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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 9th June 2023

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 09 June 2023:

-74% of Breaches Involve Human Element- Make Employees Your Best Asset

-Cyber Security Agency Urges Vigilance as MOVEit Attack Impacts Major Companies Including British Airways, Boots and the BBC

-CISOs and IT Lack Confidence in Executives’ Cyber Defence Knowledge as the Spotlight Falls on the Boardroom

-Only 1 in 10 CISOs are Board-ready as Nearly Half of Boards Lack Cyber Expertise

-BEC Volumes and Ransomware Costs Double in a Year

-Hackers are Targeting C-Suite Executives Through Their Personal Email

-Proactive Detection is Crucial as Organisations Lack Effective Threat Research

-Number of Vulnerabilities Exploited Rose by 55%

-Ransomware Behind Most Cyber Attacks, with Record-breaking May

-4 Areas of Cyber Risk That Boards Need to Address

-North Korea Makes 50% of Income from Cyber Attacks

-Going Beyond “Next Generation” Network Security

-Worldwide 2022 Email Phishing Statistics and Examples

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

  • 74% of Breaches Involve Human Element- Make Employees Your Best Asset

Verizon’s recent data breach report analysed 16,312 security incidents and 5,199 breaches. A total of 74% of breaches involved a human element, highlighting the role of employees in achieving good cyber resilience. Organisations looking to improve their resilience should therefore consider how well and how frequently they train their users. In a recent report, Fortinet found that 90% of leaders believed that increasing their employee cyber security awareness would help decrease the occurrence of cyber attacks. Worryingly, despite 85% of leaders having an awareness and training programme in place, 50% believed their employees still lacked cyber security knowledge.

With an effective training programme, organisations can increase their employees’ cyber risk awareness and empower them in defending the organisation, laying the foundation for a strong cyber security culture.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/06/06/verizon-data-breach-investigations-report-2023-dbir/

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/06/09/employees-cybersecurity-knowledge/

  • Cyber Security Agency Urges Vigilance as MOVEit Attack Impacts Major Companies Including British Airways, Boots and the BBC

The recent cyber attacks on file transfer software MOVEit have impacted a number of major companies through their supply chain. The attack, which hit UK-based HR and payroll provider Zellis has had a huge knock-on effect, with major companies such as British Airways, Boots and the BBC suffering as a result of using Zellis in their supply chain. The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has emphasised the need for organisations to exercise heightened vigilance.

Organisations must be aware of supply chain risks, and how an attack on a supplier or service provider can impact their own organisation. It is important for organisations to manage supply chain security, assess third party risks, communicate with suppliers and keep on top of emerging threats; it’s no simple task.

https://www.securityweek.com/several-major-organizations-confirm-being-impacted-by-moveit-attack/

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/british-cybersecurity-agency-urges-vigilance-major-companies-fall-victim-software-hack-1716493

  • CISOs and IT Lack Confidence in Executives’ Cyber Defence Knowledge as the Spotlight Falls on the Boardroom

Nearly three-quarters of data breaches include an element of human failure, and senior business leaders were particularly at risk, according to a recent report. Not only do business leaders possess the most sensitive information, but they are often the least protected, with many organisations making security protocol exemptions for them. Such factors have pushed the boardroom into the spotlight more.

In another report, it was found that only 28% of IT professionals were confident in their executives’ ability to recognise a phishing email. The report found that as many as 71% of executives were reusing compromised passwords from personal accounts inside the company. Technology alone won’t solve the problem: user awareness training is required and this includes the boardroom.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3698708/cisos-it-lack-confidence-in-executives-cyber-defense-knowledge.html

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366539293/Cyber-spotlight-falls-on-boardroom-privilege-as-incidents-soar

  • Only 1 in 10 CISOs are Board-ready as Nearly Half of Boards Lack Cyber Expertise

A recent study has found that only 1 in 10 chief information security officers (CISOs) have all the key traits thought to be crucial for success on a corporate board, with many lacking governance skills and experience and other attributes needed for board readiness. Worryingly, nearly half of the 1,000 companies in the study lacked at least one director with cyber security expertise. This is concerning as good cyber security starts from the board: the board is responsible for understanding the business risks of a cyber incident and for endorsing whether the cyber controls in place have reduced those risks to a level that the board is happy with. Similarly, the board would not sign off financial risks without ensuring they had someone with financial experience and qualifications present. The Black Arrow vCISO service is ideal for organisations that need expertise in assessing and managing cyber risks, underpinned by governance reporting and metrics presented to enable the board to make educated and informed decisions.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3698291/only-one-in-10-cisos-today-are-board-ready-study-says

  • BEC Volumes and Ransomware Costs Double in a Year

The number of recorded business email compromise (BEC) attacks doubled over the past year, with the threat comprising nearly 60% of social engineering incidents studied by Verizon for its 2023 Data Breach Investigations Report. The report this year was based on analysis of 16,312 security incidents and 5,199 breaches over the past year.

Pretexting, which is commonly using in BEC attacks, is now more common than phishing in social engineering incidents, although the latter is still more prevalent in breaches, the report noted. The median amount stolen in pretexting attacks now stands at $50,000. The vast majority of attacks (97%) over the past year were motivated by financial gain rather than espionage.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/bec-volumes-ransomware-costs/

  • Hackers are Targeting C-Suite Executives Through Their Personal Email

As companies rely on chief financial officers (CFOs) to mitigate risk, cyber attacks and the costs associated with them are a major concern. Now there is also a growing trend of cyber criminals targeting C-suite executives in their personal lives, where it is easier to pull off a breach as there are fewer, if any, protections, instead of targeting them through their business accounts. Once attackers have access, they then try to use this to gain entry to the corporate systems. The report found that 42% of companies have experienced cyber criminal attacks on their senior-level corporate executives, which can compromise sensitive business data. The report found that 58% of respondents stated that cyber threat prevention for executives and their digital assets are not covered in their cyber, IT and physical securities strategies and budgets.

https://fortune.com/2023/06/08/hackers-targeting-c-suite-executives-personal-email-cybersecurity

  • Proactive Detection is Crucial as Organisations Lack Effective Threat Research

In a recent study, it was found that CISOs are spending significantly less time on threat research and awareness, despite 58% having an increase in their budget for cyber security; the same number reported that their team is so busy, they may not detect an attack. In a different report, keeping up with threat intelligence was identified as one of the biggest challenges faced.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/06/06/cisos-cybersecurity-spending/

  • Number of Vulnerabilities Exploited Rose by 55%

A recent report from Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 found that the number of vulnerabilities that attackers are exploiting has grown by 55% compared to 2021, with most of the increase resulting from supply chain vulnerabilities; along with this was a 25% rise in the number of CVE’s, the term used for identified vulnerabilities. Worryingly ChatGPT scams saw a 910% increase in monthly domain registrations, pointing to an exponential growth in fraudulent activities taking advantage of the widespread usage and popularity of AI-powered chatbots.

Such growth puts further strain on cyber security staff, making it even harder for organisations to keep up. A strong threat management programme is needed, to help organisations prioritise threats and use organisational resources effectively to address said threats.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/exploitation-vulnerabilities-grew/

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/cves-surge-25-2022-another-record/

  • Ransomware Behind Most Cyber Attacks, with Record-breaking May

2022 saw ransomware account for nearly one in four (24%) cyber attacks, with 95% of events resulting in a loss costing upwards of $2.25 million during 2021-2022. Ransomware remains a significant threat as evidenced by a different report, which stated that May 2023 saw a 154% spike in ransomware compared to May 2022. Other key findings include unreported attacks being five times more likely than reported attacks.

https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-research/ransomware-hit-new-attack-highs-in-may-2023-blackfog-report-says/

https://www.scmagazine.com/analysis/ransomware/ransomware-attacks-have-room-to-grow-verizon-data-breach-report-shows

  • 4 Areas of Cyber Risk That Boards Need to Address

As technological innovations such as cloud computing, the Internet of Things, robotic process automation, and predictive analytics are integrated into organisations, it makes them increasingly susceptible to cyber threats. This means that governing and assessing cyber risks becomes a prerequisite for successful business performance. This need for transparency has been recognised by the regulators and facilitated by the new cyber security rules to ensure companies maintain adequate cyber security controls and appropriately disclose cyber-related risks and incidents.

To ensure they fulfil the requirements, organisations should focus on the following areas: position security as a strategic business enabler; continuously monitor the cyber risk capability performance; align cyber risk management with business needs through policies and standards; and proactively anticipate the changing threat landscape by utilising threat intelligence sources for emerging threats.

https://hbr.org/2023/06/4-areas-of-cyber-risk-that-boards-need-to-address

  • North Korea Makes 50% of Income from Cyber Attacks

The North Korean regime makes around half of its income from cyber attacks on cryptocurrency and other targets. A 2019 UN estimate claimed North Korea had amassed as much as $2bn through historic attacks on crypto firms and traditional banks.

North Korean hackers have been blamed for some of the biggest ever heists of cryptocurrency, including the $620m stolen from Sky Mavis’ Ronin Network last year and the $281m taken from KuCoin in 2020 and $35m from Atomic Wallet just this last weekend.

They are using increasingly sophisticated techniques to get what they want. The 3CX supply chain attacks, in which backdoor malware was implanted into a legitimate-looking software update from the eponymous comms provider, is thought to have been a targeted attempt at hitting crypto exchanges.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/north-korea-makes-50-income/

  • Going Beyond “Next Generation” Network Security

Over a decade ago, the phrase “next generation” was used in the network security space to describe the introduction of application-layer controls with firewalls. It was a pivotal moment for the space, setting a new standard for how we protected the perimeter. A lot has happened in the last decade though, most notably, the rapid adoption of cloud and multicloud architectures and the loss of the “perimeter.” Today, 82% of IT leaders have adopted hybrid cloud architectures, and 58% of organisations use between two and three public Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds. On top of that, 95% of web traffic is encrypted which limits visibility. Applications are everywhere, access privileges are unstructured, increasing the attack surface, and businesses expect near-perfect availability and resilience. To make things more complicated, enterprises have tried to solve these challenges with disparate solutions, leading to vendor sprawl among security stacks and operational inefficiency. What was once considered “next-generation” network security no longer cuts it.

https://blogs.cisco.com/security/going-beyond-next-generation-network-security-cisco-platform-approach

  • Worldwide 2022 Email Phishing Statistics and Examples

Remote and hybrid work environments have become the new norm. The fact that email has become increasingly integral to business operations, has led malicious actors to favour email as an attack vector. According to a report by security company Egress, 92% of organisations have fallen victim to phishing attacks in 2022, a 29% increase in phishing incidents from 2021. Phishing attacks aimed at stealing info and data, also known as credential phishing, saw a 4% growth in 2022, with nearly 7 million detections. Rather worryingly, there was a 35% increase in the number of detections that related to business email compromise (BEC); these attacks mostly impersonated executives or high-ranking management personnel. With the increase in AI tools, it is expected that cyber criminals will be better able to create and deploy more sophisticated phishing attacks.

https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/ciso/23/e/worldwide-email-phishing-stats-examples-2023.html


Governance, Risk and Compliance


Threats

Ransomware, Extortion and Destructive Attacks

Ransomware Victims

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

BEC – Business Email Compromise

Other Social Engineering; Smishing, Vishing, etc

Artificial Intelligence

2FA/MFA

Malware

Mobile

Botnets

Denial of Service/DoS/DDOS

Internet of Things – IoT             

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Impersonation Attacks

Deepfakes

Insurance

Dark Web

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Software Supply Chain

Cloud/SaaS

Hybrid/Remote Working

Shadow IT

Encryption

API

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Training, Education and Awareness

Data Protection

Careers, Working in Cyber and Information Security

Privacy, Surveillance and Mass Monitoring




Vulnerability Management

Vulnerabilities


Tools and Controls




Sector Specific

Industry specific threat intelligence reports are available.

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

·       Automotive

·       Construction

·       Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)

·       Defence & Space

·       Education & Academia

·       Energy & Utilities

·       Estate Agencies

·       Financial Services

·       FinTech

·       Food & Agriculture

·       Gaming & Gambling

·       Government & Public Sector (including Law Enforcement)

·       Health/Medical/Pharma

·       Hotels & Hospitality

·       Insurance

·       Legal

·       Manufacturing

·       Maritime

·       Oil, Gas & Mining

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

·       Retail & eCommerce

·       Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)

·       Startups

·       Telecoms

·       Third Sector & Charities

·       Transport & Aviation

·       Web3


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

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

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

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

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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 25 November 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 25 November 2022:

-Hackers Hit One Third of Organisations Worldwide Multiple Times

-Firms Spend $1,197 Per Employee Yearly to Address Cyber Attacks

-90% of Organisations have Microsoft 365 Security Gaps

-Luna Moth Phishing Extortion Campaign Targets Businesses in Multiple Sectors

-The Real Cost of Cyber Attacks: What Organisations Should Be Prepared For

-34 Russian Cyber Crime Groups Stole Over 50 Million Passwords with Stealer Malware

-“Password” Continues to Be the Most Common Password in 2022

-Lasts Year’s Massive Twitter Data Breach Was Far Worse Than Reported, Reveal Security Researchers

-European Parliament Declares Russia to be a State Sponsor of Terrorism – then Gets Attacked

-The Changing Nature of Nation-State Cyber Warfare

-Is Your Company Covered for a Cyber Security Attack? That’s the £2 Million Question

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

  • Hackers Hit One Third of Organisations Worldwide Multiple Times

Hackers have stolen customer records multiple times from nearly a third of organisations worldwide in the past 12 months, security provider Trend Micro said in its newly released, twice-yearly Cyber Risk Index (CRI) report.

The report features interviews with some 4,100 organisations across North America, Europe, Latin/South America and Asia-Pacific. Respondents stressed that customer records are at increased risk as organisations struggle to profile and defend an expanding attack surface.

Overall, respondents rated the following as the top cyber threats in 1H 2022:

  • Business Email Compromise (BEC)

  • Clickjacking

  • Fileless attacks

  • Ransomware

  • Login attacks (Credential Theft)

Here are some key findings from the study:

  • The CRI calculates the gap between organisational preparedness and the likelihood of being attacked, with -10 representing the highest level of risk. The global CRI index moved from –0.04 in 2H 2021 to –0.15 in 1H 2022, indicating a surging level of risk over the past six months.

  • This is a slight increase in risk from the second half of 2021, when it was -0.04. Organisations in North America and Asia-Pacific saw an increase in their cyber risk from that period while Europe and Latin/South America’s risk decreased in comparison.

  • The number of global organisations experiencing a “successful” cyber-attack increased from 84% to 90% over the same period.

  • The number now expected to be compromised over the coming year has also increased from 76% to 85%.

From the business perspective, the biggest concern is the misalignment between CISOs and business executives, Trend Micro said. The answers given by respondents to the question: “My organisation’s IT security objectives are aligned with business objectives,” only made a score of 4.79 out of 10.0

By addressing the shortage of cyber security professionals and improving security processes and technology, organisations will significantly reduce their vulnerability to attacks.

You can’t protect what you can’t see. But with hybrid working ushering in a new era of complex, distributed IT environments, many organisations are finding it difficult to eradicate growing security coverage and visibility gaps. To avoid the attack surface spiraling out of control, they need to combine asset discovery and monitoring with threat detection and response on a single platform.

https://www.msspalert.com/cybersecurity-research/hackers-hit-one-third-of-organizations-worldwide-multiple-times/

  • Firms Spend $1,197 Per Employee Yearly to Address Cyber Attacks

Companies pay an average of $1,197 per employee yearly to address successful cyber incidents against email services, cloud collaboration apps or services and browsers.

Security researchers at Perception Point shared the findings with Infosecurity before publishing them in a new white paper this month.

According to the new data, the above figures exclude compliance fines, ransomware mitigation costs and losses from non-operational processes, all of which can cause further spending.

The survey, conducted in conjunction with Osterman Research in June, considers the responses of 250 security and IT decision-makers at various enterprises and reveals additional discoveries regarding today’s enterprise threat landscape.

These findings demonstrate the urgent need for organisations to find the most accurate and efficient cyber security solutions which provide the necessary protection with streamlined processes and managed services.

Among the findings is that malicious incidents against new cloud-based apps and services occur at 60% of the frequency with which they take place on email-based services.

Additionally, some attacks, like those involving malware installed on an endpoint, happen on cloud collaboration apps at a much higher rate (87%) when compared to email-based services.

The Perception Point report also shows that a successful email-based cyber incident takes security staff an average of 86 hours to address.

In light of these figures, the security company added that one security professional with no additional support can only handle 23 email incidents annually, representing a direct cost of $6452 per incident alone.

Conversely, incidents detected on cloud collaboration apps or services take, on average, 71 hours to resolve. In these cases, one professional can handle just 28 incidents yearly at an average cost of $5305 per incident.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/firms-dollar1197-per-employee/

  • 90% of Organisations have Microsoft 365 Security Gaps

A recently published study evaluated 1.6 million Microsoft 365 users across three continents, finding that 90% of organisations had gaps in essential security protections. Managing Microsoft 365 (M365) is complicated. How can IT teams avoid management headaches, stay 100% compliant, and truly take control of their M365 instance?

Research from the study reveals that many common security procedures are not being followed 100% of the time. This leaves gaping holes in most organisations’ security defences. While most companies have strong documented security policies, the research uncovered that most aren’t being implemented consistently due to difficulties in reporting and limited IT resources:

  • 90% of companies had gaps across all four key areas studied – multi-factor authentication (MFA), email security, password policies, and failed logins

  • 87% of companies have MFA disabled for some or all their admins (which are the most critical accounts to protect, due to their higher access levels)

  • Only 17% of companies had strong password requirements that were being consistently followed.

Overall, nearly every organisation is leaving the door open for cyber security threats due to weak credentials, particularly for administrator accounts.

In addition to security challenges, the study identified key areas for improvement in managing Microsoft 365 licences as well, such as:

  • The average company had 21.6% of their licenses unassigned or “sitting on the shelf.” Another 10.2% of licenses were inactive, for an average of 31.9% unused licenses.

  • 17% of companies had over 10,000 licenses unassigned or inactive. These cases represent big opportunities to optimise licence spend with better tools.

Overall, the study reveals that reporting challenges make security and licence management incredibly difficult, leading to unnecessary risks and costs.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/11/22/microsoft-365-security-protections/

  • Luna Moth Phishing Extortion Campaign Targets Businesses in Multiple Sectors

A callback phishing extortion campaign by Luna Moth (aka Silent Ransom Group) has targeted businesses in multiple sectors, including legal and retail.

The findings come from Palo Alto Network’s security team Unit 42, which described the campaign in a new advisory.

“This campaign leverages extortion without encryption, has cost victims hundreds of thousands of dollars and is expanding in scope,” reads the technical write-up. At the same time, Unit 42 said that this type of social engineering attack leaves very few artifacts because it relies on legitimate technology tools to carry out attacks. In fact, callback phishing, also known as telephone-oriented attack delivery (TOAD), is a social engineering method that requires a threat actor to interact with the victim to accomplish their goals.

“This attack style is more resource intensive but less complex than script-based attacks, and it tends to have a much higher success rate,” reads the advisory. According to Unit 42, threat actors associated with the Conti group have extensively used this attack style in BazarCall campaigns. “Early iterations of this attack focused on tricking the victim into downloading the BazarLoader malware using documents with malicious macros,” explained the researchers.

As for the new campaign, which Sygnia security researchers first unveiled in July, it removes the malware portion of the attack. “In this campaign, attackers use legitimate and trusted systems management tools to interact directly with a victim’s computer to manually exfiltrate data [...] As these tools are not malicious, they’re not likely to be flagged by traditional antivirus products,” Unit 42 wrote.

The researchers also said that they expect callback phishing attacks to increase in popularity because of low per-target cost, low risk of detection and fast monetisation factors.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/luna-moth-phishing-target-multiple/

  • The Real Cost of Cyber Attacks: What Organisations Should Be Prepared For

With each passing year, hackers and cyber criminals of all kinds are becoming more sophisticated, malicious, and greedy conducting brazen and often destructive cyber-attacks that can severely disrupt a company’s business operations. And this is a big problem, because, first and foremost, customers rely on a company’s ability to deliver services or products in a timely manner. Cyber-attacks not only can affect customers’ data, but they can impact service delivery.

In one of the recent incidents, the UK’s discount retailer The Works has been forced to temporarily shut down some of its stores after a ransomware attack. While the tech team quickly shut down the company’s computers after being alerted to the security breach by the firewall system, the attack caused disruption to deliveries and store functionality including till operations.

A cyber security incident can greatly affect a business due to the consequences associated with cyber-attacks like potential lawsuits, hefty fines and damage payments, insurance rate hikes, criminal investigations and bad publicity. For example, shares of Okta, a major provider of authentication services, fell 9% after the company revealed it was a victim of a major supply chain incident via an attack on a third-party contractor’s laptop, which affected some of its customers.

Another glaring example is a 2021 cyber-attack launched by the Russian-speaking ransomware gang called DarkSide against the operator of one of the US’ largest fuel pipelines Colonial Pipeline, which crippled fuel delivery across the Southeastern United States impacting lives of millions due to supply shortages. Colonial paid the DarkSide hackers a $4.4 million ransom soon after the incident. The attackers also stole nearly 100GB of data from Colonial Pipeline and threatened to leak it if the ransom wasn’t paid. It’s also worth noting that the company is now facing a nearly $1 million penalty for failure “to plan and prepare for a manual restart and shutdown operation, which contributed to the national impacts after the cyber-attack.”

Data breaches and costs associated with them have been on the rise for the past few years, but, according to a 2021 report, the average cost per breach increased from $3.86 million in 2020 to $4.24 million in 2021. The report also identified four categories contributing most global data breach costs – Lost business cost (38%), Detection and escalation (29%), Post breach response (27%), and Notification (6%).

Ransomware attacks cost an average of $4.62 million (the cost of a ransom is not included), and destructive wiper-style attacks cost an average of $4.69 million, the report said.

For a business, a data breach is not just a loss of data, it can also have a long-lasting impact on operations and undermine customers’ trust in the company. In fact, a survey revealed that 87% of consumers are willing to take their business elsewhere if they don’t trust a company is handling their data responsibly. Therefore, the reputational damage might be detrimental to a business’ ability to attract new customers.

https://informationsecuritybuzz.com/the-real-cost-of-cyber-attacks-what-organizations-should-be-prepared-for-2/

  • 34 Russian Cyber Crime Groups Stole Over 50 Million Passwords with Stealer Malware

As many as 34 Russian-speaking gangs, distributing information-stealing malware under the stealer-as-a-service model, stole no fewer than 50 million passwords in the first seven months of 2022.

"The underground market value of stolen logs and compromised card details is estimated around $5.8 million" Singapore-headquartered Group-IB said in a report shared with The Hacker News.

Aside from looting passwords, the stealers also harvested 2.11 billion cookie files, 113,204 crypto wallets, and 103,150 payment cards.

A majority of the victims were located in the US, followed by Brazil, India, Germany, Indonesia, the Philippines, France, Turkey, Vietnam, and Italy. In total, over 890,000 devices in 111 countries were infected during the time frame.

Group-IB said the members of several scam groups who are propagating the information stealers previously participated in the Classiscam operation. These groups, which are active on Telegram and have around 200 members on average, are hierarchical, consisting of administrators and workers (or traffers), the latter of whom are responsible for driving unsuspecting users to info-stealers like RedLine and Raccoon. This is achieved by setting up bait websites that impersonate well-known companies and luring victims into downloading malicious files. Links to such websites are, in turn, embedded into YouTube video reviews for popular games and lotteries on social media, or shared directly with non-fungible token (NFT) artists.

https://thehackernews.com/2022/11/34-russian-hacker-groups-stole-over-50.html

  • “Password” Continues to Be the Most Common Password in 2022

You would think the time spent working from home in the last two years or so helped netizens across the planet figure out how to master the world of WWW in a more efficient manner.

But new research from NordPass shows that despite so many people relying on an Internet connection for their daily activities, few actually care about the security of their data when they go online.

As a result, “password” continues to be the number one password out there, with the aforementioned company claiming that this particular keyword was detected close to 5 million times in a 3TB database. It takes less than one second to crack this password, the company says.

“123456” is currently the second most-used password worldwide, followed by its longer sibling known as “123456789” because, you know, hackers don’t know how to count to 10.

“There’s more than one way to get swindled on Tinder: using “tinder” as your password is more risky than swiping right on a billionaire. In total, this password was used 36,384 times” NordPass says. “The glitziest film industry event of the year – the Oscars ceremony – inspired many to use not-so-glitzy passwords: the password “Oscars” was used 62,983 times.”

Of course, it’s no surprise that Internet users out there turn to movies to get inspiration for their passwords, so unfortunately, “batman” is currently one of the most used keywords supposed to secure Internet accounts.

“Films and shows like Batman, Euphoria, and Encanto were among the most popular releases in 2021/2022. All are also popular passwords: “batman” was used 2,562,776 times, “euphoria” 53,993, and “encanto” 10,808 times,” the company says.

The most common password in the United States is “guest,” while in the United Kingdom, quite a lot of people go for “liverpool” (despite hackers needing just 1 second to crack it).

https://news.softpedia.com/news/password-continues-to-be-the-most-common-password-in-2022-as-well-536503.shtml

  • Lasts Year’s Massive Twitter Data Breach Was Far Worse Than Reported, Reveal Security Researchers

A massive Twitter data breach last year, exposing more than five million phone numbers and email addresses, was worse than initially reported. The same security vulnerability appears to have been exploited by multiple bad actors, and the hacked data has been offered for sale on the dark web by several sources.

It had previously been thought that only one hacker gained access to the data, and Twitter’s belated admission reinforced this impression. HackerOne first reported the vulnerability back in January, which allowed anyone to enter a phone number or email address, and then find the associated twitterID. This is an internal identifier used by Twitter, but can be readily converted to a Twitter handle. A bad actor would be able to put together a single database which combined Twitter handles, email addresses, and phone numbers.

At the time, Twitter admitted that the vulnerability had existed, and subsequently been patched, but said nothing about anyone exploiting it. Restore Privacy subsequently reported that a hacker had indeed used the vulnerability to obtain personal data from millions of accounts.

https://9to5mac.com/2022/11/25/massive-twitter-data-breach/

  • European Parliament Declares Russia to be a State Sponsor of Terrorism – Then Gets Attacked

On Wednesday, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the latest developments in Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine. MEPs highlight that the deliberate attacks and atrocities committed by Russian forces and their proxies against civilians in Ukraine, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and other serious violations of international and humanitarian law amount to acts of terror and constitute war crimes. In light of this, they recognise Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism and as a state that “uses means of terrorism”.

As the EU currently cannot officially designate states as sponsors of terrorism, the European Parliament calls on the EU and its member states to put in place the proper legal framework and consider adding Russia to such a list. This would trigger a number of significant restrictive measures against Moscow and have profound restrictive implications for EU relations with Russia.

In the meantime, MEPs call on the Council to include the Russian paramilitary organisation ‘the Wagner Group’, the 141st Special Motorized Regiment, also known as the “Kadyrovites”, and other Russian-funded armed groups, militias and proxies, on the EU’s terrorist list.

Almost immediately after the vote the European Parliament suffered a sustained denial of service attack that shut down email services and disrupted internet access for more than an hour. A pro-Russian group called KILLNET then claimed responsibility in a Telegram post.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20221118IPR55707/european-parliament-declares-russia-to-be-a-state-sponsor-of-terrorism

https://informationsecuritybuzz.com/comment-european-parliament-hit-by-cyberattack-after-vote-on-russia/

  • The Changing Nature of Nation-State Cyber Warfare

Military conflict is ever shifting from beyond the battlefield and into cyber space. Ever more sophisticated and ruthless groups of nation-state actors and their proxies continue to target critical systems and infrastructure for political and ideological leverage. These criminals’ far-reaching objectives include intelligence gathering, financial gain, destabilising other nations, hindering communications, and the theft of intellectual property.

The risks to individuals and society are clear. Due to its importance to daily life and the economy, the UK’s critical national infrastructure (CNI) is a natural target for malicious nation-state cyber-attacks. We only need look at the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack in the US – at the hands of the Russia-affiliated DarkSide group – to appreciate the potential for one criminal act to escalate and cause large-scale societal impact: panic and disruption. Even though the pipeline was shut down for less than a week, the havoc caused by suspending fuel supplies gave CNI operators everywhere a worrying taste of things to come.

Closer to home, the recent cyber attack on South Staffordshire Water highlights the need for all utilities providers to take proactive measures and precautions to better secure essential human sustenance supplies. With the risk of coordinated attacks by criminals backed by nation states rising, the potential for human casualties if attacks against CNI go unchecked is becoming starkly clear.

The Russia-Ukraine war has heightened awareness of the cyber threats posed by all nation-state adversaries. Unsurprisingly, challenges and conflicts in the physical world tend to bleed through into the cyber domain. And with relations between Western nations and Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea more fraught than ever, UK organisations can expect to see further increases in cyber threats at the hands of hostile nation-state actors.

https://informationsecuritybuzz.com/the-changing-nature-of-nation-state-cyber-warfare/

  • Is Your Company Covered for a Cyber Security Attack? That’s the £2 Million Question

Cyber crime continues to be a persistent and pressing issue for all sized businesses, particularly smaller organisations. In fact, according to the National Cyber Security Alliance, nearly 60% of small businesses that experience a cyber attack shut their doors within six months.

Despite the continuing rise in risk, many small businesses remain vulnerable to cyber attacks due to a lack of resources and – surprisingly – a lack of knowledge of the existing threats. Moreover, companies are now being exposed to cyber risks even further as they struggle to get appropriate cyber insurance, which, if needed, can be devastating should bad actors circumvent your company’s defences.

Cyber insurance is a policy that helps an organisation pay for any financial losses incurred following a data breach or cyber attack. It also helps cover any costs related to the remediation process, such as paying for the investigation, crisis communication, legal services, and customer refunds.

With the constant – and ever-increasing – threat of potential cyber attacks and the need to protect their assets, many companies are applying for cyber insurance, which generally covers a variety of different types of cyber-attacks, including data breaches; business email compromises; cyber extortion demands; malware infections and ransomware.

But, despite the benefits of cyber insurance, it remains surprisingly undervalued. The UK government’s Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2022 found that only 43% of businesses have a cyber insurance policy in place.

Organisations must always seek cost-effective ways to address the cyber security risks they face – as no business is safe in the modern security landscape from a cyber threat. One of the most common ways to mitigate the risk of a cyber security incident is cyber insurance.  While all-sized businesses can benefit from having cyber insurance, small businesses frequently lack the knowledge and importance of securing it. This is usually because of the cost, the time involved in finding a provider, and a lack of understanding of the importance of a cyber insurance policy.

https://informationsecuritybuzz.com/is-your-company-covered-for-a-cybersecurity-attack-thats-the-2-million-question/


Threats

Ransomware and Extortion

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

BEC – Business Email Compromise

Malware

Mobile

Internet of Things – IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Insurance

Software Supply Chain

Denial of Service DoS/DDoS

Cloud/SaaS

Hybrid/Remote Working

Identity and Access Management

Encryption

API

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Cyber Bullying, Cyber Stalking and Sextortion

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

Privacy, Surveillance and Mass Monitoring

Misinformation, Disinformation and Propaganda

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







Sector Specific

Industry specific threat intelligence reports are available.

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

·       Automotive

·       Construction

·       Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)

·       Defence & Space

·       Education & Academia

·       Energy & Utilities

·       Estate Agencies

·       Financial Services

·       FinTech

·       Food & Agriculture

·       Gaming & Gambling

·       Government & Public Sector (including Law Enforcement)

·       Health/Medical/Pharma

·       Hotels & Hospitality

·       Insurance

·       Legal

·       Manufacturing

·       Maritime

·       Oil, Gas & Mining

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

·       Retail & eCommerce

·       Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)

·       Startups

·       Telecoms

·       Third Sector & Charities

·       Transport & Aviation

·       Web3


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

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

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

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

Read More
Black Arrow Admin Black Arrow Admin

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 30 September 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 30 September 2022:

-UK Organisations, Ukraine's Allies Warned of Potential "Massive" Cyber Attacks By Russia

-Cyber Criminals See Allure in BEC Attacks Over Ransomware

-Most Hackers Need 5 Hours or Less to Break Into Enterprise Environments

-Global Firms Deal with 51 Security Incidents Each Day

-Phishing Attacks Crushed Records Last Quarter, Driven by Mobile

-Why Paying the Ransom is Still the Most Common Response to a Ransomware Attack?

-Ransomware Attacks Continue Increasing: 20% of All Reported Attacks Occurred in the Last 12 Months

-More Than Half of Security Pros Say Risks Higher in Cloud Than On Premise

-How To Outsmart Increasingly Complex Cyber Attacks

-Top Issues Driving Cyber Security: Growing Number of Cyber Criminals, Variety of Attacks

-Cyber Threats Top Business Leaders' Biggest Concerns

-Fired Admin Cripples Former Employer's Network Using Old Credentials

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

  • UK Organisations, Ukraine's Allies Warned of Potential "Massive" Cyber Attacks By Russia

The head of the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) Lindy Cameron has given an update on Russia’s cyber activity amid its war with Ukraine. Her speech at Chatham House last week came just a few days after Ukraine’s military intelligence agency issued a warning that Russia was “preparing massive cyber attacks on the critical infrastructure of Ukraine and its allies.” This coincides with a new Forrester report that reveals the extent to which the cyber impact of the Russia-Ukraine conflict has expanded beyond the conflict zone with malware attacks propagating into European entities.

Addressing Russian cyber activity this year, Cameron stated that, while we have not seen the “cyber-Armageddon” some predicted, there has been a “very significant conflict in cyber space – probably the most sustained and intensive cyber campaign on record – with the Russian State launching a series of major cyber attacks in support of their illegal invasion in February.”

Russian cyber forces from their intelligence and military branches have been busy launching a huge number of attacks in support of immediate military objectives.

Since the start of the year, the NCSC has been advising UK organisations to take a more proactive approach to cyber security in light of the situation in Ukraine. “There may be organisations that are beginning to think ‘is this still necessary?’ as in the UK we haven’t experienced a major incident related to the war in Ukraine. My answer is an emphatic yes,” Cameron said.

In response to significant recent battlefield set-backs, Putin has been reacting in unpredictable ways, and so we shouldn’t assume that just because the conflict has played out in one way to date, it will continue to go the same way, Cameron added. “There is still a real possibility that Russia could change its approach in the cyber domain and take more risks – which could cause more significant impacts in the UK.” UK organisations and their network defenders should therefore be prepared for this period of elevated alert with a focus on building long-term resilience, which is a “marathon not a sprint,” she said.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3674871/ncsc-chief-warns-uk-organizations-ukraine-s-allies-of-possible-massive-cyberattacks-by-russia.html#tk.rss_news

  • Cyber Criminals See Allure in BEC Attacks Over Ransomware

While published trends in ransomware attacks have been contradictory — with some firms tracking more incidents and other fewer — business email compromise (BEC) attacks continue to have proven success against organisations.

BEC cases, as a share of all incident-response cases, more than doubled in the second quarter of the year, to 34% from 17% in the first quarter of 2022. That's according to Arctic Wolf's "1H 2022 Incident Response Insights" report, published on 29 September, which found that specific industries — including financial, insurance, business services, and law firms, as well as government agencies — experienced more than double their previous number of cases, the company said.

Overall, the number of BEC attacks encountered per email box has grown by 84% in the first half of 2022, according to data from cyber security firm Abnormal Security.

Meanwhile, so far this year, threat reports released by organisations have revealed contradictory trends for ransomware. Arctic Wolf and the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) have seen drops in the number of successful ransomware attacks, while business customers seem to be encountering ransomware less often, according to security firm Trellix. At the same time, network security firm WatchGuard had a contrary take, noting that its detection of ransomware attacks skyrocketed 80% in the first quarter of 2022, compared with all of last year.

The surging state of BEC landscape is unsurprising because BEC attacks offer cyber criminals advantages over ransomware. Specifically, BEC gains do not rely on the value of cryptocurrency, and attacks are often more successful at escaping notice while in progress. Threat actors are unfortunately very opportunistic.

For that reason, BEC — which uses social engineering and internal systems to steal funds from businesses — continues to be a stronger source of revenue for cyber criminals. In 2021, BEC attacks accounted for 35%, or $2.4 billion, of the $6.9 billion in potential losses tracked by the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), while ransomware remained a small fraction (0.7%) of the total.

https://www.darkreading.com/threat-intelligence/cybercriminals-see-allure-bec-attacks-ransomware

  • Most Hackers Need 5 Hours or Less to Break Into Enterprise Environments

A new survey of 300 ethical hackers provides insight into not only the most common means of initial access, but how a complete end-to-end attack happens.

Around 40% of ethical hackers recently surveyed by the SANS Institute said they can break into most environments they test, if not all. Nearly 60% said they need five hours or less to break into a corporate environment once they identify a weakness.

The SANS ethical hacking survey, done in partnership with security firm Bishop Fox, is the first of its kind and collected responses from over 300 ethical hackers working in different roles inside organisations, with different levels of experience and specialisations in different areas of information security. The survey revealed that on average, hackers would need five hours for each step of an attack chain: reconnaissance, exploitation, privilege escalation and data exfiltration, with an end-to-end attack taking less than 24 hours.

The survey highlights the need for organisations to improve their mean time-to-detect and mean-time-to-contain, especially when considering that ethical hackers are restricted in the techniques they're allowed to use during penetration testing or red team engagements. Using black hat techniques, like criminals do, would significantly improve the success rate and speed of attack.

When asked how much time they typically need to identify a weakness in an environment, 57% of the polled hackers indicated ten or fewer hours: 16% responded six to ten hours, 25% three to five hours, 11% one to two hours and 5% less than an hour.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3675535/most-hackers-need-5-hours-or-less-to-break-into-enterprise-environments.html#tk.rss_news

  • Global Firms Deal with 51 Security Incidents Each Day

Security operations (SecOps) teams are struggling to respond to dozens of cyber security incidents every single day, according to a new report from Trellix.

The security vendor polled 9000 security decision makers from organisations with 500+ employees across 15 markets to compile its latest study, ‘XDR: Redefining the future of cyber security’.

It found that the average SecOps team has to manage 51 incidents per day, with 36% of respondents claiming they deal with 50 to 200 daily incidents. Around half (46%) agreed that they are “inundated by a never-ending stream of cyber-attacks.”

Part of the problem is the siloed nature of security and detection and response systems, the study claimed. Some 60% of respondents argued that poorly integrated products mean teams can’t work efficiently, while a third (34%) admitted they have blind spots. It’s perhaps no surprise, therefore, that 60% admitted they can’t keep pace with the rapid evolution of security threats.

This could be having a major impact on the bottom line. The vast majority (84%) of security decision makers that Trellix spoke to estimated that their organisation lost up to 10% of revenue from security breaches in the past year.

Medium size businesses ($50–$100m in revenue) lost an average of 8% in revenue, versus 5% for large businesses with a turnover of $10bn–$25bn. That could mean hundreds of millions of dollars are being thrown away each year due to inadequate SecOps.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/global-firms-51-security-incidents/

  • Phishing Attacks Crushed Records Last Quarter, Driven by Mobile

Last quarter saw a record-shattering number of observed phishing attacks, fuelled in large part by attempts to target users on their mobile devices.

The latest Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) "Phishing Activity Trends Report" for the second quarter of 2022 found 1,097,811 observed phishing attacks, the most the group has ever measured in its history.

The financial sector remained the top target for phishing lures (27.6%), along with other bombarded sectors, including webmail and software-as-a-service providers, social media sites, and cryptocurrency.

But much of the rise in phishing volume is due to a new threat actor focus on mobile devices, specifically vishing (voice phishing) and smishing (SMS phishing) attacks, the report noted.

https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/phishing-attacks-crushed-records-last-quarter

  • Why Paying the Ransom is Still the Most Common Response to a Ransomware Attack

According to new data from Databarracks, 44% of the organisations who experienced a ransomware assault paid the demanded ransom. 22% made use of ransomware decryption software, while 34% restored data from backups.

The Databarracks 2022 Data Health Check produced the results. The annual report has been collecting data on ransomware, cyber, backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity from more than 400 UK IT decision-makers since 2008.

From the victim’s standpoint, it’s logical why you may pay a ransom. You are unable to handle orders or provide customer support, and losses mount swiftly. Downtime expenses can easily surpass the ransom.

Organisations may believe that paying the ransom will solve the issue more quickly, allowing them to resume operations as usual. This strategy is faulty for a number of causes.

First of all, there is no assurance that your data will be returned. Second, once criminals know an organisation is an easy target, they frequently attack it again. Finally, it conveys the incorrect message. By paying, you are assisting the crooks by demonstrating that their strategies are effective.

https://informationsecuritybuzz.com/study-research/why-paying-the-ransom-is-still-the-most-common-response-to-a-ransomware-attack/

  • Ransomware Attacks Continue Increasing: 20% of All Reported Attacks Occurred in the Last 12 Months

Nearly a quarter of businesses have suffered a ransomware attack, with a fifth occurring in the past 12 months, according to a latest annual report from cyber security specialist Hornetsecurity.

The 2022 Ransomware Report, which surveyed over 2,000 IT leaders, revealed that 24% have been victims of a ransomware attack, with one in five (20%) attacks happening in the last year.

Cyber attacks are happening more frequently. Last year's ransomware survey revealed one in five (21%) companies experienced an attack; this year it rose by three percent to 24%.

Attacks on businesses are increasing, and there is a shocking lack of awareness and preparation by IT pros. The survey shows that many in the IT community have a false sense of security as bad actors develop new techniques.

The 2022 Ransomware Report highlighted a lack of knowledge on the security available to businesses. A quarter (25%) of IT professionals either don't know or don't think that Microsoft 365 data can be impacted by a ransomware attack.

Just as worryingly, 40% of IT professionals that use Microsoft 365 in their organisation admitted they do not have a recovery plan in case their Microsoft 365 data was compromised by a ransomware attack.

Microsoft 365 is vulnerable to phishing attacks and ransomware attacks, but with the help of third-party tools, IT admins can back up their Microsoft 365 data securely and protect themselves from such attacks.

Industry responses showed the widespread lack of preparedness from IT professionals and businesses. There has been an increase in businesses not having a disaster recovery plan in place if they do succumb to the heightened threat of a cyber attack.

In 2021, 16% of respondents reported having no disaster recovery plan in place. In 2022, this grew to 19%, despite the rise in attacks.

https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/ransomware-attacks-continue-increasing-20-of-all-reported-attacks-occurred-in-the-last-12-months---new-survey

  • More Than Half of Security Pros Say Risks Higher in Cloud Than On Premise

A recent survey from machine identity solutions provider Venafi aimed to explore the complexity of cloud environments and the resulting impact on cyber security.

Venafi surveyed 1,101 security decision makers (SDMs) in firms with more than 1,000 employees and found that eighty-one percent of companies have experienced a cloud security incident in the last year. Forty-five percent have suffered at least four security incidents in the same period. More than half of security decision makers believe that security risks are higher in the cloud than on-premise.

Twenty-four percent of the firms have more than 10,000 employees. Ninety-two percent of the SDMs are at manager level or above, with 49% at c-suite level or higher.

Most of the firms surveyed believe the underlying issue is the increasing complexity of their cloud deployments. Since these companies already host 41% of their applications in the cloud, and expect to increase this to 57% over the next 18 months, the problem is only likely to worsen in the future.

The ripest target of attack in the cloud is identity management, especially machine identities. Each of these cloud services, containers, Kubernetes clusters and microservices needs an authenticated machine identity – such as a TLS certificate – to communicate securely. If any of these identities is compromised or misconfigured, it dramatically increases security and operational risks.

Respondents reported that the most common cloud incidents are security incidents during runtime (34%), unauthorised access (33%), misconfigurations (32%), vulnerabilities that have not been remediated (24%), and failed audits (19%).

Their primary operational concerns are hijacking of accounts, services or traffic (35%), malware or ransomware (31%), privacy/data access issues such as those from GDPR (31%), unauthorised access (28%), and nation state attacks (26%).

https://www.securityweek.com/more-half-security-pros-say-risks-higher-cloud-premise

  • How To Outsmart Increasingly Complex Cyber Attacks

Threat detection is harder today than it was two years ago. Next year will be harder than this year. Why? It’s a compounding effect from skills shortages and threat varieties that’s making it more challenging for any one product to handle key security wins. And cyber security is a constantly evolving sector with 2022 a devastating year for cyber security. Both hackers and security experts are always in a battle to outsmart each other.

Even for businesses with good IT departments, data protection can too quickly become an afterthought. Today’s threat landscape is growing, not just in the frequency of attacks (and the number of high-profile breaches recorded in the media) but so is the complexity of any given threat. A recent piece of research found that in 93 percent of cases, an external attacker can breach an organisation’s network perimeter and gain access to local network resources. Following increasing levels of cyber-attacks, it’s a case of “not if I will be hit by a ransomware attack,” but “when…” Organisations need to do something to mitigate the risk and protect their businesses, and they need to do it now. 

Planning and executing a better defence to outsmart attackers and win more security battles doesn’t have to feel like a military operation – but it does require the right service coverage to remove blind spots and reduce emerging risks before they escalate. 

https://informationsecuritybuzz.com/articles/how-to-outsmart-increasingly-complex-cyber-attacks/

  • Top Issues Driving Cyber Security: Growing Number of Cyber Criminals, Variety of Attacks

Fortifying cyber security defences remains a work in progress for many organisations, who acknowledge their shortcomings but have yet to commit the necessary resources to the effort, according to new research from CompTIA.

While a majority of respondents in each of seven geographic regions feels that their company’s cyber security is satisfactory, CompTIA’s “State of Cybersecurity” shows that a much smaller number rank the situation as “completely satisfactory.” Nearly everyone feels that there is room for improvement.

“Companies are aware of the threats they face and the potential consequences of an attack or breach,” said Seth Robinson, VP of industry research, CompTIA. “But they may be underestimating their exposure and how much they need to invest in cyber security. Risk mitigation is the key, the filter through which everything should be viewed.”

Two of the top three issues driving cyber security considerations are the growing volume of cyber criminals, cited by 48% of respondents, and the growing variety of cyber attacks (45%). Additionally, ransomware and phishing have quickly become major areas of concern as digital operations have increased and human error has proven more costly.

“Digital transformation driven by cloud and mobile adoption requires a new strategic approach to cyber security, but this poses significant challenges, both tactically and financially,” Robinson said. “As IT operations and strategy have grown more complex, so has the management of cyber security.”

As cyber security is more tightly integrated with business objectives, zero trust is the overarching policy that should be guiding modern efforts, though its adoption will not take place overnight because it requires a drastically different way of thinking and acting. The report suggests there is small progress in recognising a holistic zero trust approach, but better progress in adopting some elements that are part of an overarching zero trust policy.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/09/30/top-issues-driving-cybersecurity/

  • Cyber Threats Top Business Leaders' Biggest Concerns

Cyber threats are the number one concern for business decision makers, beating worries over economic uncertainty, rising energy costs and hiring, according to insurance provider Travelers. The firm polled over 1200 business leaders to compile its 2022 Travelers Risk Index report.

This is the third time in four years that cyber has emerged as the top concern, with more than half (57%) of respondents believing a future cyber-attack on their organisation is inevitable. A quarter (26%) said their company had already been a breach victim, the seventh successive year this figure has risen.

The top two cyber-related concerns were suffering a security breach (57%), and a system glitch causing computers to crash (55%). Becoming a cyber-extortion victim rose from eighth position to third this year.

However, despite general concern about cyber-threats, business decision-makers may also be guilty of overconfidence in their organisation’s security posture.

Nearly all respondents (93%) said they’re confident their company has implemented best practices to prevent or mitigate a cyber event. Yet most have not deployed endpoint detection and response tools (64%), they haven’t conducted a vendor cyber-assessment (59%), and don’t have an incident response plan (53%). Further, while 90% said they’re familiar with multi-factor authentication (MFA), only 52% had implemented it for remote access. This increasingly matters, not only to mitigate cyber-risk but also to reduce insurance premium costs and increase coverage.

Cyber attacks can shut down a company for a long period of time or even put it out of business, and it’s imperative that companies have a plan in place to mitigate any associated operational and financial disruptions.

Effective measures that have proven to reduce the risk of becoming a cyber victim are available, but based on these survey results, not enough companies are taking action. It’s never too late, and these steps can help businesses avoid a devastating cyber-event.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/cyberthreats-top-business-big/

  • Fired Admin Cripples Former Employer's Network Using Old Credentials

After being laid off, an IT system administrator disrupted the operations of his former employer, a high-profile financial company in Hawaii, hoping to get his job back.

Casey K Umetsu, aged 40, worked as a network admin for the company between 2017 and 2019, when his employer terminated his contract. The US Department of Justice says in a press release that the defendant pled guilty to accessing his former employer's website and making configuration changes to redirect web and email traffic to external computers.

To prolong the business disruption for several more days, Umetsu performed additional actions that essentially locked out the firm's IT team from the website administration panel. In the end, the victimised company learned who was responsible for the sabotage after reporting the cyber security incident to the FBI.

Umetsu is awaiting sentence for his wrongdoings on January 19, 2023. He faces a maximum of 10 years of prison time and a fine of up to $250,000.

While Umetsu's actions are condemnable, the company's security practices cannot be overlooked since Umetsu used credentials that should have been invalidated the moment he got fired.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/fired-admin-cripples-former-employers-network-using-old-credentials/


Threats

Ransomware and Extortion

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Other Social Engineering; Smishing, Vishing, etc

Malware

Mobile

Internet of Things – IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Deepfakes

Software Supply Chain

Denial of Service DoS/DDoS

Cloud/SaaS

Open Source

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Training, Education and Awareness

Parental Controls and Child Safety

Regulations, Fines and Legislation

Models, Frameworks and Standards

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






Sector Specific

Industry specific threat intelligence reports are available.

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

·       Automotive

·       Construction

·       Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)

·       Defence & Space

·       Education & Academia

·       Energy & Utilities

·       Estate Agencies

·       Financial Services

·       FinTech

·       Food & Agriculture

·       Gaming & Gambling

·       Government & Public Sector (including Law Enforcement)

·       Health/Medical/Pharma

·       Hotels & Hospitality

·       Insurance

·       Legal

·       Manufacturing

·       Maritime

·       Oil, Gas & Mining

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

·       Retail & eCommerce

·       Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)

·       Startups

·       Telecoms

·       Third Sector & Charities

·       Transport & Aviation

·       Web3


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

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

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

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

Read More
Black Arrow Admin Black Arrow Admin

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 29 July 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 29 July 2022

-1 in 3 Employees Don’t Understand Why Cyber Security Is Important

-As Companies Calculate Cyber Risk, The Right Data Makes a Big Difference

-Only 25% Of Organizations Consider Their Biggest Threat to Be from Inside the Business

-The Global Average Cost of a Data Breach Reaches an All-Time High of $4.35 Million

-Race Against Time: Hackers Start Hunting for Victims Just 15 Minutes After a Bug Is Disclosed

-Ransomware-as-a-Service Groups Forced to Change Tack as Payments Decline

-Phishers Targeted Financial Services Most During H1 2022

-HR Emails Dupe Employees the Most – KnowBe4 research reveals

-84% Of Organizations Experienced an Identity-Related Breach In The Past 18 Months

-Economic Downturn Raises Risk of Insiders Going Rogue

-5 Trends Making Cyber Security Threats Riskier and More Expensive

-Ransomware: Publicly Reported Incidents Are Only the Tip of the Iceberg

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

  • 1 in 3 Employees Don’t Understand Why Cyber Security Is Important

According to a new Tessian report, 30% of employees do not think they personally play a role in maintaining their company’s cyber security posture.

What’s more, only 39% of employees say they’re very likely to report a security incident, making investigation and remediation even more challenging and time-consuming for security teams. When asked why, 42% of employees said they wouldn’t know if they had caused an incident in the first place, and 25% say they just don’t care enough about cyber security to mention it.

Virtually all IT and security leaders agreed that a strong security culture is important in maintaining a strong security posture. Yet, despite rating their organisation’s security 8 out 10, on average, three-quarters of organisations experienced a security incident in the last 12 months.

The report suggests this could stem from a reliance on traditional training programs: 48% of security leaders say training is one of the most important influences on building a positive security posture. But the reality is that employees aren’t engaged; just 28% of UK and US workers say security awareness training is engaging and only 36% say they’re paying full attention. Of those who are, only half say it’s helpful, while another 50% have had a negative experience with a phishing simulation. With recent headlines depicting how phishing simulations can go awry, negative experiences like these further alienate employees and decrease engagement.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/07/28/employees-dont-understand-why-cybersecurity-is-important/

  • As Companies Calculate Cyber Risk, the Right Data Makes a Big Difference

The proposed US Securities and Exchange Commission’s stronger rules for reporting cyber attacks will have ramifications beyond increased disclosure of attacks to the public. By requiring not just quick reporting of incidents, but also disclosure of cyber policies and risk management, such regulation will ultimately bring more accountability for cyber security to the highest levels of corporate leadership. Other jurisdictions will very likely follow the US in requiring more stringent cyber controls and governance.

This means that boards and executives everywhere will need to increase their understanding of cyber security, not only from a tech point of view, but from a risk and business exposure point of view. The CFO, CMO and the rest of the C-suite and board will want and need to know what financial exposure the business faces from a data breach, and how likely it is that breaches will happen. This is the only way they will be able to develop cyber policies and plans and react properly to the proposed regulations.

Companies will therefore need to be able to calculate and put a dollar value on their exposure to cyber risk. This is the starting point for the ability to make cyber security decisions not in a vacuum, but as part of overall business decisions. To accurately quantify cyber security exposure, companies need to understand what the threats are and which data and business assets are at risk, and they then need to multiply the cost of a breach by the probability that such an event will take place in order to put a dollar figure on their exposure.

While there are many automated tools, including those that use artificial intelligence (AI), that can help with this, the key to doing this well is to make sure calculations are rooted in real and relevant data – which is different for each company or organisation.

https://venturebeat.com/2022/07/22/as-companies-calculate-cyber-risk-the-right-data-makes-a-big-difference/

  • Only 25% Of Organisations Consider Their Biggest Threat to Be from Inside the Business

A worrying 73.5% of organisations feel they have wasted the majority of their cyber security budget on failing to remediate threats, despite having an over-abundance of security tools at their disposal, according to Gurucul.

Only 25% of organisations consider their biggest threat to be from inside the business, despite insider threats increasing by 47% over the past two years. With only a quarter of businesses seeing their biggest threat emanating from inside their organisation, it seems over 70% saw the biggest cyber security challenges emanating from external threats such as ransomware. In fact, although external threats account for many security incidents, we must never forget to look beyond those external malicious and bad actors to insider threats to effectively secure corporate data and IP.

The survey also found 33% of respondents said they are able to detect threats within hours, while 27.07% even claimed they can detect threats in real-time. However, challenges persist with 33% of respondents stating that it still takes their organisation days and weeks to detect threats, with 6% not being able to detect them at all.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/07/28/biggest-threat-inside-the-business/

  • The Global Average Cost of a Data Breach Reaches an All-Time High of $4.35 Million

IBM Security released the 2022 Cost of a Data Breach Report, revealing costlier and higher-impact data breaches than ever before, with the global average cost of a data breach reaching an all-time high of $4.35 million for studied organisations.

With breach costs increasing nearly 13% over the last two years of the report, the findings suggest these incidents may also be contributing to rising costs of goods and services. In fact, 60% of studied organisations raised their product or services prices due to the breach, when the cost of goods is already soaring worldwide amid inflation and supply chain issues.

The perpetuality of cyber attacks is also shedding light on the “haunting effect” data breaches are having on businesses, with the IBM report finding 83% of studied organisations have experienced more than one data breach in their lifetime. Another factor rising over time is the after-effects of breaches on these organisations, which linger long after they occur, as nearly 50% of breach costs are incurred more than a year after the breach.

The 2022 Cost of a Data Breach Report is based on in-depth analysis of real-world data breaches experienced by 550 organisations globally between March 2021 and March 2022. The research, which was sponsored and analysed by IBM Security, was conducted by the Ponemon Institute.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/07/27/2022-cost-of-a-data-breach-report/

  • Race Against Time: Hackers Start Hunting for Victims Just 15 Minutes After a Bug Is Disclosed

Attackers are becoming faster at exploiting previously undisclosed zero-day flaws, according to Palo Alto Networks.  This means that the amount of time that system admins have to patch systems before exploitation happens is shrinking fast..

The company warns in its 2022 report covering 600 incident response (IR) cases that attackers typically start scanning for vulnerabilities within 15 minutes of one being announced.

Among this group are 2021's most significant flaws, including the Exchange Server ProxyShell and ProxyLogon sets of flaws, the persistent Apache Log4j flaws aka Log4Shell, the SonicWall zero-day flaws, and Zoho ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus.

While phishing remains the biggest method for initial access, accounting for 37% of IR cases, software vulnerabilities accounted of 31%. Brute-force credential attacks (like password spraying) accounted for 9%, while smaller categories included previously compromised credentials (6%), insider threat (5%), social engineering (5%), and abuse of trusted relationships/tools (4%).    

Over 87% of the flaws identified as the source of initial access fell into one of six vulnerability categories.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/race-against-time-hackers-start-hunting-for-victims-just-15-minutes-after-a-bug-is-disclosed/

  • Ransomware-as-a-Service Groups Forced to Change Tack as Payments Decline

Ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operators are evolving their tactics yet again in response to more aggressive law enforcement efforts, in a move that is reducing their profits but also making affiliates harder to track, according to Coveware.

The security vendor’s Q2 2022 ransomware report revealed that concerted efforts to crack down on groups like Conti and DarkSide have forced threat actors to adapt yet again.

It identified three characteristics of RaaS operations that used to be beneficial, but are increasingly seen as a hinderance.

The first is RaaS branding, which has helped to cement the reputation of some groups and improve the chances of victims paying, according to Coveware. However, branding also makes attribution easier and can draw the unwanted attention of law enforcement, it said.

“RaaS groups are keeping a lower profile and vetting affiliates and their victims more thoroughly,” Coveware explained.

“More RaaS groups have formed, resulting in less concentration among the top few variants. Affiliates are frequently shifting between RaaS variants on different attacks, making attribution beyond the variant more challenging.”

In some cases, affiliates are also using “unbranded” malware to make attribution more difficult, it added.

The second evolution in RaaS involves back-end infrastructure, which used to enable scale and increase profitability. However, it also means a larger attack surface and a digital footprint that’s more expensive and challenging to maintain.

As a result, RaaS developers are being forced to invest more in obfuscation and redundancy, which is hitting profits and reducing the amount of resources available for expansion, Coveware claimed.

Finally, RaaS shared services used to help affiliates with initial access, stolen data storage, negotiation management and leak site support.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/raas-groups-forced-change-payments/

  • Phishers Targeted Financial Services Most During H1 2022

Banks received the lion’s share of phishing attacks during the first half of 2022, according to figures published by cyber security company Vade.

The analysis also found that attackers were most likely to send their phishing emails on weekdays, with most arriving between Monday and Wednesday. Attacks tapered off towards the end of the week, Vade said.

While financial services scored highest on a per-sector basis, Microsoft was the most impersonated brand overall. The company’s Microsoft 365 cloud productivity services are a huge draw for cyber-criminals hoping to access accounts using phishing attacks.

Phishing attacks on Microsoft customers have become more creative, according to Vade, which identified several phone-based attacks. It highlighted a campaign impersonating Microsoft’s Defender anti-malware product, fraudulently warning that the company had debited a subscription fee. It encouraged victims to fix the problem by phone.

Facebook came a close second, followed by financial services company Crédit Agricole, WhatsApp and Orange.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/phishers-financial-services-h1-2022/

  • HR Emails Dupe Employees the Most – KnowBe4 research reveals

In phishing tests conducted on business emails, more than half of the subject lines clicked imitated Human Resources communications.

New research has revealed the top email subjects clicked on in phishing tests were those related to or from Human Resources, according to the latest ‘most clicked phishing tests‘ conducted by KnowBe4. In fact, half of those that were clicked on had subject lines related to Human Resources, including vacation policy updates, dress code changes, and upcoming performance reviews. The second most clicked category were those send from IT, which include requests or actions of password verifications that were needed immediately.

KnowBe4’s CEO commented “More than 80% of company data breaches globally come from human error, so security awareness training for your staff is one of the least costly and most effective methods to thwart social engineering attacks. Training gives employees the ability to rapidly recognise a suspicious email, even if it appears to come from an internal source, causing them to pause before clicking. That moment where they stop and question the email is a critical and often overlooked element of security culture that could significantly reduce your risk surface.”

This research comes hot off the heels of the recent KnowBe4 industry benchmarking report which found one in three untrained employees will click on a phishing link. The worst performing industries were Energy & Utilities, Insurance and Consulting, with all labelled the most at risk for social engineering in the large enterprise category.

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2022/07/27/hr-emails-dupe-employees-the-most-knowbe4-research-reveals/

  • 84% Of Organisations Experienced an Identity-Related Breach in the Past 18 Months

60% of IT security decision makers believe their overall security strategy does not keep pace with the threat landscape, and that they are either lagging behind (20%), treading water (13%), or merely running to keep up (27%), according to a survey by Sapio Research.

The report also highlights differences between the perceived and actual effectiveness of security strategies. While 40% of respondents believe they have the right strategy in place, 84% of organisations reported that they have experienced an identity-related breach or an attack using stolen credentials during the previous year and a half.

Promisingly, many organisations are hungry to make a change, particularly when it comes to protecting identities. In fact, 90% of respondents state that their organisations fully recognise the importance of identity security in enabling them to achieve their business goals, and 87% say that it is one of the most important security priorities for the next 12 months.

However, 75% of IT and security professionals also believe that they’ll fall short of protecting privileged identities because they won’t get the support they need. This is largely due to a lack of budget and executive alignment, with 63% of respondents saying that their company’s board still doesn’t fully understand identity security and the role it plays in enabling better business operations.

While the importance of identity security is acknowledged by business leaders, most security teams will not receive the backing and budget they need to put vital security controls and solutions in place to reduce major risks. This means that the majority of organisations will continue to fall short of protecting privileges, leaving them vulnerable to cyber criminals looking to discover privileged accounts and abuse them.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/07/28/identity-related-breach/

  • Economic Downturn Raises Risk of Insiders Going Rogue

Declining economic conditions could make insiders more susceptible to recruitment offers from threat actors looking for allies to assist them in carrying out various attacks.

Enterprise security teams need to be aware of the heightened risk and strengthen measures for protecting against, detecting, and responding to insider threats, researchers from Palo Alto Network's Unit 42 threat intelligence team recommended in a report this week.

The security vendor's report highlighted several other important takeaways for security operations teams, including the fact that ransomware and business email compromise attacks continue to dominate incident response cases and vulnerability exploits — accounting for nearly one-third of all breaches.

Unit 42 researchers analysed data from a sampling of over 600 incident response engagements between April 2021 and May 2022 and determined that difficult economic times could lure more actors to cyber crime. This could include both people with technical skills looking to make a fast buck, as well as financially stressed insiders with legitimate access to valuable enterprise data and IT assets. The prevalence of remote and hybrid work models has created an environment where it's easier for workers to steal intellectual property or carry out other malicious activity, the researchers found.

https://www.darkreading.com/risk/economic-downturn-raises-the-risk-of-insiders-going-rogue

  • 5 Trends Making Cyber Security Threats Riskier and More Expensive

Since the pandemic the cyber world has become a far riskier place. According to the Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report 2022, almost half (48%) of organisations across the US and Europe experienced a cyber attack in the past 12 months. Even more alarming is that these attacks are happening despite businesses doubling down on their cyber security spend.

Cyber security is at a critical inflection point where five megatrends are making the threat landscape riskier, more complicated, and costlier to manage than previously reported. To better understand the evolution of this threat landscape, let’s examine these trends in more detail.

  1. Everything becomes digital

  2. Organisations become ecosystems

  3. Physical and digital worlds collide

  4. New technologies bring new risks

  5. Regulations become more complex

Organisations can follow these best practices to elevate cyber security performance:

  • Identify, prioritise, and implement controls around risks.

  • Adopt a framework such as ISO 27001 or NIST Cyber Security Framework.

  • Develop human-layered cyber security.

  • Fortify your supply chain.

  • Avoid using too many tools.

  • Prioritise protection of critical assets.

  • Automate where you can.

  • Monitor security metrics regularly to help business leaders get insight into security effectiveness, regulatory compliance, and levels of security awareness in the organisation.

Cyber security will always be a work in progress. The key to effective risk management is having proactive visibility and context across the entire attack surface. This helps to understand which vulnerabilities, if exploited, can cause the greatest harm to the business. Not all risks can be mitigated; some risks will have to be accepted and trade-offs will have to be negotiated.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3667442/5-trends-making-cybersecurity-threats-riskier-and-more-expensive.html#tk.rss_news

  • Ransomware: Publicly Reported Incidents Are Only the Tip of the Iceberg

The threat landscape report on ransomware attacks published this week by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) uncovers the shortcomings of the current reporting mechanisms across the EU.

As one of the most devastating types of cyber security attacks over the last decade, ransomware, has grown to impact organisations of all sizes across the globe.

This threat landscape report analysed a total of 623 ransomware incidents across the EU, the United Kingdom and the United States for a reporting period from May 2021 to June 2022. The data was gathered from governments' and security companies' reports, from the press, verified blogs and in some cases using related sources from the dark web.

Between May 2021 and June 2022 about 10 terabytes of data were stolen each month by ransomware threat actors. 58.2% of the data stolen included employees' personal data.

At least 47 unique ransomware threat actors were found.

For 94.2% of incidents, we do not know whether the company paid the ransom or not. However, when the negotiation fails, the attackers usually expose and make the data available on their webpages. This is what happens in general and is a reality for 37.88% of incidents.

We can therefore conclude that the remaining 62.12% of companies either came to an agreement with the attackers or found another solution.

The study also shows that companies of every size and from all sectors are affected.

The figures in the report can however only portray a part of the overall picture. In reality, the study reveals that the total number of ransomware attacks is much larger. At present this total is impossible to capture since too many organisations still do not make their incidents public or do not report on them to the relevant authorities.

https://www.enisa.europa.eu/news/ransomware-publicly-reported-incidents-are-only-the-tip-of-the-iceberg


Threats

Ransomware

BEC – Business Email Compromise

Phishing & Email Based Attacks

Other Social Engineering; SMishing, Vishing, etc

Malware

Mobile

Internet of Things – IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain

 Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

AML/CFT/Sanctions

Insurance

Dark Web

Supply Chain and Third Parties

Software Supply Chain

Denial of Service DoS/DDoS

Cloud/SaaS

Attack Surface Management

Identity and Access Management

Encryption

Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks

Social Media

Training, Education and Awareness

Privacy

Law Enforcement Action and Take Downs

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





Sector Specific

Industry specific threat intelligence reports are available.

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

·       Automotive

·       Construction

·       Critical National Infrastructure (CNI)

·       Defence & Space

·       Education & Academia

·       Energy & Utilities

·       Estate Agencies

·       Financial Services

·       FinTech

·       Food & Agriculture

·       Gaming & Gambling

·       Government & Public Sector (including Law Enforcement)

·       Health/Medical/Pharma

·       Hotels & Hospitality

·       Insurance

·       Legal

·       Manufacturing

·       Maritime

·       Oil, Gas & Mining

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

·       Retail & eCommerce

·       Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs)

·       Startups

·       Telecoms

·       Third Sector & Charities

·       Transport & Aviation

·       Web3




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

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

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

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

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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 25 March 2022

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 25 March 2022:

-Morgan Stanley Client Accounts Breached in Social Engineering Attacks

-Ransomware Is Scary, But Another Scam Is Costing Victims Much, Much More

-Phishing Kits Constantly Evolve to Evade Security Software

-Ransomware Payments, Demands Rose Dramatically in 2021

-7 Suspected Members of LAPSUS$ Hacker Gang, Aged 16 to 21, Arrested in UK

-Here's How Fast Ransomware Encrypts Files

-HEAT Attacks: A New Class of Cyber Threats Organisations Are Not Prepared For

-The Cyber Warfare Predicted In Ukraine May Be Yet To Come

-The Three Russian Cyber Attacks The West Most Fears

-Do These 8 Things Now To Boost Your Security Ahead Of Potential Russian Cyber Attacks

-Cyber Crime Victims Suffered Losses of Over $6.9B in 2021 in the US Alone

-Expanding Threat Landscape: Cyber Criminals Attacking from All Sides

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

  • Morgan Stanley Client Accounts Breached in Social Engineering Attacks

Morgan Stanley Wealth Management says some of its customers had their accounts compromised in social engineering attacks.

The account breaches were the result of vishing (aka voice phishing), a social engineering attack where scammers impersonate a trusted entity (in this case Morgan Stanley) during a voice call to convince their targets into revealing sensitive information such as banking or login credentials.

The company said in a notice sent to affected clients that, "on or around February 11, 2022," a threat actor impersonating Morgan Stanley gained access to their accounts after tricking them into providing their Morgan Stanley Online account info.

After successfully breaching their accounts, the attacker also electronically transferred money to their own bank account by initiating payments using the Zelle payment service.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/morgan-stanley-client-accounts-breached-in-social-engineering-attacks/

  • Ransomware Is Scary, But Another Scam Is Costing Victims Much, Much More

Business email compromise (BEC) remains the biggest source of financial losses, which totalled $2.4 billion in 2021, up from an estimated $1.8 billion in 2020, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Internet Crime Center (IC3).

The FBI says in its 2021 annual report that Americans last year lost $6.9 billion to scammers and cyber criminals through ransomware, BEC, and cryptocurrency theft related to financial and romance scams. In 2020, that figure stood at $4.2 billion.

Last year, FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received 847,376 complaints about cybercrime losses, up 7% from 791,790 complaints in 2020.

BEC has been the largest source of fraud for several years despite ransomware attacks grabbing most headlines.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/ransomware-is-scary-but-another-scam-is-costing-victims-much-much-more-says-fbi/#ftag=RSSbaffb68

  • Phishing Kits Constantly Evolve to Evade Security Software

Modern phishing kits sold on cybercrime forums as off-the-shelf packages feature multiple, sophisticated detection avoidance and traffic filtering systems to ensure that internet security solutions won’t mark them as a threat.

Fake websites that mimic well-known brands are abundant on the internet to lure victims and steal their payment details or account credentials.

Most of these websites are built using phishing kits that feature brand logos, realistic login pages, and in cases of advanced offerings, dynamic webpages assembled from a set of basic elements.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/phishing-kits-constantly-evolve-to-evade-security-software/

  • Ransomware Payment Demands Rose Dramatically in 2021

Ransomware attackers demanded dramatically higher ransom fees last year, and the average ransom payment rose by 78% to $541,010, according to data from incident response (IR) cases investigated by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42.

IR cases by Unit 42 also saw a whopping 144% increase in ransom demands, to $2.2 million. According to the report, the most victimised sectors were professional and legal services, construction, wholesale and retail, healthcare, and manufacturing.

Cyber extortion spiked, with 85% of ransomware victims — some 2, 556 organisations — having their data dumped and exposed on leak sites, according to the "2022 Unit 42 Ransomware Threat Report."

Conti led the ransomware attack volume, representing some one in five cases Unit 42 investigated, followed by REvil, Hello Kitty, and Phobos.

https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/ransomware-payments-demands-rose-dramatically-in-2021

  • 7 Suspected Members of LAPSUS$ Hacker Gang, aged 16 to 21, Arrested in UK

The City of London Police has arrested seven teenagers between the ages of 16 and 21 for their alleged connections to the prolific LAPSUS$ extortion gang that's linked to a recent burst of attacks targeting NVIDIA, Samsung, Ubisoft, LG, Microsoft, and Okta.

"The City of London Police has been conducting an investigation with its partners into members of a hacking group," Detective Inspector, Michael O'Sullivan, said in a statement shared with The Hacker News. "Seven people between the ages of 16 and 21 have been arrested in connection with this investigation and have all been released under investigation. Our enquiries remain ongoing."

The development, which was first disclosed by BBC News, comes after a report from Bloomberg revealed that a 16-year-old Oxford-based teenager is the mastermind of the group. It's not immediately clear if the minor is one among the arrested individuals. The said teen, under the online alias White or Breachbase, is alleged to have accumulated about $14 million in Bitcoin from hacking.

https://thehackernews.com/2022/03/7-suspected-members-of-lapsus-hacker.html

  • Here's How Fast Ransomware Encrypts Files

Forty-two minutes and 54 seconds: that's how quickly the median ransomware variant can encrypt and lock out a victim from 100,000 of their files.

The data point came from Splunk's SURGe team, which analysed in its lab how quickly the 10 biggest ransomware strains — Lockbit, REvil, Blackmatter, Conti, Ryuk, Avaddon, Babuk, Darkside, Maize, and Mespinoza — could encrypt 100,000 files consisting of some 53.93 gigabytes of data. Lockbit won the race, with speeds of 86% faster than the median. One Lockbit sample was clocked at encrypting 25,000 files per minute.

Splunk's team found that ransomware variants are all over the map speed-wise, and the underlying hardware can dictate their encryption speeds.

https://www.darkreading.com/application-security/here-s-how-fast-ransomware-encrypts-files

  • HEAT Attacks: A New Class of Cyber Threats Organisations Are Not Prepared For

Web malware (47%) and ransomware (42%) now top the list of security threats that organisations are most concerned about. Yet despite the growing risks, just 27% have advanced threat protection in place on every endpoint device that can access corporate applications and resources.

This is according to research published by Menlo Security, exploring what steps organisations are taking to secure themselves in the wake of a new class of cyber threats – known as Highly Evasive Adaptive Threats (HEAT).

As employees spend more time working in the browser and accessing cloud-based applications, the risk of HEAT attacks increases. Almost two-thirds of organisations have had a device compromised by a browser-based attack in the last 12 months. The report suggests that organisations are not being proactive enough in mitigating the risk of these threats, with 45% failing to add strength to their network security stack over the past year. There are also conflicting views on the most effective place to deploy security to prevent advanced threats, with 43% citing the network, and 37% the cloud.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/03/22/web-security-threats/

  • The Cyber Warfare Predicted in Ukraine May Be Yet to Come

In the build-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the national security community braced for a campaign combining military combat, disinformation, electronic warfare and cyber attacks. Vladimir Putin would deploy devastating cyber operations, the thinking went, to disable government and critical infrastructure, blind Ukrainian surveillance capabilities and limit lines of communications to help invading forces. But that’s not how it has played out. At least, not yet.

The danger is that as political and economic conditions deteriorate, the red lines and escalation judgments that kept Moscow’s most potent cyber capabilities in check may adjust. Western sanctions and lethal aid support to Ukraine may prompt Russian hackers to lash out against the west. Russian ransomware actors may also take advantage of the situation, possibly resorting to cyber crime as one of the few means of revenue generation.

https://www.ft.com/content/2938a3cd-1825-4013-8219-4ee6342e20ca

  • The Three Russian Cyber Attacks the West Most Fears

The UK's cyber authorities are supporting the White House's calls for "increased cyber-security precautions", though neither has given any evidence that Russia is planning a cyber-attack.

Russia has previously stated that such accusations are "Russophobic".

However, Russia is a cyber-superpower with a serious arsenal of cyber-tools, and hackers capable of disruptive and potentially destructive cyber-attacks.

Ukraine has remained relatively untroubled by Russian cyber-offensives but experts now fear that Russia may go on a cyber-offensive against Ukraine's allies.

"Biden's warnings seem plausible, particularly as the West introduced more sanctions, hacktivists continue to join the fray, and the kinetic aspects of the invasion seemingly don't go to plan," says Jen Ellis, from cyber-security firm Rapid7.

This article from the BCC outlines the hacks that experts most fear, and they are repeats of things we have already seen coming out of Russia, only potentially a lot more destructive this time around.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-60841924

  • Do These 8 Things Now to Boost Your Security Ahead of Potential Russian Cyber Attacks

The message comes as the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ramp up warnings about Russian hacking of everything from online accounts to satellite broadband networks. CISA's current campaign is called Shields Up, which urges all organisations to patch immediately and secure network boundaries. This messaging is being echoed by UK and other Western Cyber authorities:

The use of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is being very strongly advocated. The White House and other agencies both sides of the Atlantic also urged companies to take seven other steps:

  • Deploy modern security tools on your computers and devices to continuously look for and mitigate threats

  • Make sure that your systems are patched and protected against all known vulnerabilities, and change passwords across your networks so that previously stolen credentials are useless to malicious actors

  • Back up your data and ensure you have offline backups beyond the reach of malicious actors

  • Run exercises and drill your emergency plans so that you are prepared to respond quickly to minimize the impact of any attack

  • Encrypt your data so it cannot be used if it is stolen

  • Educate your employees to common tactics that attackers will use over email or through websites

  • Work with specialists to establish relationships in advance of any cyber incidents.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/white-house-warns-do-these-8-things-now-to-boost-your-security-ahead-of-potential-russian-cyberattacks/

  • Cyber Crime Victims Suffered Losses of Over $6.9B in 2021 in the US Alone

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reported a record-breaking year for 2021 in the number of complaints it received, among which business email compromise (BEC) attacks made up the majority of incidents.

IC3 handled 847,376 complaint reports last year — an increase of 7% over 2020 — which mainly revolved around phishing attacks, nonpayment/nondelivery scams, and personal data breaches. Overall, losses amounted to more than $6.9 billion.

BEC and email account compromises ranked as the No. 1 attack, accounting for 19,954 complaints and losses of around $2.4 billion.

"In 2021, heightened attention was brought to the urgent need for more cyber incident reporting to the federal government. Cyber incidents are in fact crimes deserving of an investigation, leading to judicial repercussions for the perpetrators who commit them," Paul Abbate, deputy director of the FBI wrote in the IC3's newly published annual report.

https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/fbi-cybercrime-victims-suffered-losses-of-over-6-9b-in-2021

  • Expanding Threat Landscape: Cyber Criminals Attacking from All Sides

Research from Trend Micro warns of spiralling risk to digital infrastructure and remote workers as threat actors increase their rate of attack on organisations and individuals.

“Attackers are always working to increase their victim count and profit, whether through quantity or effectiveness of attacks,” said Jon Clay, VP of threat intelligence at Trend Micro.

“Our latest research shows that while Trend Micro threat detections rose 42% year-on-year in 2021 to over 94 billion, they shrank in some areas as attacks became more precisely targeted.”

Ransomware attackers are shifting their focus to critical businesses and industries more likely to pay, and double extortion tactics ensure that they are able to profit. Ransomware-as-a-service offerings have opened the market to attackers with limited technical knowledge – but also given rise to more specialisation, such as initial access brokers who are now an essential part of the cybercrime supply chain.

Threat actors are also getting better at exploiting human error to compromise cloud infrastructure and remote workers. Trend Micro detected and prevented 25.7 million email threats in 2021 compared to 16.7 million in 2020, with the volume of blocked phishing attempts nearly doubling over the period. Research shows home workers are often prone to take more risks than those in the office, which makes phishing a particular risk.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/03/22/threat-actors-increase-attack/


Threats

Ransomware

Phishing & Email

Other Social Engineering

Malware

Mobile

IoT

Data Breaches/Leaks

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking

Insider Risk and Insider Threats

Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime

Insurance

Dark Web

Supply Chain

Cloud

Passwords & Credential Stuffing

Spyware, Espionage & Cyber Warfare


Nation State Actors

Nation State Actors – Russia

Nation State Actors – China

Nation State Actors – North Korea






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Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 11 June 2021

Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 11 June 2021: World’s Biggest Meat Producer JBS Pays $11m Ransom; New Type Of Ransomware Could Be 10 Times As Dangerous; Lewd Phishing Lures Aimed At Business Explode; UK Schools Forced To Shut Following Ransomware; COVID-19 Has Transformed Work, But Cyber Security Is Not Keeping Pace; Colonial Pipeline Ransomware Attack Stemmed From Old VPN Password; Evil Corp Rebrands Ransomware To Escape Sanctions; Billions Of Passwords Leaked Online From Past Data Breaches

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

World’s Biggest Meat Producer JBS Pays $11m Cyber Crime Ransom

JBS, the world’s biggest meat processor, has paid an $11m (£7.8m) ransom after a cyber attack shut down operations, including abattoirs in the US, Australia and Canada. While most of its operations have been restored, the Brazilian-headquartered company said it hoped the payment would head off any further complications including data theft. JBS, which supplies more than a fifth of all beef in the US, reportedly made the payment in bitcoin.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jun/10/worlds-biggest-meat-producer-jbs-pays-11m-cybercrime-ransom

Jackware: A New Type Of Ransomware Could Be 10 Times As Dangerous

Between the attacks on Colonial Pipeline and JBS, which disrupted nearly half of the East Coast’s gasoline supply for a week and threatened 20% of the U.S. meat market, respectively, consumers are finally experiencing the first physical impacts to their daily lives from cyber attacks. As bad as these attacks are, they could get a lot worse. Cyber criminals are constantly evolving, and what is keeping many security professionals up at night is the growing risk of “jackware” — a new type of ransomware that could be 10 times more dangerous because instead of encrypting Windows computers and servers. Jackware hijacks the actual physical devices and machines that make modern life possible. It’s only a matter of when we will see these attacks happen

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ransomware-jackware-115229732.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=tw&tsrc=twtr

Lewd Phishing Lures Aimed At Business Explode

Attackers have amped up their use of X-rated phishing lures in business email compromise (BEC) attacks. A new report found a stunning 974-percent spike in social-engineering scams involving suggestive materials, usually aimed at male-sounding names within a company. The Threat Intelligence team with GreatHorn made the discovery and explained it’s not simply libido driving users to click on these suggestive scams. Instead, these emails popping up on people’s screens at work are intended to shock the user, opening the door for them to make a reckless decision to click. It’s a tactic GreatHorn called “dynamite phishing.”

https://threatpost.com/lewd-phishing-lures-business-explode/166734/

UK Schools Forced To Shut Following Critical Ransomware Attack

Two schools in the south of England have been forced to temporarily close their doors after a ransomware attack that encrypted and stole sensitive data. The Skinners' Kent Academy and Skinners' Kent Primary School were attacked on June 2, according to a statement on the trust’s website which said it is currently working with third-party security experts, the police, and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). It revealed that on-premises servers were targeted at the Tunbridge Well-based schools. As student and staff emergency contact details, medical records, timetables, and registers were encrypted by the attackers, the decision was taken to close on Monday.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/schools-shut-ransomware-attacl/

Emerging Ransomware Targets Dozens Of Businesses Worldwide

An emerging ransomware strain in the threat landscape claims to have breached 30 organisations in just four months since it went operational by riding on the coattails of a notorious ransomware syndicate. First observed in February 2021, "Prometheus" is an offshoot of another well-known ransomware variant called Thanos, which was previously deployed against state-run organisations in the Middle East and North Africa last year. The affected entities are believed to be government, financial services, manufacturing, logistics, consulting, agriculture, healthcare services, insurance agencies, energy and law firms in the U.S., U.K., and a dozen more countries in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and South America.

https://thehackernews.com/2021/06/emerging-ransomware-targets-dozens-of.html

COVID-19 Has Transformed Work, But Cyber Security Is Not Keeping Pace, Report Finds

An international survey of tech professionals from the Thales Group finds some bleak news for the current state of data security: the COVID-19 pandemic has upended cyber security norms, and security teams are struggling to keep up. The problems appear to be snowballing; lack of preparation has led to a scramble resulting in poor data protection practices, outdated security infrastructure not receiving needed overhauls, a jumble of new systems that only make matters worse and priority misalignment between security teams and leadership.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/covid-19-has-transformed-work-but-cybersecurity-isnt-keeping-pace-report-finds/

Colonial Pipeline Ransomware Attack Was The Result Of An Old VPN Password

It took only one dusty, no-longer-used password for the DarkSide cyber criminals to breach the network of Colonial Pipeline Co. last month, resulting in a ransomware attack that caused significant disruption and remains under investigation by the U.S. government and cyber security experts. Attackers used the password to a VPN account that was no longer in use but still allowed them to remotely access Colonial Pipeline’s network, Charles Carmakal, senior vice president at FireEye’s cyber security consulting firm Mandiant, told Bloomberg in an interview, according to a published report on the news outlet’s website.

https://threatpost.com/darkside-pwned-colonial-with-old-vpn-password/166743/

Evil Corp Rebrands Ransomware To Escape Sanctions

Threat actors behind a notorious Russian cyber crime group appear to have rebranded their ransomware once again in a bid to escape US sanctions prohibiting victims from paying them. Experts took to Twitter to point out that a leak site previously run by the Babuk group, which famously attacked Washington DC’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), had rebranded to “PayloadBin.” The Babuk group claimed that it was shutting down its affiliate model for encrypting victims and moving to a new model back in April. A ‘new’ ransomware variant with the same name has also been doing the rounds of late, but according to CTO of Emsisoft, Fabian Wosar, it’s nothing more than a copycat effort by Evil Corp.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/evil-corp-rebrands-ransomware/

Billions Of Passwords Leaked Online From Past Data Breaches

A list of leaked passwords discovered on a hacker forum may be one of the largest such collections of all time. A 100GB text file leaked by a user on a popular hacker forum contains 8.4 billion passwords, likely gathered from past data breaches.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/billions-of-passwords-leaked-online-from-past-data-breaches/


Threats

Ransomware

Phishing

Other Social Engineering

Malware

Mobile

Vulnerabilities

Data Breaches

Organised Crime & Criminal Actors

Cryptocurrency

Nation State Actors

Denial of Service

Charities



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