Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 20 October 2023

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 Insecurity: Many Businesses Scared They May be Hit by a Cyber Attack at Any Moment

A report from the Commvault and the International Data Corporation (IDC) found that 61% of respondents believe that a data loss within the next 12 months is "likely" or "highly likely" to occur due to increasingly sophisticated attacks. Unfortunately, most businesses do not have an unlimited budget; cyber security related spending must therefore be effective, taking an informed risk based approach to prioritise the biggest threats to businesses. To understand these threats, businesses must know the current threat landscape and how that relates to their business specifically. In order to be able to apply any threat intelligence, organisations must first ascertain what they need to protect through a documented asset register; after all you cannot protect something you do not know exists.

Sources: [PR Newswire] [TechRadar]

Cyber Security Investments Show Mature Business Mindset

Companies need to start embracing cyber security as a business enabler, rather than being viewed as a pure cost or as a regulatory burden. Good cyber security is a strong indicator of a mature business mindset, giving customers, employees, and suppliers confidence that you are running a mature, responsible operation that takes the value of its data and IP very seriously. With the perception of customers changing to be more security-based, having a high level of cyber security can establish trust and therefore distinguish a business in the marketplace.

Source: [Insider Media] [Compare the Cloud]

SMBs Struggle to Keep Pace as Cyber Threats Reach All Time High

Research conducted by Sage has found UK small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) are particularly struggling with cyber security preparedness, with 57% asking for more support with education and training and 45% not understanding what security is needed for their business. The report found that globally, 70% of SMBs highlighted cyber threats as a major concern, with 51% struggling to keep on top of new threats and 48% experiencing a cyber incident in the past year.

SMBs globally, found that their struggle related to making sure employees know what is expected of them in protecting the organisation (45%), providing education and awareness training (44%) and cost (43%).

Source: (IT Security Guru)

Phishing Attacks Hit Record Highs in Q2 2023, with Emails from HR still the Most Effective Lure

Research has found in the third quarter of this year, phishing attacks soared by 173% compared with the previous three months, and malware was up 110% over the same period, with 233.9 million malicious emails detected. Banks and financial services organisations remained a top target, with a 121% rise in phishing attacks.

In a separate report, human resource topics were found to account for more than half of the top-clicked phishing email subjects. This included emails that related to a change in dress code and updates on annual leave. It’s important for organisations to take this into account when training employees.

Sources: [SiliconANGLE1] [Beta News] [SiliconANGLE2] [TechRadar] [Security Brief]

Cyber Attacks Are a Matter of When, Not If; The Best Time to Deal with Them Is Before They Happen

Another week brings more companies added to the list of victims of cyber attacks. Just this week, UK based social care provider CareTech’s childcare subsidiary Cambian was criticised for keeping a cyber attack quiet, with individuals who had data stolen having to chase Cambian for details.

Cyber attacks happen, and companies need to admit when they have happened and inform relevant people. Honesty and clarity are key. After an attack, there are a number of things going on at once such as finding out what has happened, identifying stolen or encrypted data, fulfilling legal and regulatory requirements and communicating both internally and externally. Unfortunately, many companies do not expect to be attacked and therefore do not have anything in place to respond to an attack. In addition to having the necessary defences in place, organisations must be prepared for the event of an attack. This can be outlined in an incident response plan (IRP).

Black Arrow works with organisations of all sizes and sectors to design and prepare for managing a cyber security incident; this can include an Incident Response Plan and an educational tabletop exercise for the leadership team that highlights the proportionate controls to help the organisation prevent and mitigate an incident.

Sources: [Euronews] [The Times] [AI-CIO]

Lloyd's Of London Warns of Worst-Case-Scenario Cyber Attack

In recent modelling by a Lloyds of London researcher, a worst-case-scenario was found to have the potential to cause $3.5 trillion of economic damage within 5 years. While this may seem implausible, with the increased number of cyber attacks, especially to the financial sector, this figure is not as incredulous as it may seem.

The FBI has also stated that the average annual cost of cyber crime worldwide is expected to soar from $8.4 trillion in 2022 to more than $23 trillion in 2027.

Sources: [Reinsurance News] [ABS-CBN News] [The Motley Fool] [City AM]

20,000 Britons Approached by Chinese Agents on LinkedIn, Says MI5 Head

An estimated 20,000 Britons have been approached by Chinese state actors on LinkedIn in the hope of stealing industrial or technological secrets, the head of MI5 stated ahead of the Five Eyes agencies summit. This summit is a meeting of the heads of security from the Five Eyes nations – UK, US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The summit discussed how industrial espionage was happening at “real scale”, with 10,000 UK businesses being at risk, particularly in artificial intelligence, quantum computing or synthetic biology where China was trying to gain a march.

A 'secure innovation' guideline has been released to assist small to medium-sized enterprises, especially tech start-ups, in bolstering their defences against threats from foreign states, criminals, and competitors. This guideline offers basic security advice on areas like investments, supply chains, IT networks, and cloud computing to safeguard emerging technologies.

Sources: [Computer Weekly] [Tech Monitor] [Guardian]

Ransomware - All it Takes is One Employee Mistake, As Criminals are Aiming Third-Party Vendors

According to a report, human error is the root cause of more than 80% of all cyber breaches. The solution in this case, is for organisations to provide effective training to employees to reduce the risk of such an error happening. However, this does not have any impact on third parties that the  organisations use. A separate report found that nearly a third of ransomware claims involved a third-party vendor as a point of failure.

Whilst organisations often focus on improving their own cyber security, third parties can become an easily overlooked area. You don’t want to invest a significant amount into your organisation’s cyber security, only for it to fail due to a third party. This is why it is important for organisations to have an effective way of measuring supply chain risk, to ensure that they know what data their third parties have access to and what is being done by the third parties to protect it.

Black Arrow have helped many clients carry out third party risk assessments on a large number of suppliers and this can be done as a standalone offering or as part of a fractional CISO engagement.

Sources: [Security Affairs] [Claims Journal]

39% of Individuals Use the Same Password for Multiple Accounts

According to a recent survey by Yubico, 80% of respondents are concerned about the security of their online accounts. Additionally, 39% admitted to using the same passwords for multiple accounts. The report found that Boomer-generation users are the least likely to reuse passwords at 20%. In comparison, Millennials are twice as likely to reuse passwords for multiple accounts at 47%. This survey highlights that whilst younger generations may be more tech savvy, having grown up with this technology, it also brings with it a more relaxed and complacent attitude when it comes to cyber security hygiene.

Source: [Security Magazine]

Why Fourth-Party Risk Management Is a Must-Have

Most organisations today are acutely aware of the risks that third-party relationships pose, and many employ some form of third-party risk management to understand and monitor these alliances. Another danger also needs to be borne in mind: the threats organisations face from their third parties’ third parties. These ‘fourth parties’, the vendors of an organisation's vendor, are becoming an increasing concern among regulators, particularly those in the banking and financial services sector. Attackers exploit fourth parties just the same as they do third parties to indirectly target an organisation. As a result, these fourth parties greatly increase an IT environment's attack surface.

Fourth parties pose reputational, operational and regulatory risks, and with new regulations such as the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) in Europe coming into place, organisations need to implement a comprehensive third-party risk management program that extends to cover fourth-party risk management. This is the only way to ensure fourth parties are vetted appropriately.

Source: [Tech Target]

AI Adoption Surges but Security Awareness Lags Behind

A new survey found that security is reportedly not the primary concern for organisations when using tools such as ChatGPT and Google Bard. Respondents are more worried about inaccurate responses than the exposure of customer and employee personally identifiable information (PII), disclosure of trade secrets (33%) and financial loss (25%). Basic security practices are lacking, however, with 82% of respondents confident in their security stacks but less than half investing in technology to monitor generative AI use, exposing them to data loss risks. Only 46% have established security policies for data sharing.

Organisations need to rigorously assess and control how large language models (LLMs) handle data, ensuring alignment with regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, and CCPA. This involves employing strong encryption, consent mechanisms and data anonymisation techniques, and ensuring control over how the organisation’s data is used, alongside regular audits and updates to ensure data handling practices remain compliant.

Source: [Infosecurity Magazine]

UK Watchdog Fines Equifax £11 Million For Role in Cyber Breach

Britain's financial watchdog has fined the consumer credit rating body Equifax £11 million ($13.4 million) for its role in "one of the largest" cyber security breaches in history. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) stated that "The cyber attack and unauthorised access to data was entirely preventable", identifying that the UK arm of Equifax did not find out data had been accessed until six  weeks after their parent company discover the hack.

Source: [Reuters]

Why Boards Must Understand and Govern Cyber Security Risk

The boardroom is a critical control in every company’s system of cyber security risk management. An ineffective approach to cyber security governance creates an overall system of cyber security that is weaker than it needs to be. Boards have typically viewed cyber security as something that it left to IT and have not been able to challenge or interpret the reports that they receive, if any, from their IT departments or IT providers. Governing bodies such as the US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) have identified this and have started bringing in regulations that force the board of directors to fully understand digital cyber security risk and have a more vital role as part of the system.
Black Arrow supports business leaders in organisations of all sizes to demonstrate governance of their cyber security, by owning their cyber security strategy and leveraging their existing internal and external resources to build resilience against a cyber security incident.

Source: [Forbes]

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Governance, Risk and Compliance

• Cyber Insecurity: Report Finds Majority of Enterprises Expect an Imminent Cyber Attack (prnewswire.com)

• Cyber Crime Costs Soar to $8 Trillion, Spotlighting the Critical Need for Cyber security Experts (globenewswire.com)

• Many cyber bosses just aren't confident in their company's defences | TechRadar

• SMBs seek help as cyber threats reach an all-time high - Help Net Security

• SMBs seek cyber training, support as attack risk surges | CIO Dive

• The real impact of the cyber security poverty line on small organisations - Help Net Security

• Cyber security investments show mature business mindset, says IT expert | Insider Media

• Is Cyber security Finally Becoming a Business Enabler? - Compare the Cloud

• The best time to deal with cyber attacks is before they happen (thetimes.co.uk)

• ‘A matter of when not if’: Why is it crucial for businesses to protect themselves from cyber attacks? | Euronews

• Preparations Are Key to Weathering Cyber security Incidents | Chief Investment Officer (ai-cio.com)

• Over 70% of firms hit by cyber attack in last 12 months (rte.ie)

• The future of cyber security regulation: what to look out for with NIS2 | TechRadar

• Getting ready for NIS2 with strong identity controls | ITPro

• Lloyd’s systemic risk scenario reveals potential cyber attack losses of $3.5tn (insuranceinsider.com)

• Well-informed employees act as 1st line of defence against cyber threats: Cisco’s Samir Mishra (techcircle.in)

• 10 Ways Boards Are Setting Their Companies Up For Cyber security Failure (forbes.com)

• NIST Cyber security Framework for Small Businesses: Key Benefits (smallbiztrends.com)

• AI and the Imperative to Take Cyber security Precautions (inforisktoday.com)

• Cyber attacks to cost $23 trillion in 2027: US official | ABS-CBN News

• How Cyber security Provides the Green Light for Business Innovation (govinfosecurity.com)

• Essential cyber hygiene: Making cyber defence cost effective - Help Net Security

• New CISO research sets out priorities, challenges and tips for success in a challenging landscape post - BSS

• The Need for a Cyber security-Centric Business Culture (darkreading.com)

• The double-edged sword of heightened regulation for financial services - Help Net Security

• Report: Cyber attacks No. 1 cause of downtime and data loss | Security Magazine

• Will CISOs Become Personally Liable for Breach Response? (inforisktoday.com)

• Keeping control in complex regulatory environments - Help Net Security

• Generative AI an Emerging Risk as CISOs Shift Cyber Resilience Strategies (informationweek.com)

• 7 risk mitigation strategies to protect business operations | TechTarget

• How to go from collecting risk data to actually reducing risk? - Help Net Security

• SEC’s New Cyber Disclosure Rule: Challenges, Consequences, And Compliance | K2 Integrity - JDSupra

• Regulations are still necessary to compel adoption of cyber security measures | ZDNET

• October Is Cyber security Awareness Month – It’s a Good Time to Update Your Training Program | Clark Hill PLC - JDSupra

• How do we measure cyber risk? | ITPro

• Ready For Cyber Readiness - Any Time Now (forbes.com)

• CISOs and board members are finding a common language - Help Net Security

• IT Disaster Recovery Best Practices: Preparing For The Worst (informationsecuritybuzz.com)

• When And How To Hire A vCISO For Your Company's Cyber security Program (forbes.com)

• 18 Factors And Metrics To Show The Value Of Cyber security Initiatives (forbes.com)

• Improve your cyber threat understanding with geopolitical context | CSO Online

• Cyber Insecurity, AI and the Rise of the CISO | ITPro Today: IT News, How-Tos, Trends, Case Studies, Career Tips, More

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Threats

Ransomware, Extortion and Destructive Attacks

• Ransomware Attacks Double: Are Companies Prepared for 2024's Cyber Threats? (thehackernews.com)

• Ransomware realities in 2023: one employee mistake can cost a company millions (securityaffairs.com)

• Ransomware Criminals Aiming at Third-Party Vendors in Hunt for ‘Big Game’ (claimsjournal.com)

• Colonial Pipeline attributes ransomware claims to ‘unrelated’ third-party data breach (therecord.media)

• Feds: Beware AvosLocker Ransomware Attacks on Critical Infrastructure (darkreading.com)

• Giant health insurer struck by ransomware didn't have antivirus protection (malwarebytes.com)

• CISA shares vulnerabilities, misconfigs used by ransomware gangs (bleepingcomputer.com)

• What Are the Legal Implications of Paying Ransomware Demands? | HackerNoon

• Healthcare Sector Warned About New Ransomware Group NoEscape - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

• New trend in ransomware: Anonymity (betanews.com)

• 63% of organisations restore data after a ransomware attack | Security Magazine

• Hacker Group GhostSec Unveils New Generation Ransomware Implant - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

• Black Basta ransomware is out and about, again. (thecyberwire.com)

• Ukrainian activists hack Trigona ransomware gang, wipe servers (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Elastic Global Threat Report 2023 Reveals Dominance of Ransomware | Business Wire

• Scammers are targeting plastic surgery clinics with extortion scams | TechRadar

• BlackCat ransomware uses new ‘Munchkin’ Linux VM in stealthy attacks (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Law enforcement operation seized Ragnar Locker group's infrastructure (securityaffairs.com)

Ransomware Victims

• Lockbit ransomware gang demanded an 80 million ransom to CDW (securityaffairs.com)

• Alphv gang stole 5TB of data from Morrison Community Hospital (securityaffairs.com)

• Colonial Pipeline attributes ransomware claims to ‘unrelated’ third-party data breach (therecord.media)

• Kansas Supreme Court Probes Potential Ransomware Attack (govinfosecurity.com)

• KwikTrip all but says IT outage was caused by a cyber attack (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Some people whose personal data stolen in HWL Ebsworth hack not told for six months | Cyber crime | The Guardian

• Another small firm suffers a serious ransomware attack: Cadre Services gets mauled by AlphV (databreaches.net)

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

• More than 95 per cent of phishing attacks target the banking and finance sectors (bizhub.vn)

• Phishing attacks hit record high in third quarter, with malware not far behind - SiliconANGLE

• VIPRE finds 233.9 million malicious emails detected in Q3 2023 (securitybrief.co.nz)

• Make sure that email from HR is legit - it could be another phishing scam | TechRadar

• Human resources emails remain top phishing targets - SiliconANGLE

• CISA, NSA, FBI publish phishing guidance | TechTarget

• Generative AI's impact on phishing attacks | TechRadar

• Rising AI-Fueled Phishing Drives Demand for Password Alternatives - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

• Phishing: What’s in a Name? | CISA

• D-Link Confirms Data Breach: Employee Falls Victim to Phishing Attack (thehackernews.com)

Artificial Intelligence

• AI and the Imperative to Take Cyber security Precautions (inforisktoday.com)

• AI Adoption Surges But Security Awareness Lags Behind - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

• Generative AI an Emerging Risk as CISOs Shift Cyber Resilience Strategies (informationweek.com)

• Exploring the Realm of Malicious Generative AI: A New Digital Security Challenge (thehackernews.com)

• AI-generated cyber attacks pose new risk to key UK infrastructure, experts warn | The Independent

• North Korea has got its hands on AI - and is testing its ability to commit cyberwarfare | TechRadar

• Research: GPT-4 Jailbreak Easily Defeats Safety Guardrails

• Generative AI is scaring CISOs – but adoption isn’t slowing down | CSO Online

• Generative AI's impact on phishing attacks | TechRadar

• Rising AI-Fueled Phishing Drives Demand for Password Alternatives - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

• Cyber criminals register .AI domains of trusted brands for malicious activity | CSO Online

• The impact of artificial intelligence on cyber offence and defence | The Strategist (aspistrategist.org.au)

2FA/MFA

• Google Authenticator synchronization raises MFA concerns | TechTarget

Malware

• Phishing attacks hit record high in third quarter, with malware not far behind - SiliconANGLE

• Valve upgrades Steam's security after several games are hacked and filled with malware | Rock Paper Shotgun

• DarkGate malware spreads through compromised Skype accounts (bleepingcomputer.com)

• BLOODALCHEMY provides backdoor to ASEAN secrets • The Register

• Discord still a hotbed of malware activity — Now APTs join the fun (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Researchers warn of increased malware delivery via fake browser updates - Help Net Security

• The forgotten malvertising campaign (malwarebytes.com)

• Malicious Notepad++ Google ads evade detection for months (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Lazarus Group Targeting Defence Experts with Fake Interviews via Trojanized VNC Apps (thehackernews.com)

• Google-hosted malvertising leads to fake Keepass site that looks genuine | Ars Technica

• Russian Hackers Bypass EDR to Deliver Weaponized TeamViewer (gbhackers.com)

• Beware - that Google Chrome update alert might actually just be malware | TechRadar

Mobile

• SpyNote: Beware of This Android Trojan that Records Audio and Phone Calls (thehackernews.com)

• The top 9 mobile security threats and how you can avoid them | ZDNET

• Hackers exploit security flaw to target iOS 17 iPhones with 'notification attack' | Macworld

• Google Play Protect adds real-time scanning to fight Android malware (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Fake 'RedAlert' rocket alert app for Israel installs Android spyware (bleepingcomputer.com)

Denial of Service/DoS/DDOS

• DDoS Attacks in 2024: Distributed DoS Explained | Splunk

Internet of Things – IoT

• Inadequate IoT protection can be a costly mistake - Help Net Security

• Israelis told to secure their home security cameras against hackers • Graham Cluley

• Logistics Matters - Alert: How hackers use printers to gain access

• Microsoft HoloLens for the military: Hacker attacks on VR headset may cause physical pain - NotebookCheck.net News

Data Breaches/Leaks

• UK watchdog fines Equifax $13.4 million for role in cyber breach | Reuters

• Casio discloses data breach impacting customers in 149 countries (bleepingcomputer.com)

• 530K people's info stolen from cloud PC gaming's Shadow • The Register

• Colonial Pipeline was hacked. No, wait, Accenture was hacked. No, wait….. untangling claims. (2) (databreaches.net)

• D-Link Confirms Data Breach: Employee Falls Victim to Phishing Attack (thehackernews.com)

• Hackers stole a million people's DNA. But what will they do with it? | Tech News | Metro News

• 23AndMe Hacker Leaks New Tranche of Stolen Data (darkreading.com)

• Healthcare breach costs soar requiring new thinking for safeguarding data (securityintelligence.com)

• Lost and Stolen Devices: A Gateway to Data Breaches and Leaks - SecurityWeek

• Twitter glitch allows CIA informant channel to be hijacked - BBC News

• Care provider under fire over response to cyber attack (thetimes.co.uk)

• Some people whose personal data stolen in HWL Ebsworth hack not told for six months | Cyber crime | The Guardian

• ServiceNow leak: thousands of companies at risk | Cybernews

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

• Cyber attacks -- where they come from and the tactics they use (betanews.com)

• Cyber criminals register .AI domains of trusted brands for malicious activity | CSO Online

• Highest percentage of cyber crime activity originates in Russia (securitybrief.co.nz)

• Single Sign On and the Cyber crime Ecosystem (bleepingcomputer.com)

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

• US authorities monitor China-linked Bitcoin miners amid national security concerns: Report (cointelegraph.com)

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

• Well-informed employees act as 1st line of defence against cyber threats: Cisco’s Samir Mishra (techcircle.in)

• Employees leaving businesses open to cyber attack – QBE research - CIR Magazine

• Why disaffected employees are your greatest cyber security risk | Federal News Network

• Ex-Navy IT head gets 5 years for selling people’s data on darkweb (bleepingcomputer.com)

Insurance

• Lloyd’s systemic risk scenario reveals potential cyber attack losses of $3.5tn (insuranceinsider.com)

• How MOVEit Is Likely to Shift Cyber Insurance Calculus (darkreading.com)

• Cyber insurance represents ‘small proportion’ of potential economic losses from major attack | Insurance Times

• How Data Changes the Cyber Insurance Market Outlook (darkreading.com)

• What to Look for in Cyber Insurance Coverage | Proofpoint US

Supply Chain and Third Parties

• Colonial Pipeline attributes ransomware claims to ‘unrelated’ third-party data breach (therecord.media)

• Why fourth-party risk management is a must-have | TechTarget

Identity and Access Management

• Fighting off cyber attacks? Make sure user credentials aren’t compromised (bleepingcomputer.com)

Encryption

• Microsoft to Phase Out NTLM in Favor of Kerberos for Stronger Authentication (thehackernews.com)

Linux and Open Source

• Open To Attack: The Risks Of Open-Source Software Attacks (informationsecuritybuzz.com)

• Can open source be saved from the EU's Cyber Resilience Act? • The Register

• Report Finds Few Open Source Projects are Actively Maintained - Slashdot

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

• IT Admins Are Just as Guilty For Weak Password Use- IT Security Guru

• Over 40,000 admin portal accounts use 'admin' as a password (bleepingcomputer.com)

• 39% of individuals use the same password for multiple accounts | Security Magazine

• Fighting off cyber attacks? Make sure user credentials aren’t compromised (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Passkeys Are Cool, But They Aren't Enterprise-Ready (darkreading.com)

• A worrying amount of corporate IDs still aren't properly protected | TechRadar

• Rising AI-Fueled Phishing Drives Demand for Password Alternatives - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

Social Media

• Hamas Hijacked Victims’ Social Media Accounts to Spread Terror - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

• Twitter glitch allows CIA informant channel to be hijacked - BBC News

Malvertising

• The forgotten malvertising campaign (malwarebytes.com)

• Malicious Notepad++ Google ads evade detection for months (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Guide to detecting and disrupting fake ads | Netcraft

• Google-hosted malvertising leads to fake Keepass site that looks genuine | Ars Technica

• Clever malvertising attack uses Punycode to look like KeePass's official website (malwarebytes.com)

Training, Education and Awareness

• Well-informed employees act as 1st line of defence against cyber threats: Cisco’s Samir Mishra (techcircle.in)

• SMBs seek cyber training, support as attack risk surges | CIO Dive

• October Is Cyber security Awareness Month – It’s a Good Time to Update Your Training Program | Clark Hill PLC - JDSupra

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

• UK watchdog fines Equifax $13.4 million for role in cyber breach | Reuters

• A Third of Organisations Not Ready to Comply with NIS2 - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

• One year left for companies to implement NIS2 cyber security directive (wbj.pl)

• The future of cyber security regulation: what to look out for with NIS2 | TechRadar

• NIS2: Why organisations need a unified cyber security standard | Microscope (computerweekly.com)

• Can open source be saved from the EU's Cyber Resilience Act? • The Register

• Security Pros Warn That EU's Vulnerability Disclosure Rule Is Risky (darkreading.com)

• SEC stepping up cyber security efforts | Inquirer Business

• The double-edged sword of heightened regulation for financial services - Help Net Security

• Top US Cyber Agency Pushing Toward First Hack Reporting Rule (bloomberglaw.com)

• Keeping control in complex regulatory environments - Help Net Security

• UN cyber crime treaty: A menace in the making – EURACTIV.com

• SEC’s New Cyber Disclosure Rule: Challenges, Consequences, And Compliance | K2 Integrity - JDSupra

Models, Frameworks and Standards

• A Third of Organisations Not Ready to Comply with NIS2 - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

• One year left for companies to implement NIS2 cyber security directive (wbj.pl)

• The future of cyber security regulation: what to look out for with NIS2 | TechRadar

• NIST Cyber security Framework for Small Businesses: Key Benefits (smallbiztrends.com)

• NIS2: Why organisations need a unified cyber security standard | Microscope (computerweekly.com)

Backup and Recovery

• Principles for ransomware-resistant cloud backups - NCSC.GOV.UK

• 63% of organisations restore data after a ransomware attack | Security Magazine

Data Protection

• Care provider under fire over response to cyber attack (thetimes.co.uk)

Careers, Working in Cyber and Information Security

• Over half of cyber security pros say they want to switch jobs (betanews.com)

• Compelling Reasons Why You Should Study Cyber Security - Minutehack

• Your guide to landing a job in cyber security (fastcompany.com)

• New Cyber security Salary Report Guides Hiring in an $8 Trillion Cyber Crime Landscape (prnewswire.com)

• One in five CISOs miss out on pay raise - Help Net Security

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

• Law enforcement operation seized Ragnar Locker group's infrastructure (securityaffairs.com)

Misinformation, Disinformation and Propaganda

• Gaza Conflict Paves Way for Pro-Hamas Information Operations (darkreading.com)

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

Misc Nation State/Cyber Warfare

• ‘Only a matter of time’ before cyber attacks are viewed as acts of war: Ex-NSA chief

• Five Eyes Warn Deep Tech Start-Ups Against Nation-State Threats - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

• Five Eyes issues five tips on thwarting nation state threats | Computer Weekly

• APT trends report Q3 2023 | Securelist

• Discord: A Playground for Nation-State Hackers Targeting Critical Infrastructure (thehackernews.com)

• TetrisPhantom: Cyber Espionage via Secure USBs Targets APAC Governments (thehackernews.com)

• Pro-Russian Hackers Exploiting Recent WinRAR Vulnerability in New Campaign (thehackernews.com)

• The evolution of deception tactics from traditional to cyber warfare - Help Net Security

• Exclusive: Ukraine says joint mission with US derailed Moscow’s cyber attacks (therecord.media)

• Government officials debate effectiveness of multilateral relations in cyber security | ZDNET

• Defence leaders recognise need to adapt to win in ‘information battlespace’ | BAE Systems

Geopolitical Threats/Activity

• How Cyber attacks Could Affect the Israel-Hamas War (govinfosecurity.com)

• Growing Concern Over Role of Hacktivism in Israel-Hamas Conflict - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

• Israelis told to secure their home security cameras against hackers • Graham Cluley

• Gaza Conflict Paves Way for Pro-Hamas Information Operations (darkreading.com)

• Pro-Israeli Hacktivist Group Predatory Sparrow Reappears (darkreading.com)

• AI-Powered Israeli 'Cyber Dome' Defence Operation Comes to Life (darkreading.com)

• Fake 'RedAlert' rocket alert app for Israel installs Android spyware (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Mideast War Has Cyber Implications | Newsmax.com

• Hamas Hijacked Victims’ Social Media Accounts to Spread Terror - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

• Pro-Iranian Hacktivists Set Sights on Israeli Industrial Control Systems (darkreading.com)

China

• Mandia: China replaces Russia as top cyber threat | CyberScoop

• FBI boss slams ‘unprecedented’ Chinese cyberespionage and IP theft   | SC Media (scmagazine.com)

• Five Eyes Warn Of Chinese Cyber Espionage | Silicon UK

• Five Eyes warn of growing threat of IP 'theft' by China's hackers (techmonitor.ai)

• 20,000 Britons approached by Chinese agents on LinkedIn, says MI5 head | MI5 | The Guardian

• Researchers Unveil ToddyCat's New Set of Tools for Data Exfiltration (thehackernews.com)

• US authorities monitor China-linked Bitcoin miners amid national security concerns: Report (cointelegraph.com)

• BLOODALCHEMY provides backdoor to ASEAN secrets • The Register

• TetrisPhantom: Cyber Espionage via Secure USBs Targets APAC Governments (thehackernews.com)

• Huawei wants to know why EU labelled it high security risk • The Register

• Google TAG Detects State-Backed Threat Actors Exploiting WinRAR Flaw (thehackernews.com)

Russia

• Mandia: China replaces Russia as top cyber threat | CyberScoop

• Russia-based Wizard Spider is Top Threat Group: Netskope Report | MSSP Alert

• Pro-Russian Hackers Exploiting Recent WinRAR Vulnerability in New Campaign (thehackernews.com)

• Russian Sandworm hackers breached 11 Ukrainian telcos since May (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Exclusive: Ukraine says joint mission with US derailed Moscow’s cyber attacks (therecord.media)

• Russian Hackers Bypass EDR to Deliver Weaponized TeamViewer (gbhackers.com)

• Russian Hackers Target Romanian Media - Valahia.News

• Highest percentage of cyber crime activity originates in Russia (securitybrief.co.nz)

• Five Eyes Warn Deep Tech Start-Ups Against Nation-State Threats - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

Iran

• Iranian hackers lurked in Middle Eastern govt network for 8 months (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Hamas-linked app offers window into cyber infrastructure, possible links to Iran | CyberScoop

North Korea

• North Korea has got its hands on AI - and is testing its ability to commit cyberwarfare | TechRadar

• Lazarus Group Targeting Defence Experts with Fake Interviews via Trojanized VNC Apps (thehackernews.com)

• North Korean hackers exploit critical TeamCity flaw to breach networks (bleepingcomputer.com)

• FBI: Thousands of Remote IT Workers Sent Wages to North Korea to Help Fund Weapons Program - SecurityWeek

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Vulnerability Management

• Vulnerability Scanning: How Often Should I Scan? (thehackernews.com)

• Microsoft Needs to Get Serious About Its Windows 10 Upgrade Problem (pcmag.com)

Vulnerabilities

• Number of Cisco Devices Hacked via Unpatched Vulnerability Increases to 40,000 - SecurityWeek

• Cisco working on fix for critical IOS XE zero-day | TechTarget

• Oracle Patches 185 Vulnerabilities With October 2023 CPU - SecurityWeek

• Critical Citrix NetScaler Flaw Exploited to Target from Government, Tech Firms (thehackernews.com)

• You Need to Update WinRAR, Right Now (gizmodo.com)

• Juniper Networks Patches Over 30 Vulnerabilities in Junos OS - SecurityWeek

• Hackers exploit critical flaw in WordPress Royal Elementor plugin (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Critical Vulnerabilities Uncovered in Open Source CasaOS Cloud Software (thehackernews.com)

• Zoom, Investors Reach $150 Million Deal Over Security Flaws Suit (bloomberglaw.com)

• Pro-Russian Hackers Exploiting Recent WinRAR Vulnerability in New Campaign (thehackernews.com)

• ServiceNow leak: thousands of companies at risk | Cybernews

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Tools and Controls

• Well-informed employees act as 1st line of defence against cyber threats

• SMBs seek cyber training, support as attack risk surges | CIO Dive

• Vulnerability Scanning: How Often Should I Scan? (thehackernews.com)

• Essential cyber hygiene: Making cyber defence cost effective - Help Net Security

• Preparations Are Key to Weathering Cyber security Incidents | Chief Investment Officer (ai-cio.com)

• Improve your cyber threat understanding with geopolitical context | CSO Online

• Why Zero Trust Is the Cloud Security Imperative (darkreading.com)

• 3 Essential Steps to Strengthen SaaS Security (darkreading.com)

• Cyber expert calls for renewed focus on zero-trust and recovery as threat actors scale-up - SiliconANGLE

• How hackers use printers to gain access

• Google Authenticator synchronization raises MFA concerns | TechTarget

• Cyber insurance represents ‘small proportion’ of potential economic losses from major attack | Insurance Times

• Email Security Best Practices for Phishing Prevention (trendmicro.com)

• The impact of artificial intelligence on cyber offence and defence | The Strategist (aspistrategist.org.au)

• What to Look for in Cyber Insurance Coverage | Proofpoint US

• Reinforcing cyber security: The network's role to prevent, detect, and respond to attacks - Help Net Security

• How to go from collecting risk data to actually reducing risk? - Help Net Security

• October Is Cyber security Awareness Month – It’s a Good Time to Update Your Training Program | Clark Hill PLC - JDSupra

• How do we measure cyber risk? | ITPro

• Generative AI an Emerging Risk as CISOs Shift Cyber Resilience Strategies (informationweek.com)

• OSINT isn't immediate ground truth--it's the result of analysis. (thecyberwire.com)

• How Data Changes the Cyber Insurance Market Outlook (darkreading.com)

• What is Structured Threat Information eXpression (STIX)? (techtarget.com)

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Reports Published in the Last Week

• Trustwave SpiderLabs Research: Cyber security in the Financial Services Sector

• APT trends report Q3 2023 | Securelist

• New CISO research sets out priorities, challenges and tips for success in a challenging landscape post - BSS

• ENISA THREAT LANDSCAPE REPORT 2023 REPORT IS OUT! (securityaffairs.com)

• Elastic Global Threat Report 2023 Reveals Dominance of Ransomware | Business Wire

• The CISO Report | Splunk

• VIPRE Security Group’s Q3 2023 Email Threat Report Reveals PDFs, Callback Phishing and Malware Via Google Drive Growing in Popularity Among Criminals - VIPRE

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Other News

• SMBs Struggle to Keep Pace with Cyber Security Threats - IT Security Guru

• Many SMBs really don't know exactly what security tools they need | TechRadar

• Hackers Hit The IT Industry: 12 Companies Targeted In 2023 | CRN

• What the Hollywood Writers Strike Resolution Means for Cyber security (darkreading.com)

• Progress gets SEC subpoena over MOVEit breach – and more! • The Register

• 51% of Financial Services Firms Reporting Breaches are From US: Trustwave Threat Landscape Report | The Fintech Times

• Cyber attacks on healthcare organisations affect patient care - Help Net Security

• Zoom, Investors Reach $150 Million Deal Over Security Flaws Suit (bloomberglaw.com)

• Thinking about the phrase 'cyber security' | Microscope (computerweekly.com)

• Cyber risk report says shipping remains ‘easy target’, paying an average $3.2m In cyber attacks (shipmanagement idcinternational.com)

• Space industry group turns up volume on satellite vulnerabilities - SpaceNews

• 5 Tips for Improving Security in Public Sector (govinfosecurity.com)

• Marketers Must Make Cyber security A Priority Every Day (forbes.com)

• UK at risk of massive security breach from national HMRC IT meltdown | The Independent

• UK warns nuclear power plant operator of cyber security failings (therecord.media)

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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

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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.

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 21 October 2022

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

Top Cyber Stories of the Last Week

• Gen Z, Millennials Really Don’t Care About Workplace Cyber Security

When it comes to cyber security in the workplace, younger employees don’t really seem to care that much, which is putting their organisations in serious harm’s way, new research has claimed.

Surveying approximately 1,000 workers using devices issued by their employers, professional services firm EY found Gen Z enterprise employees were more apathetic about cyber security than their Boomer counterparts in adhering to their employer's safety policies.

This is despite the fact that four in five (83%) of all those surveyed claimed to understand their employer’s security protocol.

When it comes to implementing mandatory IT updates, for example, 58% of Gen Z’ers and 42% of millennials would disregard them for as long as possible. Less than a third (31%) of Gen X’ers, and just 15% of baby boomers said they do the same.

Apathy in the young extends to password reuse between private and business accounts. A third of Gen Z and millennial workers surveyed admitted to this, compared to less than a quarter of all Gen X’ers and baby boomers.

Some say the apathy of young people towards technology is down to their over-familiarity with technology, and never having been without it. Being too comfortable with tech undoubtedly makes an enterprise's younger employees a major target for cyber criminals looking to exploit any hole in security. 

If an organisation's cyber security practices aren't upheld strongly, threat actors can compromise huge networks with simple social engineering attacks.

https://www.techradar.com/news/younger-workers-dont-care-about-workplace-cybersecurity

• Supply Chain Attacks Increased Over 600% This Year and Companies Are Falling Behind

The number of documented supply chain attacks involving malicious third-party components has increased 633% over the past year, now sitting at over 88,000 known instances, according to a new report from software supply chain management company Sonatype. Meanwhile, instances of transitive vulnerabilities that software components inherit from their own dependencies have also reached unprecedented levels and plague two-thirds of open-source libraries.

“The networked nature of dependencies highlights the importance of having visibility and awareness about these complex supply chains” Sonatype said in its newly released State of the Software Supply Chain report. “These dependencies impact our software, so having an understanding of their origins is critical to vulnerability response. Many organisations did not have the needed visibility and continued their incident response procedures for Log4Shell well beyond the summer of 2022 as a result.”

Log4Shell is a critical vulnerability discovered in November 2021 in Log4j, a widely popular open-source Java library used for logging and bundled in millions of enterprise applications and software products, often as an indirect dependency. According to Sonatype’s monitoring, as of August 2022, the adoption rate for fixed versions of Log4j sits at around 65%. Moreover, this doesn’t even account for the fact that the Log4Shell vulnerability originated in a Java class called JndiManager that is part of Log4j-core, but which has also been borrowed by 783 other projects and is now found in over 19,000 software components.

Log4Shell served as a watershed moment, highlighting the inherent risks that exist in the open-source software ecosystem – which sits at the core of modern software development – and the need to manage them properly. It also led to several initiatives to secure the software supply chain by private organisations, software repository managers, the Linux Foundation, and government bodies. Yet, most organisations are far from where they need to be in terms of open-source supply chain management.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3677228/supply-chain-attacks-increased-over-600-this-year-and-companies-are-falling-behind.html#tk.rss_news

• Cyber-Enabled Crimes Are Biggest Police Concerns

Cyber-related crimes such as money laundering, ransomware and phishing pose the biggest threat to society, according to the first ever Interpol Global Crime Trend report.

The inaugural study was compiled from data received from the policing organisation’s 195 member countries, as well as information and analysis from external sources.

Money laundering was ranked the number one threat, with 67% of respondents claiming it to be a “high” or “very high” risk. Ransomware came second (66%) but was the crime type that most (72%) expected to increase in the next 3–5 years.

Of the nine top crime trends identified in the report, six are directly cyber-enabled, including money laundering, ransomware, phishing, financial fraud, computer intrusion and child sexual exploitation.

Interpol warned that the pandemic had fomented new underground offerings like “financial crime-as-a-service,” including digital money laundering tools which help to lower the barrier to entry for criminal gangs. It also claimed that demand for online child sexual exploitation and abuse (OCSEA) content surged during the pandemic. Some 62% of respondents expect it to increase or significantly increase in the coming years.

The findings represent something of a turnaround from pre-pandemic times, when drug trafficking regularly topped the list of police concerns. Thanks to a surge in corporate digitalisation, home working and online shopping, there are now rich pickings to be had from targeting consumers and business users with cyber-scams and attacks, Interpol claimed.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/cyberenabled-crimes-are-biggest/

• List of Common Passwords Accounts for Nearly All Cyber Attacks

Half of a million passwords from the RockYou2021 list account for 99.997% of all credential attacks against a variety of honeypots, suggesting attackers are just taking the easy road.

Tens of millions of credential-based attacks targeting two common types of servers boiled down to a small fraction of the passwords that formed a list of leaked credentials, known as the RockYou2021 list.

Vulnerability management firm Rapid7, via its network of honeypots, recorded every attempt to compromise those servers over a 12-month period, finding that the attempted credential attacks resulted in 512,000 permutations. Almost all of those passwords (99.997%) are included in a common password list — the RockYou2021 file, which has 8.4 billion entries — suggesting that attackers, or the subset of threat actors attacking Rapid7's honeypots, are sticking to a common playbook.

The overlap in all the attacks also suggest attackers are taking the easy road, said Rapid7. "We know now, in a provable and demonstrable way, that nobody — 0% of attackers — is trying to be creative when it comes to unfocused, untargeted attacks across the Internet," they said. "Therefore, it's very easy to avoid this kind of opportunistic attack, and it takes very little effort to take this threat off the table entirely, with modern password managers and configuration controls."

Every year, security firms present research suggesting users are continuing to pick bad passwords. In 2019, an evaluation of passwords leaked to the Internet found that the top password was "123456," followed by "123456789" and "qwerty," and unfortunately things have not got much better since then.

https://www.darkreading.com/endpoint/a-common-password-list-accounts-for-nearly-all-cyberattacks

• Shared Responsibility or Shared Fate? Decentralised IT Means We Are All Cyber Defenders

Does your organisation truly understand the shared responsibility model? Shared responsibility emerged from the early days of cloud computing as a way to delineate responsibilities between cloud providers and their customers, but often there's a gap between what shared responsibility means and how it is interpreted. With the decentralisation of IT, this gap is getting worse.

Applications, servers, and overall technology used to be under the purview and control of the IT department, yet with the shift to cloud, and specifically software-as-a-service (SaaS), this dynamic has changed. Whether it's the sales team bringing in a customer relationship management (CRM) system like Salesforce, or the HR department operating a human resources information system (HRIS) like Workday, there's a clear "expanding universe" of IT that no longer sits where it used to. Critical business workflows exist in separate business units far from IT and security and are managed as such. Our corporate IT footprints have become decentralised.

This is not some minor, temporary trend. With the ease and speed of adopting new SaaS applications and the desire to "lift and shift" code into cloud-based environments, this is the future. The future is decentralised.

The shift to business-owned and -operated applications puts security teams in a position where risk management is their responsibility; they are not even able to log into some of these critical systems. It's like asking your doctor to keep you healthy but not giving her access to your information or having regular check-ups. It doesn't work that way.

Beyond the challenging human skills gap, there's technical entropy and diversity everywhere, with different configuration settings, event logs, threat vectors, and data sensitivities. On the access side, there are different admins, users, integrations, and APIs. If you think managing security on Windows and Mac is a lot, try it across many huge applications.

With this reality, how can the security team be expected to combat a growing amount of decentralised business technology risk?

We must operate our technology with the understanding that shared responsibility is the vertical view between cloud provider and customer, but that enterprise-owned piece of shared responsibility is the burden of multiple teams horizontally across an organisation. Too often the mentality is us versus them, availability versus security, too busy to care about risk, too concerned with risk to understand "the business."

https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-threats/shared-responsibility-or-shared-fate-decentralized-it-means-we-are-all-cyber-defenders

• Ukraine War Cuts Ransomware as Kremlin Co-Opts Hackers

The Ukraine war has helped reduce global ransomware attacks by 10pc in the last few months, a British cyber security company has said.

Criminal hacking gangs, usually engaged in corporate ransomware activities, are increasingly being co-opted by the Russian military to launch cyber attacks on Ukraine, according to Digital Shadows. “The war is likely to continue to motivate ransomware actors to target government and critical infrastructure entities,” according to the firm. Such attacks partly contributed to a 10pc drop in the number of ransomware threats launched during the three months to September, said the London-based company.

The drop in ransomware may also partly be caused by tit-for-tat digital attacks between rival hacking gangs. Researchers said the Lockbit gang, who recently targeted LSE-listed car retailer Pendragon with a $60m (£53.85m) ransom demand, were the target of attacks from their underworld rivals. The group is increasingly inviting resentment from competing threat groups and possibly former members.

Some cyber criminals’ servers went offline in September after what appeared to be an attack from competitors. In the world of cyber criminality, it is not uncommon for tensions to flare among rival groups.

Officials from GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre have said ransomware is one of the biggest cyber threats facing the UK. Figures published by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport this year revealed the average costs to businesses caused by ransomware attacks is around £19,000 per incident.

US-based cyber security company Palo Alto Networks, however, warned that the average ransom payment it saw in the early part of this year was $925,000 (£829,000).

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/10/23/ukraine-war-cuts-ransomware-kremlin-co-opts-hackers/

• 96% Of Companies Report Insufficient Security for Sensitive Cloud Data

The vast majority of organisations lack confidence in securing their data in cloud, while many companies acknowledge they lack sufficient security even for their most sensitive data, according to a new report by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA).

The CSA report surveyed 1,663 IT and security professionals from organisations of various sizes and in various locations. "Only 4% report sufficient security for 100% of their data in the cloud. This means that 96% of organisations have insufficient security for at least some of their sensitive data," according to the report, which was sponsored by data intelligence firm BigID.

Apart from struggling with securing sensitive data, organisations are also having trouble tracking data in the cloud. Over a quarter of organisations polled aren’t tracking regulated data, nearly a third aren’t tracking confidential or internal data, and 45% aren’t tracking unclassified data, the report said.

“This suggests that organisations’ current methods of classifying data aren’t sufficient for their needs. However, if the tracking is this low, it could be a contributing factor to the issue of dark data. Organisations need to utilise data discovery and classification tools to properly understand the data they have and how to protect it,” the CSA study noted.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3677491/96-of-companies-report-insufficient-security-for-sensitive-cloud-data.html#tk.rss_news

• Your Microsoft Exchange Server Is a Security Liability

With endless vulnerabilities, widespread hacking campaigns, slow and technically tough patching, it's time to say goodbye to on-premise Exchange.

Once, reasonable people who cared about security, privacy, and reliability ran their own email servers. Today, the vast majority host their personal email in the cloud, handing off that substantial burden to the capable security and engineering teams at companies like Google and Microsoft. Now, cyber security experts argue that a similar switch is due - or long overdue - for corporate and government networks. For enterprises that use on-premise Microsoft Exchange, still running their own email machine somewhere in a closet or data centre, the time has come to move to a cloud service, if only to avoid the years-long plague of bugs in Exchange servers that has made it nearly impossible to keep determined hackers out.

The latest reminder of that struggle arrived earlier this week, when Taiwanese security researcher Orange Tsai published a blog post laying out the details of a security vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange. Tsai warned Microsoft about this vulnerability as early as June of 2021, and while the company responded by releasing some partial fixes, it took Microsoft 14 months to fully resolve the underlying security problem. Tsai had earlier reported a related vulnerability in Exchange that was massively exploited by a group of Chinese state-sponsored hackers known as Hafnium, which last year penetrated more than 30,000 targets by some counts. Yet according to the timeline described in Tsai’s post this week, Microsoft repeatedly delayed fixing the newer variation of that same vulnerability, assuring Tsai no fewer than four times that it would patch the bug before pushing off a full patch for months longer. When Microsoft finally released a fix, Tsai wrote, it still required manual activation and lacked any documentation for four more months.

Meanwhile, another pair of actively exploited vulnerabilities in Exchange that were revealed last month still remain unpatched after researchers showed that Microsoft’s initial attempts to fix the flaws had failed. Those vulnerabilities were just the latest in a years-long pattern of security bugs in Exchange’s code. And even when Microsoft does release Exchange patches, they’re often not widely implemented, due to the time-consuming technical process of installing them.

The result of those compounding problems, for many who have watched the hacker-induced headaches of running an Exchange server pile up, is a clear message: An Exchange server is itself a security vulnerability, and the fix is to get rid of it.

“You need to move off of on-premise Exchange forever. That’s the bottom line,” says Dustin Childs, the head of threat awareness at security firm Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), which pays researchers for finding and reporting vulnerabilities in commonly used software and runs the Pwn2Own hacking competition. “You’re not getting the support, as far as security fixes, that you would expect from a really mission-critical component of your infrastructure.”

https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-exchange-server-vulnerabilities/

• Are Cyber Security Vendors Pushing Snake Oil?

Survey: 96 percent of cyber security decision makers confused by vendor marketing.

The availability of new security products increases, the amount of budget spent on cyber security grows, and the number of security breaches seems to outpace both. This basic lack of correlation between increasing cyber security spend and any clear increase in cyber security effectiveness is the subject of a new analytical survey from Egress.

With 52 million data breaches in Q2 2022 alone (Statista), Egress questioned 800 cyber security and IT leaders on why vendor claims and reality aren’t aligned. The headline response in the survey is that 91% of decision makers have difficulty in selecting cyber security vendors due to unclear marketing about their specific offerings.

The financial investment cycle doesn’t help in this. For many investors, the strength of the management team is more important than the product. The argument is not whether this product is a cyber security silver bullet, but whether this management can take the company to a point where it can exit with serious profits.

If investment is achieved, much of it will go into marketing. That marketing must compete against existing, established vendors – so it tends to be louder, more aggressive, and replete with hyperbole. Marketing noise can lead to increased valuation, which can lead to a successful and profitable exit by the investors.

Of course, this is an oversimplification and doesn’t always happen. The point, however, is that it does happen and has no relevance to the real effectiveness of the product in question. Without any doubt, there are many products that have been over-hyped by marketing funds provided by profit-driven investors.

https://www.securityweek.com/are-cybersecurity-vendors-pushing-snake-oil

• Ransomware Preparedness: What Are You Doing Wrong?

Axio released its 2022 State of Ransomware Preparedness research report, revealing that although notable improvements have been made since Axio’s 2021 report, organisational ransomware preparedness continues to be insufficient to keep pace with new attack vectors.

The report reveals that the lack of fundamental cyber security practices and controls, including critical vulnerability patching and employee cyber security training, continues to undermine organisational attempts to improve ransomware defences.

“Ransomware continues to wreak havoc on global organisations, regardless of size or industry,” remarked the report’s co-author David White, President of Axio. “As the number of attacks will most likely continue on an exponential trajectory, it’s more important than ever for companies to re-evaluate their cyber security practices and make the needed improvements to help combat these attacks.”

The report identifies several emerging patterns that yield insights into why organisations are increasingly susceptible to ransomware attacks. In 2021, seven key areas where organisations were deficient in implementing and sustaining basic cyber security practices were identified, and these patterns dominated the 2022 study results as well:

• Managing privileged access

• Improving basic cyber hygiene

• Reducing exposure to supply chain and third-party risk

• Monitoring and defending networks

• Managing ransomware incidents

• Identifying and addressing vulnerabilities in a timely manner

• Improving cyber security training and awareness

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

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

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

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

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

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

• A ransomware-specific playbook for incident management is in place for only 30% of organisations.

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

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/10/20/insufficient-ransomware-preparedness/

• NSA Cybersecurity Director's Six Takeaways from the War in Ukraine

From the warning banner ‘Be afraid and expect the worst’ that was shown on several Ukrainian government websites on January 13, 2022, after a cyber-attack took them down, the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) cybersecurity director, Rob Joyce, knew that something was going to be different, and very aggressive, between Ukraine and Russia, and that it would be happening in the cyber space as well.

Ten months on, he was invited to speak at one of Mandiant Worldwide Information Security Exchange's (mWISE) opening keynotes on October 18, 2022. Joyce shared six takeaways from the Russia-Ukraine cyber-conflict in terms of what we learned from it and its impact on how nations should protect their organisations.

1. Both espionage and destructive attacks will occur in conflict

2. The cyber security industry has unique insight into these conflicts

3. Sensitive intelligence can make a decisive difference

4. You can develop resiliency skills

5. Don’t try to go it alone

6. You have not planned enough yet for the contingencies

Toward the end of the keynote, Joyce suggested the audience simulate a scenario based on what happened in Ukraine with the China-Taiwan conflict escalating and see what they should put in place to better prepare for such an event.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/nsa-6-takeaways-war-ukraine/

• Microsoft Confirms Server Misconfiguration Led to 65,000+ Companies' Data Leak

Microsoft this week confirmed that it inadvertently exposed information related to thousands of customers following a security lapse that left an endpoint publicly accessible over the internet sans any authentication.

"This misconfiguration resulted in the potential for unauthenticated access to some business transaction data corresponding to interactions between Microsoft and prospective customers, such as the planning or potential implementation and provisioning of Microsoft services," Microsoft said in an alert.

Microsoft also emphasised that the B2B leak was "caused by an unintentional misconfiguration on an endpoint that is not in use across the Microsoft ecosystem and was not the result of a security vulnerability."

The misconfiguration of the Azure Blob Storage was spotted on September 24, 2022, by cyber security company SOCRadar, which termed the leak BlueBleed. Microsoft said it's in the process of directly notifying impacted customers.

The Windows maker did not reveal the scale of the data leak, but according to SOCRadar, it affects more than 65,000 entities in 111 countries. The exposure amounts to 2.4 terabytes of data that consists of invoices, product orders, signed customer documents, partner ecosystem details, among others.

https://thehackernews.com/2022/10/microsoft-confirms-server.html

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Threats

Ransomware and Extortion

• Сryptocurrency and Ransomware — The Ultimate Friendship (thehackernews.com)

• Venus Ransomware targets publicly exposed Remote Desktop services (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Pendragon being held to $60m ransom by dark web hackers – Car Dealer Magazine

• Magniber Ransomware Is Targeting Home PC (informationsecuritybuzz.com)

• Hackers exploit critical VMware flaw to drop ransomware, miners (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Ransomware Now Deployed as a Precursor to Physical War - MSSP Alert

• TommyLeaks and SchoolBoys: Two sides of the same ransomware gang (bleepingcomputer.com)

• With Conti gone, LockBit takes lead of the ransomware threat landscape | CSO Online

• Tactics Tie Ransom Cartel Group to Defunct REvil Ransomware (darkreading.com)

• Wholesale giant METRO hit by IT outage after cyber attack (bleepingcomputer.com)

• The link between Ransom Cartel and REvil ransomware gangs - Security Affairs

• Deadbolt Ransomware Targets NAS Devices - IT Security Guru

• Black Basta Ransomware Hackers Infiltrate Networks via Qakbot to Deploy Brute Ratel C4 (thehackernews.com)

• How Vice Society Got Away With a Global Ransomware Spree | WIRED

• Microsoft warns over unusual ransomware attacks | ZDNET

• Defenders beware: A case for post-ransomware investigations - Microsoft Security Blog

• Ransomware crews regrouping as LockBit rise continues (computerweekly.com)

• Singapore Creates Counter Ransomware Task Force to Tackle Threats - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

• Ransom Cartel linked to notorious REvil ransomware operation (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Hackney Council Ransomware Attack £12m+ Recovery - IT Security Guru

• Microsoft Warns of Novel Ransomware Attacking Ukraine, Poland - MSSP Alert

• Prestige ransomware hits victims of HermeticWiper • The Register

• New ransomware targets transportation sectors in Ukraine, Poland | SC Media (scmagazine.com)

• Japanese tech firm Oomiya hit by LockBit 3.0 - Security Affairs

• Ransomware attack halts circulation of some German newspapers (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Ransomware Insurance Security Requirement Strategies (trendmicro.com)

• Australian insurance firm Medibank confirms ransomware attack (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Ransomware attack impacted some CommonSpirit sites, but few details released | SC Media (scmagazine.com)

• BlackByte ransomware uses new data theft tool for double-extortion (bleepingcomputer.com)

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

• Phishing works so well crims won't use deepfakes: Sophos • The Register

• Phishing Mitigation Can Cost Businesses More Than $1M Annually (darkreading.com)

• Securing your organisation against phishing can cost up to $85 per email | CSO Online

• How phishing campaigns abuse Google Ad click tracking redirects - Help Net Security

• Attackers switch to self-extracting password-protected archives to distribute email malware | CSO Online

Other Social Engineering; Smishing, Vishing, etc

• Amazon customers warned about text message scam that is trying to steal personal details | The Northern Echo

Malware

• VMware bug with 9.8 severity rating exploited to install witch’s brew of malware | Ars Technica

• Microsoft’s out-of-date driver list left Windows PCs open to malware attacks for years - The Verge

• Ursnif malware switches from bank account theft to initial access (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Experts spotted a new undetectable PowerShell Backdoor - Security Affairs

• Emotet Botnet Distributing Self-Unlocking Password-Protected RAR Files to Drop Malware (thehackernews.com)

• Typosquat campaign mimics 27 brands to push Windows, Android malware (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Thousands of GitHub repositories deliver fake PoC exploits with malware (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Hackers use new stealthy PowerShell backdoor to target 60+ victims (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Hijacking of Popular Minecraft Launcher by Rogue Developer Raises Malware Fears - IGN

• URSNIF (aka Gozi) banking trojan morphs into backdoor • The Register

• What is a RAT (Remote Access Trojan)? | Definition from TechTarget

Mobile

• QR codes could unlock phone to hackers, security expert warns (nypost.com)

• These 16 Clicker Malware Infected Android Apps Were Downloaded Over 20 Million Times (thehackernews.com)

Internet of Things – IoT

• Riskiest IoT Devices - Cameras, VoIP And Video Conferencing (informationsecuritybuzz.com)

• NCSC CEO Calls for International Standards on IoT Security - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

• Securing IoT devices against attacks that target critical infrastructure - Microsoft Security Blog

• 74% say connected cars and EV chargers need cyber security ratings | Ars Technica

Data Breaches/Leaks

• The companies most likely to lose your data - Help Net Security

• Fines are not enough! Data breach victims want better security - Help Net Security

• Medibank hack turned into a data breach: The attackers are demanding money - Help Net Security

• Mormon Church Hit By Cyber attack, Personal Data Exposed (informationsecuritybuzz.com)

• Keystone Health Data Breach Impacts 235,000 Patients | SecurityWeek.Com

• Fashion brand SHEIN fined $1.9m for lying about data breach – Naked Security (sophos.com)

• Client Data Exfiltrated In Advanced NHS cyber Attack (informationsecuritybuzz.com)

• Optus tells customers affected by data breach they can no longer use passports as online ID | Optus | The Guardian

• Australian Wine Dealer Suffers Data Breach, 500,000 Customers May Be (informationsecuritybuzz.com)

• Advocate Aurora Health in potential 3 million patient leak • The Register

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

• Cyber criminals jailed for cryptocurrency theft, death threats (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Israeli cyber intel firm shines bright light on new, shadowy cyber crime collective | The Times of Israel

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

• Why Crypto Winter is No Excuse to Let Your Cyber Defences Falter (thehackernews.com)

• North Korea’s Lazarus Group Attacks Japanese Crypto Firms - Decrypt

• Coinbase users scammed out of $21M in crypto sue company for negligence | Ars Technica

• SIM Swappers Sentenced to Prison for Hacking Accounts, Stealing Cryptocurrency | SecurityWeek.Com

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

• Financial losses to synthetic identity-based fraud to double by 2024 | CSO Online

• AI is Key to Tackling Money Mules and Disrupting Fraud: Industry Group | SecurityWeek.Com

• Cops Arrest Suspected Multimillion-Dollar Fraud Mastermind - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

Deepfakes

• Deepfakes: What they are and how to spot them - Help Net Security

• Phishing works so well crims won't use deepfakes: Sophos • The Register

Insurance

• Ransomware Insurance Security Requirement Strategies (trendmicro.com)

Supply Chain and Third Parties

• How supply chain threats will evolve in 2023 - Help Net Security

Software Supply Chain

• Software Supply Chain Attacks Soar 742% In Three Years (informationsecuritybuzz.com)

• SBOMs: An Overhyped Concept That Won't Secure Your Software Supply Chain (darkreading.com)

Denial of Service DoS/DDoS

• Pro-Russia Hackers DDoS Bulgarian Government - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

Cloud/SaaS

• Microsoft Data-Exposure Incident Highlights Risk of Cloud Storage Misconfiguration (darkreading.com)

• 3 cloud security posture questions CISOs should answer (techtarget.com)

• 10 Steps to Securing the Cloud - MSSP Alert

Attack Surface Management

• Attack Surface Management 2022 Midyear Review Part 1 (trendmicro.com)

Identity and Access Management

• What Is the Difference Between Identity Verification and Authentication? (darkreading.com)

Encryption

• The quantum computing threat is real. Now we need to act. - CyberScoop

API

• Thousands of Publicly Exposed API Tokens Could Threaten Software Integrity - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

• Open banking API security: Best practices to ensure a safe journey - Help Net Security

Open Source

• New security concerns for the open-source software supply chain - Help Net Security

• Python vulnerability highlights open source security woes (techtarget.com)

• Researchers find 633% increase in cyber-attacks aimed at open source repositories | The Daily Swig (portswigger.net)

• 3 Ways to Help Customers Defend Against Linux-Based Cyber attacks - MSSP Alert

• OldGremlin hackers use Linux ransomware to attack Russian orgs (bleepingcomputer.com)

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

• Most People Still Reuse Their Passwords Despite Years Of Hacking (informationsecuritybuzz.com)

• Password Report: Honeypot Data Shows Bot Attack Trends Against RDP, SSH | SecurityWeek.Com

• Eight RTX 4090s Can Break Passwords in Under an Hour | Tom's Hardware (tomshardware.com)

Training, Education and Awareness

• Security Awareness Urged to Grow Beyond Compliance (darkreading.com)

• Raising cyber security awareness is good for everyone - but it needs to be done better | ZDNET

• Millennials, Gen Z blamed for poor company security • The Register

Privacy, Surveillance and Mass Monitoring

• Amazon and the Rise of ‘Luxury Surveillance’ - The Atlantic

• Google sued over biometric data collection without consent (bleepingcomputer.com)

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

• Fines are not enough! Data breach victims want better security - Help Net Security

• Fashion brand SHEIN fined $1.9m for lying about data breach – Naked Security (sophos.com)

• New York fines EyeMed $4.5 million for 2020 email hack, data breach | SC Media (scmagazine.com)

• Health insurer pays out $4.5m over bungled data security • The Register

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

• INTERPOL-led Operation Takes Down 'Black Axe' Cyber Crime Organisation (thehackernews.com)

• Law enforcement arrested 31 suspects for stealing cars by hacking key fobs - Security Affairs

• Cops Arrest Suspected Multimillion-Dollar Fraud Mastermind - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

• Interpol is setting up its own metaverse to learn how to police the virtual world | Euronews

• Brazilian Police Nab Suspected Member of Lapsus$ Group (darkreading.com)

• Interpol Report: "Financial Crime-as-a-Service" an Emerging Threat - MSSP Alert

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

• Ransomware Now Deployed as a Precursor to Physical War - MSSP Alert

• US, China, Russia, more meet at Singapore infosec event • The Register

• NSA cyber chief says Ukraine war is compelling more intelligence sharing with industry - CyberScoop

• China-Linked Cyber-Espionage Team Homes In on Hong Kong Government Orgs (darkreading.com)

• Microsoft Warns of Novel Ransomware Attacking Ukraine, Poland - MSSP Alert

• Hackers target Asian casinos in lengthy cyber espionage campaign (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Prestige ransomware hits victims of HermeticWiper • The Register

• Pro-Russia Hackers DDoS Bulgarian Government - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

• OldGremlin Ransomware Targeted Over a Dozen Russian Entities in Multi-Million Scheme (thehackernews.com)

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Nation State Actors

Nation State Actors – Russia

• Ukraine war: Life appears normal in Moscow... but a sinister undercurrent exists as Putin's conflict drags on | World News | Sky News

• Ukraine's cyber chief calls for global anti-fake news fight • The Register

• German Cyber security Boss Sacked Over Kremlin Connection (darkreading.com)

• Killing Starlink! Russian Media Says Over 4000 Missiles Required To Destroy Starlink Service; Experts Say 'Mission Impossible' (eurasiantimes.com)

• New ransomware targets transportation sectors in Ukraine, Poland | SC Media (scmagazine.com)

• Bulgaria hit by a cyber attack originating from Russia - Security Affairs

Nation State Actors – China

• As China-Taiwan tensions mount, how's your cyber defence? • The Register

• Chinese 'Spyder Loader' Malware Spotted Targeting Organisations in Hong Kong (thehackernews.com)

• Hackers compromised Hong Kong govt agency network for a year (bleepingcomputer.com)

• WIP19 Threat Group Cyber attacks Target IT Service Providers, Telcos - MSSP Alert

Nation State Actors – North Korea

• North Korea’s Lazarus Group Attacks Japanese Crypto Firms - Decrypt

Nation State Actors – Iran

• FBI Warns of Iranian Cyber Firm's Hack-and-Leak Operations | SecurityWeek.Com

• 'FurBall' Spyware Being Used Against Iranian Citizens (darkreading.com)

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Vulnerability Management

• Compare vulnerability assessment vs. vulnerability management (techtarget.com)

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Vulnerabilities

• 45,654 VMware ESXi servers reached End of Life on Oct. 15 - Security Affairs

• VMware bug with 9.8 severity rating exploited to install witch’s brew of malware | Ars Technica

• Hackers Started Exploiting Critical "Text4Shell" Apache Commons Text Vulnerability (thehackernews.com)

• Text message verification flaws in your Windows Active Directory (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Apache Commons Vulnerability: Patch but Don't Panic (darkreading.com)

• Zoom for Mac patches sneaky “spy-on-me” bug – update now! – Naked Security (sophos.com)

• ProxyLogon researcher details new Exchange Server flaws (techtarget.com)

• Over 17000 Fortinet devices exposed online are very likely vulnerable to CVE-2022-40684 - Security Affairs

• Exploited Windows zero-day lets JavaScript files bypass security warnings (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Dozen High-Severity Vulnerabilities Patched in F5 Products | SecurityWeek.Com

• Oracle Releases 370 New Security Patches With October 2022 CPU | SecurityWeek.Com

• Palo Alto Networks fixed a high-severity flaw in PAN-OS - Security Affairs

• Hackers exploit critical VMware flaw to drop ransomware, miners (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Zimbra Patches Under-Attack Code Execution Bug | SecurityWeek.Com

• WordPress Security Update 6.0.3 Patches 16 Vulnerabilities | SecurityWeek.Com

• Python vulnerability highlights open source security woes (techtarget.com)

• Critical Flaw Reported in Move Virtual Machine Powering the Aptos Blockchain Network (thehackernews.com)

• Analysis of a Remote Code Execution (RCE) Vulnerability in Cobalt Strike 4.7.1 (securityintelligence.com)

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Reports Published in the Last Week

• Financial and cyber crimes top global police concerns, says new INTERPOL report

• Post-Quantum Cryptography: Anticipating Threats and Preparing the Future — ENISA (europa.eu)

• Attack Surface Management 2022 Midyear Review Part 1 (trendmicro.com)

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Other News

• Zero trust is misused in security, say Cloudflare, Zscaler - Protocol

• How to manage and reduce secret sprawl (techtarget.com)

• Cyber professional shortfall hits 3.4 million (computerweekly.com)

• Infosec still (mostly) a boys club • The Register

• Cyber security Workforce Gap Grows by 26% in 2022 - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

• VPN use prevails despite interest in VPN alternatives (techtarget.com)

• JP Morgan Bans Staff From Working Remotely In Hotels and Coffee Shops-But Not Airbnbs | Inc.com

• Experts discovered millions of .git folders exposed to public - Security Affairs

• Microsoft Defender is lacking in offline detection capabilities, says AV-Comparatives | TechSpot

• Internet connectivity worldwide impacted by severed fiber cables in France (bleepingcomputer.com)

• UK's Remote Shetland Mysteriously Lose Phone, Internet After Cable Cut (businessinsider.com)

• CISOs, rejoice! Security spending is increasing - Help Net Security

• Equifax surveilled 1,000 remote workers, fired 24 found juggling two jobs | Ars Technica

• Do You Think Businesses Must Do More To Boost Cyber Defences, Says Nadhim (informationsecuritybuzz.com)

• NATO Just Deployed Its First Killer Ground Robot (futurism.com)

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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

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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.

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 13 August 2021

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

SMBs Increasingly Vulnerable To Ransomware, Despite The Perception They Are Too Small To Target

A new report this week warns that small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are at particular risk based on the attack trends seen during the first six months of the year. The report revealed that during the first half of 2021, 4 out of 5 organisations experienced a cyber security breach originating from a vulnerability in their third-party vendor ecosystem. That’s at a time when the average cost of a data breach rose to around $3.56 million, with the average ransomware payment jumping 33% to more than $100,000.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2021/08/10/smbs-ransomware/

May 2021 Saw A 440% Increase In Phishing, The Single Largest Phishing Spike On Record

In May 2021, a report revealed a 440% increase in phishing, holding the record for the single largest phishing spike in a single month. It also showed that industries such as oil, gas and mining saw a 47% increase in the same six-month period, with manufacturing and wholesale traders seeing a 32% increase. The report extends its yearly threat intelligence report, with updated metrics between January 1 and June 30 2021. It also investigates the latest trends in malware, phishing and crypto exchanges.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/may-phishing-increase-webroot/

Users Can Be Just As Dangerous As Hackers

Most organisations should be at least as worried about user management as they are about Bond villain-type hackers launching compromises from abroad. Most organisations have deployed single sign-on and modern identity-management solutions. These generally allow easy on-boarding, user management, and off-boarding. However, on mobile devices, these solutions have been less effective. Examples include mobile applications such as WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, or even SMS-which are common in the workforce. All these tools allow for low-friction, agile communication in an increasingly mobile business environment. Today, many of these tools offer end-to-end encryption (e2ee), which is a boon when viewed through the lens of protecting against outside attackers. However, e2ee also resists internal governance and compliance programs.

https://thehackernews.com/2021/08/users-can-be-just-as-dangerous-as.html?m=1

With Crime-As-A-Service, Anyone Can Be An Attacker

Crime-as-a-Service (CaaS) is the practice of experienced cybercriminals selling access to the tools and knowledge needed to execute cyber crime – in particular, it’s often used to create phishing attacks. For hackers, phishing is one of the easiest ways to steal your organisation’s data. Traditionally, executing a successful phishing campaign required a seasoned cyber criminal with technical expertise and knowledge of social engineering. However, with the emergence of CaaS, just about anyone can become a master of phishing for a small fee.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2021/08/03/crime-as-a-service/

The Rise Of Cloud Is Creating Security Blindspots

Businesses are growing increasingly reliant on cloud services, but with all the good, businesses must also face the bad, according to a new report which says that the rise of cloud means greater complexity and more security blind spots.

Increased expansion into the cloud has led to new risks. All of the respondents in the report had suffered at least one incident in their public cloud environment in the last year, with 30 percent saying they had no formal sign-off before pushing to production.

https://www.itproportal.com/news/the-rise-of-cloud-is-creating-security-blindspots/

Connected Devices Increasingly At Risk As New Ransomware Attacks Are Reported Almost Daily

A report has been released on the state of connected devices. The 2021 study addresses pandemic-related cyber security challenges, including the growth of connected devices and related increase of security risks from these devices as threat actors took advantage of chaos to launch attacks. The study incorporates security risk and trend analysis of anonymized data for the past 12 months (June 2020 through June 2021) across the company’s 500+ deployments in healthcare, life sciences, retail, and manufacturing verticals. The number of agentless and un-agentable devices increased to 42% in this year’s report (compared to 32% of agentless or un-agentable devices in 2020).

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2021/08/12/connected-devices-risks/

The Value Of PII And How It Still Fuels Malign Activities In The Digital Ecosystem

The COVID-19 pandemic engendered new vulnerabilities in the digital ecosystem for threat actors to exploit, resulting in items like vaccines, fraudulent vaccine certificates, and other COVID-19 related items being sold in dark marketplaces and underground forums, an Intelligence report reveals. The research analysed the value of personally identifiable information (PII), drawing links between the breach economy, PII, and a range of emerging digital threats to executives and brands.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2021/08/10/pii-value-digital-ecosystem/

Ransomware Payments Explode Amid ‘Quadruple Extortion’

Two reports slap hard figures on what’s already crystal clear: Ransomware attacks have skyrocketed, and ransomware payments are the comet trails that have followed them skyward. The average ransomware payment spiked 82 percent year over year: It’s now over half a million dollars, according to the first-half 2021 update report. As far as the sheer multitude of attacks goes, researchers on Thursday reported that they’ve identified and analysed 121 ransomware incidents so far in 2021, a 64 percent increase in attacks, year-over-year.

https://threatpost.com/ransomware-payments-quadruple-extortion/168622/

Hackers Netting Average Of Nearly $10,000 For Stolen Network Access

A new report from a cyber security company has spotlighted the thriving market on the dark web for network access that nets cyber criminals thousands of dollars. Researchers have examined network access sales on underground Russian and English-language forums before compiling a study on why criminals sell their network access and how criminals transfer their network access to buyers. More than 37% of all victims in a sample of the data were based in North America while there was an average price of $9,640 and a median price of $3,000.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/hackers-netting-average-of-nearly-10000-for-stolen-network-access/

1M Stolen Credit Cards Hit Dark Web For Free

Threat actors have leaked 1 million stolen credit cards for free online as a way to promote a fairly new and increasingly popular cyber criminal site dedicated to…selling payment-card credentials. Researchers noticed the leak of the payment-card data during a “routine monitoring of cyber crime and Dark Web marketplaces,” researchers said in a post published over the weekend. The cards were published on an underground card-selling market, AllWorld.Cards, and stolen between 2018 and 2019, according to info posted on the forum.

https://threatpost.com/1m-stolen-credit-cards-dark-web/168514/

Ransomware Group Demanding $50M In Accenture Security Breach

The hacker group behind a ransomware attack on global solution provider giant Accenture has made a ransom demand for $50 million, according to a cyber security firm that reports seeing the demand. The threat actor is demanding the $50 million in exchange for more than 6 TB of data, according to a tweet.

https://www.crn.com/news/security/ransomware-group-demanding-50m-in-accenture-security-breach-cyber-firm

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Threats

Ransomware

• Top 5 Ransomware Operators By Income

• Ransomware Gangs Exploiting Windows Print Spooler Vulnerabilities

• Hackers Reportedly Threaten To Leak Data From Gigabyte Ransomware Attack

• Bitcoin Ransomware Hackers Hit Accenture

• Why Ransomware Is Such A Threat To Critical Infrastructure

• Ransomware Demands And Payments Hit New Records

• Synology Warns Of Malware Infecting NAS Devices With Ransomware

Phishing

• AI Wrote Better Phishing Emails Than Humans In A Recent Test

Other Social Engineering

• Cyber Fraud Shifts To Gaming, Travel And Leisure, Report Finds

Malware

• Discord Malware Is A Persistent And Growing Threat Warns Sophos

• Microsoft Warning: This Unusual Malware Attack Has Just Added Some New Tricks

• Experts Shed Light On New Russian Malware-As-A-Service Written In Rust

• IISpy: A Complex Server‑Side Backdoor With Anti‑Forensic Features

• Anatomy Of Native IIS Malware

Mobile

• A 5G Shortcut Leaves Phones Exposed to Stingray Surveillance

• Beware! New Android Malware Hacks Thousands of Facebook Accounts

IOT

• A Critical Random Number Generator Flaw Affects Billions Of IoT Devices

Vulnerabilities

• Microsoft's August 2021 Patch Tuesday: 44 Flaws Fixed, Seven Critical Including Print Spooler Vulnerability

• Microsoft Confirms There's Yet Another New Windows Print Spooler Security Bug

• Microsoft Exchange Server: Threat Actors Actively Scanning For Proxyshell Vulnerability, Researchers Warn

• Magento Update Released To Fix Critical Flaws Affecting E-Commerce Sites

• Vulnerability Found In Kindle E-Reader

• Got A Cheap Cisco Router In Your Home Office? If It's One Of These, There's An Exposed RCE Hole You Need To Plug

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

• Attackers Started Exploiting a Router Vulnerability Just 2 Days After Its Disclosure

• Hackers Steal $600 Million In Crypto From DeFi Site Poly Network

Dark Web

• 1M Stolen Credit Cards Hit Dark Web For Free

Supply Chain

• MSSPs Particularly Vulnerable To Cisco FDM Flaw

DoS/DDoS

• Attackers Increasingly Turning to DDoS As A Ransom Vector

Nation State Actors

• Briton Suspected Of Spying For Russia Arrested In Germany

• Putin Is Crushing Biden’s Room To Negotiate On Ransomware

Cloud

• Data Of Three Million Elderly Citizens Exposed In Cloud Security Oversight

• AWS S3 Can Be A Security Risk For Your Business

Privacy

• UN Human Rights Experts Call For Spyware Crackdown

• Apple Says ‘Screeching Minority” Who Object Against Their Photos Being Scanned For The Police ‘Have Misunderstanding’

• Is Your Router Giving Away Your Location?

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Other News

• The Challenges Healthcare CISOs Face In An Evolving Threat Landscape

• Hacker Shares The Scariest Things He's Seen On The Dark Web

• Researchers Develop RISC-V Chip for Quantum-Resistant Encryption

• Quantum Computers Could Threaten Blockchain Security. These New Defenses Might Be The Answer

• Saving Money By Holding Onto Old Tech Is Costing Us All Billions

• Unwanted Bot Traffic Costs Businesses $250 Million A Year

• Attacks Against Industrial Networks Will Become A Bigger Problem. We Need To Fix Security Now

• Kaseya's Universal Revil Decryption Key Leaked On A Hacking Forum

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

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

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

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

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 05 March 2021

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.

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

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Top Cyber Stories of the Last Week

New Strain Of Ransomware Implements Self-Spreading Capabilities

French experts spotted a new Ryuk ransomware variant that implements self-spreading capabilities to infect other devices on victims’ local networks.

This new version has a new attribute that allows it to self replicate over the local network allowing the malware to propagate itself – machine to machine – within the Windows domain. Once launched, it will spread itself to every Windows machine it can reach.

https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/115064/reports/ryuk-ransomware-self-spreading-capabilities.html

One In Four People Use Work Passwords For Consumer Websites

The report found that one in four consumers admit to using their work email or passwords to log in to consumer websites and applications such as food delivery apps, online shopping sites and even dating apps. The report found that consumers are neglecting to implement fundamental security safeguards across smart IoT devices at home, which could have serious security ramifications on both the individual and the enterprise amid increased and ongoing remote work spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2021/02/26/use-work-passwords-for-consumer-websites/

Massive Rise In Threats Across Expanding Attack Surfaces

New malware samples nearly doubled: New ransomware samples increased 106% year-over-year. Trojans increased 128%, with threat actors using trojans to exploit lower-severity vulnerabilities. Sophisticated, multi-staged attacks and malware-as-a-service have become the norm. Vulnerabilities hit a new high: 18,341 new vulnerabilities in 2020 have been reported. To stay ahead of attacks, security and risk leaders need sophisticated insights into which vulnerabilities are high-risk and remediation options for all assets, including non-patching options.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2021/02/26/expanding-attack-surfaces/

Half of Organisations Concerned Remote Working Puts Them at Greater Risk of Cyber Attacks

Half of organizations are concerned that the shift to remote work is putting them a greater risk of Cyber Attacks, according to a new study with IDG. A survey of UK CIOs, CTOs and IT decision makers revealed that insecure practices are regularly taking place among remote workers, providing more opportunities for Cyber Criminals to strike.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/half-orgs-remote-working-risk/

Microsoft Patches Four Zero-Day Exchange Server Bugs

Microsoft has been forced to release out-of-band patches to fix multiple zero-day vulnerabilities being exploited by Chinese state-backed threat actors. The unusual step was taken to protect customers running on-premises versions of Microsoft Exchange Server.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/microsoft-patch-four-zeroday/

A Booming Trade In Bugs Is Undermining Cyber Security

If you discover that a favourite vending-machine dispenses free chocolate when its buttons are pressed just so, what should you do? The virtuous option is to tell the manufacturer, so it can fix it. The temptation is to gorge.

https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2021/03/06/a-booming-trade-in-bugs-is-undermining-cyber-security

Is Your Browser Extension A Botnet Backdoor?

A company that rents out access to more than 10 million Web browsers so that clients can hide their true Internet addresses has built its network by paying browser extension makers to quietly include its code in their creations. This story examines the lopsided economics of extension development, and why installing an extension can be such a risky proposition.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/03/is-your-browser-extension-a-botnet-backdoor/

Cyber Attack Shuts Down Online Learning At 15 UK Schools

A threat actor was able to access the trust's central network infrastructure and while an investigation took place, all existing phone, email, and website communication had to be pulled. Students are still learning remotely in England. Schools are set to reopen on March 8, but in the meantime, only a small subset of children are attending school physically, such as the children of key workers.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/cyberattack-shuts-down-online-learning-at-15-uk-schools/

First Fully Weaponized Spectre Exploit Discovered Online

A fully weaponized exploit for the Spectre CPU vulnerability was uploaded on the malware-scanning website VirusTotal last month, marking the first time a working exploit capable of doing actual damage has entered the public domain. The exploit was discovered and targets Spectre, a major vulnerability that was disclosed in January 2018. According to its website, the Spectre bug is a hardware design flaw in the architectures of Intel, AMD, and ARM processors that allows code running inside bad apps to break the isolation between different applications at the CPU level and then steal sensitive data from other apps running on the same system.

https://therecord.media/first-fully-weaponized-spectre-exploit-discovered-online/

Solarwinds Security Fiasco May Have Started With Simple Password Blunders

We still do not know just how bad the SolarWinds security breach is. We do know over a hundred US government agencies and companies were cracked. "The largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen," with more than a thousand hackers behind it. It may have all started when an intern first set an important password to "'solarwinds123." Then, adding insult to injury, the intern shared the password on GitHub.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/solarwinds-security-fiasco-may-have-started-with-simple-password-blunders/

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Threats

Ransomware

• Data analytics agency Polecat held to ransom after server exposed 30TB of records

• Ransomware gang hacks Ecuador's largest private bank, Ministry of Finance

• Ransomware puzzle: These two pieces of malware look very different, but they evolved from the same root

• Search crimes – how the Gootkit gang poisons Google searches

• Qualys hit with ransomware: customer invoices leaked on extortionists' tor blog

Phishing

• COVID19 Vaccine Phishing Scams Surge 26% in Three Months

Malware

• Compromised Website Images Camouflage ObliqueRAT Malware

• Malicious NPM packages target Amazon, Slack with new dependency attacks

Mobile

• This new jailbreak threat could put nearly all iPhones at risk

Vulnerabilities

• These Microsoft Exchange Server zero-day flaws are being used by hackers, so update now

• High severity Linux network security holes found, fixed

• Working Windows and Linux Spectre exploits found on VirusTotal

• Google shares PoC exploit for critical Windows 10 Graphics RCE bug

• Another Chrome zero-day exploit – so get that update done!

• If you own a MacBook, download and install macOS Big Sur 11.2.2 ASAP

Data Breaches

• Data is the world’s most valuable (and vulnerable) resource

• Far-Right Platform Gab Has Been Hacked—Including Private Data

• Singapore Airlines frequent flyer members hit in third-party data security breach

Organised Crime

• Three Top Russian Cyber Crime Forums Hacked

• Hackers share methods to bypass 3D Secure for payment cards

• Cyber Crime 'Help Wanted': Job Hunting on the Dark Web

Dark Web

• The 20 Most Common Passwords Found On The Dark Web

Supply Chain

• Why supply chains are today's fastest growing cyber security threat

• Bombardier is latest victim of Accellion supply chain attack

Nation-State Actors

• Indian cyber espionage activity rising amid growing rivalry with China, Pakistan

• Microsoft accuses China over email cyber-attacks

• New nation-state cyber attacks

• Lazarus Targets Defense Companies with ThreatNeedle Malware

• Security News This Week: The SolarWinds Body Count Now Includes NASA and the FAA

Privacy

• How To Reclaim Your Privacy from Windows 10

• Home-security cameras have become a fruitful resource for law enforcement — and a fatal risk

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Reports Published in the Last Week

• Report: Quality, not quantity, is the hallmark of the latest waves of phishing attacks

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Other News

• Next Cyber War will hit regular People online

• Prime-factor mathematical foundations of RSA cryptography ‘broken’, claims cryptographer

• Criminals 'Posing As Cyber Security Experts' As Number Of Firms Rises

• NSA, Microsoft promote a Zero Trust approach to cyber security

• Inside the race to keep secrets safe from the quantum computing revolution

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

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

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

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

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 12 February 2021

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.

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Top Cyber Stories of the Last Week

2020 Sees Ransomware Increase By Over 400 Percent

A new study from Cyber Security company, finds that last year malware increased by 358 percent overall and ransomware increased by 435 percent as compared with 2019. The report which analyzes millions of attacks taking place across the year finds distribution of the Emotet malware skyrocketed by 4,000 percent, while malware threats attacking Android phones increased by 263 percent. July saw the largest increase in malicious activity, up by 653 percent compared with the previous year. Microsoft Office documents are the most manipulated document attack vector and these attacks were up by 112 percent.

https://betanews.com/2021/02/10/ransomware-increase-400-percent/

Remote Desktop Protocol Attacks Surge By 768%

Remote desktop protocol (RDP) attacks increase by 768% between Q1 and Q4 last year, fuelled by the shift to remote working. However, a slower rate of growth was observed in the final quarter of the year, indicating that organizations have enhanced their security for remote users.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/remote-desktop-protocol-attacks/

Even Minor Phishing Operations Can Distribute Millions Of Malicious Emails Per Week

Even small-scale phishing campaigns are capable of distributing millions and millions of malicious emails to victims around the world, according to a new report. Describing the most popular styles of phishing attack, criminal today rely on fast-churning campaigns. They create a single phishing email template (usually in English) and send it out to anywhere between 100 and 1,000 targets.

https://www.itproportal.com/news/even-small-phishing-operations-can-distribute-millions-of-malicious-emails-per-week/

With One Update, This Malicious Android App Hijacked Millions Of Devices

With a single update, a popular barcode scanner app on Google Play transformed into malware and was able to hijack up to 10 million devices. Lavabird Ltd.'s Barcode Scanner was an Android app that had been available on Google's official app repository for years. The app, accounting for over 10 million installs, offered a QR code reader and a barcode generator -- a useful utility for mobile devices.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/with-one-update-this-malicious-android-app-hijacked-10-million-devices/

Cd Projekt Hit By Ransomware Attack, Refused To Pay Ransom, Data Reportedly Sold Off By Hackers

Polish video game maker CD Projekt, which makes Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher, has confirmed it was hit by a ransomware attack. In a statement posted to its Twitter account, the company said it will “not give in nor negotiate” with the hackers, saying it has backups in place. “We have already secured our IT infrastructure and begun restoring data,” the company said.

https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/09/cd-projekt-red-hit-by-ransomware-attack-refuses-to-pay-ransom/

Hacked Florida Water Plant Used Shared Passwords And Windows 7 PCs

The Oldsmar, Florida water plant hacked earlier this week used outdated Windows 7 PCs and shared passwords, the Associated Press has reported. A government advisory also revealed that the relatively unsophisticated attack used the remote-access program TeamViewer. However, officials also said that the hacker’s attempt to boost chemicals to dangerous levels was stopped almost immediately after it started.

https://www.engadget.com/hacked-water-plant-computer-had-shared-passwords-andofdate-windows-os-082552973.html

Top Web Hosting Provider Shuts Down Following Cyber Attack

Cybercriminals often attack websites in order to extort a ransom from their victims but a recent cyberattack against the web hosting company No Support Linux Hosting took quite a different turn. After a hacker managed to breach the company's internal systems and compromise its entire operation, No Support Linux Hosting has announced that it is shutting down. The company alerted its customers to the situation before shutting down its website in a message.

https://www.techradar.com/news/top-web-hosting-provider-shuts-down-following-cyberattack

High Demand For Hacker Services On Dark Web Forums

Nine in 10 (90%) users of dark web forums are searching for a hacker who can provide them with a particular resource or who can download a user database. This is according to new research by Positive Technologies, which analyzed activity on the 10 most prominent forums on the dark web, which offer services such as website hacking and the buying/selling of databases. The study highlights the growing demand for hackers’ services and stolen data, exacerbated by the increased internet usage by both organizations and individuals since the start of COVID-19.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/demand-hacker-services-dark-web/

Facebook Phishing Campaign Tricked Nearly 500,000 Users In Two Weeks

A recent investigation uncovered a large scale phishing operation on Facebook. The Facebook phishing campaign is dangerous and targets user personal information. The phishing scam “Is that you” currently on Facebook has been around in multiple forms for years. The whole trouble starts with a “friend” sending you a message claiming to have found a video or image with you in it. The message is usually a video and after clicking, it takes you through a series of websites. These websites have malicious scripts that get your location, device type, and operating system.

https://www.gizchina.com/2021/02/09/facebook-phishing-campaign-tricked-nearly-500000-users-in-two-weeks/

Hackers Are Tweaking Their Approach To Phishing Attacks In 2021

Cyber criminals are a creative bunch, constantly coming up with new ways to avoid detection and advance their sinister goals. A new report from cyber security experts at BitDam describes a few fresh techniques used in the wild so far in 2021. According to the report, email protection solutions tend to trust newly created email domains that are yet to be flagged as dangerous. Criminals are now increasingly exploiting this fact to increase the chances that phishing, and malware emails make it into victims' inboxes.

https://www.itproportal.com/news/hackers-are-tweaking-their-approach-to-phishing-attacks-in-2021/

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Threats

 Ransomware

• Researchers identify 223 vulnerabilities used in recent ransomware attacks (Potential headline)

• CD Projekt hit by ransomware attack, refuses to pay ransom

• This old form of ransomware has returned with new tricks and new targets

Phishing

• This phishing attack uses some very retro technology to hide its payload

Malware

• Malicious Code Injected via Google Chrome Extension Highlights App Risks

Mobile

• Android devices caught in Matryosh botnet

• Military, Nuclear Entities Under Target By Novel Android Malware

IOT

• This old security vulnerability left millions of Internet of Things devices vulnerable to attacks

Vulnerabilities

• Zero-Day and Six Publicly Disclosed CVEs Fixed

• Swarm of Palo Alto PAN-OS vulnerabilities

• Actively Exploited Windows Kernel EoP Bug Allows Takeover

• Apple fixes serious sudo vulnerability in macOS

• Attackers Exploit Critical Adobe Flaw to Target Windows Users

• Microsoft issues emergency fix for Wi-Fi foul-up delivered hot and fresh on Patch Tuesday

Data Breaches

• The Accellion Data Breach Seems to Be Getting Bigger

• Billions of Passwords Offered for $2 in Cyber-Underground

• Experian to investigate possible data leak

Organised Crime

• Europol takes down hackers who allegedly stole over $100 million in crypto from celebs

Supply Chain

• Supply-chain Hack Breaches 35 Companies, Including Paypal, Microsoft, Apple 

Nation-State Actors

• Android spyware strains linked to state-sponsored Confucius threat group

• 'BendyBear' APT malware linked to Chinese government hackers

• Microsoft to alert Office 365 users of nation-state hacking activity

• Probable Iranian Cyber Actors, Static Kitten, Conducting Cyberespionage Campaign Targeting UAE and Kuwait Government Agencies

• Big Russian hack used a technique experts had warned about for years. Why wasn’t the U.S. government ready?

Privacy

• Browser ‘Favicons’ Can Be Used as Undeletable ‘Supercookies’ to Track You Online

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Reports Published in the Last Week

• The Global Risks Report Highlights The Onslaught Of Cyberattacks And A Failure Of Governments To Stop Them. 

• ESET Threat Report Q4 2020

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Other News

• Google launches Open Source Vulnerabilities (OSV) database

• Quantum computing could make encryption algorithms obsolete

• UK’s enemies trying to ‘tear society apart’ via social media

• 91% of enterprise pros experienced an API security incident in 2020

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

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

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

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

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 11 December 2020

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

Top Cyber Headlines of the Week

Cyber crime costs the world more than $1 trillion, a 50% increase from 2018

Cyber crime costs the world economy more than $1 trillion, or just more than one percent of global GDP, which is up more than 50 percent from a 2018 study that put global losses at close to $600 billion. Beyond the global figure, the report also explored the damage reported beyond financial losses, finding 92 percent of companies felt effects beyond monetary losses.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2020/12/07/cybercrime-costs-world/

FireEye, one of the world's largest security firms, discloses security breach

FireEye, one of the world largest security firms, said today it was hacked and that a "highly sophisticated threat actor" accessed its internal network and stole hacking tools FireEye uses to test the networks of its customers.

The firm said the threat actor also searched for information related to some of the company's government customers.

The attacker was described as a "highly sophisticated threat actor, one whose discipline, operational security, and techniques lead us to believe it was a state-sponsored attack."

https://www.zdnet.com/article/fireeye-one-of-the-worlds-largest-security-firms-discloses-security-breach/

Chinese Breakthrough in Quantum Computing a Warning for Security Teams

China’s top quantum-computer researchers have reported that they have achieved quantum supremacy, i.e., the ability to perform tasks a traditional supercomputer cannot. And while it’s a thrilling development, the inevitable rise of quantum computing means security teams are one step closer to facing a threat more formidable than anything before.

https://threatpost.com/chinese-quantum-computing-warning-security/161935/

Ransom payouts hit record-highs, surging 178% in a year

Average ransom payouts increased by 178% in the third quarter of this year, from $84,000 (£63,000) to almost £234,000, compared with the year before. Ransomware payments reached record-highs in 2020 as employees shifted to remote working to curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, creating more attack vectors for hackers.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/ransomware-payouts-hacking-computers-hit-record-highs-surging-134527988.html

Ransomware Set for Evolution in Attack Capabilities in 2021

Ransomware is set to evolve into a greater threat in 2021 as service offerings and collaborations increase. The year turned out “different than predicted” and the shift to working from home also impacted the e-crime landscape. “This created an industrialization of e-crime groups and their abilities to extend from single groups into business pipelines”

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/ransomware-evolution-capabilities/

How Organisations Can Prevent Users from Using Breached Passwords

There is no question that attackers are going after your sensitive account data. Passwords have long been a target of those looking to compromise your environment. Why would an attacker take the long, complicated way if they have the keys to the front door?

https://thehackernews.com/2020/12/how-organizations-can-prevent-users.html

Threats

Ransomware

• Hackers demand $34.7 million in Bitcoin after ransomware attack on Foxconn

• Ransomware forces hosting provider Netgain to take down data centers

• Ransomware-struck schools reject £1m demand from crims in timely reminder to always mind the air-gap

• 'Malwareless' ransomware campaign operators pwned 83k victims' MySQL servers, 250k databases up for sale

• Ransomware hits helicopter maker Kopter

Phishing

• Spearphishing Attack Spoofs Microsoft.com to Target 200M Office 365 Users

• Adobe users targeted in dangerous new phishing campaign

IOT

• Millions of IoT devices could be vulnerable to these unfixable security bugs

Malware

• Qbot malware switched to stealthy new Windows autostart method

• Microsoft exposes Adrozek, malware that hijacks Chrome, Edge, and Firefox

• Social media sharing icons could harbor info-stealing malware

• All-new Windows 10 malware is excellent at evading detection

• Rana Android Malware Updates Allow WhatsApp, Telegram IM Snooping

Vulnerabilities

• Critical, Unpatched Bugs Open GE Radiological Devices to Remote Code Execution

• Amnesia:33 vulnerabilities impact millions of smart and industrial devices

• Microsoft December 2020 Patch Tuesday security update address 58 vulnerabilities, 22 of them are remote code execution vulnerabilities.

• Expert discloses zero-click, wormable flaw in Microsoft Teams

• NSA Warns: Patched VMware Bug Under Active Attack

Data Breaches

• FireEye, one of the world's largest security firms, discloses security breach

• HMRC admits to 26 data breaches during 2019-20

• Hackers leak data from Embraer, world's third-largest airplane maker

• Payment service PayPay hacked

Threat Actors

• Norway says Russian hacking group APT28 is behind August 2020 Parliament hack

Insider Threats

• Bank Employee Sells Personal Data of 200,000 Clients

Other News

• Experian predicts 5 key data breach targets for 2021

• 6 new ways threat actors will attack in 2021

• Research: Millions of smart devices vulnerable to hacking

• Finland passes new 5G security law to ban risky equipment

• Ransomware attacks target backup systems, compromising the company ‘insurance policy’

Reports Published in the Last Week

• Sophos 2021 Threat Report

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

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

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

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