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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 01 September 2023

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Intelligence Briefing 01 September 2023:

-66 Percent of Businesses Don't Understand Their Cyber Risks

-Massive Supplier Cyber Breach Puts London’s Metropolitan Police on Red Alert After Officer and Staff Details Hacked

-Pay our Ransom Instead of a GDPR Fine, Cyber Crime Gang Tells Targets, as Attacks Against Small Businesses Ramp Up

-Survey Finds In-house Counsel Cyber Anxiety Skyrocketing

-58% of Malicious Emails Contained Spoofed Content

-Cyber Attacks Remain a Top Concern for Organisations Across All Industries

-BYOD Security Gap: Survey Finds 49% of European Firms Unprotected

-13% of Employees Admit to Falling for Phishing Attacks Working at Home, 9% Would Wait to Report After the Weekend

-Numbers Don't Lie: Exposing the Harsh Truths of Cyber Attacks in New Report

-Kroll’s Breach Highlights SIM-Swapping Risk

-Reducing The Risk of AI, What Can You Do?

-Debunking Popular Cyber Security Myths

-3 Malware Loaders Responsible for 80% of Intrusions

-MOVEit Hack Shows Attackers Still Use Old Tricks

-Barracuda Thought it Drove 0-day Hackers out of Customers’ Networks. It was Wrong

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

66 Percent of Businesses Don't Understand Their Cyber Risks

A survey has found that 67% of organisations have experienced a breach requiring attention within the last two years, despite having traditional security measures in place. Worryingly, 66% self-reported having limited visibility and insight into their cyber risk profiles.

83% of organisations agreed that a comprehensive cyber risk reduction strategy would yield a reduction in the likelihood of a significant cyber incident occurring, yet a number of organisations are finding it difficult to implement this and as a result are looking for outside assistance too. The report found that 93 percent of organisations plan to offload specific segments of cyber risk reduction workstreams or projects to security service providers within the next two years.

Source: [Beta News]

Massive Supplier Cyber Breach Puts London’s Metropolitan Police on Red Alert After Officer and Staff Details Hacked

All 47,000 personnel working for the Met Police were warned of the risk their photos, names and ranks having been stolen when cyber crooks penetrated the IT systems of a contractor printing warrant cards and staff passes. The supplier had access to names, ranks, photos, vetting levels and pay numbers of officers and staff, but did not hold information such as addresses, phone numbers or financial details.

The attack shows the importance of understanding the supply chain, and what access your supplier has access to. Without knowing who has your data, and what data, you will be left clueless if a breach on a supplier occurs.

Sources [Data Breaches] [UKAuthority]

Pay our Ransom Instead of a GDPR Fine, Cyber Crime Gang Tells Targets, as Attacks Against Small Businesses Ramp Up

Ransomware actors are always evolving their tactics, with gangs now telling victims if they don’t pay, then they will face fines under data protection laws. Additionally, small businesses are on the radar, partially due to them being easier targets for actors; some gangs have shifted from asking for millions from a large organisation, to requesting small ransoms from multiple small businesses.

As a result in both the number and sophistication of ransomware attacks, 80% of organisations expect their spending to increase. Not every organisation has an unlimited budget and so it is important that organisations are able to prioritise and allocate their budget effectively, to give them the most protection that their budget allows, especially small to medium-sized businesses.

Sources [Dark Reading] [The Record] [Security Magazine]

Survey Finds In-house Counsel Cyber Anxiety Skyrocketing

In a recent report, only 25% of legal professionals said they felt fully prepared to deal with a cyber attack, with 78% ranking the task of shielding their organisation from cyber attacks as the greatest regulatory concern over the next 12 months; previously, this figure was only 30% in 2021.

There has been a growing number of attacks, due to the sensitive data that is held and the number of attacks will continue to rise. With regulatory concerns adding to this, in-house counsel should be looking to have their concerns heard and drive the organisation to bolster their defences, and this may include outsourcing expert advice to make sure it is done correctly.

Source: [Law.com]

58% of Malicious Emails Contained Spoofed Content

According to a recent report, 58% of malicious emails contained spoof content and spam emails had increased by 30% from Q1 to Q2 2023. The report identified a surge in the number of uses of QR codes as a primary attack method, showing that attack methods are evolving, and in some cases, choosing not to use traditional methods.

The report reinforces the need for constant user education training, to reduce the risk of an employee falling for a phishing email. With this training, new evolving techniques such as that with QR codes, should also be addressed.

Source: [Security Magazine]

Cyber Attacks Remain a Top Concern for Organisations Across All Industries

Cyber attacks remain a top threat to organisations’ ability to do business across all industries. When asked in a recent report, 18% of respondents reported that cyber attacks threatened or disrupted their business.

With cyber attacks being a huge concern, many organisations have an incident response plan in place; yet despite this, nearly one quarter (23%) of companies surveyed have either never conducted tests or are unsure if their teams have tested. Cyber incidents are a matter of when, not if, and a strong incident response plan is always needed and can prevent a bad situation from being made worse by doing the wrong things in the immediate aftermath of an attack.

Source: [Business Wire]

BYOD Security Gap: Survey Finds 49% of European Firms Unprotected

A recent survey found that a concerning 49% of European businesses are operating without having a formal bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy, highlighting a lack of visibility and control over such devices. The report found that organisations are concerned about compliance-based issues, with 43% noting increased worries.

The benefits of BYOD are clear, allowing organisations to save money and eliminate the need for multiple devices. But without a formal BYOD policy, organisations are risking having employees bring in devices that are effectively invisible to IT. This means that the vulnerabilities that come with it, and the risks it can bring, also go unnoticed. To mitigate the risk, a formalised BYOD policy is required.

Source: [Infosecurity Magazine]

13% of Employees Admit to Falling for Phishing Attacks Working at Home, 9% Would Wait to Report After the Weekend

In a recent report, it was found that 13% of employees admitted they had fallen for a phishing attack whilst working from home. Rather worryingly, 21% said they would continue working business as usual in the event of falling victim to a phishing attack whilst working remotely on a Friday, with 9% indicating they’d wait until after the weekend to report it, effectively, giving the attacker a 48 hour period in which they go unnoticed, if the employee even remembers to report it on the Monday.

It is important that users are educated, both on spotting phishing attacks and the reporting process, so that organisations can be best protected. By providing regular and effective user training, employees will be at less risk of falling victim to a phishing attack, even from home. Additionally, by understanding the reporting process and why there is a need to report as soon as possible, organisations will shorten their detection time.

Source: [Security Magazine]

Numbers Don't Lie: Exposing the Harsh Truths of Cyber Attacks in New Report

In their most recent quarterly report, BlackBerry focused on a 90-day window, identifying over 1.5 million malware-based attacks, over 200,000 unique attacks, 17,000 attacks per day and 12 per minute to name a few. The report found that financial institutions were amongst the most targeted.

Source: [The Hacker News]

Kroll’s Breach Highlights SIM-Swapping Risk

A recent supply chain breach at Kroll, the risk and financial advisory firm, affected downstream customers and exposed personal information on hundreds of claimants in bankruptcy proceedings. The breach occurred when a threat actor had transferred an employee’s phone number to a device in the attackers possession, which was then subsequently used to access sensitive information.

In this attack, the actor had convinced T-Mobile to port the employee’s number over, allowing the actor to access files containing bankruptcy details. A mitigation recommended for this is to ask your network provider if they offer port freeze or number lock, to protect it from unauthorised transfer.

Source [Dark Reading]

Reducing The Risk of AI, What Can You Do?

Threat actors' use of generative AI has fuelled a significant rise in attacks worldwide during the last 12 months according to a recent report. Yet despite this, AI is still seen as a positive thing for organisations, with the power of generative AI quickly realised.

Certainly, AI can be used in the organisation to increase efficiency and automate tasks, but it must be used with vigilance. Organisations implementing AI should have governance over the usage of AI to eliminate the chance of data leaking. This governance may include policies, procedures and approved AI software.

Sources: [CSO Online] [UKTech News]

Debunking Popular Cyber Security Myths

At a time when cyber security is a constant feature in the news and our daily lives, it is important to debunk a few myths surrounding it. One of the biggest, is the assumption that cyber defence is all about the technical controls; in fact, 89% of cyber attacks involved social engineering. The prevalence of social engineering further shows that strong passwords, firewalls and antivirus are not enough; what’s the use in having a password that takes years to crack if you hand it over to someone?

When we think cyber security, we often think of external threat actors, but insider risk is a real threat: whether by malicious actions, negligence or misunderstanding, those inside your organisation can be a real risk to your organisation.

So what’s the take home? Cyber is more than just technology, and it is not just an outside attacker. Organisations’ cyber efforts should focus on more than just the technical requirements; by having things such as user education training, organisations can mitigate their cyber risk.

Sources: [Forbes] [Trend Micro]

3 Malware Loaders Responsible for 80% of Intrusions

Three malware loaders, QBot, SocGholish, and Raspberry Robin, are responsible for 80 percent of observed attacks on computers and networks so far this year. The malware are all distributed differently; Qbot is typically deployed through a phishing email, SocGholish is downloaded without user interaction, and Raspberry Robin is through USB devices.

Sources: [The Register] [Infosecurity Magazine]

MOVEit Hack Shows Attackers Still Use Old Tricks

SQL injection has been around for a quarter of a century, yet it still features amongst the top 10 list of security vulnerabilities. In fact, SQL injection was the method of attack for the infamous MOVEit hacks, which has impacted over 700 organisations, with the number still growing.

The MOVEit attack highlights just how easily old, over-looked vulnerabilities can be used to target an organisation. Consider your organisation now: are there any legacy systems or software in place?

Source: [Dark Reading]

Barracuda Thought it Drove 0-day Hackers out of Customers’ Networks. It was Wrong.

In late May, security vendor Barracuda had released a patch for their email security gateway (ESG), which was being actively exploited. Having already accounted for this, the threat actors utilised a new attack, which meant infected devices would reinfect themselves, effectively negating Barracuda’s patch. Unfortunately, this meant that for a while, Barracuda thought it was in the clear, when it was still under attack.

Upon realising this, Barracuda’s security advisory changed from recommending a patch to requiring an immediate replacement of compromised ESG appliances, regardless of the patch level. This shows the need for organisations to keep up to date with the latest threat intelligence, as missing the second update could mean infected devices are still in the wild, with organisations under the false perception that they were safe.

Source: [Ars Technica]



Threats

Ransomware, Extortion and Destructive Attacks

Ransomware Victims

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Other Social Engineering; Smishing, Vishing, etc

Artificial Intelligence

2FA/MFA

AITM/MITM

Malware

Mobile

Botnets

Denial of Service/DoS/DDOS

BYOD

Internet of Things – IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Impersonation Attacks

Deepfakes

Insurance

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Cloud/SaaS

Hybrid/Remote Working

Identity and Access Management

Encryption

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Biometrics

Social Media

Training, Education and Awareness

Cyber Bullying, Cyber Stalking and Sextortion

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Models, Frameworks and Standards

Data Protection

Careers, Working in Cyber and Information Security

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

Privacy, Surveillance and Mass Monitoring

Misinformation, Disinformation and Propaganda


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

Russia

China

North Korea


Vulnerability Management

Vulnerabilities




Sector Specific

Industry specific threat intelligence reports are available.

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

·         Automotive

·         Construction

·         Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)

·         Defence & Space

·         Education & Academia

·         Energy & Utilities

·         Estate Agencies

·         Financial Services

·         FinTech

·         Food & Agriculture

·         Gaming & Gambling

·         Government & Public Sector (including Law Enforcement)

·         Health/Medical/Pharma

·         Hotels & Hospitality

·         Insurance

·         Legal

·         Manufacturing

·         Maritime

·         Oil, Gas & Mining

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

·         Retail & eCommerce

·         Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)

·         Startups

·         Telecoms

·         Third Sector & Charities

·         Transport & Aviation

·         Web3


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

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

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

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

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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 01 July 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 01 July 2022:

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

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

-Patchable and Preventable Security Issues Lead Causes of Q1 Attacks

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

-EMEA Continues to Be a Hotspot for Malware Threats

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

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

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

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

-Human Error Remains the Top Security Issue

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

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

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

Top Cyber Stories of the Last Week

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Patchable and Preventable Security Issues Lead Causes of Q1 Attacks

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

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

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

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

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

  • Three in Four Vulnerability Management Programs Ineffective

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

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

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

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

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

  • EMEA Continues to Be a Hotspot for Malware Threats

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Human Error Remains the Top Security Issue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Threats

Ransomware

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Malware

Mobile

Internet of Things – IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Insurance

Software Supply Chain

Denial of Service DoS/DDoS

Attack Surface Management

Shadow IT

Open Source

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Training, Education and Awareness

Privacy

Parental Controls and Child Safety

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

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

Nation State Actors

Nation State Actors – Russia

Nation State Actors – China

Nation State Actors – North Korea

Vulnerability Management

Vulnerabilities

Sector Specific

Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)

Financial Services Sector

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Telecoms

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

Energy & Utilities

Oil, Gas and Mining

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

Food and Agriculture

Education and Academia

Web3

Reports Published in the Last Week

Other News

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

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

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

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

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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 24 June 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 24 June 2022:

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

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

-5 Social Engineering Assumptions That Are Wrong

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

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

-Cloud Email Threats Soar 101% in a Year

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

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

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

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

-How Companies Are Prioritizing Infosec and Compliance

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

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

Top Cyber Stories of the Last Week

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • 5 Social Engineering Assumptions That Are Wrong

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

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

  2. Legitimate services are safe from social engineering abuse.

  3. Attackers only use computers, not telephones.

  4. Replying to existing email conversations is safe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Cloud Email Threats Soar 101% in a Year

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

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

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

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

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

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/cloud-email-threats-soar-101-in-a/

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

Rapidly growing employee identities, third-party partners, and machine nodes have companies scrambling to secure credential information, software secrets, and cloud identities, according to researchers.

In a survey of IT and identity professionals from Dimensional Research, almost every organisation — 98% — experienced rapid growth in the number of identities that have to be managed, with that growth driven by expanding cloud usage, more third-party partners, and machine identities. Furthermore, businesses are also seeing an increase in breaches because of this, with 84% of firms suffering an identity-related breach in the past 12 months, compared with 79% in a previous study covering two years.

The number and complexity of identities organisations are having to manage and secure is increasing. Whenever there is an increase in identities, there is a corresponding heightened risk of identity-related breaches due to them not being properly managed and secured, and with the attack surfaces also growing exponentially, these breaches can occur on multiple fronts.

For the most part, organisations focus on employee identities, which 70% consider to be the most likely to be breached and 58% believe to have the greatest impact, according to the 2022 "Trends in Securing Digital Identities" report based on the survey. Yet third-party partners and business customers are significant sources of risk as well, with 35% and 25% of respondents considering those to be a major source of breaches, respectively.

https://www.darkreading.com/operations/identity-related-breaches-last-12-months

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

Cymulate announced the results of a survey, revealing that two-thirds of companies who have been hit by cyber crime in the past year have been hit more than once, with almost 10% experiencing 10 or so more attacks a year.

Research taken from 858 security professionals surveyed across North America, EMEA, APAC and LATAM across a wide range of industries including technology, banking, finance and government, also highlighted larger companies hit by cyber crime are experiencing shorter disruption time and damage to business with 40% reported low damage compared with medium-size businesses (less than 2,500 employees) which had longer recovery times and more business affecting damage.

Other highlights

  • 40% of respondents admitted to being breached over the past 12 months.

  • After being breached once, statistics showed they were more likely to be hit again than not (66%).

  • Malware (55%), and more specifically ransomware (40%) and DDoS (32%) were the main forms of cyber attacks experienced by those surveyed.

  • Attacks primarily occurred via end-user phishing (56%), via third parties connected to the enterprise (37%) or direct attacks on enterprise networks (34%).

  • 22% of companies publicly disclosed cyber attacks in the worst-case breaches, with 35% needing to hire security consultants, 12% dismissing their current security professionals and 12% hiring public relations consultants to deal with the repercussions to their reputations. Top three best practices for cyber attack prevention, mitigation and remediation include multi-factor authentication (67%), proactive corporate phishing and awareness campaigns (53%), and well-planned and practiced incident response plans (44%). Least privilege also ranked highly, at 43%.

  • 29% of attacks come from insider threats – intentionally or unintentionally.

  • Leadership and cyber security teams who meet regularly to discuss risk reduction are more cyber security-ready – those who met 15 times a year incurred zero breaches whereas those who suffered six or more breaches met under nine times on average.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/06/21/companies-hit-by-cybercrime/

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

Insurance exists to protect the insured party against catastrophe, but the insurer needs protection so that its policies are not abused – and that's where the fine print comes in. However, in the case of ransomware insurance, the fine print is becoming contentious and arguably undermining the usefulness of ransomware insurance.

In recent years, ransomware insurance has grown as a product field because organisations are trying to buy protection against the catastrophic effects of a successful ransomware attack. Why try to buy insurance? Well, a single, successful attack can just about wipe out a large organisation, or lead to crippling costs – NotPetya alone led to a total of $10bn in damages.

Ransomware attacks are notoriously difficult to protect against completely. Like any other potentially catastrophic event, insurers stepped in to offer an insurance product. In exchange for a premium, insurers promise to cover many of the damages resulting from a ransomware attack.

Depending on the policy, a ransomware policy could cover loss of income if the attack disrupts operations, or loss of valuable data, if data is erased due to the ransomware event. A policy may also cover you for extortion – in others, it will refund the ransom demanded by the criminal.

The exact payout and terms will of course be defined in the policy document, also called the "fine print." Critically, fine print also contains exclusions, in other words circumstances under which the policy won't pay out. And therein lies the problem.

https://thehackernews.com/2022/06/do-you-have-ransomware-insurance-look.html

  • The Price of Stolen Info: Everything on Sale on The Dark Web

What is the price for personal information, including credit cards and bank accounts, on the dark web?

Privacy Affairs researchers concluded that criminals using the dark web need only spend $1,115 for a complete set of a person’s account details, enabling them to create fake IDs and forge private documents, such as passports and driver’s licenses.

Access to other information is becoming even cheaper. The Dark Web Price Index 2022 – based on data scanning dark web marketplaces, forums, and websites, revealed:

  • Credit card details and associated information cost between $17-$120

  • Online banking login information costs $45

  • Hacked Facebook accounts cost $45

  • Cloned VISA with PIN cost $20

  • Stolen PayPal account details, with minimum $1000 balances, cost $20.

In December 2021, about 4.5 million credit cards went up for sale on the dark web, the study found. The average price ranged from $1-$20.

Scammers can buy full credit card details, including CVV number, card number, associated dates, and even the email, physical address and phone number. This enables them to penetrate the credit card processing chain, overriding any security countermeasures.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/06/22/stolen-info-sale-dark-web/

  • How Companies Are Prioritising Infosec and Compliance

New research conducted by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), examines the impact of the compliance budget on security strategy and priorities. It describes areas for which companies prioritise information security and compliance, which leaders control information security spending, how compliance has shifted the overall security strategy of the organisation, and the solutions and tools on which organisations are focusing their technology spending.

The findings cover three critical areas of an organisation’s security and compliance posture: information security and IT audit and compliance, data security and data privacy, and security and compliance spending.

One key takeaway is that merging security and compliance priorities addresses regulatory control gaps while improving the organisation’s security posture. Respondents revealed insights on how they handle compliance, who is responsible for compliance and security responsibilities, and what compliance-related security challenges organisations face.

Additional findings:

  • Companies found the need to shift their information security strategy to address compliance priorities (93%).

  • Information security and IT compliance priorities are generally aligned (89%).

  • Existing security tools have to address data privacy considerations going forward (76%).

  • Managing an organisation’s multiple IT environments and the controls that govern those environments is the greatest challenge in the IT audit and compliance space (39%).

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/06/24/companies-infosec-compliance-priorities/

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

A US Government watchdog has warned that private insurance companies are increasingly backing out of covering damages from major cyber attacks — leaving businesses facing “catastrophic financial loss” unless another insurance model can be found.

The growing challenge of covering cyber risk is outlined in a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which calls for a government assessment of whether a federal cyber insurance option is needed.

The report draws on threat assessments from the National Security Agency (NSA), Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and Department of Justice, to quantify the risk of cyber attacks on critical infrastructure, identifying vulnerable technologies that might be attacked and a range of threat actors capable of exploiting them.

Citing an annual threat assessment released by the ODNI, the report finds that hacking groups linked to Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea pose the greatest threat to US infrastructure — along with certain non-state actors like organised cyber criminal gangs.

Given the wide and increasingly skilled range of actors willing to target US entities, the number of cyber incidents is rising at an alarming rate.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/23/23180115/gao-infrastructure-catastrophic-financial-loss-cyberattacks-insurance


Threats

Ransomware

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Other Social Engineering

Malware

Mobile

Internet of Things – IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Cloud/SaaS

Identity and Access Management

Open Source

Training, Education and Awareness

Privacy

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

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




Vulnerabilities

Sector Specific

Financial Services Sector

SMBs – Small and Medium Businesses

Legal

Health/Medical/Pharma Sector

Retail/eCommerce

Manufacturing

CNI, OT, ICS, IIoT and SCADA


Reports Published in the Last Week



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

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

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

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

Read More
Black Arrow Admin Black Arrow Admin

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 06 August 2021

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 06 August 2021:

-Ransomware Volumes Hit Record High

-Ransomware Gangs Recruiting Insiders To Breach Corporate Networks

-More Than 12,500 Vulnerabilities Disclosed In First Half Of 2021

-New DNS Vulnerability Allows 'Nation-State Level Spying' On Companies

-Constant Review Of Third Party Security Critical As Ransomware Threat Climbs

-Kaseya Ransomware Attack Sets Off Race To Hack Service Providers

-Joint UK/US Advisory Detailing Top 30 Vulnerabilities Include Plenty Of Usual Suspects

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


Top Cyber Stories of the Last Week

Ransomware Volumes Hit Record Highs As 2021 Wears On

Ransomware has seen a significant uptick so far in 2021, with global attack volume increasing by 151 percent for the first six months of the year as compared with the year-ago half. Meanwhile, the FBI has warned that there are now 100 different strains circulating around the world. From a hard-number perspective, the ransomware scourge hit a staggering 304.7 million attempted attacks. To put that in perspective, the firm logged 304.6 million ransomware attempts for the entirety of 2020.

https://threatpost.com/ransomware-volumes-record-highs-2021/168327/

Ransomware Gangs Recruiting Insiders To Breach Corporate Networks

The LockBit 2.0 ransomware gang is actively recruiting corporate insiders to help them breach and encrypt networks. In return, the insider is promised million-dollar payouts. Many ransomware gangs operate as a Ransomware-as-a-Service, which consists of a core group of developers, who maintain the ransomware and payment sites, and recruited affiliates who breach victims' networks and encrypt devices. Any ransom payments that victims make are then split between the core group and the affiliate, with the affiliate usually receiving 70-80% of the total amount. However, in many cases, the affiliates purchase access to networks from other third-party pentesters rather than breaching the company themselves. With LockBit 2.0, the ransomware gang is trying to remove the middleman and instead recruit insiders to provide them access to a corporate network.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/lockbit-ransomware-recruiting-insiders-to-breach-corporate-networks/

More Than 12,500 Vulnerabilities Disclosed In First Half Of 2021

Two new reports were released, covering data breaches and vulnerabilities in the first half of 2021, finding that there was a decline in the overall number of reported breaches but an increase in the number of vulnerabilities disclosed.  The company's data breach report found that there were 1,767 publicly reported breaches in the first six months of 2021, a 24% decline compared to the same period last year. The number of reported breaches grew in the US by 1.5% while 18.8 billion records were exposed year to date, a 32% decline compared to the 27.8 billion records leaked in the first half of 2020.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/more-than-12500-vulnerabilities-disclosed-in-first-half-of-2021-risk-based-security/

New DNS Vulnerability Allows 'Nation-State Level Spying' On Companies

Security researchers found a new class of DNS vulnerabilities impacting major DNS-as-a-Service (DNSaaS) providers that could allow attackers to access sensitive information from corporate networks.

DNSaaS providers (also known as managed DNS providers) provide DNS renting services to other organisations that do not want to manage and secure yet another network asset on their own.

These DNS flaws provide threat actors with nation-state intelligence harvesting capabilities with a simple domain registration.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-dns-vulnerability-allows-nation-state-level-spying-on-companies/

Constant Review Of Third Party Security Critical As Ransomware Threat Climbs

Enterprises typically would give their third-party suppliers "the keys to their castle" after carrying out the usual checks on the vendor's track history and systems, according to a New York-based Forrester analyst who focuses on security and risk. They believed they had done their due diligence before establishing a relationship with the supplier, but they failed to understand that they should be conducting reviews on a regular basis, especially with their critical systems suppliers. Third-party suppliers should have the ability to deal with irregular activities in their systems and the appropriate security architecture in place to prevent any downstream effects, he added.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/constant-review-of-third-party-security-critical-as-ransomware-threat-climbs/

Kaseya Ransomware Attack Sets Off Race To Hack Service Providers

A ransomware attack in July that paralyzed as many as 1,500 organisations by compromising tech-management software from a company called Kaseya has set off a race among criminals looking for similar vulnerabilities, cyber security experts said. An affiliate of a top Russian-speaking ransomware gang known as REvil used two gaping flaws in software from Florida-based Kaseya to break into about 50 managed services providers (MSPs) that used its products, investigators said. Now that criminals see how powerful MSP attacks can be, "they are already busy, they have already moved on and we don’t know where," said head of the non-profit Dutch Institute for Vulnerability Disclosure, which warned Kaseya of the weaknesses before the attack.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/kaseya-ransomware-attack-sets-off-race-hack-service-providers-researchers-2021-08-03/

‘It’s Quite Feasible To Start A War’: Just How Dangerous Are Ransomware Hackers?

Secretive gangs are hacking the computers of governments, firms, even hospitals, and demanding huge sums. But if we pay these ransoms, are we creating a ticking time bomb? They have the sort of names that only teenage boys or aspiring Bond villains would dream up (REvil, Grief, Wizard Spider, Ragnar), they base themselves in countries that do not cooperate with international law enforcement and they don’t care whether they attack a hospital or a multinational corporation. Ransomware gangs are suddenly everywhere, seemingly unstoppable – and very successful.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/aug/01/crypto-criminals-hack-the-computer-systems-of-governments-firms-even-hospitals

Joint UK/US Advisory Detailing Top 30 Vulnerabilities Include Plenty Of Usual Suspects

A joint advisory from law enforcement agencies in the US, UK, and Australia this week tallied the 30 most-frequently exploited vulnerabilities. Perhaps not surprisingly, the list includes a preponderance of flaws that were disclosed years ago; everything on the list has a patch available for whoever wants to install it. But as we've written about time and again, many companies are slow to push updates through for all kinds of reasons, whether it's a matter of resources, know-how, or an unwillingness to accommodate the downtime often necessary for a software refresh. Given how many of these vulnerabilities can cause remote code execution—you don't want this—hopefully they'll start to make patching more of a priority.

https://www.wired.com/story/top-vulnerabilities-russia-nso-group-iran-security-news/

Average Total Cost Of A Data Breach Increased By Nearly 10% Year Over Year

Based on in-depth analysis of real-world data breaches experienced by over 500 organisations, the global study suggests that security incidents became more costly and harder to contain due to drastic operational shifts during the pandemic, with costs rising 10% compared to the prior year. Businesses were forced to quickly adapt their technology approaches last year, with many companies encouraging or requiring employees to work from home, and 60% of organisations moving further into cloud-based activities during the pandemic. The new findings suggest that security may have lagged behind these rapid IT changes, hindering organizations’ ability to respond to data breaches.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2021/07/29/total-cost-data-breach/

65% Of All DDoS Attacks Target US And UK

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are common for cyber criminals who want to disrupt online-dependent businesses. According to the data analysed by a VPN team, 65% of all distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are directed at the US or UK. Computers and the internet industry are the favourite among cyber criminals. The United States was a target for 35% of all DDoS attacks in June 2021. Cyber criminals launched DDoS attacks against Amazon Web Services, Google, and other prominent US-based companies in the past. The United Kingdom comes second as it fell victim to 29% of all DDoS attacks. As the UK has many huge businesses, they often are targeted by hackers for valuable data or even a ransom. China was threatened by 18% of all DDoS attacks in June 2021. Assaults from and to China happen primarily due to political reasons, to interrupt some government agency.

https://www.pcr-online.biz/2021/08/05/65-of-all-ddos-attacks-target-us-and-uk/


Threats

Ransomware

Phishing

Other Social Engineering

Malware

Mobile

Vulnerabilities

Data Breaches

OT, ICS, IIoT and SCADA

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptojacking

Supply Chain

Nation State Actors

Cloud


Reports Published in the Last Week



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

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

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

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

Read More