within minutes or hours, compared to 82% of respondents in other verticals.

Even though mature financial organisations detect phishing quickly, it is still crucial for them to keep educating their personnel on this threat because attacks are becoming more sophisticated. To increase the likelihood of a user clicking a malicious link, attackers are crafting custom spear phishing messages that are directed at the person responsible for a certain task in the organisation and that appear to come from an authority figure. Regular staff training, along with continuous activity monitoring, will help reduce the risk of infiltration.

https://www.darkreading.com/cloud/44-of-financial-institutions-believe-their-own-it-teams-are-the-main-risk-to-cloud-security

  • MFA Fatigue Attacks Are Putting Your Organisation at Risk

The rapid advancement of technology in all industries has led to the threat of ever-increasing cyber attacks that target businesses, governments, and individuals alike. A common threat targeting businesses is MFA Fatigue attacks—a technique where a cyber criminal attempts to gain access to a corporate network by bombarding a user with MFA prompts until they finally accept one.

MFA refers to multi-factor authentication, a layered end-user verification strategy to secure data and applications. For a user to log in, an MFA system needs them to submit various combinations of two or more credentials.

Using MFA Fatigue attacks, cyber criminals bombard their victims with repeated 2FA (two-factor authentication) push notifications to trick them into authenticating their login attempts, to increase their chances of gaining access to sensitive information. This attempt can be successful, especially when the target victim is distracted or overwhelmed by the notifications or misinterprets them as legitimate authentication requests.

One major MFA Fatigue attack, also known as MFA bombing, targeted the ride-sharing giant Uber in September 2022. Uber attributed the attack to Lapsus$, a hacking group that started by compromising an external contractor’s credentials.

Cyber criminals increasingly use social engineering attacks to access their targets’ sensitive credentials. Social engineering is a manipulative technique used by hackers to exploit human error to gain private information.

MFA Fatigue is a technique that has gained popularity among hackers in recent years as part of their social engineering attacks. This is a simple yet effective technique with destructive consequences as the hackers are banking on their targets’ lack of training and understanding of attack vectors. Since many MFA users are unfamiliar with this style of attack, they would not understand that they are approving a fraudulent notification.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/mfa-fatigue-attacks-are-putting-your-organization-at-risk/

  • Cyber Security Training Boosts Risk Posture, Research Finds

Business executives worldwide see the economic advantages of continuing professional cyber security education and the steep downside from a workforce of under-trained individuals, Cybrary, a training platform provider, said in a new report.

The survey of 275 executives, directors and security professionals in North America and the UK who either procure or influence professional cyber security training, was conducted by consultancy Omdia. The results showed that the benefits of professional training boost an employee’s impact on the organisation, the overall risk posture of the organisation, and in the costs associated with finding and retaining highly skilled employees, the analyst said.

The study’s key findings include:

  • 73% of respondents said their team’s cyber security performance was more efficient because of ongoing professional cyber security training.

  • 62% of respondents said that training improved their organisation’s cyber security effectiveness (which encompasses decreases in the number of breach attempts and overall security events).

  • 79% of respondents ranked professional cyber security training at the top or near the top of importance for the organisation’s ability to prevent and rapidly remediate breaches and ensuing consequences such as reputational damage.

  • 70% of companies reported a relationship between an incident and training, and two-thirds of respondents reported increased investments in ongoing cyber security training after a security incident.

  • Large enterprises are the least likely to delay upskilling until after an incident, indicating that companies with larger cyber security teams firmly understand the importance of ongoing professional training.

  • 67% of surveyed SMBs invested in cyber security training after a security incident, which served as a call to action.

  • 53% invested in professional cyber security training due to a cyber security insurance audit.

  • 48% of organisations said that cyber security training drives retention and decreases the likelihood that a cyber security professional will leave the organisation that trains them.

  • 41% said that ongoing cyber security training has no significant impact on if a cyber security professional leaves.

Cybrary said the research shows the rewards that organisations enjoy by investing in training and upskilling their security professionals. The data “codifies the fiscal and reputational paybacks in proactively improving cyber security defences versus responding to attacks. It also codifies an often-underrecognised benefit of cyber security upskilling: helping the organisation retain invaluable security talent despite market and organisational uncertainty”.

https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-research/cybersecurity-training-boosts-risk-posture-research-finds/

  • MI5 Chief: UK Will Have to Tackle Russian Aggression ‘for Years to Come’

Britain will have to tackle Russian aggression for years to come, said the MI5’s chief on Wednesday, adding that his agency had blocked more than 100 attempts by the Kremlin to insert suspected spies into the UK since the Salisbury poisonings.

Ken McCallum, giving an annual threat update, said state-based threats were increasing and said the UK also faced a heightened direct threat from Iran, which had threatened “to kidnap or even kill” 10 people based in Britain in the past year.

The spy chief said Russia had suffered a “strategic blow” after 400 spies were expelled from around Europe following the start of the war in Ukraine, but he said the Kremlin was actively trying to rebuild its espionage network.

Britain had expelled 23 Russian spies posing as diplomats after the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury in 2018, yet since then “over 100 Russian diplomatic visa applications” had been rejected on national security grounds.

McCallum accused Russia of making “silly claims” about British activities without evidence, such as that UK was involved in attacking the Nord Stream gas pipelines. But the head of MI5 said “the serious point” was that “the UK must be ready for Russian aggression for years to come”.

Iran’s “aggressive intelligence services” were actively targeting Britain and had made “at least 10” attempts to “kidnap or even kill” British or UK-based individuals since January as the regime felt greater pressure than ever before.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/nov/16/mi5-chief-uk-will-have-to-tackle-russian-aggression-for-years-to-come

  • Offboarding Processes Pose Security Risks as Job Turnover Increases: Report

Research from YouGov finds that poor offboarding practices across industries including healthcare and tech are putting companies at risk, including for loss of end-user devices and unauthorised SaaS application use.

Organisations across multiple industries are struggling to mitigate potential risks, including loss of end-user and storage devices as well as unauthorised use of SaaS applications, during their offboarding process, according to new research conducted by YouGov in partnership with Enterprise Technology Management (ETM) firm Oomnitza.

Over the last 18 months, employee turnover has increased, with the US Department of Labor estimating that by the end of 2021, a total of 69 million people, more than 20% of Americans, had either lost or changed their job. Although these figures could initially be attributed to the so-called Great Resignation, this figure is likely to increase due to the numerous job cuts that are now being reported, including layoffs at major technology companies, as organisations look to reduce operational costs.

Although the circumstances of an employee’s departure can sometimes make the offboarding process more complex, ultimately offboarding should aim to prevent disruption and mitigate any potential risks.

However, in YouGov’s 2022 State of Corporate Offboarding Process Automation report, the research found that although implementing a secure offboarding processes is now seen as a business imperative for enterprises, 48% of the survey’s respondents expressed deficiencies in or lack of automated workflows across departments and IT tools to facilitate the secure offboarding of employees.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3680368/offboarding-processes-pose-security-risks-as-job-turnover-increases-report.html#tk.rss_news

  • Supply Chains Need Shoring Up Against Cyber Attacks, C-Suite Executives Say

Nearly every organisation (98%) in a new survey of some 2,100 C-suite executives has been hit by a supply chain cyber attack in the last year, security provider BlueVoyant said in a newly released study.

The study gleaned data from interviews with chief technology officers (CTOs), chief security officers (CSOs), chief operating officers (COOs), chief information officers (CIOs), chief information security officers (CISOs), and chief procurement officers (CPOs) responsible for supply chain and cyber risk management in organisations of more than 1,000 employees across business services, financial services, healthcare and pharmaceutical, manufacturing, utilities and energy, and defence industries.

While the number of companies experiencing digital supply chain attacks has stayed relatively static year-over-year, the attention paid by organisations to that attack vector has increased, BlueVoyant said. Still, the New York-based cyber defender said, there’s a lot of room for organisations to better monitor suppliers and “work with them to remediate issues to reduce their supply chain risks.”

Here are some macro highlights from the survey:

  • 40% of respondents rely on the third-party vendor or supplier to ensure adequate security.

  • In 2021, 53% of companies said they audited or reported on supplier security more than twice per year. That number has improved to 67% in 2022. These numbers include enterprises monitoring in real time.

  • Budgets for supply chain defence are increasing, with 84% of respondents saying their budget has increased in the past 12 months.

  • The top pain points reported are internal understanding across the enterprise that suppliers are part of their cyber security posture, meeting regulatory requirements, and working with suppliers to improve their security.

https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-research/supply-chains-need-shoring-up-against-cyberattacks-c-suite-executives-say/

  • Do Companies Need Cyber Insurance?

Companies are increasingly seeking to transfer risk with cyber insurance. This trend has been influenced by a greater severity in cyber attacks and the resulting skyrocketing costs of incident response, business disruption and recovery.

Companies struggle to afford the high prices of cyber insurance, however. One market index reported the price of cyber insurance increased 79% in the second quarter of 2022. Without it, however, companies risk shouldering the full cost of any resulting harm. Furthermore, insurance companies that lack traditional decades of actuarial data must consider whether to provide cyber insurance to clients unable or unwilling to show their cyber security maturity through independent risk analysis.

This combination of circumstances leaves businesses vulnerable, financially drained and facing potential reputational damage. But does it have to be this way? And is cyber insurance truly necessary? For the majority of organisations, the answer is that cyber insurance is a worthwhile investment as part of their overall risk treatment plans. There are a number of activities, however, that should be undertaken to optimise the benefits and reduce the costs of cyber-risk insurance.

A rise in high-profile attacks, in tandem with increased regulation and compliance surrounding cyber security and privacy, has shifted the conversation around digital safety. No longer is cyber security an optional aspect of the business model with a fixed, stagnant cost. Businesses today have become too digitally dependent to ignore cyber security, with classified, internal information stored online; communication largely conducted via email or another platform; and the workforce transitioned to hybrid and remote work environments. Effective cyber security and privacy, as well as mitigating financial and operational risks, can be strategic enablers to modern digital business.

Cyber insurance is not a solution -- it's a piece of the puzzle. Regardless of industry or company size, all businesses should conduct an independent cyber audit prior to committing to cyber insurance. In doing so, organisations can determine the need for cyber insurance and better understand their organisations' risk posture and weak points.

Even if insurance is needed, the audit further adds value as it lets insurance companies support the company specific to its digital landscape and help it become more digitally strong. Additionally, the existence of an independent audit and risk review may indeed enable the insurance company to offer higher levels of coverage without the need for excessive premiums.

https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/post/Do-companies-need-cyber-insurance

Threats

Ransomware and Extortion

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Malware

Mobile

Internet of Things – IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Impersonation Attacks

Dark Web

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Software Supply Chain

Denial of Service DoS/DDoS

Cloud/SaaS

Encryption

Open Source

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Privacy, Surveillance and Mass Monitoring

Governance, Risk and Compliance

Careers, Working in Cyber and Information Security

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

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 – Iran

Nation State Actors – Misc

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 Cyber Threat Briefing 04 November 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 04 November 2022:

-NCSC Looks Back on Year Of ‘Profound Change’ for Cyber

-LastPass Research Finds False Sense of Cyber Security Running Rampant

-Insurance Giant Settles NotPetya ‘Act of War’ Lawsuit, Signaling Cyber Insurance Shakeup

-Microsoft Warns of Uptick in Hackers Leveraging Publicly-Disclosed 0-Day Vulnerabilities

-Chinese Mob Has 100K Slaves Working in Cambodian Cyber Crime Mills

-Ransomware Research: 17 Leaked Databases Operated by Threat Actors Threaten Third Party Organisations

-Not Enough Ransomware Victims Are Reporting Attacks, And That's a Problem for Everyone

-Hackers Selling Access to 576 Corporate Networks for $4 Million

-Cyber Security Recovery is a Process That Starts Long Before a Cyber Attack Occurs

-Geopolitics Plays Major Role in Cyber Attacks, Says EU Cyber Security Agency

-Russian Hackers Account for Most 2021 Ransomware Schemes, US Says

-Exposed: The Global Hacking Network That Targets VIPs

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

  • NCSC Looks Back on Year Of ‘Profound Change’ for Cyber

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) provided support for 18 nationally significant ransomware attacks; removed 2.1 million cyber-enabled commodity campaigns; issued 34 million early warning alerts about attacks, compromises, vulnerabilities or open ports; and received 6.5 million reports of suspicious emails in the past 12 months – but in a year of “profound change” in the cyber security landscape, it was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that dominated the agenda.

Reflecting on the past 12 months as she launched the NCSC’s latest annual report on 1 November at an event in London, NCSC CEO Lindy Cameron said that the return of war to Europe with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine presented a unique set of challenges in cyber space for the NCSC and its partners and allies.

Cameron added that while the cyber threat from Russia has perhaps been the most visible security issue of 2022, it was also important not to forget that when it comes to nation-state actors, it will likely be the technical development and evolution of China that ultimately has the more lasting impact on the UK’s national cyber security.

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252526766/NCSC-looks-back-on-year-of-profound-change-for-cyber

  • LastPass Research Finds False Sense of Cyber Security Running Rampant

LastPass released findings from its fifth annual Psychology of Password findings, which revealed even with cyber security education on the rise, password hygiene has not improved. Regardless of generational differences across Boomers, Millennials and Gen Z, the research shows a false sense of password security given current behaviours across the board. In addition, LastPass found that while 65% of all respondents have some form of cyber security education — through school, work, social media, books or via online courses — the reality is that 62% almost always or mostly use the same or variation of a password.

The survey, which explored the password security behaviours of 3,750 professionals across seven countries, asked about respondents’ mindset and behaviours surrounding their online security. The findings highlighted a clear disconnect between high confidence when it comes to their password management and their unsafe actions. While the majority of professionals surveyed claimed to be confident in their current password management, this doesn’t translate to safer online behaviour and can create a detrimental false sense of safety.

Key findings from the research include:

  • Gen Z is confident when it comes to their password management, while also being the biggest offenders of poor password hygiene.

  • Cyber security education doesn’t necessarily translate to action.

  • Confidence creates a false sense of password security.

The latest research showcases that even in the face of a pandemic, where we spent more time online amid rising cyber attacks, there continues to be a disconnect for people when it comes to protecting their digital lives. Even though nearly two-thirds of respondents had some form of cyber security education, it is not being put into practice for varying reasons.

https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-threats/untitled

  • Insurance Giant Settles NotPetya ‘Act of War’ Lawsuit, Signaling Cyber Insurance Shakeup

The settlement last week in a $100 million lawsuit over whether insurance giant Zurich should cover losses Mondelez International suffered from NotPetya may very well reshape the entire cyber insurance marketplace.

Zurich initially denied claims from Mondelez after the malware, which experts estimate caused some $10 billion in damages globally, wreaked havoc on its computer networks. The insurance provider claimed an act of war exemption since it’s widely believed Russian military hackers unleashed NotPetya on a Ukrainian company before it spread around the world.

Now, however, it’s increasingly clear insurers aren’t off the hook for NotPetya payouts or from covering losses from other attacks with clear links to nation-state hackers.

That’s because in this case, what Mondelez and many other corporations endured was not an act of war, but “collateral damage” in a much larger cyber conflict that had nothing to do with them, said the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

There needs to be a rethink what act of war means in cyber space when it comes to insurance. The current definitions come out of the 19th century when we had pirates, navies and privateers.

Last week’s ruling in favour of Mondelez follows a January ruling in a New Jersey court that sided with global pharmaceutical company Merck in a similar case. Its insurance companies initially refused to pay for damages from NotPetya. Merck claimed losses that amounted to $1.4 billion. The insurers are appealing the ruling.

Insurers seized on the NotPetya episode to test how courts would rule on cyber coverage questions, particularly when there’s so much evidence pointing to one particular nation-state actor. Since NotPetya was widely attributed to the Russian government it gave the industry a “really strong opportunity” to set legal precedent limiting their responsibility in these instances.

Insurers will start to be much more upfront about the fact that they aren’t going to cover acts of cyber war or limit payouts for NotPetya type incidents in the future.

https://www.cyberscoop.com/insurance-giant-settles-notpetya-lawsuit/

  • Microsoft Warns of Uptick in Hackers Leveraging Publicly-Disclosed 0-Day Vulnerabilities

Microsoft is warning of an uptick among nation-state and criminal actors increasingly leveraging publicly-disclosed zero-day vulnerabilities for breaching target environments.

The tech giant, in its 114-page Digital Defense Report, said it has "observed a reduction in the time between the announcement of a vulnerability and the commoditisation of that vulnerability," making it imperative that organisations patch such exploits in a timely manner.

This also corroborates with an April 2022 advisory from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which found that bad actors are "aggressively" targeting newly disclosed software bugs against broad targets globally.

Microsoft noted that it only takes 14 days on average for an exploit to be available in the wild after public disclosure of a flaw, stating that while zero-day attacks are initially limited in scope, they tend to be swiftly adopted by other threat actors, leading to indiscriminate probing events before the patches are installed.

It further accused Chinese state-sponsored groups of being "particularly proficient" at discovering and developing zero-day exploits. This has been compounded by the fact that the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) enacted a new vulnerability reporting regulation in September 2021 that requires security flaws to be reported to the government prior to them being shared with the product developers.

Redmond further said the law could enable government-backed elements to stockpile and weaponise the reported bugs, resulting in the increased use of zero-days for espionage activities designed to advance China's economic and military interests.

https://thehackernews.com/2022/11/microsoft-warns-of-uptick-in-hackers.html

  • Chinese Mob Has 100K Slaves Working in Cambodian Cyber Crime Mills

Up to 100,000 people from across Asia have been lured to Cambodia by Chinese crime syndicates with the promise of good jobs. When they arrive, their passports are seized and they are put to work in modern-day sweatshops, running cyber crime campaigns.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Cambodia, which was hit hard economically by the pandemic, has allowed Chinese mobsters to set up enormous cyber crime operations using human trafficked labour without consequence, because of the revenue it generates for the country. The campaigns they carry out run the gamut from romance scams to fake sports betting.

Although the Cambodian government acknowledges that as many as 100,000 workers are involved in these activities, it denies anyone is being held against their will. However, the stories from traumatised victims rescued from cyber crime mills include tales of beatings and torture for failing to meet quotas, and of being sold and passed around from gang to gang.

https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/chinese-mob-100k-slaves-cambodian-cybercrime-mills

  • Ransomware Research: 17 Leaked Databases Operated by Threat Actors Threaten Third Party Organisations

Ransomware remains a serious threat to organisations, Deep Instinct, a New York-based deep learning cyber security specialist, said in its recently released 2022 Interim Cyber Threat Report.

It’s no surprise, the company said, as there are currently 17 leaked databases operated by threat actors who are leveraging the data for attacks on third-party companies, most notably social engineering, credential theft, and triple-extortion attacks.

Here are the report’s key findings:

  • Changes in ransomware gangs, including LockBit, Hive, BlackCat, and Conti. The latter has spawned “Conti Splinters” made up of former affiliates Quantum, BlackBasta, and BlackByte.

  • Significant changes to tactics by Emotet, Agent Tesla, NanoCore, and others. For example, Emotet uses highly obfuscated VBA macros to avoid detection.

  • The use of documents for malware has decreased as the top attack vector, following Microsoft’s move to disable macros by default in Microsoft Office files. Threat actors have already pivoted to other methods such as LNK, HTML, and archive email attachments.

  • Vulnerabilities such as SpoolFool, Follina and DirtyPipe highlighted the exploitability of both Windows and Linux systems despite efforts to enhance their security.

  • The number of exploited in-the-wild vulnerabilities spikes every 3-4 months. The next spike is expected to occur by the end of the year.

  • Threat actor groups are extending data exfiltration attacks to demand ransoms from third-party companies if the leaked data contains their sensitive information.

The report also makes three predictions:

  • More inside jobs. Malicious threat actors look for the weakest link, which is often in the supply chain. Groups like Lapsus$ do not rely on exploits but instead look for insiders who are willing to sell access to data within their organisation.

  • Rise of protestware. Look for a spike in protestware, which is self-sabotaging one’s software and weaponising it with malware capabilities in an effort to harm all or some of its users. The war between Russia and Ukraine has caused a surge in protestware.

  • End of year attacks. While no major vulnerability in 2022 has emerged similar to the Log4J or the Exchange cases in 2021, there is an increase year-over-year in the number of publicly assigned CVEs for reported vulnerabilities. For now, threat actors are still exploiting old vulnerabilities during 2022 simply because there is a plethora of unpatched systems for 2021 CVEs but that will change.

Organisations are warned to be on their guard. 2022 has been another record year for cyber criminals and ransomware gangs. It’s no secret that these threat actors are constantly upping their game with new and improved tactics designed to evade traditional cyber defences. Defenders must continue to be vigilant and find new approaches to prevent these attacks from happening.

https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-research/ransomware-research-17-leaked-databases-operated-by-threat-actors-threaten-third-party-organizations/

  • Ransomware: Not Enough Victims Are Reporting Attacks, And That's a Problem for Everyone

Ransomware continues to be a significant cyber threat to businesses and the general public – but it's difficult to know the true impact of attacks because many victims aren't coming forward to report them.

The warning comes in the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) Annual Review for 2022, which looks back at key developments and incidents in cyber crime over the last year, with ransomware described as an "ever present" threat and a "major challenge" to businesses and public services.

That's demonstrated by how the review details how in the 12-month period between 1 September 2021 and 31 August 2022 there were 18 ransomware incidents that needed a "nationally coordinated" response. These included attacks on a supplier to the National Health Service (NHS) and a ransomware attack against South Staffordshire Water.

However, the true impact of ransomware remains unclear, because the NCSC says that many organisations that fall prey to ransomware attacks aren't disclosing them.

That lack of reporting is despite the significant and disruptive consequences ransomware attacks can have, not only for organisations that fall victim, but for wider society – which is why it's vital that cyber security is taken seriously and incidents are reported.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/ransomware-not-enough-victims-are-reporting-attacks-and-that-increases-the-threat-for-everyone/

  • Hackers Selling Access to 576 Corporate Networks for $4 Million

A new report shows that hackers are selling access to 576 corporate networks worldwide for a total cumulative sales price of $4,000,000, fuelling attacks on the enterprise.

The research comes from Israeli cyber-intelligence firm KELA which published its Q3 2022 ransomware report, reflecting stable activity in the sector of initial access sales but a steep rise in the value of the offerings.

Although the number of sales for network access remained about the same as in the previous two quarters, the cumulative requested price has now reached $4,000,000. For comparison, the total value of initial access listings in Q2 2022 was $660,000, recording a drop in value that coincided with the summer ransomware hiatus that hurt demand.

Initial access brokers (IABs) are hackers who sell access to corporate networks, usually achieved through credential theft, webshells, or exploiting vulnerabilities in publicly exposed hardware. After establishing a foothold on the network, the threat actors sell this corporate access to other hackers who use it to steal valuable data, deploy ransomware, or conduct other malicious activity. The reasons IABs choose not to leverage network access vary, ranging from lacking diverse intrusion skills to preferring not to risk increased legal trouble.

IABs still play a crucial role in the ransomware infection chain, even if they got sidelined last year when big ransomware gangs that operated as crime syndicates operated their own IAB departments.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-selling-access-to-576-corporate-networks-for-4-million/

  • Cyber Security Recovery is a Process That Starts Long Before a Cyber Attack Occurs

Organisations are racing to stay ahead of cyber criminals, and as a result, we see businesses investing a lot of money on identifying and detecting attacks, on preventing attacks in the first place, and in responding to live attacks. But they are not spending the same amounts on attack recovery. They may have followed all the relevant guidelines, and even implemented the ISO 27000 standard, but none of that helps them to understand how to build the business back after a serious cyber attack.

Until recent years, this cyber security recovery investment would be spent on an annual tabletop exercise or disaster recovery test and auditing recovery plans. While this should be done, it isn’t enough on its own.

Cyber security insurance is also critical, of course, but it only covers some of the losses. It won’t cover future loss. The reality is most organisations find it very difficult to fully recover from an attack. Those that invest more in disaster recovery and business continuity recover from these attacks far more swiftly than their less-prepared competitors.

The four core components of an effective cyber security recovery program

  1. Pre-emptive action

  2. Responsibilities and accountability

  3. Having the right IT architecture, security and recovery process in place

  4. Learning lessons and implementing changes.

Once these factors are understood, and any weak spots identified, the organisation can focus on re-designing or updating architecture and procedures, and on retraining employees (something that should happen regularly).

Recovery is a process that starts long before a cyber attack occurs. It concludes not when the data is secured, but when the organisation can say that it’s learned everything it can from the event and has made the changes necessary to avoid it happening again.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/11/03/cybersecurity-recovery/

  • Geopolitics Plays Major Role in Cyber Attacks, Says EU Cyber Security Agency

The ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict has resulted in an increase in hacktivist activity in the past year, with state-sponsored threat actors targeting 128 governmental organisations in 42 countries that support Ukraine, according to the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA).

In addition, some threat actors targeted Ukrainian and Russian entities during the early days of the conflict, likely for the collection of intelligence, according to the 10th edition of the ENISA threat landscape report. The report, this year titled Volatile Geopolitics Shake the Trends of the 2022 Cybersecurity Threat Landscape, notes that in general geopolitical situations continue to have a high impact on cyber security.

This year's report identified several attack types frequently used by state-sponsored attackers. These include zero-day and critical vulnerability exploitation; attacks on operational technology (OT) networks; wiper attacks to destroy and disrupt networks of governmental agencies and critical infrastructure entities; and supply chain attacks. Attacks also featured social engineering, disinformation, and threats against data.

State-sponsored threat actors have also been observed targeting entities from countries in Southeast Asia, Japan, Australia, and Taiwan. Due to increased tensions between specific countries in Asia, state-sponsored threat actors have targeted countries (including EU member states) that had established closer ties with Taiwan.

Ransomware remains the top cyber crime attack type this year as well. More than 10 terabytes of data were stolen monthly during the period studied, with phishing identified as the most common initial vector of such attacks. The report also noted that 60% of affected organisations likely have paid the ransom demanded.

The second most used form of attack was DDoS. The largest DDoS attack ever was launched in Europe in July 2022 against a European customer of Akamai. The attack hit a peak at 853.7Gbps and 659.6Mpps (megapackets per second) over 14 hours.

While all sectors fell victim to attacks, public administration and government entities were the most affected, making up 24% of all cyber attack victims. This was followed by digital service providers at 13% and the general public at 12%. These three sectors alone accounted for 50% of all the attacks during this year.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3678771/geopolitics-plays-major-role-in-cyberattacks-says-eu-cybersecurity-agency.html#tk.rss_news

  • Russian Hackers Account for Most 2021 Ransomware Schemes, US Says

Payment-seeking software made by Russian hackers was used in three quarters of all the ransomware schemes reported to a US financial crime agency in the second half of 2021, a Treasury Department analysis released on Tuesday showed.

In an analysis issued in response to the increase in number and severity of ransomware attacks against critical infrastructure in the United States since late 2020, the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) said it had received 1,489 ransomware-related filings worth nearly $1.2 billion in 2021, a 188% jump from the year before.

Out of 793 ransomware incidents reported to FinCEN in the second half of 2021, 75% "had a nexus to Russia, its proxies, or persons acting on its behalf," the report said.

Washington last week hosted a meeting with officials from 36 countries and the European Union, as well as 13 global companies to address the growing threat of ransomware and other cyber crime, including the illicit use of cryptocurrencies.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-says-many-ransomware-attacks-late-2021-were-connected-russian-actors-2022-11-01/

  • Exposed: The Global Hacking Network That Targets VIPs

Private investigators linked to the City of London are using an India-based computer hacking gang to target British businesses, government officials and journalists.

The Sunday Times and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism have been given access to the gang’s database, which reveals the extraordinary scale of the attacks. It shows the criminals targeted the private email accounts of more than 100 victims on behalf of investigators working for autocratic states, British lawyers and their wealthy clients. Critics of Qatar who threatened to expose wrongdoing by the Gulf state in the run-up to this month’s World Cup were among those hacked.

It is the first time the inner workings of a major “hack-for-hire” gang have been leaked to the media and it reveals multiple criminal conspiracies. Some of the hackers’ clients are private investigators used by major law firms with bases in the City of London.

The investigation — based on the leaked documents and undercover work in India — reveals:

  • Orders went out to the gang to target the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason in May, three weeks after his appointment was announced.

  • The president of Switzerland and his deputy were targeted just days after he met Boris Johnson and Liz Truss in Downing Street to discuss Russian sanctions.

  • Philip Hammond, then chancellor, was hacked as he was dealing with the fallout of Russia’s novichok poisonings in Salisbury.

  • A private investigator hired by a London law firm acting for the Russian state ordered the gang to target a British-based oligarch fleeing President Putin.

  • Michel Platini, the former head of European football, was hacked shortly before he was due to talk to French police about corruption allegations relating to this year’s World Cup.

  • The hackers broke into the email inboxes of the Formula One motor racing bosses Ruth Buscombe, the British head of race strategy at the Alfa Romeo team, and Otmar Szafnauer, who was chief executive of the Aston Martin team.

  • The gang seized control of computers owned by Pakistan’s politicians, generals and diplomats and eavesdropped on their private conversations apparently at the behest of the Indian secret services.

The commissioning of hacking is a criminal offence punishable with a maximum sentence of ten years in jail in Britain. The Metropolitan Police was tipped off about the allegations regarding Qatar in October last year, yet chose not to take any action. David Davis, the former cabinet minister, said that the force should reopen its investigation into the cyber attacks against British citizens. Davis said the investigation exposed how London has become “the global centre of hacking”.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/exposed-the-global-hacking-network-that-targets-vips-nff67j67z

Threats

Ransomware and Extortion

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

BEC – Business Email Compromise

Malware

Mobile

Internet of Things – IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Insurance

Dark Web

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Software Supply Chain

Denial of Service DoS/DDoS

Cloud/SaaS

API

Open Source

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Training, Education and Awareness

Travel

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Careers, Working in Cyber and Information Security

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

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

Other News

Sector Specific

Industry specific threat intelligence reports are available.

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

·       Automotive

·       Construction

·       Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)

·       Defence & Space

·       Education & Academia

·       Energy & Utilities

·       Estate Agencies

·       Financial Services

·       FinTech

·       Food & Agriculture

·       Gaming & Gambling

·       Government & Public Sector (including Law Enforcement)

·       Health/Medical/Pharma

·       Hotels & Hospitality

·       Insurance

·       Legal

·       Manufacturing

·       Maritime

·       Oil, Gas & Mining

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

·       Retail & eCommerce

·       Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)

·       Startups

·       Telecoms

·       Third Sector & Charities

·       Transport & Aviation

·       Web3

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

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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 08 July 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 08 July 2022:

-Businesses Urged Not To Give In To Ransomware Cyber Criminals As Authorities See Increase In Payouts

-People Are the Primary Attack Vector Around the World

-Early Detection Crucial in Stopping Business Email Compromise (BEC) Scams

-54% of SMBs Do Not Implement Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

-New Cyber Threat Emerges from the Inside, Research Report Finds

-Ransomware: Why it's still a big threat, and where the gangs are going next

-NCSC: Prepare for Protected Period of Heightened Cyber-Risk

-69% Of Employees Need to Deal With More Security Measures In A Hybrid Work Environment

-FBI and MI5 Leaders Give Unprecedented Joint Warning on Chinese Spying

-As Cyber Criminals Recycle Ransomware, They're Getting Faster

-UK Military Investigates Hacks on Army Social Media Accounts

-APT Campaign Targeting SOHO Routers Highlights Risks to Remote Workers

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

Top Cyber Stories of the Last Week

  • Businesses Urged Not to Give In To Ransomware Cyber Criminals As Authorities See Increase In Payouts

While there have been arguments made for criminalising the payment of ransoms, it poses a number of additional risks such as providing the criminals with an additional factor they could use to extort their victims.

Businesses are being urged not to pay cyber extortionists as authorities say they are seeing evidence of a rise in ransomware payments.

In a joint letter to the Law Society, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the Information Commissioner's Office are warning solicitors who may have been advising their clients to pay.

It follows warnings earlier this year by cyber security experts from the UK, US, and Australia of a "growing wave of increasingly sophisticated ransomware attacks" which could have "devastating consequences".

The joint letter states that while ransomware payments are "not unusually unlawful" those who pay them "should be mindful of how relevant sanctions regimes (particularly those related to Russia)" when considering making the payment.

The US sanctioned in December 2019 any financial dealings with a Russian cyber crime group that was accused of working with Russian intelligence to steal classified government documents.

Despite the spillover from the Russian war in Ukraine - in one case knocking 5,800 wind turbines in Germany offline - the NCSC says it has not detected any increase in hostile activity targeting Britain during the conflict.

Businesses however had been warned that there is a heightened threat level when it comes to cyber attacks due to the conflict which is likely to be here "for the long-haul".

https://news.sky.com/story/businesses-urged-not-to-give-in-to-ransomware-cyber-criminals-as-authorities-see-increase-in-payouts-12648253

  • People Are the Primary Attack Vector Around the World

With an unprecedented number of employees now working in hybrid or fully remote environments, compounded by an increase in cyber threats and a more overwhelmed, COVID-19 information fatigued workforce, there has never been a more critical time to effectively create and maintain a cyber secure workforce and an engaged security culture.

People have become the primary attack vector for cyber-attackers around the world. Humans, rather than technology, represent the greatest risk to organisations and the professionals who oversee security awareness programs are the key to effectively managing that risk.

Awareness programs enable security teams to effectively manage their human risk by changing how people think about cyber security and help them exhibit secure behaviours, from the Board of Directors on down.

Effective and mature security awareness programs not only change their workforce’s behaviour and culture but also measure and demonstrate their value to leadership via a metrics framework. Organisations can no longer justify an annual training to tick the compliance box, and it remains critical for organisations to dedicate enough personnel, resources, and tools to manage their human risk effectively.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/07/05/people-primary-attack-vector/

  • Early Detection Crucial in Stopping Business Email Compromise (BEC) Scams

Cofense Intelligence studied hundreds of business email compromise attacks and found that most scams attempt to establish trust with targeted employees over multiple emails.

Avoiding a costly social engineering attack often requires employees to spot suspicious emails before threat actors request sensitive information or access.

Cofense Intelligence published new research Thursday that showed most business email compromise (BEC) scams can be thwarted in their initial stages when the attackers are not asking for money or a transfer of funds. The cyber security vendor analysed hundreds of BEC emails sent to customers during March and April, and engaged with the threat actors in approximately half the cases.

The company found that only 36% of attackers looking to conduct fraud attacks opened with a cordial greeting and request for cash, gift cards or confidential payment information. Most BEC scams, Cofense found, attempt to slowly build up trust over the course of multiple email exchanges with the target and ingratiate them with common phrases like "sorry to bother you."

Once they realise they can get money out of you, they will do everything they can to drain you dry. For many of the scammers, this becomes a literal hustle, where they will quickly pivot to other cash-out methods. Just because something starts as a wire transfer doesn't mean they won't ask you to send cryptocurrency, gift cards, a cheque, or use your personal Venmo or PayPal to wire them money.

https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/news/252522493/Early-detection-crucial-in-stopping-BEC-scams

  • 54% of SMBs Do Not Implement Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

SMB owners across the globe are still relying only on usernames and passwords to secure critical employee, customer, and partner data, according to the Global Small Business Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) Study released by the Cyber Readiness Institute (CRI).

Services that enforce MFA require users to present more than one piece of evidence whenever they log in to a business account (e.g., company email, payroll, human resources, etc.).

MFA has been in use for decades and is widely recommended by cyber security experts, yet 55% of SMBs surveyed are not “very aware” of MFA and its security benefits, and 54% do not use it for their business. Of the businesses that have not implemented MFA, 47% noted they either didn’t understand MFA or didn’t see its value. In addition, nearly 60% of small business and medium-sized owners have not discussed MFA with their employees.

Nearly all account compromise attacks can be stopped outright, just by using MFA. It’s a proven, effective way to thwart bad actors.

Of the companies that have implemented some form of MFA, many still seem to have done so haphazardly. Only 39% of those who offer MFA have a process for prioritising critical hardware, software, and data, with 49% merely “encouraging the use of MFA when it is available.”

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/07/08/smb-implement-mfa/

  • New Cyber Threat Emerges from the Inside, Research Report Finds

In its 2022 Insider Risk Intelligence & Research Report, DTEX Systems, a workforce cyber intelligence and security company, identifies a new cyber threat: the “Super Malicious Insider.”

Just what is a Super Malicious Insider and where does it come from? Well, it comes from inside your own organisation or someone who recently worked for you — a threat actor who may be truly of your own making.

“It was the year (2021) we all came to realise the Work-from-Anywhere (WFA) movement was here to stay,” DTEX reports. “For security and risk professionals, this hastened the end of corporate perimeter-centric security, and a requirement to protect hundreds of thousands of ‘remote offices’ outside of traditional corporate controls. To make matters worse, a measurable increase in employee attrition toward the end of 2021 created the perfect storm for insider threats.”

So, if your organisation didn’t observe a proportional increase in attempted or actual data loss, then you were likely not looking, DTEX asserts.

Critically your insiders know your vulnerabilities and can exploit them, for example, when an employee quits to join a competitor, it is often tempting to take proprietary information with them. This can include customer lists, product plans, financial data and other intellectual property.

The Super Malicious Insider is better able to hide their activities, obfuscate data and exfiltrate sensitive information without detection. Importantly, in numerous insider incidents reviewed in 2021, the Super Malicious Insider had made significant efforts to appear normal by not straying outside of their day-to-day routine, DTEX reports.

Here are some key statistics from the report:

  • Industrial espionage is at an all-time high. In 2021, 72% of respondents saw an increase in actionable insider threat incidents. IP or data theft led the list at 42% of incidents, followed by unauthorised or accidental disclosure (23%), sabotage (19%), fraud (%) and other (7%). In fact, 42% of all DTEX i3 investigations involved theft of IP or customer data.

  • The technology industry (38%), followed by pharma/life sciences (21%), accounted for the most IP theft incidents. In addition, technology (33%) had the most super malicious incidents, followed by critical infrastructure (24%) and government (11%).

  • Investigations that led to criminal prosecution occurred within someone’s home 75% of the time. More telling, 32% of malicious incident incidents included sophisticated insider techniques.

https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-research/new-cyberthreat-emerges-from-the-inside-research-report-finds/

  • Ransomware: Why It's Still A Big Threat, And Where The Gangs Are Going Next

Ransomware attacks are still lucrative for cyber criminals because victims pay ransoms - and the threat is still evolving.

Ransomware has been a cyber security issue for a long time, but last year it went mainstream. Security threats like malware, ransomware and hacking gangs are always evolving.

Major ransomware attacks like those on Colonial Pipeline, the Irish Healthcare Executive and many others demonstrated how significant the problem had become as cyber attacks disrupted people's lives.

What was once a small cyber-criminal industry based around encrypting files on personal computers and demanding a ransom of a few hundred dollars for a decryption key had evolved into a massive ecosystem designed around holding critical services and infrastructure to ransom - and making extortion demands of millions of dollars.

No wonder Lindy Cameron, head of the UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), has described ransomware as "the biggest global cyber threat".

Ransomware is continually evolving, with new variants appearing, new ransomware groups emerging, and new techniques and tactics designed to make the most money from attacks.

And as the recent Conti ransomware leaks showed, the most successful ransomware gangs are organised as if they were any other group of software developers.

They are really acting like a business. Aside from the fact they're not legitimately registered, they really are. They're functioning like a real business and sometimes the number of people within these organisations is bigger than some startups. They have shown a lot of resilience and a lot of agility in adapting to what's new.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/ransomware-why-its-still-a-big-threat-and-where-the-gangs-are-going-next/

  • NCSC: Prepare for Protracted Period of Heightened Cyber Risk

The UK’s leading cyber security agency has urged organisations to follow best practices and take care of their infosecurity staff in order to weather an extended period of elevated cyber risk due to the ongoing war in Ukraine.

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) guide, Maintaining A Sustainable Strengthened Cyber Security Posture, comes on the back of warnings that organisations must “prepare for the long haul” as the conflict enters its fifth month.

Alongside basic hygiene controls, the strengthening of cyber-resilience and revisiting of risk-based decisions made in the earlier acute phase of the war, organisations should pay special attention to their security staff, the NCSC said.

“Increased workloads for cyber security staff over an extended period can harm their wellbeing and lead to lower productivity, with a potential rise in unsafe behaviours or errors,” it said.

With this in mind, the guide highlighted several steps IT security managers should consider:

  • Empower staff to make decisions in order to improve agility and free-up leaders to focus on medium-term priorities

  • Spread workloads evenly across a wider pool of staff to reduce the risk of burnout and enable less experienced employees to benefit from development opportunities

  • Provide opportunities for staff to recharge through more frequent breaks and time away from the office, as well as work on less pressured tasks

  • Look after each other by watching for signs that colleagues are struggling and ensuring they always have the right resources to hand

  • Engage the entire workforce with the right internal communications processes, and support so that all staff are able to identify and report suspicious behaviour

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/ncsc-prepare-cyber-risk/

  • 69% Of Employees Need to Deal with More Security Measures In A Hybrid Work Environment

Security firm Ivanti worked with global digital transformation experts and surveyed 10,000 office workers, IT professionals, and the C-Suite to evaluate the level of prioritisation and adoption of digital employee experience in organisations and how it shapes the daily working experiences for employees. The report revealed that 49% of employees are frustrated by the tech and tools their organisation provides and 64% believe that the way they interact with technology directly impacts morale.

One of the biggest challenges facing IT leaders today is the need to enable a seamless end user experience while maintaining robust security. The challenge becomes more complex when there is pressure from the top to bypass security measures, with 49% of C-level executives reporting they have requested to bypass one or more security measures in the last year.

Maintaining a secure environment and focusing on the digital employee experience are two inseparable elements of any digital transformation. In the war for talent a key differentiator for organisations is providing an exceptional and secure digital experience. Ivanti, a cyber security software provider, says “We believe that organisations not prioritising how their employees experience technology is a contributing factor for the Great Resignation”.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/07/04/security-measures-hybrid-work-environment/

  • FBI and MI5 Leaders Give Unprecedented Joint Warning on Chinese Spying

The head of the FBI and the leader of Britain’s domestic intelligence agency have delivered an unprecedented joint address, raising fresh alarm about the Chinese government, warning business leaders that Beijing is determined to steal their technology for competitive gain.

In a speech at MI5’s London headquarters intended as a show of western solidarity, Christopher Wray, the FBI director, stood alongside the MI5 director general, Ken McCallum. Wray reaffirmed longstanding concerns about economic espionage and hacking operations by China, as well as the Chinese government’s efforts to stifle dissent abroad.

“We consistently see that it’s the Chinese government that poses the biggest long-term threat to our economic and national security, and by ‘our’, I mean both of our nations, along with our allies in Europe and elsewhere,” Wray said.

He told the audience the Chinese government was “set on stealing your technology, whatever it is that makes your industry tick, and using it to undercut your business and dominate your market”.

Ken McCallum said MI5 was running seven times as many investigations into China as it had been four years ago and planned to “grow as much again” to tackle the widespread attempts at inference which pervade “so many aspects of our national life”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/06/fbi-mi5-china-spying-cyberattacks-business-economy

  • As Cyber Criminals Recycle Ransomware, They're Getting Faster

Like history, ransomware repeats itself. Researchers recently encountered a new variant of a ransomware campaign and observed that it has been improving itself by reusing code from publicly available sources.

Nokoyawa is a new ransomware for Windows that first appeared at the beginning of this year. The first samples found by researchers were gathered in February 2022 and contain significant coding similarities with other older ransomware strains, some going back to 2019.

These new variants had been improving themselves by reusing code from publicly available sources. The April 2022 samples include three new features that increase the number of files that Nokoyawa can encrypt. These features already existed in recent ransomware families, and their addition just indicates that Nokoyawa developers are trying to match pace with other operators in terms of technological capability.

https://www.securityweek.com/cybercriminals-recycle-ransomware-theyre-getting-faster

  • UK Military Investigates Hacks on Army Social Media Accounts

British military authorities are trying to find out who hacked the army’s social media accounts over the weekend, flooding them with cryptocurrency videos and posts related to collectible electronic art.

The investigation was launched after authorised content on the army’s YouTube account was replaced with a video feed promoting cryptocurrencies that included images of billionaire Elon Musk. The Army’s Twitter account retweeted a number of posts about non-fungible tokens, unique digital images that can be bought and sold but have no physical counterpart.

“Apologies for the temporary interruption to our feed,” the Army said in a tweet posted after the Twitter account was restored on Sunday. “We will conduct a full investigation and learn from this incident. Thanks for following us, and normal service will now resume.”

The Ministry of Defence said late Sunday that both breaches had been “resolved.”

While internet users were unable to access the Army’s YouTube site on Monday, a spokesperson said the site was down for standard maintenance. The Twitter feed was operating normally.

Although U.K. officials have previously raised concerns about state-sponsored Russian hacking, the military did not speculate on who was responsible for Sunday’s breaches.

“The Army takes information security extremely seriously, and until their investigation is complete it would be inappropriate to comment further,” the Ministry of Defence said.

https://www.securityweek.com/uk-military-investigates-hacks-army-social-media-accounts

Campaign Targeting SOHO Routers Highlights Risks to Remote Workers

A targeted attack campaign has been compromising small office/home office (SOHO) routers since late 2020, with the goal of hijacking network communications and infecting local computers with stealthy and sophisticated backdoors. Attacks against home routers are not new, but the implants used by attackers in this case were designed for local network reconnaissance and lateral movement instead of just abusing the router itself.

"The rapid shift to remote work in spring of 2020 presented a fresh opportunity for threat actors to subvert traditional defence-in-depth protections by targeting the weakest points of the new network perimeter - devices that are routinely purchased by consumers but rarely monitored or patched - small office/home office (SOHO) routers," researchers from Black Lotus Labs, the threat intelligence arm of telecommunications company Lumen Technologies said in a recent report.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3665912/apt-campaign-targeting-soho-routers-highlights-risks-to-remote-workers.html#tk.rss_news

Threats

Ransomware

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Malware

Mobile

Internet of Things – IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Software Supply Chain

Cloud/SaaS

Identity and Access Management

Asset Management

Encryption

API

Open Source

Social Media

Digital Transformation

Travel

Cyber Bullying and Cyber Stalking

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Models, Frameworks and Standards

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

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

Sector Specific

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

We currently provide tailored threat intelligence based on the following sectors, additional sectors by arrangement:

  • 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 01 July 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 01 July 2022:

-Ransomware Is the Biggest Global Cyber Threat. And The Attacks Are Still Evolving

-Study Reveals Traditional Data Security Tools Have a 60% Failure Rate Against Ransomware and Extortion

-Patchable and Preventable Security Issues Lead Causes of Q1 Attacks

-Three in Four Vulnerability Management Programs Ineffective, NopSec Research Finds

-EMEA Continues to Be a Hotspot for Malware Threats

-A New, Remarkably Sophisticated Malware Is Attacking Home and Small Office Routers

-What Are Shadow IDs, and How Are They Crucial in 2022?

-Zero-Days Aren't Going Away Anytime Soon & What Leaders Need to Know

-Half of 2022's Zero-Days Are Variants of Previous Vulnerabilities

-Human Error Remains the Top Security Issue

-Carnival Cruises Torpedoed by US States, Agrees to Pay $6m After Wave of Cyber Attacks

-Uber Ex-Security Chief Accused of Hacking Coverup Must Face Fraud Charges, Judge Rules

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 Is the Biggest Global Cyber Threat. And The Attacks Are Still Evolving

Ransomware is the biggest cyber security threat facing the world today, with the potential to significantly affect whole societies and economies – and the attacks are unrelenting, the head of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has warned.

"Even with a war raging in Ukraine – the biggest global cyber threat we still face is ransomware. That tells you something of the scale of the problem. Ransomware attacks strike hard and fast. They are evolving rapidly, they are all-pervasive, they're increasingly offered by gangs as a service, lowering the bar for entry into cyber crime," said Lindy Cameron, CEO of the NCSC in a speech at Tel Aviv Cyber Week.

She added that the NCSC has dealt with "nationally significant incidents" along with hundreds of general cyber incidents that "affect the UK more widely every year".

While she didn't detail any specific instances of responding to ransomware incidents, Cameron warned that "these complex attacks have the potential to affect our societies and economies significantly", and implied that if it weren't for the work of NCSC incident responders, alongside their counterparts in the industry and international counterparts, the attacks could have had a major impact.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/ransomware-attacks-are-the-biggest-global-cyber-threat-and-still-evolving-warns-cybersecurity-chief/

  • Study Reveals Traditional Data Security Tools Have a 60% Failure Rate Against Ransomware and Extortion

Titaniam, Inc., the data security platform, announced the ‘State of Data Exfiltration & Extortion Report.’ The survey revealed that while over 70% of organisations have an existing set of prevention, detection, and backup solutions, nearly 40% of organisations have been hit with ransomware attacks in the last year, and more than 70% have experienced one in the previous five years, proving existing solutions to be woefully inadequate in managing the risks and impacts from these attacks.

Data exfiltration during ransomware attacks is up 106% relative to where it was five years ago. We are seeing the emergence of a new trend where cyber criminals are no longer limiting themselves to just encrypting entire systems—they are making sure to steal data ahead of the encryption so that they can have additional leverage on the victim. The survey found that 65% of those who have experienced a ransomware attack have also experienced data theft or exfiltration due to the incident. Of those victims, 60% say the hackers used the data theft to extort them further, known as double extortion. Most of them, i.e., 59% of victims, paid the hackers, implying that they were not helped by their backup or data security tools to prevent this fate.

Data is being exposed for theft and extortion in other ways too. Nearly half (47%) uncovered publicly exposed data in their systems in the last 24 months. It was found that respondents have a mix of data security & protection (78%), prevention & detection (75%), and backup and recovery (73%) in their cyber security stacks. Still, exposure and extortion numbers imply a missing puzzle piece regarding attacks.

https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/study-reveals-traditional-data-security-tools-have-a-60-failure-rate-against-ransomware-and-extortion

  • Patchable and Preventable Security Issues Lead Causes of Q1 Attacks

Attacks against companies spiked in Q1 2022 with patchable and preventable external vulnerabilities responsible for the bulk of attacks.

Eighty-two percent of attacks on organisations in Q1 2022 were caused by the external exposure of known vulnerabilities in the victim’s external-facing perimeter or attack surface. Those unpatched bugs overshadowed breach-related financial losses tied to human error, which accounted for 18 percent.

The numbers come from Tetra Defense and its quarterly report that sheds light on a notable uptick in cyber attacks against United States organisations between January and March 2022.

The report did not let employee security hygiene, or a lack thereof, off the hook. Tetra revealed that a lack of multi-factor authentication (MFA) mechanisms adopted by firms and compromised credentials are still major factors in attacks against organisations.

https://threatpost.com/lead-causes-of-q1-attacks/180096/

  • Three in Four Vulnerability Management Programs Ineffective

How at risk are organisations to unsecured vulnerabilities in their networks? NopSec, a threat and exposure management provider, gives us the answers in a new study of some 430 cyber security professionals.

Are security teams finding successful approaches to their vulnerability management, or are “open doors around their attack surface” leaving them susceptible to disaster in their organisation? The answer, as it turns out, is that some organisations are better at detection, response and remediation of their vulnerabilities.

Perhaps more importantly, others are not as locked down as they believe, according to the report. Keeping track of known vulnerabilities and responding quickly is one thing, but locating flaws they did not previously know existed is quite another.

Seventy percent of respondent say their vulnerability management program (VMP) is only somewhat effective or worse, blind spots and shadow IT remain top challenges, and vulnerabilities take too long to patch.

https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-research/three-in-four-vulnerability-management-programs-ineffective-study-finds/

  • EMEA Continues to Be a Hotspot for Malware Threats

Ransomware detections in the first quarter of this year doubled the total volume reported for 2021, according to the latest quarterly Internet Security Report from the WatchGuard Threat Lab. Researchers also found that the Emotet botnet came back in a big way, the infamous Log4Shell vulnerability tripled its attack efforts and malicious cryptomining activity increased.

Although findings from the Threat Lab’s Q4 2021 report showed ransomware attacks trending down year over year, that all changed in Q1 2022 with a massive explosion in ransomware detections. While Q4 2021 saw the downfall of the infamous REvil cybergang, WatchGuard analysis suggests that this opened the door for the LAPSUS$ extortion group to emerge, which along with many new ransomware variants such as BlackCat – the first known ransomware written in the Rust programming language – could be contributing factors to an ever-increasing ransomware and cyber-extortion threat landscape.

The report also shows that EMEA continues to be a hotspot for malware threats. Overall regional detections of basic and evasive malware show WatchGuard Fireboxes in EMEA were hit harder than those in North, Central and South America (AMER) at 57% and 22%, respectively, followed by Asia-Pacific (APAC) at 21%.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/06/30/emea-malware-threats/

  • A New, Remarkably Sophisticated Malware Is Attacking Home and Small Office Routers

An unusually advanced hacking group has spent almost two years infecting a wide range of routers in North America and Europe with malware that takes full control of connected devices running Windows, macOS, and Linux, researchers reported on June 28.

So far, researchers from Lumen Technologies' Black Lotus Labs say they've identified at least 80 targets infected by the stealthy malware, including routers made by Cisco, Netgear, Asus, and DrayTek. Dubbed ZuoRAT, the remote access Trojan is part of a broader hacking campaign that has existed since at least the fourth quarter of 2020 and continues to operate.

The discovery of custom-built malware written for the MIPS architecture and compiled for small-office and home-office routers is significant, particularly given its range of capabilities. Its ability to enumerate all devices connected to an infected router and collect the DNS lookups and network traffic they send and receive, and remain undetected, is the hallmark of a highly sophisticated threat actor.

"While compromising small office/home office (SOHO) routers as a vector to gain access to an adjacent LAN is not a novel technique, it has seldom been reported," Black Lotus Labs researchers wrote. "Similarly, reports of person-in-the-middle style attacks, such as DNS and HTTP hijacking, are even rarer and a mark of a complex and targeted operation. The use of these two techniques congruently demonstrated a high level of sophistication by a threat actor, indicating that this campaign was possibly performed by a state-sponsored organisation."

The campaign comprises at least four pieces of malware, three of them written from scratch by the threat actor. The first piece is the MIPS-based ZuoRAT, which closely resembles the Mirai internet-of-things malware that achieved record-breaking distributed denial-of-service attacks that crippled some Internet services for days. ZuoRAT often gets installed by exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities in SOHO devices.

https://www.wired.com/story/zuorat-trojan-malware-hacking-routers/

  • What Are Shadow IDs, and How Are They Crucial in 2022?

Just before last Christmas, in a first-of-a-kind case, JPMorgan was fined $200M for employees using non-sanctioned applications for communicating about financial strategy. No mention of insider trading, naked shorting, or any malevolence. Just employees circumventing regulation using, well, Shadow IT. Not because they tried to obfuscate or hide anything, simply because it was a convenient tool that they preferred over any other sanctioned products (which JPMorgan certainly has quite a few of.)

Visibility into unknown and unsanctioned applications has been required by regulators and also recommended by the Center for Internet Security community for a long time. Yet it seems that new and better approaches are still in demand. Gartner has identified External Attack Surface Management, Digital Supply Chain Risk, and Identity Threat Detection as the top three trends to focus on in 2022, all of which are closely intertwined with Shadow IT.

"Shadow IDs," or in other words, unmanaged employee identities and accounts in third-party services, are often created using a simple email-and-password-based registration. Cloud access security broker (CASB) and corporate single-sign-on (SSO) solutions are limited to a few sanctioned applications, and are not widely adopted on most websites and services either. This means, that a large part of an organisation's external surface - as well as its user identities - may be completely invisible.

https://thehackernews.com/2022/06/what-are-shadow-ids-and-how-are-they.html

  • Zero-Days Aren't Going Away Anytime Soon, and What Leaders Need to Know

Few security exploits are the source of more sleepless nights for security professionals than zero-day attacks. Just recently, researchers discovered a new vulnerability enabling hackers to achieve remote code execution within Microsoft Office. Dubbing the evolving threat the Follina exploit, researchers say all versions of Office are at risk. And because the internal security teams have no time to prepare or patch their systems to defend against these software vulnerabilities, crafty threat actors can take advantage, taking their time after they've accessed an organisation's environment to observe and exfiltrate data while remaining completely unseen.

And though sophisticated threat actors and nations have exploited zero-days for nearly two decades, last year saw a historic rise in the number of vulnerabilities detected. Both Google and Mandiant tracked a record number of zero-days last year, with the caveat that more zero-days are being discovered because security companies are getting better at finding them — not necessarily because hackers are coming up with new vulnerabilities. Not all zero-days are created equal, though. Some require sophisticated and novel techniques, like the attack on SolarWinds, and others exploit simple vulnerabilities in commonly used programs like Windows. Thankfully, there's some basic cyber hygiene strategies that can keep your organisation sufficiently prepared to mitigate zero-day exploits.

https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/zero-days-aren-t-going-away-anytime-soon-and-what-leaders-need-to-know

  • Half of 2022's Zero-Days Are Variants of Previous Vulnerabilities

Google Project Zero has observed a total of 18 exploited zero-day vulnerabilities in the first half of 2022, at least half of which exist because previous bugs were not properly addressed.

According to Google Project Zero researcher Maddie Stone, nine of the in-the-wild zero-days seen so far this year could have been prevented had organisations applied more comprehensive patching.

“On top of that, four of the 2022 zero-days are variants of 2021 in-the-wild zero-days. Just 12 months from the original in-the-wild zero-day being patched, attackers came back with a variant of the original bug,” Stone says.

The most recent of these issues is the Follina vulnerability in the Windows platform. Tracked as CVE-2022-30190, it is a variant of an MSHTML zero-day tracked as CVE-2021-40444.

CVE-2022-21882 is another Windows vulnerability that is a variant of an in-the-wild zero-day that was improperly resolved last year, namely CVE-2021-1732.

An iOS IOMobileFrameBuffer bug (CVE-2022-22587) and a type confusion flaw in Chrome’s V8 engine (CVE-2022-1096) are two other zero-days that are variants of exploited security flaws found last year – CVE-2021-30983 and CVE-2021-30551, respectively.

Other 2022 zero-days that are variants of improperly addressed security defects are CVE-2022-1364 (Chrome), CVE-2022-22620 (WebKit), CVE-2021-39793 (Google Pixel), CVE-2022-26134 (Atlassian Confluence), and CVE-2022-26925 (Windows flaw called PetitPotam).

https://www.securityweek.com/google-half-2022s-zero-days-are-variants-previous-vulnerabilities

  • Human Error Remains the Top Security Issue

Human error remains the most effective vector for conducting network infiltrations and data breaches.

The SANS Institute security centre issued its annual security awareness report Wednesday, which was based on data from 1,000 infosec professionals and found that employees and their lack of security training remain common points of failure for data breaches and network attacks. The report also tracked the maturity level of respondents' security awareness programs and their effectiveness in reducing human risk.

"This year's report once again identifies what we have seen over the past three years: that the most mature security awareness programs are those that have the most people dedicated to managing and supporting it," the cyber security training and education organisation said.

"These larger teams are more effective at working with the security team to identify, track, and prioritise their top human risks, and at engaging, motivating, and training their workforce to manage those risks."

The SANS Institute study ranked maturity by five levels, from lowest to highest: nonexistent, compliance-focused, promoting awareness and behaviour change, long-term sustainment and culture change, and metrics framework. The report found that while approximately 400 respondents said their programs promote awareness and behaviour change - the highest such response for any maturity level - the number represented a 10% decrease from the previous year's report.

https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/news/252522226/SANS-Institute-Human-error-remains-the-top-security-issue

  • Carnival Cruises Torpedoed by US States, Agrees to Pay $6m After Wave of Cyber Attacks

Carnival Cruise Lines will cough up more than $6 million to end two separate lawsuits filed by 46 states in the US after sensitive, personal information on customers and employees was accessed in a string of cyber attacks.

A couple of years ago, as the coronavirus pandemic was taking hold, the Miami-based business revealed intruders had not only encrypted some of its data but also downloaded a collection of names and addresses; Social Security info, driver's license, and passport numbers; and health and payment information of thousands of people in almost every American state.

It all started to go wrong more than a year prior, as the cruise line became aware of suspicious activity in May 2019. This apparently wasn't disclosed until 10 months later, in March 2020.

Back in 2019, the security operations team spotted an internal email account sending spam to other addresses. It turned out miscreants had hijacked 124 employee Microsoft Office 365 email accounts, and were using them to send phishing emails to harvest more credentials. This, we're told, gave the intruders access to personal data on 180,000 Carnival employees and customers. It's likely the miscreants first broke in using phishing mails or brute-forcing passwords; either way, there was no multi-factor authentication.

Then in August 2020, the company said it was hit with the aforementioned ransomware, and copies of its files were siphoned. In January 2021, it was infected again with malware, and again sensitive information – specifically, customer passport numbers and dates of birth, and employee credit card numbers – were downloaded. And in March that year, a staffer's work email account was compromised again to send out a phishing email; more sensitive information was exposed.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/28/carnival-cybersecurity-fines/

  • Uber Ex-Security Chief Accused of Hacking Coverup Must Face Fraud Charges, Judge Rules

A federal judge on Tuesday said a former Uber Technologies Inc. security chief must face wire fraud charges over his alleged role in trying to cover up a 2016 hacking that exposed personal information of 57 million passengers and drivers.

The US Department of Justice had in December added the three charges against Joseph Sullivan to an earlier indictment, saying he arranged to pay money to two hackers in exchange for their silence, while trying to conceal the hacking from passengers, drivers and the US Federal Trade Commission.

https://www.reuters.com/business/uber-ex-security-chief-accused-hacking-coverup-must-face-fraud-charges-judge-2022-06-28/

Threats

Ransomware

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Malware

Mobile

Internet of Things – IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Insurance

Software Supply Chain

Denial of Service DoS/DDoS

Attack Surface Management

Shadow IT

Open Source

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Training, Education and Awareness

Privacy

Parental Controls and Child Safety

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

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

Vulnerability Management

Vulnerabilities

Sector Specific

Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)

Financial Services Sector

FinTech

Telecoms

OT, ICS, IIoT, SCADA and Cyber-Physical Systems

Energy & Utilities

Oil, Gas and Mining

Chinese Threat Actor Targets Rare Earth Mining Companies in North America, Australia | SecurityWeek.Com

Food and Agriculture

Education and Academia

Web3

Reports Published in the Last Week

Other News

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

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

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

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

Read More
Black Arrow Admin Black Arrow Admin

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 24 June 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 24 June 2022:

-The NCSC Sets Out the UK’s Cyber Threat Landscape

-We're Now Truly in The Era of Ransomware as Pure Extortion Without the Encryption

-5 Social Engineering Assumptions That Are Wrong

-Gartner: Regulation, Human Costs Will Create Stormy Cyber Security Weather Ahead

-Ransomware Attacks - This Is the Data That Cyber Criminals Really Want to Steal

-Cloud Email Threats Soar 101% in a Year

-80% of Firms Suffered Identity-Related Breaches in Last 12 Months

-After Being Breached Once, Many Companies Are Likely to Be Hit Again

-Do You Have Ransomware Insurance? Look at the Fine Print

-The Price of Stolen Info: Everything on Sale On The Dark Web

-How Companies Are Prioritizing Infosec and Compliance

-Businesses Risk ‘Catastrophic Financial Loss’ from Cyber Attacks, US Watchdog Warns

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

Top Cyber Stories of the Last Week

  • The NCSC Sets Out the UK’s Cyber Threat Landscape

The current state of the UK’s cyber threat landscape was outlined by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), during a keynote address on the final day of Infosecurity Europe 2022.

They described the cyber threats posed by nation-states, particularly Russia and China. Russia remains “one of the world’s most prolific cyber actors and dedicates significant resources to conducting cyber operations across the globe.”  The NCSC and international partner organisations have attributed a number of high-profile attacks related to the conflict to Russian state actors, including the Viasat incident on the eve of the invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Therefore, the NCSC recommends that organisations prepare for a dynamic situation that is liable to change rapidly.

The NCSC emphasised that a more significant long-term threat comes from China, citing GCHQ director Jeremy Fleming’s assertion that “Russia is affecting the weather, but China is shaping the climate.” She described the nation’s “highly sophisticated” activities in cyberspace, born out of its “increasing ambitions to project its influence beyond its borders.” This includes a keen interest in the UK’s commercial secrets.

In addition to nation-state attacks, the NCSC noted that cyber crime is continuing to rise, with ransomware a continuing concern. Attacks are expected to grow in scale, with threat actors likely to increasingly target managed service providers (MSPs) to gain access to a wider range of targets. More generally, cyber capabilities will become more commoditised over the next few years, meaning they are increasingly available to a larger group of would-be attackers who are willing to pay.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/ncsc-uk-cyber-threat-landscape/

  • We're Now Truly in The Era of Ransomware as Pure Extortion Without the Encryption

Increasingly cyber crime rings tracked as ransomware operators are turning toward primarily data theft and extortion – and skipping the encryption step altogether. Rather than scramble files and demand payment for the decryption keys, and all the faff in between in facilitating that, simply exfiltrating the data and demanding a fee to not leak it all is just as effective. This shift has been ongoing for many months, and is now virtually unavoidable.

The FBI and CISA this month warned about a lesser-known extortion gang called Karakurt, which demands ransoms as high as $13 million. Karakurt doesn't target any specific sectors or industries, and the gang's victims haven't had any of their documents encrypted and held to ransom. Instead, the crooks claim to have stolen data, with screenshots or copies of exfiltrated files as proof, and they threaten to sell it or leak it publicly if they don't receive a payment.

Some of these thieves offer discounted ransoms to corporations to encourage them to pay sooner, with the demanded payment getting larger the longer it takes to cough up the cash (or Bitcoin, as the case may be).

Additionally, some crime groups offer sliding-scale payment systems. So you pay for what you get, and depending on the amount of ransom paid you get a control panel, you get customer support, you get all of the tools you need."

https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/25/ransomware_gangs_extortion_feature/

  • 5 Social Engineering Assumptions That Are Wrong

Social engineering is involved in the vast majority of cyber attacks, but a new report from Proofpoint has revealed five common social engineering assumptions that are not only wrong but are repeatedly subverted by malicious actors in their attacks.

  1. Threat actors don’t have conversations with targets.

  2. Legitimate services are safe from social engineering abuse.

  3. Attackers only use computers, not telephones.

  4. Replying to existing email conversations is safe.

  5. Fraudsters only use business-related content as lures.

Commenting on the report’s findings, Sherrod DeGrippo, Proofpoint’s Vice-President Threat Research and Detection, stated that the vendor has attempted to debunk faulty assumptions made by organisations and security teams so they can better protect employees against cyber crime. “Despite defenders’ best efforts, cyber criminals continue to defraud, extort and ransom companies for billions of dollars annually. Security-focused decision makers have prioritised bolstering defences around physical and cloud-based infrastructure, which has led to human beings becoming the most relied upon entry point for compromise. As a result, a wide array of content and techniques continue to be developed to exploit human behaviours and interests.”

Indeed, cyber criminals will go to creative and occasionally unusual lengths to carry out social engineering campaigns, making it more difficult for users to avoid falling victim to them.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3664932/5-social-engineering-assumptions-that-are-wrong.html#tk.rss_news

  • Gartner: Regulation, Human Costs Will Create Stormy Cyber Security Weather Ahead

Security teams should prepare for what researchers say will be a challenging environment through 2023, with increased pressure from government regulators, partners, and threat actors.

Gartner kicked off its Security & Risk Management Summit with the release of its analysts' assessments of the work ahead, which Richard Addiscott, the company's senior director analyst, discussed during his opening keynote address.

“We can’t fall into old habits and try to treat everything the same as we did in the past,” Addiscott said. “Most security and risk leaders now recognise that major disruption is only one crisis away. We can’t control it, but we can evolve our thinking, our philosophy, our program, and our architecture.”

Topping Gartner's list of eight predictions is a rise in the government regulation of consumer privacy rights and ransomware response, a widespread shift by enterprises to unify security platforms, more zero trust, and, troublingly, the prediction that by 2025 threat actors will likely have figured out how to "weaponise operational technology environments successfully to cause human casualties”, the cyber security report said.

https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/gartner-regulation-human-cost-stormy-cybersecurity-weather

  • Ransomware Attacks - This Is the Data That Cyber Criminals Really Want to Steal

There are certain types of data that criminals target the most, according to an analysis of attacks.

Data theft and extortion has become a common – and unfortunately effective – part of ransomware attacks, where in addition to encrypting data and demanding a ransom payment for the decryption key, gangs steal information and threaten to publish it if a payment isn't received.

These so-called double extortion attacks have become an effective tool in the arsenal of ransomware gangs, who leverage them to force victims to pay up, even in cases where data could be restored from offline backups, because the threat of sensitive information being published is too great.

Any stolen data is potentially useful to ransomware gangs, but according to analysis by researchers at cyber security company Rapid7, of 161 disclosed ransomware incidents where data was published, some data is seen as more valuable than others.

According to the report, financial services is the sector that is most likely to have customer data exposed, with 82% of incidents involving ransomware gangs accessing and making threats to release this data. Stealing and publishing sensitive customer information would undermine consumer trust in financial services organisations: while being hacked in the first place would be damaging enough, some business leaders might view paying a ransom to avoid further damage caused by data leaks to be worth it.

The second most-leaked type of file in ransomware attacks against financial services firms, featuring in 59% of disclosures from victims, is employee personally identifiable information (PII) and data related to human resources. 

https://www.zdnet.com/article/ransomware-attacks-this-is-the-data-that-cyber-criminals-really-want-to-steal/

  • Cloud Email Threats Soar 101% in a Year

The number of email-borne cyber-threats blocked by Trend Micro surged by triple digits last year, highlighting the continued risk from conventional attack vectors.

The vendor stopped over 33.6 million such threats reaching customers via cloud-based email in 2021, a 101% increase. This included 16.5 million phishing emails, a 138% year-on-year increase, of which 6.5 million were credential phishing attempts.

Trend Micro also blocked 3.3 million malicious files in cloud-based emails, including a 134% increase in known threats and a 221% increase in unknown malware.

The news comes as Proofpoint warned in a new report of the continued dangers posed by social engineering, and the mistaken assumptions many users make. 

Many users don’t realise that threat actors may spend considerable time and effort building a rapport over email with their victims, especially if they’re trying to conduct a business email compromise (BEC) attack, it said.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/cloud-email-threats-soar-101-in-a/

  • 80% of Firms Suffered Identity-Related Breaches in Last 12 Months

Rapidly growing employee identities, third-party partners, and machine nodes have companies scrambling to secure credential information, software secrets, and cloud identities, according to researchers.

In a survey of IT and identity professionals from Dimensional Research, almost every organisation — 98% — experienced rapid growth in the number of identities that have to be managed, with that growth driven by expanding cloud usage, more third-party partners, and machine identities. Furthermore, businesses are also seeing an increase in breaches because of this, with 84% of firms suffering an identity-related breach in the past 12 months, compared with 79% in a previous study covering two years.

The number and complexity of identities organisations are having to manage and secure is increasing. Whenever there is an increase in identities, there is a corresponding heightened risk of identity-related breaches due to them not being properly managed and secured, and with the attack surfaces also growing exponentially, these breaches can occur on multiple fronts.

For the most part, organisations focus on employee identities, which 70% consider to be the most likely to be breached and 58% believe to have the greatest impact, according to the 2022 "Trends in Securing Digital Identities" report based on the survey. Yet third-party partners and business customers are significant sources of risk as well, with 35% and 25% of respondents considering those to be a major source of breaches, respectively.

https://www.darkreading.com/operations/identity-related-breaches-last-12-months

  • After Being Breached Once, Many Companies Are Likely to Be Hit Again

Cymulate announced the results of a survey, revealing that two-thirds of companies who have been hit by cyber crime in the past year have been hit more than once, with almost 10% experiencing 10 or so more attacks a year.

Research taken from 858 security professionals surveyed across North America, EMEA, APAC and LATAM across a wide range of industries including technology, banking, finance and government, also highlighted larger companies hit by cyber crime are experiencing shorter disruption time and damage to business with 40% reported low damage compared with medium-size businesses (less than 2,500 employees) which had longer recovery times and more business affecting damage.

Other highlights

  • 40% of respondents admitted to being breached over the past 12 months.

  • After being breached once, statistics showed they were more likely to be hit again than not (66%).

  • Malware (55%), and more specifically ransomware (40%) and DDoS (32%) were the main forms of cyber attacks experienced by those surveyed.

  • Attacks primarily occurred via end-user phishing (56%), via third parties connected to the enterprise (37%) or direct attacks on enterprise networks (34%).

  • 22% of companies publicly disclosed cyber attacks in the worst-case breaches, with 35% needing to hire security consultants, 12% dismissing their current security professionals and 12% hiring public relations consultants to deal with the repercussions to their reputations. Top three best practices for cyber attack prevention, mitigation and remediation include multi-factor authentication (67%), proactive corporate phishing and awareness campaigns (53%), and well-planned and practiced incident response plans (44%). Least privilege also ranked highly, at 43%.

  • 29% of attacks come from insider threats – intentionally or unintentionally.

  • Leadership and cyber security teams who meet regularly to discuss risk reduction are more cyber security-ready – those who met 15 times a year incurred zero breaches whereas those who suffered six or more breaches met under nine times on average.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/06/21/companies-hit-by-cybercrime/

  • Do You Have Ransomware Insurance? Look at the Fine Print

Insurance exists to protect the insured party against catastrophe, but the insurer needs protection so that its policies are not abused – and that's where the fine print comes in. However, in the case of ransomware insurance, the fine print is becoming contentious and arguably undermining the usefulness of ransomware insurance.

In recent years, ransomware insurance has grown as a product field because organisations are trying to buy protection against the catastrophic effects of a successful ransomware attack. Why try to buy insurance? Well, a single, successful attack can just about wipe out a large organisation, or lead to crippling costs – NotPetya alone led to a total of $10bn in damages.

Ransomware attacks are notoriously difficult to protect against completely. Like any other potentially catastrophic event, insurers stepped in to offer an insurance product. In exchange for a premium, insurers promise to cover many of the damages resulting from a ransomware attack.

Depending on the policy, a ransomware policy could cover loss of income if the attack disrupts operations, or loss of valuable data, if data is erased due to the ransomware event. A policy may also cover you for extortion – in others, it will refund the ransom demanded by the criminal.

The exact payout and terms will of course be defined in the policy document, also called the "fine print." Critically, fine print also contains exclusions, in other words circumstances under which the policy won't pay out. And therein lies the problem.

https://thehackernews.com/2022/06/do-you-have-ransomware-insurance-look.html

  • The Price of Stolen Info: Everything on Sale on The Dark Web

What is the price for personal information, including credit cards and bank accounts, on the dark web?

Privacy Affairs researchers concluded that criminals using the dark web need only spend $1,115 for a complete set of a person’s account details, enabling them to create fake IDs and forge private documents, such as passports and driver’s licenses.

Access to other information is becoming even cheaper. The Dark Web Price Index 2022 – based on data scanning dark web marketplaces, forums, and websites, revealed:

  • Credit card details and associated information cost between $17-$120

  • Online banking login information costs $45

  • Hacked Facebook accounts cost $45

  • Cloned VISA with PIN cost $20

  • Stolen PayPal account details, with minimum $1000 balances, cost $20.

In December 2021, about 4.5 million credit cards went up for sale on the dark web, the study found. The average price ranged from $1-$20.

Scammers can buy full credit card details, including CVV number, card number, associated dates, and even the email, physical address and phone number. This enables them to penetrate the credit card processing chain, overriding any security countermeasures.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/06/22/stolen-info-sale-dark-web/

  • How Companies Are Prioritising Infosec and Compliance

New research conducted by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), examines the impact of the compliance budget on security strategy and priorities. It describes areas for which companies prioritise information security and compliance, which leaders control information security spending, how compliance has shifted the overall security strategy of the organisation, and the solutions and tools on which organisations are focusing their technology spending.

The findings cover three critical areas of an organisation’s security and compliance posture: information security and IT audit and compliance, data security and data privacy, and security and compliance spending.

One key takeaway is that merging security and compliance priorities addresses regulatory control gaps while improving the organisation’s security posture. Respondents revealed insights on how they handle compliance, who is responsible for compliance and security responsibilities, and what compliance-related security challenges organisations face.

Additional findings:

  • Companies found the need to shift their information security strategy to address compliance priorities (93%).

  • Information security and IT compliance priorities are generally aligned (89%).

  • Existing security tools have to address data privacy considerations going forward (76%).

  • Managing an organisation’s multiple IT environments and the controls that govern those environments is the greatest challenge in the IT audit and compliance space (39%).

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/06/24/companies-infosec-compliance-priorities/

  • Businesses Risk ‘Catastrophic Financial Loss’ from Cyber Attacks, US Watchdog Warns

A US Government watchdog has warned that private insurance companies are increasingly backing out of covering damages from major cyber attacks — leaving businesses facing “catastrophic financial loss” unless another insurance model can be found.

The growing challenge of covering cyber risk is outlined in a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which calls for a government assessment of whether a federal cyber insurance option is needed.

The report draws on threat assessments from the National Security Agency (NSA), Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and Department of Justice, to quantify the risk of cyber attacks on critical infrastructure, identifying vulnerable technologies that might be attacked and a range of threat actors capable of exploiting them.

Citing an annual threat assessment released by the ODNI, the report finds that hacking groups linked to Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea pose the greatest threat to US infrastructure — along with certain non-state actors like organised cyber criminal gangs.

Given the wide and increasingly skilled range of actors willing to target US entities, the number of cyber incidents is rising at an alarming rate.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/23/23180115/gao-infrastructure-catastrophic-financial-loss-cyberattacks-insurance

Threats

Ransomware

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Other Social Engineering

Malware

Mobile

Internet of Things – IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Cloud/SaaS

Identity and Access Management

Open Source

Training, Education and Awareness

Privacy

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

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

Vulnerabilities

Sector Specific

Financial Services Sector

SMBs – Small and Medium Businesses

Legal

Health/Medical/Pharma Sector

Retail/eCommerce

Manufacturing

CNI, OT, ICS, IIoT and SCADA

Reports Published in the Last Week

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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The Ukraine Crisis – The Overspill from Cyber Warfare Threatens Us All

The Ukraine Crisis – The Overspill from Cyber Warfare Threatens Us All

Over the past few weeks, the global media has been alerting us all to the prospect of aggressive action by Russia in Ukraine. The US has warned of imminent acts of provocation to create a pretext to invade Ukraine, and today the UK has started to withdraw embassy staff.

Conflict is no longer restricted to the physical world. We might think we are a safe distance away from the front line, but modern warfare does not care about international borders.

Over the past few weeks, the global media has been alerting us all to the prospect of aggressive action by Russia in Ukraine. The US has warned of imminent acts of provocation to create a pretext to invade Ukraine, and today the UK has started to withdraw embassy staff.

Conflict is no longer restricted to the physical world. We might think we are a safe distance away from the front line, but modern warfare does not care about international borders.

The last time Russia took aggressive action against Ukraine, companies across the world found themselves victim of an attack that got out of control. Russia was named by several intelligence agencies as having injected the NotPetya encrypting malware through a Ukrainian tax preparation software in 2017 to target Ukrainian assets. The situation eventually spiralled to infect thousands of businesses across the world, causing serious damage.

The situation could be more serious this time. The risk of damage to companies in the Channel Islands and UK from a Russian cyber attack increases further when sides are taken, with the US, UK and other allied nations likely to take up at least some degree of involvement. The British Government for example, plans to invest £5 billion in retaliatory cyber attacks, creating their very own “Cyber Force” to target hostile states.

We need to learn from this, and we advise you to ensure you have appropriate controls in place to help protect yourself and if necessary to be able to recover if you are affected by an attack. These controls must be across people, operations and technology; it is impossible for technology alone to give the necessary protection.

Contact us for help to understand your risks and your security gaps.

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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 21 January 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 21 January 2022

-Cyber Risks Top Worldwide Business Concerns In 2022

-Bosses Think That Security Is Taken Care Of: CISOs Aren't So Sure

-Fraud Is On the Rise, and It's Going to Get Worse

-Two-Fifths of Ransomware Victims Still Paying Up

-Less Than a Fifth of Cyber Leaders Feel Confident Their Organisation is Cyber-Resilient

-Endpoint Malware And Ransomware Detections Hit All-Time High

-End Users Remain Organisations' Biggest Security Risk

-Supply Chain Disruptions Rose In 2021

-Red Cross Begs Attackers Not to Leak Stolen Data for 515K People

-DHL Dethrones Microsoft As Most Imitated Brand In Phishing Attacks

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

Top Cyber Stories of the Last Week

Cyber Risks Top Worldwide Business Concerns In 2022

Cyber perils are the biggest concern for companies globally in 2022, according to the Allianz Risk Barometer. The threat of ransomware attacks, data breaches or major IT outages worries companies even more than business and supply chain disruption, natural disasters or the COVID-19 pandemic, all of which have heavily affected firms in the past year.

Cyber incidents tops the Allianz Risk Barometer for only the second time in the survey’s history (44% of responses), Business interruption drops to a close second (42%) and Natural catastrophes ranks third (25%), up from sixth in 2021. Climate change climbs to its highest-ever ranking of sixth (17%, up from ninth), while Pandemic outbreak drops to fourth (22%).

The annual survey incorporates the views of 2,650 experts in 89 countries and territories, including CEOs, risk managers, brokers and insurance experts. View the full global and country risk rankings.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/01/20/cyber-concern-2022/

Bosses Think That Security Is Taken Care Of: CISOs Aren't So Sure

The World Economic Forum warns about a significant gap in understanding between C-suites and information security staff - but it's possible to close the gap.

Organisations could find themselves at risk from cyberattacks because of a significant gap between the views of their own security experts and the boardroom.

The World Economic Forum's new report, The Global Cyber Security Outlook 2022, warns there are big discrepancies between bosses and information security personnel when it comes to the state of cyber resilience within organisations.

According to the paper, 92% of business executives surveyed agree that cyber resilience is integrated into enterprise risk management strategies – or in other words, protecting the organisation against falling victim to a cyberattack, or mitigating the incident so it doesn't result in significant disruption.

However, only 55% of security-focused executives believe that cyber resilience is integrated into risk management strategies – indicating a significant divide in attitudes to cyber security.

This gap can leave organisations vulnerable to cyberattacks, because boardrooms believe enough has been done in order to mitigate threats, while in reality there could be unconsidered vulnerabilities or extra measures put in place.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/managers-think-their-systems-are-unbreakable-cybersecurity-teams-arent-so-sure/

Fraud Is On the Rise, and It's Going to Get Worse

The acceleration of the digital transformation resulted in a surge of online transactions, greater adoption of digital payments, and increased fraud.

As more daily activities — work, education, shopping, and entertainment — shift online, fraud is also on the rise. A trio of recent reports paint a bleak picture, highlighting concerns that companies are experiencing increasing losses from fraud and that the situation will get worse over the coming year.

In KPMG's survey of senior risk executives, 67% say their companies have experienced external fraud in the past 12 months, and 38% expect the risk of fraud committed by external perpetrators to somewhat increase in the next year. External fraud, which includes credit card fraud and identity theft, is specifically referring to incidents perpetuated by individuals outside the company. For most of these respondents, there was a financial impact: Forty-two percent say their organisations experienced 0.5% to 1% of loss as a result of fraud and cybercrime.

https://www.darkreading.com/edge-articles/fraud-is-on-the-rise-and-its-going-to-get-worse

Two-Fifths of Ransomware Victims Still Paying Up

Two-fifths (39%) of ransomware victims paid their extorters over the past three years, with the majority of these spending at least $100,000, according to new Anomali research.

The security vendor hired The Harris Poll to complete its Cyber Resiliency Survey – interviewing 800 security decision-makers in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, India, New Zealand, the UAE, Mexico and Brazil.

Some 87% said their organisation had been the victim of a successful attack resulting in damage, disruption, or a breach since 2019. However, 83% said they’d experienced more attacks since the start of the pandemic.

Over half (52%) were ransomware victims, with 39% paying up. Of these, 58% gave their attackers between $100,000 and $1m, while 7% handed over more than $1m.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/two-fifths-ransomware-victims/

Less Than a Fifth of Cyber Leaders Feel Confident Their Organisation is Cyber-Resilient

Less than one-fifth (17%) of cyber leaders feel confident that their organisations are cyber-resilient, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s inaugural Global Cyber Security Outlook 2022 report.

The study, written in collaboration with Accenture, revealed there is a wide perception gap between business executives and security leaders on the issue of cyber security. For example, 92% of businesses believe cyber-resilience is integrated into their enterprise risk-management strategies, compared to just 55% of cyber leaders.

This difference in attitude appears to be having worrying consequences. The WEF said that many security leaders feel that they are not consulted in security decisions, and only 68% believe cyber-resilience forms a major part of their organisation’s overall corporate risk management.

In addition, over half (59%) of all cyber leaders admitted they would find it challenging to respond to a cyber security incident due to a shortage of skills within their team.

Supply chain security was another major concern among cyber leaders, with almost nine in 10 (88%) viewing SMEs as a key threat to supply chains.

Interestingly, 59% of cyber leaders said cyber-resilience and cyber security are synonymous, with the differences not well understood.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/cyber-leaders-organisation/

Endpoint Malware And Ransomware Detections Hit All-Time High

Endpoint malware and ransomware detections surpassed the total volume seen in 2020 by the end of Q3 2021, according to researchers at the WatchGuard Threat Lab. In its latest report, WatchGuard also highlights that a significant percentage of malware continues to arrive over encrypted connections.

While zero-day malware increased by just 3% to 67.2% in Q3 2021, the percentage of malware that arrived via Transport Layer Security (TLS) jumped from 31.6% to 47%. Data shows that many organisations are not decrypting these connections and therefore have poor visibility into the amount of malware hitting their networks.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/01/20/endpoint-malware-ransomware-detections-q3-2021/

End Users Remain Organisations' Biggest Security Risk

With the rapid adoption of hybrid working environments and increased attacks, IT and security professionals worry that future data breaches will most likely be the result of end users who are negligent of or break security policy, according to a recent Dark Reading survey. The percentage of respondents in Dark Reading's 2021 Strategic Security Survey who perceive users breaking policy as the biggest risk fell slightly, however, from 51% in 2020 to 48% in 2021. Other potential issues involving end users showed improvements as well, with social engineering falling in concern from 20% to 15% and remote work worries halving from 26% to 13%.

While this trend is positive, it's unclear where the increased confidence comes from, since more people now report ineffective end-user security awareness training (11%, to 2020's 7%).

Respondents shared their heightened concern about well-funded attacks. In 2021, 25% predicted an attack targeted at their organisations (a rise from 2020, when 20% said the same), and fear of a nation-state-sponsored action rose to 16% from 9% the year before. Yet only 16% reported sophisticated, automated malware as a top concern, a 10% drop from 2020, and fear of a gap between security and IT advances only merited 9%. A tiny 3% worried that their security tools wouldn't work well together, dropping from the previous year's 10%.

https://www.darkreading.com/edge-threat-monitor/despite-rise-of-third-party-concerns-end-users-still-the-biggest-security-risk

Supply Chain Disruptions Rose In 2021

56% of businesses experienced more supply chain disruptions in 2021 than 2020, a Hubs report reveals.

Last year was marked by a number of challenges, including computer chip shortages, port congestion, the ongoing impacts of COVID-19, logistics impediments, and energy crises, though with every hurdle faced, solutions are being sought. It is increasingly clear that while certain risks are hard to anticipate and difficult to plan for, it is possible to mitigate the effects of supply chain disruptions by establishing a robust and agile supply chain.

Over 98% of global companies are now planning to boost the resilience of their manufacturing supply chains, however, 37% have yet to implement any measures. As businesses develop long term strategies, over 57% of companies say diversification of their supply chains is the most effective way of building resilience. This report explores last year’s most disruptive events, how disruptions have changed over time, industry trends and strategies for strengthening manufacturing supply chains.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/01/19/supply-chain-disruptions-2021/

Red Cross Begs Attackers Not to Leak Stolen Data for 515K People

A cyber attack forced the Red Cross to shut down IT systems running the Restoring Family Links system, which reunites families fractured by war, disaster or migration. UPDATE: The ICRC says it’s open to confidentially communicating with the attacker.

The Red Cross is imploring threat actors to show mercy by abstaining from leaking data belonging to 515,000+ “highly vulnerable” people. The data was stolen from a program used to reunite family members split apart by war, disaster or migration.

“While we don’t know who is responsible for this attack, or why they carried it out, we do have this appeal to make to them,” Robert Mardini, the director general of the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), said in a release on Wednesday. “Your actions could potentially cause yet more harm and pain to those who have already endured untold suffering. The real people, the real families behind the information you now have are among the world’s least powerful. Please do the right thing. Do not share, sell, leak or otherwise use this data.”

https://threatpost.com/red-cross-begs-attackers-not-to-leak-515k-peoples-stolen-data/177799/

DHL Dethrones Microsoft As Most Imitated Brand In Phishing Attacks

DHL was the most imitated brand in phishing campaigns throughout Q4 2021, pushing Microsoft to second place, and Google to fourth.

This isn't surprising considering that the final quarter of every year includes the Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas shopping season, so phishing lures based on package deliveries naturally increase.

DHL is an international package delivery and express mail service, delivering over 1.6 billion parcels per year.

As such, phishing campaigns impersonating the brand have good chances of reaching people who are waiting for a DHL package to arrive during the holiday season.

The specific lures range from a package that is stuck at customs and requires action for clearance to supposed tracking numbers that hide inside document attachments or embedded links.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/dhl-dethrones-microsoft-as-most-imitated-brand-in-phishing-attacks/

Threats

Ransomware

BEC – Business Email Compromise

Phishing

Malware

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Insurance

CNI, OT, ICS, IIoT and SCADA

Nation State Actors

Cloud

Privacy

Passwords & Credential Stuffing

Spyware, Espionage & Cyber Warfare

Vulnerabilities

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

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

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

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

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