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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Threats
Ransomware and Extortion
Ransomware data theft tool may show a shift in extortion tactics (bleepingcomputer.com)
The various ways ransomware impacts your organization - Help Net Security
New Royal Ransomware emerges in multi-million dollar attacks (bleepingcomputer.com)
Research: 20% of All Reported Ransomware Attacks Occurred in the Last 12 Months - MSSP Alert
BlackCat Ransomware Attackers Spotted Fine-Tuning Their Malware Arsenal (thehackernews.com)
Noberus ransomware gets info-stealing upgrades • The Register
SQL Server admins warned to watch for Fargo ransomware • The Register
BlackCat/ALPHV Gang Adds Wiper Functionality as Ransomware Tactic (darkreading.com)
Leaked LockBit 3.0 builder used by ‘Bl00dy’ ransomware gang in attacks (bleepingcomputer.com)
NCC Group: IceFire ransomware gang ramping up attacks (techtarget.com)
MS SQL servers are getting hacked to deliver ransomware to orgs - Help Net Security
Hackers Leak French Hospital Patient Data in Ransom Fight | SecurityWeek.Com
Oxford Health: Cyber attack continues to hit NHS trust's services - BBC News
LA School District Ransomware Attackers Now Threaten to Leak Stolen Data (darkreading.com)
Phishing & Email Based Attacks
Fake US govt job offers push Cobalt Strike in phishing attacks (bleepingcomputer.com)
Germany arrests hacker for stealing €4 million via phishing attacks (bleepingcomputer.com)
Capital One Phish Showcases Growing Bank-Brand Targeting Trend (darkreading.com)
Other Social Engineering; Smishing, Vishing, etc
How cyber criminals use public online and offline data to target employees | CSO Online
Beware Revolut frozen card scams sent via SMS text • Graham Cluley
IRS warns Americans of massive rise in SMS phishing attacks (bleepingcomputer.com)
Malware
Office exploits continue to spread more than any other category of malware - Help Net Security
This credit card-stealing malware is spreading like wildfire | Digital Trends
Hacking group hides backdoor malware inside Windows logo image (bleepingcomputer.com)
Hackers now sharing cracked Brute Ratel post-exploitation kit online (bleepingcomputer.com)
Cobalt Strike malware campaign targets job seekers (techtarget.com)
New Botnet 'Chaos' Targeting Linux, Windows Systems (informationsecuritybuzz.com)
Malware targets VMware users for espionage, Mandiant says • The Register
Chaos Malware Resurfaces With All-New DDoS & Cryptomining Modules (darkreading.com)
Quantum Builder tool helps criminals spread Windows RATs • The Register
Unit 42 finds polyglot files delivering IcedID malware (techtarget.com)
Hackers use PowerPoint files for 'mouseover' malware delivery (bleepingcomputer.com)
Does AI-powered malware exist in the wild? Not yet (techtarget.com)
New Erbium password-stealing malware spreads as game cracks, cheats (bleepingcomputer.com)
Lazarus APT continues to target job seekers with macOS malware - Security Affairs
APT28 relies on PowerPoint Mouseover to deliver Graphite malware - Security Affairs
Mobile
WhatsApp 0-Day Bug Let Hackers Execute an Arbitary Code Remotely (gbhackers.com)
Adware on Google Play and Apple Store installed 13 million times (bleepingcomputer.com)
Samsung facing class action suit after customer data leak • The Register
Inside a cyber attack method that targets your cellphone - The Washington Post
Internet of Things – IoT
Data Breaches/Leaks
Watchfinder warns customers that hackers stole their data • Graham Cluley
Shangri-La hotels Customer Database Hacked | SecurityWeek.Com
Hacker Behind Optus Breach Releases 10,200 Customer Records in Extortion Scheme (thehackernews.com)
Australia government wants Optus to pay for data breach | ZDNET
Organised Crime & Criminal Actors
Ukraine Arrests Cyber Crime Group for Selling Data of 30 Million Accounts (thehackernews.com)
New hacking group ‘Metador’ lurking in ISP networks for months (bleepingcomputer.com)
Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain
Scams targeting crypto enthusiasts are becoming increasingly common - Help Net Security
Chaos Malware Resurfaces With All-New DDoS & Cryptomining Modules (darkreading.com)
Cyber sleuth alleges $160M Wintermute hack was an inside job (cointelegraph.com)
Insider Risk and Insider Threats
Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime
Identities Stolen From 1 In 4 Internet Users (informationsecuritybuzz.com)
Fake Sites Siphon Millions of Dollars in 3-Year Scam (darkreading.com)
Here’s how crooks are using deepfakes to scam your biz • The Register
Deepfakes
Reshaping the Threat Landscape: Deepfake Cyber attacks Are Here (darkreading.com)
The deepfake danger: When it wasn’t you on that Zoom call | CSO Online
Software Supply Chain
Denial of Service DoS/DDoS
Hackers are making DDoS attacks sneakier and harder to protect against | ZDNET
UK's MI5 website briefly hit by denial of service attack - BBC | Reuters
Chaos Malware Resurfaces With All-New DDoS & Cryptomining Modules (darkreading.com)
Cloud/SaaS
Cloud security trends: What makes cloud infrastructure vulnerable to threats? - Help Net Security
81% of Companies Suffered A Cloud Security Incident Last Year – (informationsecuritybuzz.com)
What Lurks in the Shadows of Cloud Security? (darkreading.com)
Open Source
Open source projects under attack, with enterprises as the ultimate targets - Help Net Security
Microsoft: Lazarus hackers are weaponizing open-source software (bleepingcomputer.com)
Numerous orgs hacked after installing weaponized open source apps | Ars Technica
Passwords, Credential Stuffing & Brute Force Attacks
The Country Where You Live Impacts Password Choices (darkreading.com)
Five Steps to Mitigate the Risk of Credential Exposure (thehackernews.com)
Social Media
Fake CISO Profiles on LinkedIn Target Fortune 500s – Krebs on Security
Ofcom chair says tech firms must prioritise safety alongside clicks | Ofcom | The Guardian
UK may fine TikTok $29 million for failing to protect children's privacy | Reuters
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
Cyber Warfare Rife in Ukraine, But Impact Stays in Shadows | SecurityWeek.Com
Mystery hackers are “hyperjacking” targets for insidious spying | Ars Technica
Cyber espionage group developed backdoors tailored for VMware ESXi hypervisors | CSO Online
Taiwanese citizens prepare for possible cyber war (axios.com)
Malware targets VMware users for espionage, Mandiant says • The Register
Espionage Group Wields Steganographic Backdoor Against Govs, Stock Exchange (darkreading.com)
Nation State Actors
Nation State Actors – Russia
Researchers Identify 3 Hacktivist Groups Supporting Russian Interests (thehackernews.com)
APT28 relies on PowerPoint Mouseover to deliver Graphite malware - Security Affairs
Meta dismantles massive Russian network spoofing Western news sites (bleepingcomputer.com)
Nation State Actors – China
Chinese Cyberespionage Group 'Witchetty' Updates Toolset in Recent Attacks | SecurityWeek.Com
China’s infosec researchers may have dodged vuln report ban` • The Register
Nation State Actors – North Korea
Lazarus Lures Aspiring Crypto Pros With Fake Exchange Job Postings (darkreading.com)
Microsoft: Lazarus hackers are weaponizing open-source software (bleepingcomputer.com)
Lazarus APT continues to target job seekers with macOS malware - Security Affairs
Lazarus hackers abuse Dell driver bug using new FudModule rootkit (bleepingcomputer.com)
Nation State Actors – Iran
Nation State Actors – Misc
Vulnerabilities
Exchange Server zero-day being actively exploited • The Register
Microsoft Confirms Pair of Blindsiding Exchange Zero-Days, No Patch Yet (darkreading.com)
Cisco Patches High-Severity Vulnerabilities in Networking Software | SecurityWeek.Com
Sophos fixes critical code injection bug under exploit • The Register
Zoho ManageEngine flaw is actively exploited, CISA warns | CSO Online
Lazarus hackers abuse Dell driver bug using new FudModule rootkit (bleepingcomputer.com)
Google Quashes 5 High-Severity Bugs With Chrome 106 Update (darkreading.com)
Critical WhatsApp Bugs Could Have Let Attackers Hack Devices Remotely (thehackernews.com)
Go Update iOS, Chrome, and HP Computers to Fix Serious Flaws | WIRED
Reports Published in the Last Week
Other News
High-Profile Hacks Show Effectiveness of MFA Fatigue Attacks | SecurityWeek.Com
Poll Of IT Security Pros Suggests Gaps In UK Cyber Defence (informationsecuritybuzz.com)
Why Organisations Need Both EDR and NDR for Complete Network Protection (thehackernews.com)
Lessons From the GitHub Cyber Security Breach (darkreading.com)
Data security trends: 7 statistics you need to know - Help Net Security
Why does a Legacy WAF Fail to “Catch” Sophisticated Attacks? (informationsecuritybuzz.com)
Akamai finds 13 million malicious newly observed domains a month | SC Media (scmagazine.com)
Opinion | The Uber Hack Exposes More Than Failed Data Security - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Cyber security Study Sees “Siloed” Security As Organisational Weak Spot - MSSP Alert
3 types of attack paths in Microsoft Active Directory environments - Help Net Security
97% of enterprises say VPNs are prone to cyber attacks: Study | CSO Online
65% of companies are considering adopting VPN alternatives - Help Net Security
Spoofing cyber attack can make cameras see things that aren’t there | New Scientist
Zero Trust is the Goal But Much Ground Yet to Cover, CompTIA Reports - MSSP Alert
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.
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Links to articles are for interest and awareness and linking to or reposting external content does not endorse any service or product, likewise we are not responsible for the security of external links.
Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 23 September 2022
Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing 23 September 2022:
-Cyber Insurers Clamp Down on Clients' Self-Attestation of Security Controls
-Survey Shows CISOs Losing Confidence in Ability to Stop Ransomware Attacks
-MFA Fatigue: Hackers’ New Favourite Tactic In High-Profile Breaches
-Credential Stuffing Accounts For One-third Of Global Login Attempts, Okta Finds
-Ransomware Operators Might Be Dropping File Encryption In Favour Of Corrupting Files
-Revolut Hack Exposes Data Of 50,000 Users, Fuels New Phishing Wave
-Researchers Say Insider Threats Play A Larger Role In Security Incidents
-SMBs vs. Large Enterprises: Not All Compromises Are Created Equal
-Cyber Attack Costs for Businesses up by 80%
-Morgan Stanley Fined $35m By SEC For Data Security Lapse, Sold Devices Full of Customer PII
-Eyeglass Reflections Can Leak Information During Video Calls
-Uber Says It Was Likely Hacked by Teenage Hacker Gang LAPSUS$
Welcome to this week’s Black Arrow Cyber Threat Briefing – a weekly digest, collated and curated by our cyber experts to provide senior and middle management with an easy to digest round up of the most notable threats, vulnerabilities, and cyber related news from the last week.
Top Cyber Stories of the Last Week
Cyber Insurers Clamp Down on Clients' Self-Attestation of Security Controls
After one company suffered a breach that could have been headed off by the MFA it claimed to have, insurers are looking to confirm claimed cyber security measures.
A voided lawsuit from a cyber insurance carrier claiming its customer misled it on its insurance application could potentially pave the way to change how underwriters evaluate self-attestation claims on insurance applications.
The case — Travelers Property Casualty Company of America v. International Control Services Inc. (ICS) — hinged on ICS claiming it had multifactor authentication (MFA) in place when the electronics manufacturer applied for a policy. In May the company experienced a ransomware attack. Forensics investigators determined there was no MFA in place, so Travelers asserted it should not be liable for the claim. The case was filed in the US District Court for the Central District of Illinois on July 6 and at the end of August, the litigants agreed to void the contract, ending ICS's efforts to have its insurer cover its losses.
This case was unusual in that Travelers maintained the misrepresentation "materially affected the acceptance of the risk and/or the hazard assumed by Travelers" in the court filing. Taking a client to court is a departure from other similar cases where an insurance company simply denied the claim.
Sean O'Brien of Yale Law School notes that security should be proactive, stopping possible breaches before they occur rather than simply responding to each successful attack. The insurance industry is likely to become more and more pernickety as cyber security claims rise, defending their bottom line and avoiding reimbursement wherever possible. This has always been the role of insurance adjusters, of course, and their business is in many ways adversarial to your organisation's interests after the dust settles from a cyber attack.
That said, organisations should not expect a payout for poor cyber security policies and practices, he notes.
Survey Shows CISOs Losing Confidence in Ability to Stop Ransomware Attacks
Despite an 86% surge in budget resources to defend against ransomware, 90% of organisations were impacted by attacks last year, a survey reveals.
An annual survey of CISOs from Canada, the UK, and US reveals that security teams are starting to lose hope that they can defend against the next ransomware attack. The survey was conducted by SpyCloud, and it showed that although budgets to protect against cyber attacks have swelled by 86%, a full 90% of organisations surveyed said they had been impacted by a ransomware over the past year.
More organisations have implemented 'Plan B' measures this year, from opening cryptocurrency accounts to purchasing ransomware insurance. These findings suggest that organisations realise threats are slipping through their defences and a ransomware attack is inevitable.
The survey did show some bright spots on the cyber security front — nearly three-quarters of those organisations surveyed are using multifactor authentication (MFA), with an increase from 44% to 73% year-over-year. The report added that respondents said they are focused on stopping credential-stealing malware, particularly on unmanaged network devices.
MFA Fatigue: Hackers’ New Favourite Tactic in High-Profile Breaches
Hackers are more frequently using social engineering attacks to gain access to corporate credentials and breach large networks. One component of these attacks that is becoming more popular with the rise of multi-factor authentication is a technique called MFA Fatigue.
When breaching corporate networks, hackers commonly use stolen employee login credentials to access VPNs and the internal network. The reality is that obtaining corporate credentials is far from difficult for threat actors, who can use various methods, including phishing attacks, malware, leaked credentials from data breaches, or purchasing them on dark web marketplaces.
To counter this, enterprises have increasingly adopted multi-factor authentication to prevent users from logging into a network without first entering an additional form of verification. This additional information can be a one-time passcode, a prompt asking you to verify the login attempt, or the use of hardware security keys.
While threat actors can use numerous methods to bypass multi-factor authentication, most revolve around stealing cookies through malware or man-in-the-middle phishing attack frameworks. However, a social engineering technique called 'MFA Fatigue' is growing more popular with threat actors as it does not require malware or phishing infrastructure and has proven to be successful in attacks.
An MFA Fatigue attack is when a threat actor runs a script that attempts to log in with stolen credentials over and over, causing what feels like an endless stream of MFA push requests to be sent to the account's owner's mobile device. The goal is to keep this up, day and night, to break down the target's cyber security posture and inflict a sense of "fatigue" regarding these MFA prompts.
Credential Stuffing Accounts for One-third Of Global Login Attempts
Okta’s global State of Secure Identity Report has found that credential stuffing is the top threat against customer accounts, outpacing legitimate login traffic in some countries. The report presents trends, examples and observations unearthed from the billions of authentications on Okta’s Auth0 platform.
Credential stuffing is when attacks take advantage of the practice of password reuse. It begins with a stolen login or password pair, then threat actors use these credentials across other common sites, using automated tooling used to “stuff” credential pairs into login forms. When an account holder reuses the same (or similar) passwords on multiple sites, it creates a domino effect in which a single credential pair can be used to breach multiple applications.
Across all industries globally, Okta found there were almost 10 billion credential stuffing attempts in the first 90 days of 2022, which amounts to 34% of authentication traffic.
Ransomware Operators Might Be Dropping File Encryption in Favour of Corrupting Files
Corrupting files is faster, cheaper, and less likely to be stopped by endpoint protection tools than encrypting them.
A recent attack that involved a threat actor believed to be an affiliate of the BlackCat/ALPHV ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation was found to use a data exfiltration tool dubbed Exmatter. Exmatter is a tool that allows attackers to scan the victim computer's drives for files with certain extensions and then upload them to an attacker-controlled server in a unique directory created for every victim. The tool supports several exfiltration methods including FTP, SFTP, and webDAV.
The way the Eraser function works is that it loads two random files from the list into memory and then copies a random chunk from the second file to the beginning of the first file overwriting its original contents. This doesn't technically erase the file but rather corrupts it. The researchers believe this feature is still being developed because the command that calls the Eraser function is not yet fully implemented and the function’s code still has some inefficiencies. Since the selected data chunk is random, it can sometimes be very small, which makes some files more recoverable than others.
Why destroy files by overwriting them with random data instead of deploying ransomware to encrypt them? At a first glance these seem like similar file manipulation operations. Encrypting a file involves overwriting it, one block at a time, with random-looking data (the ciphertext). However, there are ways to detect these encryption operations when done in great succession and many endpoint security programs can now detect when a process exhibits this behaviour and can stop it. Meanwhile, the kind of file overwriting that Exmatter does is much more subtle.
The act of using legitimate file data from the victim machine to corrupt other files may be a technique to avoid heuristic-based detection for ransomware and wipers, as copying file data from one file to another is much more plausibly benign functionality compared to sequentially overwriting files with random data or encrypting them.
Another reason is that encrypting files is a more intensive task that takes a longer time. It's also much harder and costly to implement file encryption programs, which ransomware essentially are, without bugs or flaws that researchers could exploit to reverse the encryption. There have been many cases over the years where researchers found weaknesses in ransomware encryption implementations and were able to release decryptors. This has happened to BlackMatter, the Ransomwware-as-a-Service (RaaS) operation with which the Exmatter tool has been originally associated.
With data exfiltration now the norm among threat actors, developing stable, secure, and fast ransomware to encrypt files is a redundant and costly endeavour compared to corrupting files and using the exfiltrated copies as the means of data recovery.
It remains to be seen if this is the start of a trend where ransomware affiliates switch to data destruction instead of encryption, ensuring the only copy is in their possession, or if it's just an isolated incident where BlackMatter/BlackCat affiliates want to avoid mistakes of the past. However, data theft and extortion attacks that involve destruction are not new and have been widespread in the cloud database space. Attackers have hit unprotected S3 buckets, MongoDB databases, Redis instances, and ElasticSearch indexes for years, deleting their contents and leaving behind ransom notes so it wouldn't be a surprise to see this move to on-premises systems as well.
Revolut Hack Exposes Data Of 50,000 Users, Fuels New Phishing Wave
Revolut has suffered a cyber attack that gave an unauthorised third party access to personal information of tens of thousands of clients. The incident occurred over a week ago, on Sunday night, and has been described as "highly targeted."
Founded in 2015, Revolut is a financial technology company that has seen a rapid growth, now offering banking, money management, and investment services to customers all over the world. In a statement a company spokesperson said that an unauthorised party had access "for a short period of time" to details of only a 0.16% of its customers.
"We immediately identified and isolated the attack to effectively limit its impact and have contacted those customers affected. Customers who have not received an email have not been impacted" , Revolut said.
According to the breach disclosure to the State Data Protection Inspectorate in Lithuania, where Revolut has a banking license, 50,150 customers have been impacted. Based on the information from Revolut, the agency said that the number of affected customers in the European Economic Area is 20,687, and just 379 Lithuanian citizens are potentially impacted by this incident.
Details on how the threat actor gained access to the database have not been disclosed but it appears that the attacker relied on social engineering. The Lithuanian data protection agency notes that the likely exposed information includes:
Email addresses
Full names
Postal addresses
Phone numbers
Limited payment card data
Account data
However, in a message to an affected customer, Revolut says that the type of compromised personal data varies for different customers. Card details, PINs, or passwords were not accessed.
Researchers Say Insider Threats Play a Larger Role In Security Incidents
Insider threats are becoming an increasingly common part of the attack chain, with malicious insiders and unwitting assets playing critical roles in incidents over the past year, according to Cisco Talos research.
In a blog post, Cisco Talos researchers said organisations can mitigate these types of risks via education, user-access control, and ensuring proper processes and procedures are in place when and if employees leave the organisation.
There are a variety of reasons a user may choose to become a malicious insider, and unfortunately many of them are occurring today. The most obvious being financial distress, where a user has a lot of debt and selling the ability to infect their employer can be a tempting avenue. There have been examples of users trying to sell access into employer networks for more than a decade, having spotted them on dark web forums. The current climate, with the economy tilting toward recession, is ripe for this type of abuse.
The cyber crime underground remains a hot spot for insider threat recruitment efforts because of the relative anonymity, accessibility, and low barrier of entry it affords. Malicious actors use forums and instant messaging platforms to advertise their insider services or, vice versa, to recruit accomplices for specific schemes that require insider access or knowledge.
By far, the most popular motivation for insider threats is financial gain. There are plenty of examples of financially-motivated threat actors seeking employees at companies to provide data and access to sell in the underground or leverage against the organisation or its customers. There have also been instances where individuals turn to underground forums and instant messaging platforms claiming to be employees at notable organisations to sell company information.
SMBs vs. Large Enterprises: Not All Compromises Are Created Equal
Attackers view smaller organisations as having fewer security protocols in place, therefore requiring less effort to compromise. Lumu has found that compromise is significantly different for small businesses than for medium-sized and large enterprises.
There is no silver bullet for organisations to protect themselves from compromise, but there are critical steps to take to understand your potential exposure and make sure that your cyber security protocols are aligned accordingly.
Compromise often stay undetected for long periods of time – 201 days on average with compromise detection and containment taking approximately 271 days. It’s critical for smaller businesses to know they are more susceptible and to get ahead of the curve with safeguards.
Results from the Lumu Ransomware Assessment show a few reasons why attacks continue to stay undetected for such long periods of time:
· 58% of organisations aren’t monitoring roaming devices, which is concerning with a workforce that has embraced remote working
· 72% of organisations either don’t or only partially monitor the use of network resources and traffic, which is problematic given that most compromises tend to originate from within the network
· Crypto-mining doesn’t appear to be a concern for the majority of organisations as 76% either do not know or only partially know how to identify it; however, this is a commonly used technique for cyber criminals
Additionally, threat data unveils attack techniques used and how they vary based on the size of the organisation.
Small businesses are primarily targeted by malware attacks (60%) and are also at greater risk of Malware, Command and Control, and Crypto-Mining. Medium-sized businesses and large enterprises don’t see as much malware and are more susceptible to Domain Generated Algorithms (DGA). This type of attack allows adversaries to dynamically identify a destination domain for command and control traffic rather than relying on a list of static IP addresses or domains.
https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/09/22/smaller-organizations-security-protocols/
Cyber Attack Costs for Businesses up by 80%
In seven out of eight countries, cyber attacks are now seen as the biggest risk to business — outranking COVID-19, economic turmoil, skills shortages, and other issues. The "Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report 2022," which assesses how prepared businesses are to fight back against cyber incidents and breaches, polled more than 5,000 corporate cyber security professionals in the US, UK, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Spain, and the Netherlands. These experts had some enlightening things to say.
According to the report, IT pros are more worried about cyber attacks (46%) than the pandemic (43%) or skills shortages (38%). And the data prove it. The survey indicates that in the past 12 months, US businesses weathered a 7% increase in cyber attacks. Approximately half of all US businesses (47%) suffered an attack in the past year.
Remote work has caused many smaller organisations to use cloud solutions instead of utilizing in-house IT services. However, with more cloud applications and APIs in use, the attack surface has broadened, too, making these organisations more vulnerable to cyber crime.
Although the proportion of staff working remotely almost halved in the past year — from 62% of the workforce in 2021 to 39% in 2022 — overall IT expenditures doubled, from $11.5 million in 2021 to $24.2 million this year. "Despite 61% of survey respondents now being back in the office, businesses are still experiencing a hangover from the pandemic," Hiscox said in a statement. "Remote working provided a year-long Christmas for cyber criminals, and we can see the results of their cyber-feast in the increased frequency and cost of attacks. As we move into a new era of hybrid working, we all have an increased responsibility to continue learning, and managing our own cyber security."
It may come as no surprise that as more organisations evolve and scale their digital business models, the median cost of an attack has surged — from $10,000 last year to $18,000 in 2022. The US is bearing the brunt of generally higher cyber attack costs, with 40% of attack victims incurring costs of $25,000 or higher. The most common vulnerability — i.e., the entry point for cyber criminals — was a cloud-based corporate server.
However, in terms of attack costs, the report reveals major regional disparities. While one organisation in the UK suffered total attack costs of $6.7 million, the hardest-hit firms in Germany, Ireland, and the Netherlands paid out more than $5 million. In turn, Belgium, France, Germany, and Spain all experienced stable or lower median costs.
https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/cyberattack-costs-for-us-businesses-up-by-80-
Morgan Stanley Fined $35m By SEC For Data Security Lapse, Sold Devices Full of Customer PII
American financial services giant Morgan Stanley agreed to pay the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) a $35m penalty on Tuesday over data security lapses.
According to the SEC's complaint, the firm would have allowed roughly 1000 unencrypted hard drives (HDDs) and about 8000 backup tapes from decommissioned data centres to be resold on auction sites without first being wiped.
The improper disposal of the devices reportedly started in 2016 and per the SEC complaint, was part of an "extensive failure" that exposed 15 million customers' data.
In fact, instead of destroying the hard drives or employing an internal IT team to erase them, Morgan Stanley would have contracted an unnamed third–party moving company with allegedly no experience in decommissioning storage media to take care of the hardware.
The moving company initially subcontracted an IT firm to wipe the drives, but their business relationship went sour, so the mover started selling the storage devices to another firm that auctioned them online without erasing them.
"This is an astonishing security mistake by one of the world's most prestigious banks, who would be expected to have well–established procedures in system life cycle management," Jordan Schroeder, managing CISO at Barrier Networks, told Infosecurity Magazine.
"Not only does the situation mean that the bank put customer data at risk, but it also demonstrates the organisation was not following an expected policy which explained the secure disposing of IT equipment."
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/morgan-stanley-pay-dollar35m-sec/
Eyeglass Reflections Can Leak Information During Video Calls
A group of academic researchers have devised a method of reconstructing text exposed via participants’ eyeglasses and other reflective objects during video conferences.
Zoom and other video conferencing tools, which have been widely adopted over the past couple of years as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, may be used by attackers to leak information unintentionally reflected in objects such as eyeglasses, the researchers say.
Using mathematical modelling and human subjects experiments, this research explores the extent to which emerging webcams might leak recognizable textual and graphical information gleaming from eyeglass reflections captured by webcams.
Dubbed ‘webcam peeking attack’, a threat model devised by academics shows that it is possible to obtain an accuracy of over 75% when reconstructing and recognizing text with heights as small as 10 mm, captured by a 720p webcam.
According to the academics, attackers can also rely on webcam peeking to identify the websites that the victims are using. Moreover, they believe that 4k webcams will allow attackers to easily reconstruct most header texts on popular websites.
To mitigate the risk posed by webcam peeking attacks, the researchers propose both near- and long-term mitigations, including the use of software that can blur the eyeglass areas of the video stream. Some video conferencing solutions already offer blurring capabilities, albeit not fine-tuned.
https://www.securityweek.com/eyeglass-reflections-can-leak-information-during-video-calls
Uber Says It Was Likely Hacked by Teenage Hacker Gang LAPSUS$
Uber has published additional information about how it was hacked, claiming that it was targeted by LAPSUS$, a cyber criminal gang with a hefty track record that is thought to be composed largely of teenagers.
Last week, someone broke into Uber’s network and used the access to cause all sorts of chaos. The culprit, who claims to be 18 years old, managed to spam company staff with vulgar Slack messages, post a picture of a penis on the company’s internal websites, and leak images of Uber’s internal environment to the web. Now, the ride-share giant has released a statement providing details on its ordeal.
In its update, the company has clarified how it was hacked, largely confirming an account made by the hacker themself. Uber says that the hacker exploited the login credentials of a company contractor to initially gain access to the network. The hacker may have originally bought access to those credentials via the dark web, Uber says. The hacker then used them to make multiple login attempts to the contractor’s account. The login attempts prompted a slew of multi-factor authentication requests for the contractor, who ultimately authenticated one of them. The hacker has previously claimed that it conducted a social engineering scheme to convince the contractor to authenticate the login attempt.
Security experts have called this an “MFA fatigue” attack. This increasingly common intrusion tactic seeks to overwhelm a victim with authentication push requests until they validate the hacker’s illegitimate login attempt.
Most interestingly, Uber has also claimed that whoever was behind this hacking episode is affiliated with the cyber crime gang “LAPSUS$.” It’s not totally clear how Uber knows that.
https://gizmodo.com/uber-says-it-was-hacked-by-teenage-hacker-gang-lapsus-1849554679
Threats
Ransomware and Extortion
Microsoft SQL servers hacked in TargetCompany ransomware attacks (bleepingcomputer.com)
BlackCat ransomware’s data exfiltration tool gets an upgrade (bleepingcomputer.com)
SpyCloud Report: 90% of Companies Affected by Ransomware in 2022 - MSSP Alert
Netflix-style Ransomware Makes Your Organisation’s Data The Prize In A (informationsecuritybuzz.com)
LockBit ransomware builder leaked online by “angry developer” (bleepingcomputer.com)
How to Prevent Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) Attacks (trendmicro.com)
The Risk of Ransomware Supply Chain Attacks (trendmicro.com)
Europol and Bitdefender Release Free Decryptor for LockerGoga Ransomware (thehackernews.com)
Vice Society Demands Ransom From LAUSD Two Weeks After Hack (gizmodo.com)
Phishing & Email Based Attacks
Microsoft: Exchange servers hacked via OAuth apps for phishing (bleepingcomputer.com)
LinkedIn Smart Links abused in evasive email phishing attacks (bleepingcomputer.com)
BBC Warns Of Cost-of-living Phishing, Expert Weighs In (informationsecuritybuzz.com)
Microsoft 365 phishing attacks impersonate US govt agencies (bleepingcomputer.com)
How DKIM records reduce email spoofing, phishing and spam (techtarget.com)
Security alert: new phishing campaign targets GitHub users | The GitHub Blog
American Airlines learned it was breached from phishing targets (bleepingcomputer.com)
Email-based threats: A pain point for organisations - Help Net Security
Other Social Engineering; Smishing, Vishing, etc
Malware
IT giants warn of ongoing Chromeloader malware campaigns - Security Affairs
Fake sites fool Zoom users into downloading deadly code • The Register
Malicious NPM package discovered in supply chain attack (techtarget.com)
How botnet attacks work and how to defend against them (bleepingcomputer.com)
Mobile
This dangerous Android spyware could affect millions of devices | TechRadar
Banking Users Faced With Rewards Phishing Scam - IT Security Guru
Malicious Apps With Millions of Downloads Found in Apple App Store, Google Play (darkreading.com)
Data Breaches/Leaks
Cyber Attack Steals Passenger Data From Portuguese Airline | SecurityWeek.Com
American Airlines discloses data breach after employee email compromise (bleepingcomputer.com)
Significant cyber attack hits Australian telco Optus • The Register
Organised Crime & Criminal Actors
London Police Arrested 17-Year-Old Hacker Suspected of Uber and GTA 6 Breaches (thehackernews.com)
Ukraine dismantles hacker gang that stole 30 million accounts (bleepingcomputer.com)
Cambodian authorities crack down on cyber slavery • The Register
Cryptocurrency/Cryptomining/Cryptojacking/NFTs/Blockchain
Cryptocurrency world's Wintermute loses $160m in cyber-heist • The Register
South Korean prosecutors ask Interpol to issue red notice for Do Kwon | Financial Times (ft.com)
"Fake crypto millionaire" charged with alleged $1.7M cryptomining scam (bitdefender.com)
Insider Risk and Insider Threats
Fraud, Scams & Financial Crime
Multi-million dollar credit card fraud operation uncovered (bleepingcomputer.com)
Microsoft Warns of Large-Scale Click Fraud Campaign Targeting Gamers (thehackernews.com)
Cyber crime cost American seniors $3 billion last year, a 62% jump (usatoday.com)
Insurance
Cyber Security Insurance Trends: Key Takeaways for MSPs - MSSP Alert
D&O insurance not yet a priority despite criminal trial of Uber’s former CISO | CSO Online
Supply Chain and Third Parties
Denial of Service DoS/DDoS
DDoS and bot attacks in 2022: Business sectors at risk and how to defend (bleepingcomputer.com)
Record DDoS Attack with 25.3 Billion Requests Abused HTTP/2 Multiplexing (thehackernews.com)
Imperva mitigated long-lasting, 25.3 billion request DDoS attack (bleepingcomputer.com)
Cloud/SaaS
Encryption
API
Open Source
Privacy, Surveillance and Mass Monitoring
Pressure mounts against Europol over data privacy • The Register
San Francisco cops can use private cameras for surveillance • The Register
Parental Controls and Child Safety
Regulations, Fines and Legislation
5 Data Privacy Laws That Could Affect Your Business (informationsecuritybuzz.com)
France and Germany fall foul of EU data retention rules • The Register
Spyware, Cyber Espionage & Cyber Warfare, including Russian Invasion of Ukraine
Russia Makes Veiled Threat to Destroy SpaceX's Starlink (pcmag.com)
Researchers Uncover New Metador APT Targeting Telcos, ISPs, and Universities (thehackernews.com)
Russian Sandworm hackers pose as Ukrainian telcos to drop malware (bleepingcomputer.com)
Anonymous claims hacked website of Russian Ministry of Defence - Security Affairs
Pro-Ukraine Hacktivists Claim to Have Hacked Notorious Russian Mercenary Group (vice.com)
European Spyware Investigators Criticize Israel and Poland | SecurityWeek.Com
Hackathon finds dozens of Ukrainian refugees trafficked online | Ars Technica
Researchers Uncover Mysterious 'Metador' Cyber-Espionage Group (darkreading.com)
This dangerous Android spyware could affect millions of devices | TechRadar
Nation State Actors
Nation State Actors – Russia
Inside Russia’s Vast Surveillance State: ‘They Are Watching’ - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Russian Cyberspies Targeting Ukraine Pose as Telecoms Providers | SecurityWeek.Com
Nation State Actors – China
Nation State Actors – Iran
FBI: Iranian hackers lurked in Albania’s govt network for 14 months (bleepingcomputer.com)
NATO's Team in Albania to Help on Iran-Alleged Cyber Attack | SecurityWeek.Com
Nation State Actors – Misc
Vulnerability Management
Vulnerabilities
Hackers Actively Exploiting New Sophos Firewall RCE Vulnerability (thehackernews.com)
CISA adds Zoho ManageEngine flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalogue - Security Affairs
AttachMe: a critical flaw affects Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) - Security Affairs
BIND Updates Patch High-Severity Vulnerabilities | SecurityWeek.Com
15-year-old Python flaw found in 'over 350,000' projects • The Register
CISA warns of critical ManageEngine RCE bug used in attacks (bleepingcomputer.com)
Critical Magento vulnerability targeted in new surge of attacks (bleepingcomputer.com)
Reports Published in the Last Week
Other News
Why Even Big Tech Companies Keep Getting Hacked—and What They Plan to Do About It - WSJ
20/20 visibility is paramount to network security - Help Net Security
Domain shadowing becoming more popular among cyber criminals (bleepingcomputer.com)
Multi-factor authentication fatigue attacks are on the rise: How to defend against them | CSO Online
What's behind the different names for cyber hacker groups (axios.com)
IT services group Wipro fires 300 employees moonlighting for competitors | TechCrunch
How can organisations benefit from full-stack observability? - Help Net Security
Firing Your Entire Cyber Security Team? Are You Sure? (thehackernews.com)
Cyber criminals launching more MFA bypass attacks (techtarget.com)
Microsoft (MSFT) Says Managers Shouldn’t Spy on Staff to Ensure They’re Working - Bloomberg
A third of enterprises globally don’t prioritize digital trust: ISACA | CSO Online
How Malware Hides in Images and What You Can Do About It (gizmodo.com)
International cooperation is key to fighting threat actors and cyber crime | CSO Online
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.
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