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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 6 October 2023

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Intelligence Briefing 06 October 2023:

-Many Cyber Attacks Begin by Breaking Human Trust

-BYOD Should Stand for Bring Your Own Disaster, According to Microsoft Ransomware Data

-SME Cyber Security Knowledge Gap Widens

-UK Security Budgets Under Strain as Cyber Incidents Soar

-Cyber Leaders’ Confidence in Their Organisation’s Defences Plummets, But Costs Mount

-FBI Warns of Dual Ransomware as Data Destruction Dwell Times Hit Low of 24 Hours

-Tech-Savvy Young Workers Might Be the Biggest Cyber Liability to Your Business

-Half of Cyber Security Professionals Report Increase in Cyber Attacks, with 60% of Attacks Going Unreported

-Global Cyber Survey Finds 50% Rise in Cyber Insurance Premiums

-Evolving Conversations: Cyber Security as a Business Risk

-Threats in Cloud Top the List of Executive Cyber Concerns

-Over Half of Phishing Emails Now Use Obfuscation Tactics to Avoid Detection

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

Top Cyber Stories of the Last Week

Many Cyber Attacks Begin by Breaking Human Trust

One of the most visible cyber attacks in recent months has reminded us that we all play a role in security, and people remain a favourite route for attackers. In the recent attack on MGM Resorts, an employee unwittingly helped the attacker to access the organisation’s systems and information. The attack highlights the power of social engineering as an attack vector, and that any size of business can fall victim.

One of the ways organisations can help to protect themselves is to provide social engineering training to employees. This builds resilience by helping employees to understand, recognise and avoid becoming a victim, recognising that cyber security involves more than just technology.

Despite some improvements in awareness programs, organisations face hurdles including budget constraints, limited training time and understaffing. Training should be continuous and target major risk areas such as phishing, vishing and password management, while fostering a proactive security culture.

Black Arrow supports organisations of all sizes in designing and delivering proportionate user education and awareness programmes, including in-person and online training as well as simulated phishing campaigns. Our programmes ensure employee engagement and build a cyber security culture to protect the organisation.

Sources: [GovTech] [Bloomberg] [Security Week]

BYOD Should Stand for Bring Your Own Disaster, According to Microsoft Ransomware Data

Microsoft research says that 80-90 percent of ransomware attacks over the past year originated from unmanaged devices. Many organisations welcome a bring your own device (BYOD) policy, yet are not managing these devices effectively.

Without appropriate management of BYOD devices, organisations are allowing a number of unknown devices onto the corporate scene; these devices can be unpatched, unregulated and can lack adequate security measures, without the organisation even being aware.

Source: [The Register]

SME Cyber Security Knowledge Gap Widens

Recent findings underscore a growing concern: a significant cyber security knowledge gap among small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). The report found that 22% of employees are concerned their actions could contribute to a cyber attack or data breach. Alarmingly, more than three-quarters of senior executives are unable to identify cyber threats or distinguish phishing emails from legitimate ones.

Despite the clear risks, three out of four SMEs do not provide any form of cyber security training to their staff. This reveals a concerning disconnect: while the majority of business owners do not perceive their staff as potential cyber security risks, many employees themselves acknowledge that they could inadvertently cause such issues.

Adding to the concern, 60% of SMEs have no plans to increase their security budget in the coming year. Two-thirds of these businesses do not view cyber security as a priority. In fact, only one in five SMEs are even considering investing in cyber insurance. This widening knowledge gap in SME cyber security is indeed troubling and calls for immediate attention.

Sources: [Insurance Journal] [Dealer Support] [IT Security Guru]

UK Security Budgets Under Strain as Cyber Incidents Soar

A recent report found that UK businesses have suffered a 25% increase in cyber incidents in the last year, against a backdrop of budgetary constraints on implementing cyber security strategies. The report found that, despite spending more than £40,000 a year on cyber security protection, more than a quarter of organisations think their cyber security budget is inadequate to fully protect them from growing threats. This is as UK businesses have experienced, on average, 30 cyber incidents over the last 12 months, a 25% increase compared to last year.

The report identified that a lack of key skills remains one of the main concerns in tackling rising cyber threats. So much so that 30% of cyber staff admit to currently facing burnout. This pressure also means that less than half of companies are confident in their ability to handle the biggest threats facing organisations, including phishing (56%) and malware (55%).

Sources: [Silicon] [Verdict] [CSO Online]

Cyber Leaders’ Confidence in Their Organisation’s Defences Plummets, But Costs Mount

A recent EY survey of cyber security leaders reported that just 1 in 5 found their organisation’s approach to cyber defences to  effective and just 36% are satisfied with the levels of best practices by teams outside the IT department. The report also found that despite higher levels of spending, the organisation’s cyber security detection and response appeared slow; 76% of respondents took six months or longer to detect and respond to an incident.

Source: [EY]

FBI Warns of Dual Ransomware as Data Destruction Dwell Times Hit Low of 24 Hours

The FBI has flagged dual ransomware attacks, where attackers will attack a company twice within a few hours, as an emerging trend. This comes as an increasing number of ransomware actors are deploying their ransomware within 24 hours of initial access, and in 10% of cases, within just a few hours. Comparing this to last year, where the median time was four and a half days, organisations have significantly less time to enact their response, if they have one.

Sources: [Tech Monitor] [The Cord] [Information Security] [Beta News] [Cision] [The Record] [Malware Bytes]

Tech-Savvy Young Workers Might Be the Biggest Cyber Liability to Your Business

A new report from Ivanti into hidden threats finds that one in three employees believe their actions do not impact their organisation's security. The research shows that Millennial and Gen Z office workers are more likely to have unsafe cyber security habits when compared to Gen X and older (those above 40 years of age). The report also finds that men and leaders are more comfortable contacting a security employee with a question or concern, with leaders at an organisation the most likely to reach out with a question at 72%.

The report also highlighted that phishing scams were found to be greatly underreported by those aged 40 and under, with 23% saying that they did not report the last phishing attempt they received, the most the most likely reason for this being “I didn’t think it was important”. In contrast, of the older demographic only 12% failed to report. Cyber security has only recently become the leading concern among C-suites and executives; however, security leaders need to enable all employees to play defence against threat actors and proactively build an open and welcoming security culture.

Sources: [Techradar] [Beta News] [HelpNet Security]

Half of Cyber Security Professionals Report Increase in Cyber Attacks, with 60% of Attacks Going Unreported

Over half (52%) of cyber security professionals are experiencing an increase in cyber attacks compared to a year ago, according to new research. Further findings revealed that only 40% of organisations conducted a cyber risk assessment annually. By conducting risk assessments, organisations are able to identify their vulnerabilities and address them, before an attacker gets the chance to exploit them.

Further, in a recent survey conducted by ISACA, which collated insights from over 2,000 security leaders globally, a significant 62% of respondents say that organisations are under-reporting cyber crime incidents. The report also revealed 59% indicate their cyber security teams are undermanned, and the challenge of retaining skilled cyber security professionals remains, with 56% experiencing retention issues.

Sources: [MSSP Alert] [Security Brief] [InfoSecurity Magazine ]

Global Cyber Survey Finds 50% Rise in Cyber Insurance Premiums

According to a recent survey, budgets for cyber security have grown 70% in the last five years and whilst these have risen, so have cyber insurance premiums (50%), due to the increase in ransomware attacks.

Insurance firms have not been able to sustain losses they were incurring without passing on these costs to their customers. At the same time, obtaining cyber insurance is getting exponentially harder, with more and more stringent controls and measures being mandated by insurance companies before underwriting to minimise their exposure.

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: [Global Reinsurance]

Evolving Conversations: Cyber Security as a Business Risk

According to a report, only 53% of board members report having regular interactions with their cyber security experts, leaving nearly half without a strong and distinct Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) perspective in the decision making process.

By including CISOs or virtual CISOS (vCISOS) in board processes, the board can better understand the cyber implications of decisions, after all, you wouldn’t make a board-level financial decision without involving the CFO.

Source: [HelpNet Security]

Threats in Cloud Top the List of Executive Cyber Concerns

A recent report published by PwC has found that cloud-related threats are the top concern for organisations that have adopted the technology. These security concerns intensify for organisations with multiple clouds or hybrid infrastructures, with the report finding more than half of respondents citing cloud security as their most pressing concern.

The report highlighted that despite the focus on cloud security, nearly every organisation had risk management lapses. Nearly a third of respondents had yet to address disaster recovery and backup with their cloud service provider, and more than two in five pointed to in-house cloud skills gaps as a lingering risk factor.

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

Source: [CIO Dive]

Over Half of Phishing Emails Now Use Obfuscation Tactics to Avoid Detection

Recent research shows that hackers are increasingly using sophisticated tactics to get their phishing emails past companies’ cyber security defences. One key finding of the report is the percentage of phishing emails that use obfuscation techniques to avoid detection jumped by 24.4% in 2023. More than half of malicious emails, or 55.2%, now use such tactics. The report found that the most widely used obfuscation technique is HTML smuggling. This is the practice of hiding malicious raw code in a seemingly legitimate HTML page; the code only turns into malware after clearing the cyber security filtering.

The use of chatbots or large language models have lowered the barrier for entry to cyber crime, making it possible to create well-written phishing campaigns and generate malware that less capable coders could not produce alone. The reports found that tools designed to detect AI-generated phishing emails work unreliability or don’t work at all in 71.4% of cases.

Source: [Silicon Angle]

Governance, Risk and Compliance

Threats

Ransomware, Extortion and Destructive Attacks

Ransomware Victims

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Other Social Engineering; Smishing, Vishing, etc

Artificial Intelligence

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

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Impersonation Attacks

AML/CFT/Sanctions

Insurance

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Software Supply Chain

Cloud/SaaS

Hybrid/Remote Working

Encryption

API

Open Source

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Biometrics

Social Media

Malvertising

Training, Education and Awareness

Parental Controls and Child Safety

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Models, Frameworks and Standards

Careers, Working in Cyber and Information Security

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

Privacy, Surveillance and Mass Monitoring

Misinformation, Disinformation and Propaganda

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

Misc Nation State, Cyber Warfare and Cyber Espionage

Russia

China

Iran

North Korea

Vulnerability Management

Vulnerabilities

Sector Specific

Industry specific threat intelligence reports are available.

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

·         Automotive

·         Construction

·         Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)

·         Defence & Space

·         Education & Academia

·         Energy & Utilities

·         Estate Agencies

·         Financial Services

·         FinTech

·         Food & Agriculture

·         Gaming & Gambling

·         Government & Public Sector (including Law Enforcement)

·         Health/Medical/Pharma

·         Hotels & Hospitality

·         Insurance

·         Legal

·         Manufacturing

·         Maritime

·         Oil, Gas & Mining

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

·         Retail & eCommerce

·         Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)

·         Startups

·         Telecoms

·         Third Sector & Charities

·         Transport & Aviation

·         Web3

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

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

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

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

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Black Arrow Admin Black Arrow Admin

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 13 August 2021

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 13 August 2021:

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

-440% Increase In Phishing

-Users Can Be Just As Dangerous As Hackers

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

-Move To Cloud Creating Security Blindspots

-Connected Devices Increasingly At Risk Of Ransomware Attacks

-Ransomware Payments Explode Amid ‘Quadruple Extortion’

-Accenture Hit With $50M Ransomware

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

Threats

Ransomware

Phishing

Other Social Engineering

Malware

Mobile

IOT

Vulnerabilities

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Dark Web

Supply Chain

DoS/DDoS

Nation State Actors

Cloud

Privacy

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

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

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

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

Read More