Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 06 January 2023

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

Top Cyber Stories of the Last Week

• Cyber War in Ukraine, Ransomware Fears Drive 2022 Surge in Demand for Threat Intelligence Tools

Amid the heightened fear of ransomware in 2022, threat intelligence emerged as a core requirement of doing business in a world gone mad.

A sizable amount of interest in the historically tech-centric discipline was fuelled in part by fear of cyber attacks tied to the war between Russia and Ukraine. In one example, the Ukrainian government warned the world that the Russian military was planning for multi-pronged attacks targeting the energy sector. Other nation-state cyber attack operations also contributed to the demand, including one June 2022 incident were Iran’s Cobalt Mirage exploited PowerShell vulnerabilities to launch ransomware attacks.

And of course, headlines of data breaches tied to vulnerabilities that organisations did not even know existed within their networks caught the attention not just of security teams, but the C-Suite and corporate board. A misconfigured Microsoft server, for example, wound up exposing years of sensitive data for tens of thousands of its customers, including personally identifiable information, user data, product and project details and intellectual property.

Indeed, according to 183 security pros surveyed by CyberRisk Alliance Business Intelligence in June 2022, threat intelligence has become critical in arming their security operations centres (SOCs) and incident response teams with operational data to help them make timely, informed decisions to prevent system downtime, thwart the theft of confidential data, and protect intellectual property.

Threat intelligence has emerged as a useful tool for educating executives. Many also credited threat intelligence for helping them protect their company and customer data — and potentially saving their organisation's reputation.

https://www.scmagazine.com/resource/threat-intelligence/2022-year-in-review-threat-intelligence-tools

• Cyber Premiums Holding Firms to Ransom

Soaring premiums for cyber security insurance are leaving businesses struggling to pay other bills, a key industry player has warned.

Mactavish, which buys insurance policies on behalf of companies, said that more than half of big businesses that had bought cyber security insurance had been forced to make cuts elsewhere to pay for it.

In a survey of 200 companies with a turnover above £10 million, Mactavish found that businesses were reducing office costs and staff bonuses and were cutting other types of insurance to meet the higher payments.

Last month Marsh, an insurance broker, revealed that costs for cyber insurance had increased by an average of 66 per cent in the third quarter compared with last year.

Meanwhile, the risk to businesses from hackers continues to rise. A government report on digital threats, published this month, showed the proportion of businesses experiencing cyber security incidents at least monthly had increased from 53 per cent to 60 per cent in the past year. Uber, Cisco and InterContinental Hotels Group were among high-profile targets this year.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cyber-safety-premiums-hold-firms-to-ransom-tnrsz3vs2

• Ransomware Ecosystem Becoming More Diverse for 2023

The ransomware ecosystem has changed significantly in 2022, with attackers shifting from large groups that dominated the landscape toward smaller ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operations in search of more flexibility and drawing less attention from law enforcement. This democratisation of ransomware is bad news for organisations because it also brought in a diversification of tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), more indicators of compromise (IOCs) to track, and potentially more hurdles to jump through when trying to negotiate or pay ransoms.

Since 2019 the ransomware landscape has been dominated by big and professionalised ransomware operations that constantly made the news headlines and even looked for media attention to gain legitimacy with potential victims. We've seen ransomware groups with spokespeople who offered interviews to journalists or issued "press releases" on Twitter and their data leak websites in response to big breaches.

The DarkSide attack against Colonial Pipeline that led to a major fuel supply disruption along the US East Coast in 2021 highlighted the risk that ransomware attacks can have against critical infrastructure and led to increased efforts to combat this threat at the highest levels of government. This heightened attention from law enforcement made the owners of underground cyber crime forums reconsider their relationship with ransomware groups, with some forums banning the advertising of such threats. DarkSide ceased operations soon thereafter and was followed later in the year by REvil, also known as Sodinokibi, whose creators were indicted and one was even arrested. REvil was one of the most successful ransomware groups since 2019.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 quickly put a strain on the relationship between many ransomware groups who had members and affiliates in both Russia and Ukraine, or other former USSR countries. Some groups, such as Conti, rushed to take sides in the war, threatening to attack Western infrastructure in support of Russia. This was a departure from the usual business-like apolitical approach in which ransomware gangs had run their operations and drew criticism from other competing groups.

This was also followed by a leak of internal communications that exposed many of Conti's operational secrets and caused uneasiness with its affiliates. Following a major attack against the Costa Rican government the US State Department put up a reward of $10 million for information related to the identity or location of Conti's leaders, which likely contributed to the group's decision to shut down operations in May.

Conti's disappearance led to a drop in ransomware activity for a couple of months, but it didn't last long as the void was quickly filled by other groups, some of them newly set up and suspected to be the creation of former members of Conti, REvil and other groups that ceased operations over the past two years.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3684248/ransomware-ecosystem-becoming-more-diverse-for-2023.html#tk.rss_news

• Attackers Evolve Strategies to Outmanoeuvre Security Teams

Attackers are expected to broaden their targeting strategy beyond regulated verticals such as financial services and healthcare. Large corporations (41%) will be the top targeted sector for cyber attacks in 2023, favoured over financial institutions (36%), government (14%), healthcare (9%), and education (8%), according to cyber security solution provider Titaniam.

The fast pace of change has introduced new vulnerabilities into corporate networks, making them an increasingly attractive target for cyber attackers. To compete in the digital marketplace, large companies are adopting more cloud services, aggregating data, pushing code into production faster, and connecting applications and systems via APIs.

As a result, misconfigured services, unprotected databases, little-tested applications, and unknown and unsecured APIs abound, all of which can be exploited by attackers.

The top four threats in 2022 were malware (30%), ransomware and extortion (27%), insider threats (26%), and phishing (17%).

The study found that enterprises expected malware (40%) to be their biggest challenge in 2023, followed by insider threats (26%), ransomware and related extortion (21%), and phishing (16%).

Malware, however, has more enterprises worried for 2023 than it did for 2022. It is important to note that these threats can overlap, where insiders can have a hand in ransomware attacks, phishing can be a source of malware, etc.

Attackers are evolving their strategies to surprise and outmanoeuvre security teams, which have hardened ransomware defences and improved phishing detection. They’re using new malware, such as loaders, infostealers, and wipers to accelerate attacks, steal sensitive data and create mayhem.

They’re also buying and stealing employee credentials to walk in through the front door of corporate networks.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/01/04/attackers-evolve-strategies-outmaneuver-security-teams/

• Building a Security-First Culture: The Key to Cyber Success

Everyone has heard a car alarm go off in the middle of the night, but how often does that notification actually lead to action? Most people will hear the alarm, glance in its direction and then hope the owner will quickly remedy the situation.

Cars alarms often fail because they go off too often, leading to apathy and annoyance instead of being a cause for emergency. For many, cyber security has also become this way. While we see an increase in the noise surrounding the need for organisations to improve the security skillset and knowledge base of employees, there continues to be little proactive action on this front. Most organisations only provide employees with elementary-grade security training, often during their initial onboarding process or as part of a standard training requirement.

At the same time, many organisations also make the grave mistake of leaving all of their security responsibilities and obligations in the hands of IT and security teams. Time and time again, this approach has proven to be highly ineffective, especially as cyber criminals refine their social engineering tactics and target user accounts to execute their attacks.

Alarmingly, recent research found that 30% of employees do not think that they play a role in maintaining their company’s cyber security posture. The same report also revealed that only 39% of employees say they are likely to report a security incident.

As traditional boundaries of access disintegrate and more employees obtain permissions to sensitive company data and systems to carry out their tasks, business leaders must change the mindset of their employees when it comes to the role they play in keeping the organisation safe from cyber crime. The key is developing an integrated cyber security strategy that incorporates all aspects—including all stakeholders—of the organisation. This should be a strategy that breaks down departmental barriers and creates a culture of security responsibility where every team member plays a part.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2023/01/03/building-a-security-first-culture-the-key-to-cyber-success/

• Adobe, Apple, Cisco, Microsoft Flaws Make Up Half of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalogue

Back in November 2021, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalogue to help federal agencies and critical infrastructure organisations identify and remediate vulnerabilities that are actively being exploited. CISA added 548 new vulnerabilities to the catalogue across 58 updates from January to end of November 2022, according to cyber security solution provider Grey Noise in its first-ever "GreyNoise Mass Exploits Report."

Including the approximately 300 vulnerabilities added in November and December 2021, CISA listed approximately 850 vulnerabilities in the first year of the catalogue's existence.

Actively exploited vulnerabilities in Microsoft, Adobe, Cisco, and Apple products accounted for over half of the updates to the KEV catalogue in 2022, Grey Noise found. Seventy-seven percent of the updates to the KEV catalogue were older vulnerabilities dating back to before 2022. Many of these vulnerabilities have been around for two decades.

Several of the vulnerabilities in the KEV catalogue are from products that have already entered end-of-life (EOL) and end-of-service-life (EOSL), according to an analysis by a team from cyber security solution provider Cyber Security Works. Even though Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 are EOSL products, the KEV catalogue lists 127 Server 2008 vulnerabilities and 117 Windows 7 vulnerabilities.

Even though the catalogue was originally intended for critical infrastructure and public-sector organisations, it has become the authoritative source on which vulnerabilities are – or have been – exploited by attackers. This is key because the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) assigned Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) identifiers for over 12,000 vulnerabilities in 2022, and it would be unwieldy for enterprise defenders to assess every single one to identify the ones relevant to their environments. Enterprise teams can use the catalogue's curated list of CVEs under active attack to create their priority lists.

https://www.darkreading.com/edge-threat-monitor/adobe-apple-cisco-microsoft-flaws-make-up-half-of-kev-catalog

• First LastPass, Now Slack and CircleCI. The Hacks Go On (and will likely worsen)

In the past week, the world has learned of serious breaches hitting chat service Slack and software testing and delivery company CircleCI, though giving the companies' opaque wording—“security issue” and “security incident,” respectively—you'd be forgiven for thinking these events were minor.

The compromises—in Slack’s case, the theft of employee token credentials and for CircleCI, the possible exposure of all customer secrets it stores—come two weeks after password manager LastPass disclosed its own security failure: the theft of customers’ password vaults containing sensitive data in both encrypted and clear text form. It’s not clear if all three breaches are related, but that’s certainly a possibility.

The most concerning of the two new breaches is the one hitting CircleCI. The company reported a “security incident” that prompted it to advise customers to rotate “all secrets” they store on the service. The alert also informed customers that it had invalidated their Project API tokens, an event requiring them to go through the hassle of replacing them.

CircleCI says it’s used by more than 1 million developers in support of 30,000 organisations and runs nearly 1 million daily jobs. The potential exposure of all those secrets—which could be login credentials, access tokens, and who knows what else—could prove disastrous for the security of the entire Internet.

It’s possible that some or all of these breaches are related. The Internet relies on a massive ecosystem of content delivery networks, authentication services, software development tool makers, and other companies. Threat actors frequently hack one company and use the data or access they obtain to breach that company's customers or partners. That was the case with the August breach of security provider Twilio. The same threat actor targeted 136 other companies. Something similar played out in the last days of 2020 when hackers compromised Solar Winds, gained control of its software build system, and used it to infect roughly 40 Solar Winds customers.

For now, people should brace themselves for additional disclosures from companies they rely on. Checking internal system logs for suspicious entries, turning on multifactor authentication, and patching network systems are always good ideas, but given the current events, those precautions should be expedited. It’s also worth checking logs for any contact with the IP address 54.145.167.181, which one security practitioner said was connected to the CircleCI breach.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/01/first-lastpass-now-slack-and-circleci-the-hacks-go-on-and-will-likely-worsen/

• Data of 235 Million Twitter Users Leaked Online

A data leak containing email addresses for 235 million Twitter users has been published on a popular hacker forum. Many experts have immediately analysed it and confirmed the authenticity of many of the entries in the huge leaked archive.

In January 2022, a report claimed the discovery of a vulnerability that can be exploited by an attacker to find a Twitter account by the associated phone number/email, even if the user has opted to prevent this in the privacy options. The vulnerability was exploited by multiple threat actors to scrape Twitter user profiles containing both private (phone numbers and email addresses) and public data, and was present within the social media platforms application programming interface (API) from June 2021 until January 2022.

At the end of July 2022, a threat actor leaked data of 5.4 million Twitter accounts that were obtained by exploiting the forementioned, now-fixed vulnerability in the popular social media platform. The scraped data was then put up for sale on various online cyber crime marketplaces. In August, Twitter confirmed that the data breach was caused by a now-patched zero-day flaw.

In December another Twitter data leak made the headlines, a threat actor obtained data of 400,000,000 Twitter users and attempted to sell it. The seller claimed the database is private, and he provided a sample of 1,000 accounts as proof of claims which included the private information of prominent users such as Donald Trump JR, Brian Krebs, and many more. The seller, who is a member of a popular data breach forum, claimed the data was scraped via a vulnerability. The database includes emails and phone numbers of celebrities, politicians, companies, normal users, and a lot of special usernames.

https://securityaffairs.com/140352/data-breach/twitter-data-leak-235m-users.html

• 16 Car Makers, including BMW, Ferrari, Ford, Honda, Kia, Land Rover, Mercedes and Toyota, and Their Vehicles Hacked via Telematics, APIs, and Infrastructure

A group of seven security researchers have discovered numerous vulnerabilities in vehicles from 16 car makers, including bugs that allowed them to control car functions and start or stop the engine.

Multiple other security defects, the researchers say, allowed them to access a car maker’s internal applications and systems, leading to the exposure of personally identifiable information (PII) belonging to customers and employees, and account takeover, among others. The hacks targeted telematic systems, automotive APIs, and infrastructure.

Impacted car models include Acura, BMW, Ferrari, Ford, Genesis, Honda, Hyundai, Infiniti, Jaguar, Kia, Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Porsche, Rolls Royce, and Toyota. The vulnerabilities were identified over the course of 2022. Car manufacturers were informed about the security holes and they released patches.

According to the researchers, they were able to send commands to Acura, Genesis, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Infiniti, Nissan, and Porsche vehicles.

Using only the VIN (vehicle identification number), which is typically visible on the windshield, the researchers were able to start/stop the engine, remotely lock/unlock the vehicle, flash headlights, honk vehicles, and retrieve the precise location of Acura, Honda, Kia, Infiniti, and Nissan cars.

They could also lock users out of remote vehicle management and could change car ownership.

https://www.securityweek.com/16-car-makers-and-their-vehicles-hacked-telematics-apis-infrastructure

• Ransomware Gang Apologises, and Gives SickKids Hospital Free Decrypter

The LockBit ransomware gang has released a free decrypter for the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), saying one of its members violated rules by attacking the healthcare organisation. SickKids is a teaching and research hospital in Toronto that focuses on providing healthcare to sick children.

On December 18th, the hospital suffered a ransomware attack that impacted internal and corporate systems, hospital phone lines, and the website. While the attack only encrypted a few systems, SickKids stated that the incident caused delays in receiving lab and imaging results and resulted in longer patient wait times.

On December 29th, SickKids announced that it had restored 50% of its priority systems, including those causing diagnostic or treatment delays. Two days after SickKids' latest announcement, the LockBit ransomware gang apologised for the attack on the hospital and released a decrypter for free.

“We formally apologise for the attack on sikkids.ca and give back the decrypter for free, the partner who attacked this hospital violated our rules, is blocked and is no longer in our affiliate programme," stated the ransomware gang.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ransomware-gang-apologizes-gives-sickkids-hospital-free-decryptor/

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Threats

Ransomware, Extortion and Destructive Attacks

• Rackspace: Ransomware Attack Bypassed ProxyNotShell Mitigations (darkreading.com)

• Hackers Leverage Compromised Fortinet Devices to Distribute Ransomware - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

• Rackspace: Customer email data accessed in ransomware attack (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Ransomware gang cloned victim’s website to leak stolen data (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Rackspace identifies hacking group responsible for early December ransomware attack | TPR

• Ransomware ecosystem becoming more diverse for 2023 | CSO Online

• Lockbit apologized for the attack on SickKids pediatric hospital and releases a free decryptor - Security Affairs

• The FBI's Perspective on Ransomware (thehackernews.com)

• Rackspace Sunsets Email Service Downed in Ransomware Attack (darkreading.com)

• Ransomware: The security debt collector - Help Net Security

• December ransomware disclosures reveal high-profile victims | TechTarget

• The Guardian ransomware attack hits week two as staff WFH • The Register

• Unraveling the techniques of Mac ransomware - Microsoft Security Blog

• Bitdefender releases free MegaCortex ransomware decryptor (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Ransomware Research: More than 200 US Infrastructure Organisations Attacked in 2022 - MSSP Alert

• Ransomware impacts over 200 govt, edu, healthcare orgs in 2022 (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Guardian ransomware attack: Staff told work from home to 23 Jan (pressgazette.co.uk)

• Rail giant Wabtec discloses data breach after Lockbit ransomware attack (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Hackers target Arnold Clark in Christmas Eve cyber attack as bosses insist customer information is safe – Car Dealer Magazine

• Christmas Eve 'cyber attack' forced Arnold Clark's network down | STV News

• Royal ransomware claims attack on Queensland University of Technology (bleepingcomputer.com)

• LockBit: Sorry for SickKids, but not housing authority • The Register

• New Survey: 1 In 4 Schools Were Victims Of Cyber Attacks In the Last Year; Administrators To Increase Spending On Privacy and Security (darkreading.com)

• Canadian mining firm shuts down mill after ransomware attack (bleepingcomputer.com)

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

• Data of 235 million Twitter users leaked online - Security Affairs

• Is NHS The Most Impersonated UK Government "Brand"? (informationsecuritybuzz.com)

• The Evolving Tactics of Vidar Stealer: From Phishing Emails to Social Media (thehackernews.com)

• New Phishing Campaign Targets Cyber security Professionals Using Hacking Tool Flipper Zero - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

• Ongoing Flipper Zero phishing attacks target infosec community (bleepingcomputer.com)

Other Social Engineering; Smishing, Vishing, etc

• Ukrainian Cops Bust Prolific Fraud Call Centre - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

• Inside a scammers’ lair: Ukraine busts 40 in fake bank call-centre raid – Naked Security (sophos.com)

Malware

• Raspberry Robin Worm Evolves to Attack Financial and Insurance Sectors in Europe (thehackernews.com)

• Hackers abuse Windows error reporting tool to deploy malware (bleepingcomputer.com)

• New SHC-compiled Linux malware installs cryptominers, DDoS bots (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Bluebottle hackers used signed Windows driver in attacks on banks (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Dridex Returns, Targets MacOS Using New Entry Method (trendmicro.com)

• New Linux malware uses 30 plugin exploits to backdoor WordPress sites (bleepingcomputer.com)

• PyTorch discloses malicious dependency chain compromise over holidays (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Hackers Using Stolen Bank Information to Trick Victims into Downloading BitRAT Malware (thehackernews.com)

• WordPress Sites Under Attack from Newly Found Linux Trojan (darkreading.com)

• Blind Eagle Hackers Return with Refined Tools and Sophisticated Infection Chain (thehackernews.com)

• Raspberry Robin Worm Hatches a Highly Complex Upgrade (darkreading.com)

• The Evolving Tactics of Vidar Stealer: From Phishing Emails to Social Media (thehackernews.com)

Denial of Service/DoS/DDOS

• War and Geopolitical Conflict: The New Battleground for DDoS Attacks (darkreading.com)

Internet of Things – IoT

• Ongoing Flipper Zero phishing attacks target infosec community (bleepingcomputer.com)

Data Breaches/Leaks

• Data of over 200 million Deezer users stolen, leaks on hacking forum • Graham Cluley

• Five Guys Data Breach Puts HR Data Under a Heat Lamp (darkreading.com)

• Analysis Of Top 10 Countries Mostly Targeted By Data Breaches (informationsecuritybuzz.com)

• Twitter said to have suffered data breach as hackers expose 235 million users' information (thenationalnews.com)

• I bought a $15 router at Goodwill — and found a millionaire's dirty secrets (nypost.com)

• Critical flaws found in Ferrari, BMW, Porsche, and other carmakers - Security Affairs

• Toyota, Mercedes, BMW API flaws exposed owners’ personal info (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Threat actors stole Slack private source code repositories - Security Affairs

• Data of over 200 million Deezer users stolen, leaks on hacking forum • Graham Cluley

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

• Threat Actors Evade Detection Through Geofencing & Fingerprinting (darkreading.com)

• A sneak peek into the dark web dealings | Nation

• Attackers create 130K fake accounts to abuse limited-time cloud computing resources | CSO Online

• Cyber criminals we lost to law in 2022

• Inside a scammers’ lair: Ukraine busts 40 in fake bank call-centre raid – Naked Security (sophos.com)

• Ukrainian Cops Bust Prolific Fraud Call Centre - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

• New SHC-compiled Linux malware installs cryptominers, DDoS bots (bleepingcomputer.com)

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

• Software engineer busted after being inspired by Office Space scam | PC Gamer

• Are Meta and Twitter Ushering in a New Age of Insider Threats? (darkreading.com)

• Ex-GE engineer sentenced for stealing turbine tech for China • The Register

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

• Avast: Expect Cyber crime "Scamdemic" to Continue in 2023 - MSSP Alert

• Software engineer busted after being inspired by Office Space scam | PC Gamer

• US regulators warn banks over cryptocurrency risks - BBC News

• What Is a Pig Butchering Scam? | WIRED

• RedZei Chinese Scammers Targeting Chinese Students in the UK (thehackernews.com)

• Inside a scammers’ lair: Ukraine busts 40 in fake bank call-centre raid – Naked Security (sophos.com)

• Ukrainian Cops Bust Prolific Fraud Call Centre - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

Impersonation Attacks

• Is NHS The Most Impersonated UK Government "Brand"? (informationsecuritybuzz.com)

AML/CFT/Sanctions

• Iran's Revolutionary Guards set to be labelled as terrorist group by UK - BBC News

Insurance

• Cyber safety premiums holding firms to ransom | Business | The Times

• How can businesses decrease cyber insurance premiums while maintaining coverage? - Help Net Security

Dark Web

• A sneak peek into the dark web dealings | Nation

Supply Chain and Third Parties

• First LastPass, now Slack and CircleCI. The hacks go on (and will likely worsen) | Ars Technica

Software Supply Chain

• There is no secure software supply-chain. - by John McBride (substack.com)

Cloud/SaaS

• Attackers create 130K fake accounts to abuse limited-time cloud computing resources | CSO Online

Encryption

• Encryption Faces an Existential Threat in Europe | WIRED

• 2023 Will See Renewed Focus on Quantum Computing (darkreading.com)

• Chinese researchers claim to find way to break encryption using quantum computers | Financial Times (ft.com)

API

• API Security Is the New Black (darkreading.com)

• Car companies massively exposed to web vulnerabilities | The Daily Swig (portswigger.net)

• 16 Car Makers and Their Vehicles Hacked via Telematics, APIs, Infrastructure | SecurityWeek.Com

• What Are Some Ways to Make APIs More Secure? (darkreading.com)

• Critical flaws found in Ferrari, BMW, Porsche, and other carmakers - Security Affairs

Open Source

• New SHC-compiled Linux malware installs cryptominers, DDoS bots (bleepingcomputer.com)

• New Linux malware uses 30 plugin exploits to backdoor WordPress sites (bleepingcomputer.com)

Social Media

• Data of 235 million Twitter users leaked online - Security Affairs

• Twitter said to have suffered data breach as hackers expose 235 million users' information (thenationalnews.com)

• The Evolving Tactics of Vidar Stealer: From Phishing Emails to Social Media (thehackernews.com)

• Are Meta and Twitter Ushering in a New Age of Insider Threats? (darkreading.com)

• Meta fined €390m over use of data for targeted ads - BBC News

• More Political Storms for TikTok After US Government Ban | SecurityWeek.Com

Parental Controls and Child Safety

• Cops Catch Serial Child Abuser After Tech Breakthrough - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

• Meta fined €390m over use of data for targeted ads - BBC News

• Google will pay $29.5M to settle two lawsuits over its location tracking practices - Security Affairs

Governance, Risk and Compliance

• Cyber safety premiums holding firms to ransom | Business | The Times

• Cyber war in Ukraine, ransomware fears drive 2022 surge in demand for threat intelligence tools | SC Media (scmagazine.com)

• Attackers never let a critical vulnerability go to waste - Help Net Security

• Attackers evolve strategies to outmanoeuvre security teams - Help Net Security

• How to start planning for disaster recovery - Help Net Security

• Building A Security-First Culture: The Key To Cyber Success (forbes.com)

• Data backup is no longer just about operational fallback - Help Net Security

• Threat Actors Evade Detection Through Geofencing & Fingerprinting (darkreading.com)

• How can businesses decrease cyber insurance premiums while maintaining coverage? - Help Net Security

Secure Disposal

• I bought a $15 router at Goodwill — and found a millionaire's dirty secrets (nypost.com)

Backup and Recovery

• Data backup is no longer just about operational fallback - Help Net Security

Data Protection

• Getting data loss prevention right - Help Net Security

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

• Cyber criminals we lost to law in 2022

• Cops Catch Serial Child Abuser After Tech Breakthrough - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

• Inside a scammers’ lair: Ukraine busts 40 in fake bank call-centre raid – Naked Security (sophos.com)

• Ukrainian Cops Bust Prolific Fraud Call centre - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

Privacy, Surveillance and Mass Monitoring

• National security fears over police using Chinese tech | News | The Times

• Meta fined €390m over use of data for targeted ads - BBC News

• Google will pay $29.5M to settle two lawsuits over its location tracking practices - Security Affairs

Artificial Intelligence

• ChatGPT: An Easy Cyber crime Target For Cyber attacks (informationsecuritybuzz.com)

• OpenAI's ChatGPT previews how AI can help hackers breach more networks (axios.com)

• How hackers might be exploiting ChatGPT - Security Affairs

• NATO tests AI’s ability to protect critical infrastructure against cyber attacks | CSO Online

Misinformation, Disinformation and Propaganda

• It's time to focus on information warfare's hard questions (cyberscoop.com)

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

• War and Geopolitical Conflict: The New Battleground for DDoS Attacks (darkreading.com)

• Cyber attacks against governments jumped 95% in last half of 2022, CloudSek says | CSO Online

• It's time to focus on information warfare's hard questions (cyberscoop.com)

• National security fears over police using Chinese tech | News | The Times

• Ex-GE engineer sentenced for stealing turbine tech for China • The Register

• Pro-Russia cyber attacks aim at destabilizing Poland - Security Affairs

• Poland warns of attacks by Russia-linked Ghostwriter hacking group (bleepingcomputer.com)

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Nation State Actors

Nation State Actors – Russia

• Russia Cyber attacks, China Covid Are Overlooked 2023 Threats - Bloomberg

Nation State Actors – China

• National security fears over police using Chinese tech | News | The Times

• Ex-GE engineer sentenced for stealing turbine tech for China • The Register

Nation State Actors – Iran

• Iran's Revolutionary Guards set to be labelled as terrorist group by UK - BBC News

Nation State Actors – Misc

• Blind Eagle Hackers Return with Refined Tools and Sophisticated Infection Chain (thehackernews.com)

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Vulnerability Management

• Adobe, Apple, Cisco, Microsoft Flaws Make Up Half of KEV Catalog (darkreading.com)

• Attackers never let a critical vulnerability go to waste - Help Net Security

Vulnerabilities

• Over 60,000 Exchange servers vulnerable to ProxyNotShell attacks (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Adobe, Apple, Cisco, Microsoft Flaws Make Up Half of KEV Catalog (darkreading.com)

• Rackspace: Ransomware Attack Bypassed ProxyNotShell Mitigations (darkreading.com)

• Zoho urges admins to patch severe ManageEngine bug immediately (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Android's First Security Updates for 2023 Patch 60 Vulnerabilities | SecurityWeek.Com

• Fortinet and Zoho Urge Customers to Patch Enterprise Software Vulnerabilities (thehackernews.com)

• Qualcomm, Lenovo flag multiple high impact firmware vulnerabilities | SC Media (scmagazine.com)

• Netgear Wi-Fi routers need to be patched immediately | TechRadar

• Synology Releases Patch for Critical RCE Vulnerability Affecting VPN Plus Servers (thehackernews.com)

• Fortinet Releases Security Updates for FortiADC | CISA

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Tools and Controls

• How Confidential Computing Can Change Cyber security (darkreading.com)

• Data backup is no longer just about operational fallback - Help Net Security

• Getting data loss prevention right - Help Net Security

• Things to know and do before you switch from VPN to ZTNA - Help Net Security

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Other News

• The cyber security industry will undergo significant changes in 2023 - Help Net Security

• SecurityAffairs Top 10 cybersecurity posts of 2022 - Security Affairs

• BleepingComputer's most popular cybersecurity stories of 2022

• WordPress Security: 22 Ways To Protect Your Website (informationsecuritybuzz.com)

• Cyber attacks against governments jumped 95% in last half of 2022, CloudSek says | CSO Online

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Sector Specific

Industry specific threat intelligence reports are available.

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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 01 July 2022

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

Top Cyber Stories of the Last Week

• 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

• Ransomware market evolution results in fewer variants, but rise in off-the-shelf cyber crime kits continues | The Daily Swig (portswigger.net)

• Record-Breaking Year for Ransomware Attacks, WatchGuard Research Predicts - MSSP Alert

• Cyber Security Experts Warn of Emerging Threat of "Black Basta" Ransomware (thehackernews.com)

• 5 years after NotPetya: Lessons learned | CSO Online

• AstraLocker 2.0 infects users directly from Word attachments (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Mitel VoIP Bug Exploited in Ransomware Attacks | Threatpost

• Black Basta Ransomware Gang Attacks 50 Companies, Cybereason Reports - MSSP Alert

• How Dangerous Is BlackBasta Ransomware? (informationsecuritybuzz.com)

• LockBit 3.0 Debuts With Ransomware Bug Bounty Program (darkreading.com)

• Black Basta Ransomware Operators Expand Their Attack Arsenal With QakBot Trojan and PrintNightmare Exploit (trendmicro.com)

• Son of Conti: Ransomware tries its hand at politics - The Record by Recorded Future

• Kaseya Ransomware - Cyber Leader’s Thoughts & Learnings One Year Later (informationsecuritybuzz.com)

• Are Protection Payments the Future of Ransomware? (tripwire.com)

• Conti vs. LockBit: A Comparative Analysis of Ransomware Groups (trendmicro.com)

• This new malware is at the heart of the ransomware ecosystem | ZDNet

• Macmillan Publishing shuts down systems after likely ransomware attack (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Walmart denies being hit by Yanluowang ransomware attack (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Fake copyright infringement emails install LockBit ransomware (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Cisco Talos techniques uncover ransomware sites on dark web (techtarget.com)

• RansomHouse gang claims to have some stolen AMD data • The Register

• 'Prolific' NetWalker extortionist pleads guilty • The Register

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

• Google Warns About Hacker-for-Hire Services Trying to Phish Users (pcmag.com)

• Clever phishing method bypasses MFA using Microsoft WebView2 apps (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Cyber Attacks via Unpatched Systems Cost Orgs More Than Phishing (darkreading.com)

• How phishing attacks are becoming more sophisticated - Help Net Security

• How Evilnum Cyber Attacks Target Microsoft Office Files - MSSP Alert

• New Matanbuchus Campaign drops Cobalt Strike beacons - Security Affairs

• Kaspersky Reveals Phishing Emails That Employees Find Most Confusing (darkreading.com)

• Ukraine arrests cyber crime gang operating over 400 phishing sites (bleepingcomputer.com)

Malware

• Microsoft finds Raspberry Robin worm in hundreds of Windows networks (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Microsoft Exchange servers worldwide backdoored with new malware (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Microsoft warning: This malware that targets Linux just got a big update | ZDNet

• ZuoRAT Hijacks SOHO Routers From Cisco, Netgear (darkreading.com)

• XFiles info-stealing malware adds support for Follina delivery (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Raccoon Stealer is back with a new version to steal your passwords (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Minors Use Discord Servers To Earn Extra Pocket Money Through Spreading Malware (informationsecuritybuzz.com)

• PyPi python packages caught sending stolen AWS keys to unsecured sites (bleepingcomputer.com)

Mobile

• Android Spyware 'Revive' Upgraded to Banking Trojan - Infosecurity Magazine

• Google warns Hermit spyware is infecting phones. What is it and how do you protect yourself from it? | Mashable

• Phone Hackers: 9 Ways To Tell If You Have Fallen Victim (informationsecuritybuzz.com)

• Apple revokes certificates for Hermit spyware app - 9to5Mac

• Google Warns of New Spyware Targeting iOS and Android Users - IT Security Guru

Internet of Things – IoT

• Swarm of malfunctioning driverless taxis brings traffic to a halt for hours (telegraph.co.uk)

Data Breaches/Leaks

• Millions of free VPN user records leaked | TechRadar

• Leaky Access Tokens Exposed Amazon Photos of Users | Threatpost

• California gun dashboards expose 10 years of personal data • The Register

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

• The strange business of cyber crime | CSO Online

• Russia-China cyber criminal collaboration could “destabilize” international order | CSO Online

• Canadian admits to hacking spree with Russian cyber-gang - BBC News

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

• Pentagon finds concerning vulnerabilities on blockchain | TechRepublic

• Threat actors sell access to tens of vulnerable networks compromised by exploiting Atlassian 0daySecurity Affairs

• Hackers steal $100m from another breached crypto bridge | TechRadar

• Santander Warns of 87% Surge in UK Crypto Scams - Infosecurity Magazine

• Dozens of cryptography libraries vulnerable to private key theft | The Daily Swig (portswigger.net)

• Missing Cryptoqueen: FBI adds Ruja Ignatova to top ten most wanted - BBC News

• Singapore warns of ‘brutal, unrelentingly hard’ crypto regs • The Register

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

• Rogue HackerOne employee steals bug reports to sell on the side (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Japanese worker loses city's personal data in USB fail • The Register

• How you handle independent contractors may determine your insider threat risk | CSO Online

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

• Threat actors increasingly use third parties to run their scams - Help Net Security

• Santander Warns of 87% Surge in UK Crypto Scams - Infosecurity Magazine

• Evolving online habits have paved the way for fraud. What can we do about it? - Help Net Security

Insurance

• Cyber Insurance: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - IT Security Guru

Software Supply Chain

• It's a Race to Secure the Software Supply Chain — Have You Already Stumbled? (darkreading.com)

• Over a Decade in Software Security: What Have We learned? - IT Security Guru

Denial of Service DoS/DDoS

• Russian hacktivists take down Norway govt sites in DDoS attacks (bleepingcomputer.com)

Attack Surface Management

• Digital Shadows Weaken Your Attack Surface (securityintelligence.com)

Shadow IT

• Shadow IT Spurs 1 in 3 Cyber Attacks (darkreading.com)

• What is Shadow IT and why is it so risky? (thehackernews.com)

Open Source

• CISA Warns of Active Exploitation of 'PwnKit' Linux Vulnerability in the Wild (thehackernews.com)

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

• RansomHouse Hackers Claim to Breach AMD With Bad Passwords (gizmodo.com)

• Breaking Down the Zola Hack and Why Password Reuse is so Dangerous (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Raccoon Stealer is back with a new version to steal your passwords (bleepingcomputer.com)

Social Media

• Verified Twitter accounts hacked to send fake suspension notices (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Facebook Business Pages Targeted via Chatbot in Data-Harvesting Campaign (darkreading.com)

• New YTStealer malware steals accounts from YouTube Creators (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Facebook 2FA phish arrives just 28 minutes after scam domain created – Naked Security (sophos.com)

Training, Education and Awareness

• Time Constraints Hamper Security Awareness Programs (darkreading.com)

Privacy

• ‘Supercookies’ Have Privacy Experts Sounding the Alarm | WIRED

• UK should immediately ban use of live facial recognition, warns report | Financial Times (ft.com)

• Snoopers’ Charter Ruled Partially Unlawful - Infosecurity Magazine

• We must stop sleepwalking towards a surveillance state | Financial Times (ft.com)

Parental Controls and Child Safety

• How parents can talk about online safety and personal info protection with their kids - Help Net Security

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

• Manx government department fined over data breach - BBC News

• Clearview fine: The unacceptable face of modern surveillance - Help Net Security

• UK security services must seek approval to access telecoms data, judges rule | UK security and counter-terrorism | The Guardian

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

• Global Police Crack Down on Online Sexual Exploitation - Infosecurity Magazine

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

• Lethal drinking water, runs on banks and panic buying: What a real Undeclared War cyber attack could mean (inews.co.uk)

• Microsoft's Defending Ukraine report offers fresh details on digital conflict and disinformation | CSO Online

• Clear Rules Needed to Prevent Conflict and Struggle in Cyber Space, Says NCSC Chief - Infosecurity Magazine

• NATO to create cyber rapid response force, increase cyber defence aid to Ukraine - CyberScoop

• Could the Russian cyber attack on Lithuania draw a military response from NATO? | World News | Sky News

• Evilnum hackers return in new operation targeting migration orgs (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Commercial cyber products must be used responsibly, says NCSC CEO (computerweekly.com)

• G7 to tackle cyber threats and disinformation from Russia: communique | Reuters

• Google Warns of New Spyware Targeting iOS and Android Users - IT Security Guru

• Apple revokes certificates for Hermit spyware app - 9to5Mac

• China lured graduate jobseekers into digital espionage | Ars Technica

• FCC commissioner calls TikTok Chinese spyware and wants it pulled from mobile app stores (androidpolice.com)

• Google warns Hermit spyware is infecting phones. What is it and how do you protect yourself from it? | Mashable

Nation State Actors

Nation State Actors – Russia

• Ukraine targeted by almost 800 cyber attacks since the war started (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Russia-linked actors may be behind an explosion at a liquefied natural gas plant in Texas - Security Affairs

• Russian Hacker Group Says Cyber Attacks Continue On Lithuania (informationsecuritybuzz.com)

• Russian hacktivists take down Norway govt sites in DDoS attacks (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Russia's Killnet hacker group says it attacked Lithuania | Reuters

Nation State Actors – China

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

• Chinese Hackers Target Building Management Systems | SecurityWeek.Com

• China lured graduate jobseekers into digital espionage | Ars Technica

Nation State Actors – North Korea

• Experts blame North Korea-linked Lazarus APT for Harmony hack - Security Affairs

Vulnerability Management

• 18 Zero-Days Exploited So Far in 2022 (darkreading.com)

• Why more zero-day vulnerabilities are being found in the wild | CSO Online

• Cyber Attacks via Unpatched Systems Cost Orgs More Than Phishing (darkreading.com)

• Solving the indirect vulnerability enigma - fixing indirect vulnerabilities without breaking your dependency tree (thehackernews.com)

• Microsoft's quiet mishandling of vulnerabilities is becoming a public mess - OnMSFT.com

Vulnerabilities

• MITRE shares this year's list of most dangerous software bugs (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Critical ManageEngine ADAudit Plus Vulnerability Allows Network Takeover, Mass Data Exfiltration (darkreading.com)

• How and why threat actors target Microsoft Active Directory | CSO Online

• Atlassian Confluence Exploits Peak at 100K Daily (darkreading.com)

• Patch Now: Linux Container-Escape Flaw in Azure Service Fabric (darkreading.com)

• Zoho ManageEngine ADAudit Plus bug gets public RCE exploit (bleepingcomputer.com)

• OpenSSL 3.0.5 awaits release to fix potential security flaw • The Register

• CISA: Adopt Modern Auth now for Exchange Online • The Register

• CISA Warns of Active Exploitation of 'PwnKit' Linux Vulnerability in the Wild (thehackernews.com)

• CISA orders agencies to patch Windows LSA bug exploited in the wild (bleepingcomputer.com)

• Mitel VoIP Bug Exploited in Ransomware Attacks | Threatpost

• Log4Shell Vulnerability in VMware Leads to Data Exfiltration and Ransomware (trendmicro.com)

• Jenkins discloses dozens of zero-day bugs in multiple plugins (bleepingcomputer.com)

• New UnRAR Vulnerability Could Let Attackers Hack Zimbra Webmail Servers (thehackernews.com)

Sector Specific

Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)

• Stress and Burnout Could Lead to Exodus of CNI Cyber Security Leaders - Infosecurity Magazine

Financial Services Sector

• Android Spyware 'Revive' Upgraded to Banking Trojan - Infosecurity Magazine

FinTech

• A Fintech Horror Story: How One Company Prioritizes Cyber Security (darkreading.com)

• Security and compliance concerns limit ‘open finance’ expansion, say executives (scmagazine.com)

Telecoms

• Why the next-gen telecom ecosystem needs better regulations (techtarget.com)

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

• APT Hackers Targeting Industrial Control Systems with ShadowPad Backdoor (thehackernews.com)

• Cyber-Physical Security: Benchmarking to Advance Your Journey | SecurityWeek.Com

• Critical Security Flaws Identified in CODESYS ICS Automation Software (thehackernews.com)

• Microsoft Exchange bug abused to hack building automation systems (bleepingcomputer.com)

• 5 Cyber Security Tips for Smart Buildings - IT Security Guru

• Chinese Hackers Target Building Management Systems | SecurityWeek.Com

• OT security: Helping under-resourced critical infrastructure organisations - Help Net Security

Energy & Utilities

Oil, Gas and Mining

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

Food and Agriculture

• Wiltshire Farm Foods Cyberattack (informationsecuritybuzz.com)

Education and Academia

• Threat Actor Claims Responsibility For IBM and Stanford University Hack - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

Web3

• Securing the Metaverse and Web3 | SecurityWeek.Com

• Cyber security and the metaverse: Identifying the weak spots | VentureBeat

Reports Published in the Last Week

• State of Email Security | Mimecast

• Q1 2022 Incident Response Insights from Tetra Defense | Arctic Wolf

• State of Data Exfiltration and Extortion 2022 - Titaniam

• SANS 2022 Security Awareness Report: Human Risk Remains the Biggest Threat to Your Organisation’s Cyber Security | SANS Institute

• Defending Ukraine: Early Lessons from the Cyber War - Microsoft On the Issues

Other News

• Cyber Attacks Gain Steam in Early '22: Tetra Defense Report - MSSP Alert

• FBI warns crooks are using deepfake videos in job interviews • The Register

• Destructive firmware attacks pose a significant threat to businesses - Help Net Security

• 48% of security practitioners seeing 3x increase in alerts per day - Help Net Security

• Adversarial machine learning explained: How attackers disrupt AI and ML systems | CSO Online

• Companies are desperate for cyber security workers—more than 700K positions need to be filled | Fortune

• 82% Cyber Breaches In Verizon’s Report Preventable, Says MyCena (informationsecuritybuzz.com)

• SolarWinds hack explained: Everything you need to know (techtarget.com)

• Properly securing APIs is becoming increasingly urgent - Help Net Security

• 97% Of UK Business Leaders Expect Quantum Computing to Disrupt Their Sectors - Infosecurity Magazine

• LGBTQ+ folks warned of dating app extortion scams • The Register

• What is Zero Trust and why would you want it? • The Register

• Tencent admits to poisoned QR code attack on QQ accounts • The Register

• Exploring the insecurity of readily available Wi-Fi networks - Help Net Security

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

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