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Black Arrow Admin 23/08/2020 Black Arrow Admin 23/08/2020

Cyber Weekly Flash Brief 21 August 2020: Uber infosec exec charged with cover-up, 50% anti-malware products fail, WFH security breach surge, 40% of firms sacked staff for cyber breaches during Covid

Cyber Weekly Flash Briefing 21 August 2020: Former Uber security exec charged with cover-up, half of anti-malware products fail to recognise threats, millions of social media accounts compromised by data breach, WFH causes surge in security breaches, staff 'oblivious' to best practices, 40% of firms have sacked staff for cyber security breaches during Covid, HMRC Investigating Over 10,000 COVID-Related Phishing Scams

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.

Former Uber security executive charged with data breach cover-up

Uber’s former chief security officer has been charged with obstruction of justice over accusations that he attempted to cover up a 2016 hack of the company, which exposed the personal details of 57m users and drivers.

Prosecutors said Joseph Sullivan, 52, hid the breach from the relevant authorities, and instead paid a ransom to the hackers and had them sign non-disclosure agreements stating, falsely, that they had not stolen personal information.

“The agreements contained a false representation that the hackers did not take or store any data,” prosecutors said in a press release. “When an Uber employee asked Sullivan about this false promise, Sullivan insisted that the language stay in the non-disclosure agreements.”

Mr Sullivan, who worked at Facebook prior to Uber, is said to have authorised the payment to the hackers of $100,000 in bitcoin, disguising the fee as coming via the company’s legitimate “bug bounty” programme — normally used to pay well-intentioned cyber security experts for discovering flaws and vulnerabilities.

It was not until November 2017, almost a year after Mr Sullivan allegedly knew the attack took place, that Uber revealed its knowledge of the breach and Mr Sullivan was dismissed.

Why this matters?

Not only was a criminal act conducted against Uber but a further criminal act was then conducted within the firm to cover it up. This shows what is at stake, that people will go to lengths to cover things up and that strong governance is needed and appropriate controls, and rewards, need to be in place across the organisation to encourage good behaviours.

Half of anti-malware products fail to recognize notable threats

Many of the most popular, well-established cyber security solutions do not protect their users from all notable threats, according to new analysis from SE Labs.

The security firm tested 14 of the world’s most popular cyber security solutions and, while products from Microsoft and Kaspersky Lab scored 100 percent, more than half failed to identify all threats.

"While the numbers of 'misses' are not out of this world, it's disappointing to see big brand products miss well-known threats," said Simon Edwards, CEO at SE Labs.

"Although we do 'create' threats by using publicly available free hacking tools, we don't write unique malware so there is no technical reason why any vendor being tested should do poorly."

According to SE Labs, the firm used common threats that affect the general public to conduct the tests, as well as more targeted forms of attack.

"In some cases the bad guys actually help us out, by sending our own organization the same types of malware that they use to target other potential victims. The Emotet malware campaign that ran in July of this year was a notable example," Edwards added.

With the Covid-19 pandemic forcing employees to remain at home, it has never been more important to protect devices and data from cyberthreats. Businesses and consumers alike are advised to keep their operating systems, applications and cybersecurity solutions up to date.

Why this matters:

Many firms put too much faith in technical controls, yet reports like this prove the point that technical controls are not as good as many people believe.Technical controls, even the best technical controls, only go so far when information security is a whole of business risk and people controls are needed in addition to technical controls to keep a firm safe.

Hundreds of millions of Instagram, TikTok, YouTube accounts compromised by data breach

Security researchers have discovered an exposed database online which contains scraped data from the social media profiles of nearly 235m Instagram, TikTok and YouTube users.

For those unfamiliar with the practice, web scraping is an automated technique used to gather data from websites that is often employed by analytics firms who use it to create large databases of user information. Although the practice is legal, it is strictly prohibited by social media companies as it puts the privacy of their users and their data at risk.

Researchers discovered three identical copies of the exposed database online at the beginning of August. After examining the database they learned that it belonged to a company called Deep Social which has shut down its operations.

Why this matters

Big beaches like these, where data has been taken from different sources, breaches and public databases, can give attackers an incredible amount of data on you, probably enough to then start attacking your home or your employer. Even as far as identity theft type attacks.

Working from home causes surge in security breaches, staff 'oblivious' to best practices

The COVID-19 pandemic shows little sign of slowing down, and for many businesses, employees are still working remotely and from home offices.

While some companies are gearing towards reopening their standard office spaces in the coming months -- and have all the challenges associated with how to do so safely to face -- they may also be facing repercussions of the rapid shift to remote working models in the cyber security space.

In the clamor to ensure employees could do their jobs from home, the enterprise needed to make sure members of staff had the right equipment as well as network and resource access.

However, according to Malwarebytes, the rushed response to COVID-19 in the business arena has created massive gaps in cyber security -- and security incidents have increased as a result.

On Thursday, the cyber security firm released a report (.PDF), "Enduring from Home: COVID-19's Impact on Business Security," examining the impact of the novel coronavirus in the security world.

Company telemetry and a survey conducted with 200 IT and cyber security professionals suggest that since the start of the pandemic, remote workers have caused a security breach in 20% of organisations.

As a result, 24% of survey respondents added that their organizations had to pay unexpected costs to address cyber security breaches or malware infections after shelter-in-place orders were imposed.

Why this matters:

Months into this pandemic and staff working from home many staff are still oblivious to what they should and should not be doing and some firms are not doing a good enough job of getting their staff to appreciate the role they playing in helping to keep their firm’s safe.

Two-fifths of firms have sacked staff for cybersecurity breaches during Covid, poll shows

Almost two-fifths of business decision-makers (39 per cent) have dismissed employees because of a cyber security policy breach since the pandemic began, a survey has found.

The research polled 200 UK business decision-makers and found more than half (58 per cent) of firms believed that working from home made employees more likely to circumvent security protocols – including through the use of personal laptops and failing to change passwords.

To combat poor employee security practices, more than half (55 per cent) of those surveyed had banned, or planned to ban, staff from using personal devices to work from home.

Meanwhile, 57 per cent were implementing more measures to securely authenticate employees, including biometric data checks such as fingerprint and facial recognition technology, and multi-factor authentication steps to access certain files, applications and accounts.

The poll found that almost two-thirds (65 per cent) had made substantial changes to their cybersecurity policies in response to breaches and to Covid-19.

Why this matters:

It is imperative employers revisited their data security protocols in light of widespread home working. Employers need to communicate that the same principles of data protection apply at home as in the office, including that a breach could lead to severe disciplinary action. The importance of securing data and directing employees accordingly cannot be underestimated as the employer could find themselves responsible for significant data breaches if they have not taken appropriate steps to protect it.

Separately, a report by recruitment firm Robert Walters has found that up to 65,000 cyber attacks take place on UK SMEs every day, with 4,500 successful. The report, Cyber security: Building Business Resilience, found that almost half (48 per cent) of UK companies admitted to not having adequate cyber security provision to maintain a fully remote working model.

We are at the mercy of Google's cloud services – and it could cost us dearly

If the internet is our information superhighway, this week's mass outage of Google services represents the sudden and total closure of the M25.

Users up and down the country who rely on the system for their livelihoods found themselves confronted with the simple Gmail message: “Oops, something went wrong”. It was the digital equivalent of the Road Closed sign.

Such is the public and private sector’s dependence on software services provided by Google and its rivals Amazon, Microsoft and Alibaba that the five-hour outage will likely be felt at GDP level.

Never mind the frustration felt by hundreds of thousands of homeworkers, think of all the lost opportunities from meetings unattended, the lost confidence from work unsent and the lost productivity from reduced output.

It all adds up: a temporary internet shutdown costs an advanced economy like Britain’s £107m per day according to a report from Deloitte and Facebook into the economic impact of disruptions to connectivity.

That’s equivalent to 1.9 per cent of daily GDP. A big hit, especially in a recession when companies small and large are fighting for their lives and public services are stretched to the limit.

Why this matters

Firms are increasing reliant on a small number of providers and a loss of any one of those providers could have serious ramifications for any business operating online. It is always best to diversify your critical systems across different providers such that a loss of one does not have such wide reaching impact.

Four million Britons with Huawei phones risk their devices becoming obsolete

Up to four million British consumers could be stuck with increasingly useless and vulnerable Huawei mobiles after the Chinese firm was blocked from receiving future software updates due to US sanctions.

The crisis-hit company's phones are in danger of rapidly becoming obsolete following the expiry of a temporary licence allowing it to use apps and Android updates from Google - raising fears they could become increasingly slow and laden with bugs.

Huawei is at risk of being unable to renew the licence after being blacklisted by the Trump administration in May last year, with US companies barred from selling technology to it without explicit government approval.

As a result, Huawei phones using Google Mobile Services could stop getting new features and security updates from the US company.

The US claims that Huawei equipment can be used by the Chinese government for espionage – something which Huawei has repeatedly denied. Older Huawei phones, developed before May 2019, are still expected to have the support of critical security features.

Why this matters:

Security updates need to rolled out to keen devices and software secure once vulnerabilities have been found and fixed by vendors. If Huawei phones are no longer able to receive these security updates any vulnerabilities in the underlying operating system will be able to continue being exploited by cyber criminals or ironically nation state actors.

HMRC Investigating Over 10,000 COVID-Related Phishing Scams

More than 10,000 email, SMS, social media and phone scams exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic are being investigated by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in the UK.

The official figures, published following a Freedom of Information (FOI) request highlight how the health and economic crisis has provided major scamming opportunities for cyber criminals.

The data showed that May was the month in which the highest number of phishing scams were reported by members of the public to HMRC, at 5152, representing a 337% rise compared to March when lockdown measures were first introduced in the UK. This was followed by 2558 reports in June, and 2105 in April. The total since March comes to 10,428.

Government programs introduced to support businesses and workers impacted by the lockdown have been a common target for scammers. Examples include an email purporting to be from HMRC regarding the government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, which attempted to get business owners to reveal their bank account information, while another offered a bogus tax rebate under the guise of the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme.

The FOI also showed that 106 COVID-related websites have been requested for removal since March, with April the highest month at 42, followed by 24 in May and 17 in March. In May, it was revealed that HMRC formally asked internet service providers (ISPs) to remove 292 scam web addresses exploiting the coronavirus outbreak.

Why this matters:

Cyber criminals will always take advantage of current events, crises and tragedies to exploit unsuspecting victims. This has never been so evident as with the current Coronavirus pandemic, especially with the shift to more staff working from home.

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.

Antony Cleal 18/08/2020 Antony Cleal 18/08/2020

Can you have too much security? Cyber Tip Tuesday for 18 August 2020

Surely more security is always better right? Surely you can’t have too much? Maybe not - find out more

Black Arrow Admin 15/08/2020 Black Arrow Admin 15/08/2020

Cyber Weekly Flash Briefing 14 August 2020: Travelex goes bust following ransomware, Microsoft fix 120 vulns inc two zero-days, more ransomware victims paying up, Cloud misconfigurations create risks

Cyber Weekly Flash Briefing 14 August 2020: Travelex Forced into Administration After Ransomware Attack, Microsoft fixes 120 vulnerabilities inc two zero-days, More ransomware victims are paying up, Misconfiguration #1 Cloud Security Threat, Beware What You Ask Amazon Alexa, Ex-Uber engineer sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing driverless car secrets from Google, Google and Amazon are now the most imitated brands for phishing

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.

Travelex Forced into Administration After Ransomware Attack

Ransomware victim Travelex has been forced into administration, with the loss of over 1000 jobs.

PwC announced late last week that it had been appointed joint administrators of the currency exchange business.

The Sodinokibi (REvil) ransomware variant is believed to have struck the firm on New Year’s Eve last year, forcing its website offline and impacting its bricks-and-mortar stores and banking services. It took until January 17 for the firm to get its first customer-facing systems live again in the UK.

Why this matters:

Firms of any size can call victim to ransomware and many firms will not survive a significant cyber event such as this. Unconfirmed reports at the time suggested that a critical unpatched vulnerability in a VPN (Virtual Private Network) may have allowed attackers to remotely execute malicious code. A security researcher said he reached out to the firm in September 2019 to flag the issue but was ignored. This again shows the importance of ensuring all security updates are applied quickly. Has this software had the security updates applied those vulnerabilities would not have been able to be used in this attack.

Microsoft August 2020 Patch Tuesday fixes 120 vulnerabilities, two zero-days

Microsoft’s August 2020 Patch Tuesday security updates fell this week and this month the company has patched 120 vulnerabilities across 13 different products, from Edge to Windows, and from SQL Server to the .NET Framework.

Among these 120 vulnerabilities, 17 bugs have received the highest severity rating of "Critical," and there are also two zero-days — vulnerabilities that have been exploited by hackers before Microsoft was able to provide a fix.

Why this matters:

All security updates should be applied as soon as possible to prevent vulnerabilities from being exploited in attacks. When vulnerabilities are announced criminals will waste no time in weaponizing them (creating exploits to use in attacks) so the quicker the vulnerabilities are closed the safer you will be.

More ransomware victims are paying up, even when data recovery is possible

The proportion of ransomware attack victims actually paying ransoms increased in the last quarter, even in instances where ransomed data could be recovered, new figures have revealed.

According to a commercial ransomware recovery service, data exfiltration attacks are becoming more common and blending with traditional ransomware hacks. Data exfiltration extortion involves an attacker taking possession of stolen data and putting it up for sale on forums or marketplaces. Once monetised, the hacker asks the victim to pay a ransom to prevent the information’s release.

The recover firm added that tools currently on the market vary wildly when it comes to data recovery success following a ransomware attack. What’s more, the company has noted an uptick in the number of companies experiencing operating system and registry corruption even after ransomed data is restored.

Why this matters:

It used to be that backups were the best defence against ransomware attacks, but if your data is stolen a backup won’t help you avoid having to pay out to keep your sensitive or confidential data out of the public domain.

Intel, SAP, and Citrix release critical security updates

Intel released 18 advisories, including fixes for Denial of Service, Information Disclosure and Elevation of Privilege flaws affecting various products on Windows, Chrome OS and Linux OS.

SAP’s released 15 security notes and an update to a previously released one to address flaws in a variety of offerings, including SAP ERP, SAP Business Objects Business Intelligence Platform, SAP S/4 HANA and various SAP NetWeaver components.

Citrix’s has released patches for a set of vulnerabilities in certain on-premises instances of Citrix Endpoint Management (aka XenMobile Server).

Why this matters:

Security upgrades should always be applied as soon as possible. Whether announced vulnerabilities are already being exploited or not as they become known they likely will be exploited and patching them (applied the fixes made available) prevent them from being exploited.

IT Pros Name Misconfiguration #1 Cloud Security Threat

Configuration errors are the number one threat to cloud security, according to a new poll of IT and security professionals.

A security vendor interviewed 653 industry professionals to compile its 2020 Cloud Security Report.

Three-quarters (75%) claimed to be “very” or “extremely” concerned about cloud security, with most (52%) believing that the risks are higher in the public cloud than on-premises.

The top four threats were cited as: misconfiguration (68%), unauthorized cloud access (58%), insecure interfaces (52%), and account hijacking (50%).

These security concerns have created multiple barriers to further adoption of cloud services. The top inhibitor of adoption was a lack of qualified staff (55%), up from fifth place last year.

This may go some way to explaining respondents’ concerns around configuration errors, especially as 68% of these organisations are using two or more public cloud providers — adding to the complexity.

Why this matters?

Organisations’ cloud migrations and deployments are racing ahead of their security teams’ abilities to defend them against attacks and breaches. Their existing security solutions only provide limited protections against cloud threats, and teams often lack the expertise needed to improve security and compliance processes

RedCurl cybercrime group has hacked companies for three years

Security researchers have uncovered a new Russian-speaking hacking group that they claim has been focusing on the past three years on corporate espionage, targeting companies across the world to steal documents that contain commercial secrets and employee personal data.

Named RedCurl, the activities of this new group have been detailed in a 57-page report released this week.

Researchers have been tracking the group since the summer of 2019 and have since identified 26 other RedCurl attacks, carried out against 14 organisations, going as far back as 2018.

Why this matters:

This Russian group have targeted victims across different countries and industry sectors, and included construction companies, retailers, travel agencies, insurance companies, banks, and law and consulting firms from countries like Russia, Ukraine, Canada, Germany, Norway, and the UK. Many firms could fall victim to cyber crime groups like this if their defences are not able to withstand such attackers.

Why You Must Beware What You Ask Amazon Alexa

The same cyber team that cracked open TikTok, WhatsApp, Microsoft’s cloud and even Philips lightbulbs has just turned its attention to Amazon’s Alexa. And, unsurprisingly, it hasn’t disappointed. After “speculating” that Amazon’s 200 million devices “could be a prime entry-point for hackers,” Check Point Research has just lifted the lid to unmask “serious security flaws in Alexa.” According to the team, “in just one click, a user could have given up their voice history, home address and control of their Amazon account.”

Why this matters:

Warnings about the dangers of smart speakers and their extended families of virtual assistants are not new. These are the same devices that causes such scandal last year, when it transpired humans were listening to conversations to better train the AI. The issue here is different, much more akin to the broader problem of IoT security. Every different gadget you connect to the internet becomes a potential vulnerability and the methods needed to crack Amazon’s devices were not particularly sophisticated.

Ex-Uber engineer sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing driverless car secrets from Google

A star engineer who admitted stealing self-driving car secrets from Google has been sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Anthony Levandowski, who helped found Google's self-driving car project, now known as Waymo, pleaded guilty to downloading documents containing data about the company's work and accessing one of them after he had left to found his own trucking startup.

Sentencing him in a San Francisco court, the judge said he was imposing prison time as a deterrent.

An early star in the self-driving car scene, Mr Levandowski pushed for Google to develop the technology but later became disillusioned, leaving in early 2016 to start trucking company Otto, which was bought by Uber less than eight months later.

Waymo sued Uber, a case which was settled in 2018, with Uber paying out $245m (£187m) in equity and agreeing not to use its technology.

Uber had signed an indemnification agreement with Mr Levandowski, forcing it to pay his legal fees, but has refused to pay a $179m debt he owes to the Google spin-out, a consequence of separate legal action relating to his departure.

Why this matters:

Your staff present one of your biggest risks, and a disgruntled or disillusioned employee can be very dangerous. The theft of intellectual property for personal gain is a classic example of this kind of behaviour. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) systems can help to spot unusual behaviour in employees and detect sensitive data being extracted from corporate systems.

Google and Amazon are now the most imitated brands for phishing

You may want to think twice about opening that email claiming to be from Google or Amazon, after new research found the tech giants were being used as lures for phishing scams.

Earlier this year, Check Point revealed that Apple was the most imitated brand for phishing, but over the course of the last few months, the iPhone maker has fallen to seventh place with Google and Amazon now taking the top spots.

Why this matters:

Phishing is estimated to be the starting point of over 90 percent of all cyberattacks and according to Verizon's 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report, nearly one third (32%) of all data breaches involved phishing activity. Additionally phishing was present in 78 percent of cyber espionage incidents and the installation and use of backdoors in company networks.

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.

Black Arrow Admin 11/08/2020 Black Arrow Admin 11/08/2020

Regulatory Expectations around Cyber and Information Security - Cyber Tip Tuesday video for 11 August 2020

Welcome to this week's Black Arrow Cyber Tip Tuesday. We have talked before about how the regulators like the Guernsey GFSC and the Jersey JFSC expect Boards to take Cyber and information security seriously by the Board just as they do with more established risks, and that Directors are required to understand and manage those risks. So, how can a Board evidence this. The clearest way is to schedule a regular review of a cyber security report at Board meetings. That report should contain a few sections with brief and focused content that is explained in terminology that all business leaders can understand. One of those sections is a dashboard with key indicators about the risks that the business faces, and the controls that are in place to mitigate those risks to match the organisation’s risk appetite. We recommend that organisations structure their risks and controls based on one of the globally recognised frameworks, for example NIST or ISO 27001. In fact, the forthcoming regulations from the GFSC are based on the NIST framework. So, the dashboard would also be structured to match that same framework, to ensure everything this covered. The Board members should be sufficiently knowledgeable about these topics to be able to question whether things are as good as the dashboard says they are, and whether the rating should be Amber instead of Green. Or, whether the RAG threshold is appropriate for their business. And that challenge in the Board room should be minuted for future reference. You don’t need to be an expert, but you do need to have a good understanding of the basics, and your independent trusted advisors can support you on the details. Contact us to see how we can help you achieve what the regulators require of you.

Welcome to this week's Black Arrow Cyber Tip Tuesday.

We have talked before about how the regulators like the Guernsey GFSC and the Jersey JFSC expect Boards to take Cyber and information security seriously by the Board just as they do with more established risks, and that Directors are required to understand and manage those risks.

So, how can a Board evidence this.

The clearest way is to schedule a regular review of a cyber security report at Board meetings. That report should contain a few sections with brief and focused content that is explained in terminology that all business leaders can understand. One of those sections is a dashboard with key indicators about the risks that the business faces, and the controls that are in place to mitigate those risks to match the organisation’s risk appetite.

We recommend that organisations structure their risks and controls based on one of the globally recognised frameworks, for example NIST or ISO 27001. In fact, the forthcoming regulations from the GFSC are based on the NIST framework. So, the dashboard would also be structured to match that same framework, to ensure everything this covered.

The Board members should be sufficiently knowledgeable about these topics to be able to question whether things are as good as the dashboard says they are, and whether the rating should be Amber instead of Green. Or, whether the RAG threshold is appropriate for their business. And that challenge in the Board room should be minuted for future reference.

You don’t need to be an expert, but you do need to have a good understanding of the basics, and your independent trusted advisors can support you on the details.

Black Arrow Admin 07/08/2020 Black Arrow Admin 07/08/2020

Cyber Weekly Flash Briefing 07 August 2020: INTERPOL warn on alarming pace of cyber crime, Canon ransomware, Garmin paid ransom, TV Licence fraud targets elderly, Netgear won’t patch vuln routers

Cyber Weekly Flash Briefing 07 August 2020: INTERPOL warning on “Alarming Pace” of cyber crime, Capital One fined $80m, Canon ransomware attack, Garmin reportedly paid multimillion ransom, Over-75s warned of rise in TV Licence 'phishing' fraud, Netgear Won’t Patch 45 Router Models Vulnerable to Serious Flaw

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.

INTERPOL: Cyber crime Growing at an “Alarming Pace” Due to #COVID19

Cyber crime is growing at an “alarming pace” as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and is expected to accelerate even further, a new report from INTERPOL has found.

It revealed the extent to which cyber-criminals are taking advantage of the increasing reliance on digital technology over recent months. This includes the rapid shift to home working undertaken by many organisations, which has involved the deployment of remote systems and networks, often insecurely.

Based on feedback from member countries, INTERPOL said that during the COVID-19 period, there has been a particularly large increase in malicious domains (22%), malware/ransomware (36%), phishing scams/fraud (59%) and fake news (14%).

Threat actors have revised their usual online scams and phishing schemes so that they are COVID-themed, playing on people’s economic and health fears.

Why this matters:

Increases in malicious activity is always a concern, especially when firms don’t realise how bad the situation is already and fail to grasp how much worse it is getting. Cyber criminals have gone through an industrial revolution and have built criminal organisations to rival some of the biggest legitimate business empires. Increases in threats require and increase in defensive capability, across IT, people and governance, to counter this rising tide.

Capital One fined $80m for data breach

Capital One, one of the top five credit card issuers by balances in the US, has been fined $80m and ordered to improve internal controls after regulators identified a string of failings that allowed hackers to obtain the personal data of more than 106m customers and credit card applicants last year.

The bank was found to have failed to establish effective risk assessment processes prior to migrating significant information technology operations to the public cloud, as well as failing to quickly correct deficiencies.

The data breach exposed names, addresses, phone numbers, self-reported income, credit scores and payment history, as well as some people’s social security numbers.

It has become a cautionary tale for banks migrating their data from their own physical IT to the kind of virtual clouds that the Capital One data was hacked from.

Why this matters:

Moving to the cloud can open up new risks and misconfigurations can go undetected until they are exploited by malicious actors. It is important to make sure you know where the weaknesses and vulnerabilities are before someone else does, and this included cloud infrastructure.

Canon confirms ransomware attack in internal memo

Canon appears to be latest in a number of large high profile firms in recent weeks to suffer a ransomware attack that has had an impact on numerous services, including Canon's email, Microsoft Teams, USA website, and other internal applications. In an internal alert sent to employees, Canon has disclosed the ransomware attack and working to address the issue.

Researchers were alerted by a suspicious outage on Canon's image.canon cloud photo and video storage service resulting in the loss of data for users of their free 10GB storage feature.

However, the final status update was strange as it mentions that while data was lost, "there was no leak of image data." This led BleepingComputer to believe there was more to the story and that they suffered a cyberattack.

Why this matters:

Any firm of any size can fall victim to ransomware and recovering can be time consuming, expensive and cause significant reputational damage. These attacks invariably stem from users clicking on links in phishing emails, something that IT departments and technical controls aren’t capable of defending against on their own.

Garmin reportedly paid multimillion-dollar ransom after suffering cyberattack

Following on from Canon being the latest high profile victim, reports indicate that fitness wearable and satellite navigation brand Garmin paid millions of dollars in ransom after an attack took many of its products and services offline last month. The payment was reportedly made through a ransomware negotiation company in order for Garmin to recover data held hostage as a result of the attack.

It was reported last week that Garmin had received a decryption key to access data encrypted by the virus, and that the initial ransom demand was for $10 million.

Why this matters:

If a company had to resort to paying the ransom then it can be inferred that they were unable to recover their data, had insufficient backups or had never tested recovering from backups and when they needed to for real found they were unable. It’s too late to find out when you need something that you don’t have it.

If no firm or individual paid ransoms this problem would go away. For as long as even a small number of firms and individuals pay this will continue to be a massive problem, affecting everyone.

Google: Eleven zero-days detected in the wild in the first half of 2020

According to data collected by Google's Project Zero security team, there have been 11 zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in the wild in the first half of the year.

The current number puts 2020 on track to have just as many zero-days as 2019 when Google security researchers said they tracked 20 zero-days all of last year.

Details about these zero-days have been obtained from a spreadsheet managed by Google security researchers, which the company made public available earlier this year. The spreadsheet contains Google's internal statistics about in-the-wild zero-day usage going as far back as 2014, when the company began tracking said stats.

Why this matters:

Zero-days are vulnerabilities for which fixes have not yet been made available and as such as difficult to defend against. Good security is all about having multiple layers of controls and if you have good procedural, people and governance controls in place this should still go a good way to helping to defend against zero-days.

As soon as security updates are made available they should ideally be tested and applied on all applicable devices as soon as possible to prevent vulnerabilities from being exploited.

TeamViewer flaw could be exploited to crack users’ password

A high-risk vulnerability (CVE-2020-13699) in TeamViewer for Windows could be exploited by remote attackers to crack users’ password and, consequently, lead to further system exploitation.

TeamViewer is an application that is used primarily for remote access to and control of various types of computer systems and mobile devices, but also offers collaboration and presentation features (e.g., desktop sharing, web conferencing, file transfer, etc.)

Since the advent of COVID-19, enterprise use of the software has increased due to many employees being forced to work from home.

Why this matters:

Credentials stolen from any successful breach are likely to be used in credential stuffing attacks (where the same usernames and passwords are reused) against other sites and services.

Qualcomm chip vulnerability puts millions of phones at risk

Smartphone devices from the likes of Google, LG, OnePlus, Samsung and Xiaomi are in danger of compromise by cyber criminals after 400 vulnerable code sections were uncovered on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon digital signal processor (DSP) chip, which runs on over 40% of the global Android estate.

To exploit the vulnerabilities, a malicious actor would merely need to convince their target to install a simple, benign application with no permissions at all.

Why this matters:

The vulnerabilities leave affected smartphones at risk of being taken over and used to spy on and track their users, having malware and other malicious code installed and hidden, or even being bricked outright. Hopefully a fix will be forthcoming but it looks like it might be months before this fix is widely available.

Over-75s warned of rise in TV Licence 'phishing' fraud

Over-75s awaiting letters about their new licence fee payments are falling victim to fraudsters, it has emerged.

The BBC has told 4.5 million pensioners to expect a letter from TV Licensing advising them on how to set up payment, as the free scheme for over-75s ended on July 31.

But the corporation has not given an indication of when the communication will arrive or what the wording will be, and in the meantime pensioners are being duped by scam emails which purport to be official.

The National Cyber Security Centre, part of GCHQ, said the number of licence fee “phishing” emails had risen in July, compared to previous months, and it was working hard to block them.

A spokesman said: “It is despicable that criminals are targeting over-75s in this way. TV Licensing would never ask for payment details over an email, so as soon as we were alerted to the scam messages sent in this callous campaign, they were immediately blocked.

Why this matters:

Cyber criminals are unscrupulous and will happily target the most vulnerable members of our society. If you have elderly relatives make them aware of these scams and encourage them not to respond for requests sent via email.

Netgear Won’t Patch 45 Router Models Vulnerable to Serious Flaw

Netgear will not patch 45 router models that are vulnerable to a high-severity remote code execution flaw, the router company revealed last week. However, the company says that routers that won’t receive updates are outdated or have reached EOL (End of Life).

The remote code execution vulnerability in question, which was disclosed June 15, allows network-adjacent attackers to bypass authentication on vulnerable Netgear routers – sans authentication. The high-severity flaw affects 79 Netgear Wi-Fi routers and home gateway models – but Netgear says that 45 of those router models are outside of its “security support period.”

Why this matters:

If you are using a Netgear device ensure that it is not in the list of devices that are no longer supported and if necessary replace it with a different router that is supported. If the device you own is still supported you should log into the web interface and ensure that it is updated to the most recent version of firmware to include any security updates.

Many people never update the firmware on their networking devices at home and this means that there can be a significant number of significant security vulnerabilities that have gone unfixed jeopardising the security of any devices connected to that router. If you don’t know how to update home networking devices contact someone who can help you to do this.

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.

Black Arrow Admin 04/08/2020 Black Arrow Admin 04/08/2020

Free Advisory Sessions for Startups and Entrepreneurs - Cyber Tip Tuesday video 04 August 2020

Welcome to this week's Black Arrow Cyber Tip Tuesday, this week Tony talks about free advisory sessions for startups and entrepreneurs to help them think about security as they take their first steps with their new businesses.

When setting up a new business there are lots and lots of things to think about, and probably many things will come up that you never knew to think about, but security is not something that should be bolted on afterwards but rather something that should be thought about from the start.

Thinking about security from the start will always put you in a better position after all no business can afford a data breach or significant cyber event and most new businesses and startups won’t survive if they are attacked. A mistake small businesses make is thinking they don’t need to worry about cyber security but nearly half of all attacks hit small businesses so this is not something only larger firms need to think about.

The controls that startups and small business should put in place are often fairly basic and most come with no or little cost attached so are within the reach of all firms no matter how small – and these controls help to protect against the vast majority of attacks. If you’re a new startup or entrepreneur contact us today to arrange a free chat to you on the right track to defending your new business.

Black Arrow Admin 31/07/2020 Black Arrow Admin 31/07/2020

Cyber Weekly Flash Briefing 31 July 2020: 386M user records stolen, Twitter spear-phishing, Garmin may have paid ransom, 27% of consumers hit with Covid19 phishing scams, Netflix phishing scam

Cyber Weekly Flash Briefing 31 July 2020: 386M user records stolen, Twitter says attack was spear-phishing, Criminals still exploiting COVID19, Netwalker ransomware, Garmin may have paid ransom, QNAP NAS devices infected, Hackers exploit networking vulns, 27% of consumers hit with pandemic-themed phishing scams, New Netflix phishing scam

386 million user records stolen in data breaches — and they're being given away for free

A notorious hacker or group of hackers is giving away copies of databases said to contain 386 million user records, after posting links to the databases on a marketplace used by cyber criminals.

The threat actor, who goes by the name ShinyHunters, claims to have data stolen from 18 different websites in the past seven months. According to reports, ShinyHungers last week began uploading the databases to a forum where anyone can download them free of charge.

ShinyHunters is believed to have played a role in high-profile data breaches at HomeChef, Promo.com, Mathway, Chatbooks, Dave.com, Wattpad and even Microsoft's GitHub account. Many of these records were previously offered for sale online.

Why this matters:

Any details stolen from one site or service will be used against other sites and services, this is why it is critical that passwords are not reused across different sites and that all passwords are unique. Using multi factor authentication is also very effective at safeguarding against these types of attacks.

Twitter says spear-phishing attack on employees led to breach

Twitter said a large hack two weeks ago targeted a small number of employees through a phone “spear-phishing” attack.

The social media platform said the hackers targeted about 130 accounts, tweeted from 45, accessed the inboxes of 36, and were able to download Twitter data from seven.

Attackers also targeted specific employees who had access to account support tools, Twitter said. The company added it has since restricted access to its internal tools and systems.

Twitter suffered a major security breach on 15 July that saw hackers take control of the accounts of major public figures and corporations, including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Apple.

The hack unfolded over the course of several hours, and in the course of halting it, Twitter stopped all verified accounts from tweeting – an unprecedented measure.

Publicly available blockchain records show the apparent scammers received more than $100,000 worth of cryptocurrency.

Why this matters?

It is nearly always a lot easier for attackers to attack your users than it is to attack your systems. IT controls alone cannot protect against social engineering attacks so making sure your staff are trained so they don’t fall for social engineering attacks is a critical part of your defence.

Cyber-Criminals Continue to Exploit #COVID19 During Q2

Cyber-criminals’ exploitation of the COVID-19 pandemic to target individuals and businesses has continued unabated during the second quarter of 2020, according to one Cyber Security firm’s Q2 2020 Threat Report published today. The findings highlight how the crisis is defining the cybersecurity landscape in Q2 in a similar way as it did in Q1 after the pandemic first struck.

The firm observed a continuous focus on phishing using COVID-19 lures in this period. This included criminals taking advantage of the rise in online shopping that has occurred during the pandemic, with a 10-fold increase in phishing emails impersonating one of the world’s leading package delivery services found in comparison to Q1.

The shift to remote working as a result of the pandemic has also led to increased targeting of Remote Desktop Protocol’s in recent months.

Ransomware tactics were found to be “rapidly developing” in this period, with operators moving away from doxing and random data leaking towards auctioning the stolen data on dedicated underground sites.

Why does this matter?

The Coronavirus crisis gave criminals an efficient lure to bait phishing emails with and for as long as it is working they will continue to exploit this crisis. It’s like we always say “cyber criminals will never let a good crisis or tragedy go to waste”

FBI Releases Flash Alert on Netwalker Ransomware

The US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) released a flash alert in which it warned organisations about the dangers of Netwalker ransomware.

The FBI said that it had received notifications of attacks involving Netwalker against U.S. and foreign government organisations along with entities operating in the healthcare and education sectors.

In its alert, the FBI noted that those responsible for Netwalker had used COVID-19 phishing emails and unpatched vulnerabilities affecting VPN apps to gain entry into an organisation. The malicious actors had then used their crypto-malware to harvest administrator credentials and steal data from their victims. Ultimately, the attackers uploaded that stolen information to a file-sharing service.

Once they had come into possession of a victim’s data, the nefarious individuals activated the ransomware’s encryption routine. This step led the threat to encrypt all connected Windows-based devices and information before dropping a ransom note on the infected machine.

Why does this matter?

Ransomware remains one of the biggest risks for all firms, organisations and individuals, and the majority of the time the ransomware infection will stem from a phishing email that a user within an organisation clicked on. As with all social engineering attacks IT controls alone are of limited effectiveness and defending against these attacks comes down to educating your users and instilling in them the importance of the role they play in defending an organisation.

Garmin may have paid hackers ransom, reports suggest

Fitness wearable and Navtech supplier Garmin may have given in to the demands of cyber criminals who encrypted its systems with ransomware, according to news reports that suggest the firm has obtained a decryption key to recover its files, strongly suggesting it has either paid up, or brokered some kind of deal.

In a statement issued four days after its services first went offline, Garmin finally confirmed it had been the victim of a cyber attack, having previously limited its response to saying it was experiencing an outage. It has not yet confirmed it was the victim of a ransomware incident, although this is now all but certain.

A spokesperson said: “Garmin today announced it was the victim of a cyber attack that encrypted some of our systems on July 23, 2020. As a result, many of our online services were interrupted including website functions, customer support, customer-facing applications, and company communications. We immediately began to assess the nature of the attack and started remediation,” said the firm.

“We have no indication that any customer data, including payment information from Garmin Pay, was accessed, lost or stolen. Additionally, the functionality of Garmin products was not affected, other than the ability to access online services.

Why does this matter?

Ransomware can affect firms of any size, from the smallest to the largest, no firm or organisation is immune and even firms that are spending millions or tens of millions on advanced protections and controls can still fall victim. These types of attacks go after the people working for an organisation, not the organisations technical infrastructure and technical controls are of limited use in defending against these types of attacks. An organisation needs to ensure their users are efficient at spotting phishing emails, it only takes one user clicking on one malicious email to take down a multinational corporation.

Cyber-security agencies from the UK and the US say 62,000 QNAP NAS devices have been infected with the QSnatch malware

The UK NCSC and US CISA published a joint security alert this week about QSnatch, a strain of malware that has been infecting network-attached storage (NAS) devices from Taiwanese device maker QNAP.

In alerts by the United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the United Kingdom's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the two agencies say that attacks with the QSnatch malware have been traced back to 2014, but attacks intensified over the last year when the number of reported infections grew from 7,000 devices in October 2019 to more than 62,000 in mid-June 2020.

Of these, CISA and the NSCS say that approximately 7,600 of the infected devices are located in the US, and around 3,900 in the UK.

Why this matters?

Vulnerable devices can be used to steal credentials (usernames and passwords) and exfiltrate information from devices on the network. It is important to keep devices up to date with the latest security patches to close any vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.

Hackers actively exploit high-severity networking vulnerabilities

Hackers are actively exploiting two unrelated high-severity vulnerabilities that allow unauthenticated access or even a complete takeover of networks run by FTSE100/Fortune 500 companies and government organisations.

The most serious exploits are targeting a critical vulnerability in F5’s Big-IP advanced delivery controller, a device that’s typically placed between a perimeter firewall and a Web application to handle load balancing and other tasks. The vulnerability, which F5 patched three weeks ago, allows unauthenticated attackers to remotely run commands or code of their choice. Attackers can then use their control of the device to hijack the internal network it’s connected to.

Why this matters?

Vulnerable devices such as this can be used to gain access to internal networks. It is important to keep devices up to date with the latest security patches to close any vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. When a vendor releases updates they should be installed as soon as possible, ideally having been tested before updates are applied in your live environment.

27% of consumers hit with pandemic-themed phishing scams

Phishing is the top digital fraud scheme worldwide related to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new research.

Among consumers reporting being targeted with digital COVID-19 schemes globally, 27% said they were hit with pandemic-themed phishing scams.

Identity fraud is a primary way fraudsters leverage stolen consumer data from phishing and other social engineering schemes. It can have long-term impacts for consumers such as the compromise of multiple online accounts and bringing down credit scores, which we anticipate will increase during pandemic reconstruction.

To better understand the impacts of COVID-19 on consumers, 7,384 adults in Canada, Colombia, Hong Kong, South Africa, the U.K., and the U.S. have been surveyed between June 30 and July 6, 2020.

It asked the consumers if they had been targeted by digital COVID-19 fraud and if so, which digital fraud scheme(s) related to COVID-19 were they targeted with. Globally, 32% said they had been targeted by digital fraud related to COVID-19 with the below being the top types of COVID-19 fraud they faced:

Top global online COVID-19 scams targeting consumers:

Why this matters?

Whatever works for criminals they will continue doing. Until consumers, as well as businesses, get better at detecting these scams and get better at spotting phishing emails criminals will carry on using the latest crisis or tragedy to get users to click on malicious emails and open their networks to attackers.

New Netflix phishing scam uncovered - here’s how to stay safe

Security analysts have uncovered a dangerous and highly convincing new Netflix phishing scam, capable of evading traditional email security software.

The phishing email masquerades as a billing error alert, pressing the victim to update their payment details within 24 hours or have their Netflix subscription voided.

The link provided in the email redirects to a functioning CAPTCHA form, used in legitimate scenarios to distinguish between humans and AI. Although this step adds a layer of friction to the process, it serves to enhance the sense of legitimacy the attacker is attempting to cultivate.

After handing over account credentials, billing address and payment card information, the victim is then redirected to the genuine Netflix home page, unaware their data has been compromised.

Why does this matter?

Phishing campaigns like this cast a wide net and only need a small number of victims to fall for it to turn a profit, and that means these types of scams are not going to go away any time soon. If no one fell for them they would stop. Always question any email that urges you to take action quickly under the guise of some threat.

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.

Black Arrow Admin 28/07/2020 Black Arrow Admin 28/07/2020

Common, and dangerous, misconceptions around ransomware - Cyber Tip Tuesday video 28 July 2020

Black Arrow Admin 25/07/2020 Black Arrow Admin 25/07/2020

Cyber Weekly Flash Briefing 24 July 2020: Cyber crime up 23% Over Past Year, Nearly 50% of employees have made a serious security mistake at work, 99.9% of Hacked Microsoft Accounts Don’t Use 2FA

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.

Cybercrime Jumped 23% Over Past Year, Says ONS

Cybercrime offenses reported by individuals and businesses have risen 23% over the past year, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The UK government body explained that 26,215 incidents were referred to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) by Action Fraud in the year ending March 2020.

The year-on-year increase was driven by a large uptick in the two highest-volume “computer misuse” types reported to Action Fraud. “Hacking – social media and email” saw a 55% increase from 12,894 offenses, and “computer viruses/malware” incidents soared by 61% to reach 6745 cases.

The double-digit increase in reported cybercrime came in spite of improvements to “internal case review processes” and an online reporting tool at Action Fraud in October 2018 which meant some offenses previously categorized as computer misuse are now being properly identified as fraud, ONS said.

Why this matters:

Any increase in reported cyber crime is significant, but such a large rise is even more alarming and demonstrates that firms and individuals need to make sure they are treating these threats seriously.

Nearly half of employees have made a serious security mistake at work

Distraction and burnout can lead to serious mistakes when working online

New research from an email security firm has revealed that almost half (43%) of employees in the US and UK have made mistakes at work that have resulted in cyber security repercussions for themselves or their company.

A survey of 2,000 professionals between the ages of 18 and 51 to find out more about why workers make mistakes and how they can be prevented before they end up turning into data breaches.

Of the employees surveyed, a quarter of them confessed to clicking on links in a phishing email at work. The research also found that employees between 31 and 40 years of age were four times more likely than employees over age 51 to click on a phishing email. At the same time, male employees were twice as likely to do so than their female coworkers.

Why does this matter:

Cyber and Information Security is fundamentally a human problem, not an IT problem, and all the IT controls in the world are worth very little if humans bypass them or fail to follow safe working practices. Ensure your users, at all levels, are aware of the role they play in securing your organisation and make sure they receive adequate and suitable training.

https://www.techradar.com/news/nearly-half-of-employees-have-made-a-mistake-that-had-cybersecurity-repercussions

99.9 Percent of Hacked Microsoft Accounts Don’t Use 2FA

Two-factor authentication (2FA) is the single most effective method of preventing unauthorised access to an online account as number from Microsoft prove.

Microsoft tracks over 1 billion active accounts monthly, which is nearly 1/8 of the world’s population. These generate more than 30 billion monthly login events. Every login to a corporate O365 account can generate multiple login entries across multiple apps, as well as additional events for other apps that use O365 for single sign-on.

If that number sounds big, bear in mind that Microsoft stops 300 million fraudulent sign-in attempts every day. Again, that’s not per year or per month, but 300 million per day.

In January 2020, 480,000 Microsoft accounts—0.048 percent of all Microsoft accounts—were compromised by spraying attacks. This is when an attacker runs a common password (like “Spring2020!”) against lists of thousands of accounts, in the hopes that some of those will have used that common password.

Sprays are just one form of attack; hundreds and thousands more were caused by credential stuffing. To perpetuate these, the attacker buys usernames and passwords on the dark web and tries them on other systems.

Then, there’s phishing, which is when an attacker convinces you to log in to a fake website to get your password. These methods are how online accounts are typically “hacked,” in common parlance.

In all, over 1 million Microsoft accounts were breached in January. That’s just over 32,000 compromised accounts per day, which sounds bad until you remember the 300 million fraudulent login attempts stopped per day.

But the most important number of all is that 99.9 percent of all Microsoft account breaches would have been stopped if the accounts had two-factor authentication enabled.

Why this matters:

Two-factor authentication (2FA) is the single most effective method of preventing unauthorised access to online accounts, remediating (or preventing) approximately 95% of attacks. That this simple step, normally available free of charge from online account providers, is so effective means it should be implemented wherever and whenever possible.

Adobe issues emergency fixes for critical vulnerabilities in Photoshop, Bridge, Prelude

Adobe has released an out-of-band emergency security update for Photoshop, Prelude, and Bridge.

On Tuesday, a week after issuing the firm's standard monthly security update, Adobe published security advisories revealing a total of 13 vulnerabilities, 12 of which are deemed critical.

Five vulnerabilities have now been resolved in Photoshop CC 2019 -- versions 20.0.9 and earlier -- and Photoshop 2020 -- versions 21.2 and earlier -- on Windows machines.

All of these vulnerabilities are considered critical, as if exploited, can lead to arbitrary code execution.

Why does this matter:

Vulnerabilities in software are exploited by attackers, patching these vulnerabilities means the vulnerabilities cannot then be exploited. Updates should always be installed as soon as possible to prevent them from being used in attacks.

Blackbaud Hack: Universities lose data to ransomware attack

At least 10 universities in the UK, US and Canada have had data stolen about students and/or alumni after hackers attacked a cloud computing provider.

Human Rights Watch and the children's mental health charity, Young Minds, have also confirmed they were affected.

The hack targeted Blackbaud, one of the world's largest providers of education administration, fundraising, and financial management software.

The US-based company's systems were hacked in May and it has been criticised for not disclosing this externally until July and for having paid the hackers an undisclosed ransom.

In some cases, the data was limited to that of former students, who had been asked to financially support the establishments they had graduated from. But in others it extended to staff, existing students and other supporters.

The institutions the BBC has confirmed have been affected are:

· University of York

· Oxford Brookes University

· Loughborough University

· University of Leeds

· University of London

· University of Reading

· University College, Oxford

· Ambrose University in Alberta, Canada

· Human Rights Watch

· Young Minds

· Rhode Island School of Design in the US

· University of Exeter

In some cases, the stolen data included phone numbers, donation history and events attended. Credit card and other payment details do not appear to have been exposed.

Why does this matter:

Every entity, business, organisation and individual is at risk from ransomware, the bigger the organisation the more point of entries exist but this does not mean this is not a major threat to smaller businesses too. Nearly all these attacks stem from a user clicking on a link in a phishing email so make sure your staff are adept at spotting phishing emails.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-53516413

Amazon Prime phishing scam returns - here's all you need to know

Shoppers warned of phone and email attacks against Amazon Prime users

Shoppers using Amazon Prime have been warned about a major phishing scam which appears to have resurfaced across the country

The scammers target victims via an automated telephone call claiming that they have opened an Amazon Prime account and that they should "press one" to cancel the transaction.

Doing so will connect the call to a fraudster posing as an Amazon customer service representative who then informs the recipient of the call that their subscription was purchased fraudulently due to a supposed "security flaw" on the targeted person's computer. The bogus Amazon representative then asks for remote access to the recipient's computer, supposedly to fix the security breach. Remote access gives control access allowing the scammers to steal personal information, including passwords and banking information.

There is also an email version of the same scam.

The email version of this scam sees the victim receiving a message stating they have started an Amazon Music subscription charged at £28.99 per month. The email then asks the recipient to click a link if they want to cancel the subscription and receive a refund - but the page they are taken to in order to input their card details and receive the refund will instead send their details to fraudsters.

Why does this matter:

Scammers only need a small number of people they target to fall for the scam for it to be profitable for them, so unfortunately these types of scams are not going to go away any time soon. Make sure you keep up to date with the latest and emerging scams and make sure relatives who might fall victim to these scams are also aware that these types of attacks are happening all the time so to exercise caution if they receive calls or emails of this nature.

Phishing attacks concealed in Google Cloud Services

Cyber criminals are increasingly concealing phishing efforts behind legitimate resources.

A lie is best concealed between two truths, an old saying goes, and it seems hackers are using this wisdom to better hide their phishing efforts.

Cyber security researchers are warning of a phishing campaign that utilises Google Cloud Services and offers legitimate PDF whitepapers to victims that give away their login credentials.

According to the researchers, it all starts with a PDF document uploaded to Google Drive, containing a link to a phishing page. The landing page requires the user to log in with their Office 365 or organisation email.

After the victim gives away their login credentials, they are redirected to a genuine PDF report published by a “renowned global consulting firm.”

Why does this matter:

Since the phishing page is hosted on Google Cloud Storage, the user might not become suspicious. Hackers are swarming around the cloud storage services that we rely on and trust, making it much tougher to identify actual phishing attacks. Traditional red flags of a phishing attack, such as look-alike domains or websites without certificates, won’t help us much as we enter a potential cyber pandemic. Users of Google Cloud Platform, even AWS and Azure users, should all beware of this fast-growing trend and learn how to protect themselves. It starts by thinking twice about the files you receive from senders.

Analysts Detect New Banking Malware

A new strain of banking malware dubbed BlackRock has been detected by researchers

An investigation into its origins has revealed BlackRock to be derived from the Xerxes banking malware. Xerxes was in turn spawned out of the LokiBot Android banking Trojan, first detected around four years ago.

The source code of the Xerxes malware was made public by its author around May 2019, making it possible for any threat actor to get their hands on it. Despite the code's availability, researchers found that the only Android banking Trojan based on Xerxes' source code that is currently operating appears to be BlackRock.

Why this matters:

This malevolent malware steals credentials not only from banking apps but also from other apps designed to facilitate communication, shopping and business. In total, the researchers found 337 Android apps were impacted, including dating, social networking and cryptocurrency apps.

Hackers wipe out more than 1,000 databases, leaving only the word 'meow'

Over 1000 unsecured databases have been permanently deleted, leaving only the word “meow” behind.

The attack saw a database that had details of the UFO VPN. UFO VPN, and other products from seemingly the same company, had recently been in the news for exposing user information.

Information exposed include unencrypted account passwords, location information, and IP addresses of user devices and VPN servers.

The VPN, and others like it, claimed that it was not logging user details. Reports alleged that this was not the case.

The attack seems to have come from a bot, according to Forbes, as the attack script overwrites database indexes with random numerical strings and the word ‘Meow’.

Why does this matter:

Unsecured databases are wide open to attackers and not only can the contents be read and information gleaned used in other attacks they can also, as was the case in this attack, be deleted, losing all data.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/database-hack-meow-attack-security-ufo-vpn-a9634906.html

Is your smart home hosting malware attacks?

It’s not only computers that can be compromised by hackers, almost any electronic device can be compromised – including your smart home gadgets.

Researchers have discovered a new family of malware called Mozi that has been quickly spreading online since last year and appears to have been designed specifically to attack low-power smart devices. Once installed, the malware tries to make contact with other infected devices, adding itself to a botnet (a collection of other compromised devices).

Infected device continues to operate normally however the devices constantly ‘listening’ for instructions from the botnet. The botnet has been designed to launch Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS) that can be used to attack and crash online services and websites. Once activated, your infected devices will be used by hackers to participate in large DDoS attacks.

Some variants can also steal data, or execute additional code, allowing hackers to gain control of your network.

As the malware evolves, the list of affected devices will undoubtedly grow.

Why does this matter:

Almost any electronic device can be compromised to serve malware, be co-opted into taking part in distributed denial of service attacks or otherwise be exploited or used as a point of entry into a network. As more and more of these devices appear in our homes and offices many people do not realise they are significantly increasing their potential attack surface.

Russian cyber attacks an 'urgent threat' to national security

Russia's cyber attack capabilities -- and its willingness to use them -- pose an "immediate and urgent threat" to the UK's national security, according to a report from a committee of MPs.

The long- delayed Russia report from the UK parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) describes how it sees Russia's abilities to use malicious cyber activities to further its aims.

"Russia's cyber capability, when combined with its willingness to deploy it in a malicious capacity, is a matter of grave concern, and poses an immediate and urgent threat to our national security," the report said.

Why does this matter:

Given the immediate threat that Russia poses to UK national security, it is concerning that there is no clear coordination of the numerous organisations across the UK intelligence community working on this issue. The risks posed by Russia, and other nation states such as China, Iran and North Korea should not be understated or ignored.

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.

Black Arrow Admin 22/07/2020 Black Arrow Admin 22/07/2020

The Risks Posed by Home Routers - Cyber Tip Tuesday 22 July 2020

Welcome to this week's Black Arrow Cyber Tip Tuesday, this week James is talking about risks posed by home routers.

A recent study in Germany of 127 home routers from 7 different brands including D-Link, Linksys, TP-Link and Zyxel found that almost 60 percent of models hadn't had a security update in over a year and most were affected by hundreds of known vulnerabilities. On top of that, they found that vendors were shipping updates with no fixes for critical vulnerabilities that have been known about for many years, some are even observed as being actively exploited.

Most routers are based on a Linux operating system which is patched and maintained regularly but the home router manufacturers are choosing to use old and known vulnerable versions of the operating system without sending updates to customers devices.

The lesser of the evils seemed to be Asus and Netgear who both applied more security fixes more frequently but another recent study found that 79 of Netgear's routers have a critical security vulnerability that would allow a remote attacker to take complete control of the device and the network behind which has been present since 2007.

With the increasing popularity of home working it is essential that both individuals and firms take in to account this increase in attack surface and apply appropriate controls and mitigations to prevent their data and their clients data from being captured by malicious third parties.

When approached correctly, home working can provide significant benefits to productivity without compromising security. Speak to us today to find out how you can achieve this.

Black Arrow Admin 17/07/2020 Black Arrow Admin 17/07/2020

Cyber Weekly Flash Briefing 17 July 2020: Major US Twitter accounts hacked, Malware in Chinese Tax Software, NK steals $2bn through cyber heists, Counterfeit Cisco kit, Windows DNS vulns, Citrix vuln

Cyber Weekly Flash Briefing 17 July 2020: Major US Twitter accounts hacked, Malware in Chinese Tax Software, NK steals $2bn through cyber heists, Counterfeit Cisco kit, Windows DNS vulns, Citrix vulns, Iranian Spies Accidentally Leaked Videos of Themselves Hacking, Malicious Router Log-Ins Soar Tenfold in Botnet Battle

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.

Major US Twitter accounts hacked in Bitcoin scam

Billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates are among many prominent US figures targeted by hackers on Twitter in an apparent Bitcoin scam.

The official accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Kanye West also requested donations in the cryptocurrency.

"Everyone is asking me to give back," a tweet from Mr Gates' account said. "You send $1,000, I send you back $2,000."

The US Senate Commerce committee has demanded Twitter brief it about the incident next week.

Twitter said it was a "co-ordinated" attack targeting its employees "with access to internal systems and tools".

"We know they [the hackers] used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf," the company said in a series of tweets.

It added that "significant steps" had been taken to limit access to such internal systems and tools while the company's investigation was ongoing.

The firm has also blocked users from being able to tweet Bitcoin wallet addresses for the time being.

More Malware Found Hidden in Chinese Tax Software

A malware campaign hiding backdoors in mandatory Chinese corporate tax software is far more extensive than at first thought, according to researchers from Trustwave.

The vendor warned last month that it discovered several clients had unwittingly installed the GoldenSpy backdoor after agreeing to download the Intelligent Tax software product, produced by Aisino Corporation.

China’s banks require all companies to download software from either Aisino or Baiwang to comply with its Golden Tax VAT scheme, indicating that the malware campaign has either direct sponsorship from the government, or is happening with its blessing.

Soon after Trustwave reported on the powerful GoldenSpy backdoor, which it said could not be removed, an uninstaller appeared out of the blue which directly negates the threat.

Now the vendor has discovered a second piece of malware, dubbed GoldenHelper, which dates back to before GoldenSpy. It’s found in the Golden Tax Invoicing Software (Baiwang edition), which is digitally signed by a subsidiary of Aisino, Nou Nou Technologies.

The malware, while functionally different to GoldenSpy, has a similar delivery mechanism and it utilises three DLL files to: interface with the Golden Tax software; bypass Windows security and escalate privileges; and download and execute arbitrary code with system-level privileges.

It also uses multiple techniques to hide its presence and activity, including randomization of name whilst in transit and of file system location, timestomping, IP-based Domain Generation Algorithm (DGA), and UAC bypass and privilege escalation.

How North Korea’s army of hackers stole $2bn through cyber bank heists

Towards the end of last year, a series of seemingly innocuous LinkedIn messages were sent to employees of aerospace and military companies in the UK, Europe and the Middle East. Curious engineers who replied to the job offers were sent further messages urging them to download files to find out more about the opportunities.

The file contained a list of available jobs and the salaries for each role. While recipients read through the list of highly paid positions, their computers were silently taken over by hackers who implanted software that allowed them to peer through all of their files and emails.

The lucrative jobs weren’t real, and neither were the recruiters. Instead the messages were sent by Lazarus, a notorious North Korean hacking group, which in 2014 had managed to break into the servers of Sony Pictures and in 2017 brought parts of the NHS to a standstill during the WannaCry ransomware attack.

Once the hackers had gained access to their target’s computer, the fake LinkedIn profiles vanished.

One hacker then used his access to a victim’s email account to find an outstanding invoice. He sent an email to another business demanding payment, but asked for the money to be sent to a new bank account controlled by the hacking group.

This cyber attack is a typical example of North Korea’s unique approach to hacking. As well as attacks to make political statements, the country uses its legions of hackers to generate billions of dollars for the regime through a series of audacious cyber bank heists.

A United Nations report published last year estimated that North Korean hackers have stolen more than $2bn (£1.5bn) and said the money was being funneled into the regime’s missile development programmes.

Cut off from almost all of the world’s financial systems, North Korea has for years relied on a series of illegal activities to bolster its income. As well as thriving drug trafficking and counterfeiting schemes, the regime has also funded hundreds of its own digital bank heists.

UK ‘on alert for China cyber attack’ in retaliation for Hong Kong

The government must be alert to potential cyber attacks from countries such as China, ministers have said as tensions increase between London and Beijing.

Last month relations between the UK and China soured after Boris Johnson pledged to offer refuge to millions of Hong Kong citizens if the country implements its planned national security law. The government is also reported to have ‘changed its view’ on plans for Chinese tech company Huawei to play a role in developing the UK’s 5G network due to growing unease over security risks.

Now senior sources claim the worsening ties could see Britain be targeted by Chinese-backed hackers in a so-called ‘cyber 9/11’. This could damage computer networks, cause power and phone blackouts and bring hospitals, government and businesses to a standstill.

Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre says it is not ‘expecting’ a rise in attacks. However, one senior minister said the threat was ‘obviously part of conversations’, but added that ‘all risk must be looked at in the round’.

Ransomware warning: Now attacks are stealing data as well as encrypting it

There's now an increasing chance of getting your data stolen, in addition to your network being encrypted, when you are hit with a ransomware attack – which means falling victim to this kind of malware is now even more dangerous.

The prospect of being locked out of the network by cyber criminals is damaging enough, but by leaking stolen data, hackers are creating additional problems. Crooks use the stolen data as leverage, effectively trying to bully organisations who've become infected with ransomware into paying up – rather than trying to restore the network themselves – on the basis that if no ransom is paid, private information will be leaked.

Ransomware groups like those behind Maze and Sodinokibi have already shown they'll go ahead and publish private information if they're not paid and now the tactic is becoming increasingly common, with over one in ten attacks now coming with blackmail in addition to extortion.

Organisations in the legal, healthcare and financial sectors are among the most targeted by these campaigns, based on the assumption that they hold the most sensitive data.

Stop Ignoring Two-Factor Authentication Just Because You’re Lazy

A large number of people and businesses are missing out on a simple, effective online security solution by ignoring two-factor authentication (2FA), also called multi-factor authentication (MFA). The only requirement is to enter a code or press a button on a separate device from the one being used, yet for many, that effort seems too great. Laziness literally becomes the weakest point in their data protection systems.

If this sounds familiar, it’s time to change, as 2FA strengthens the security of all-important apps, including those where you share financial details such as banking and shopping apps – but to work, it has to be used.

Russian hackers ‘try to steal vaccine research’ in cyber attack on labs

Hackers linked to Russian intelligence agencies are targeting British scientists seeking to develop a coronavirus vaccine, spooks in the US, UK and Canada have warned.

In a joint statement Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the US National Security Agency and the Canadian Communication Security Establishment, said that the APT29 hacking group, also known as the ‘Dukes’ or ‘Cozy Bear’ has been hitting medical organisations and universities with cyber attacks which they believe have had the Kremlin’s blessing.

These attacks are part of a global campaign to steal research secrets of research. While the institutions targeted have not been revealed, the UK is home to two of the world’s leading coronavirus vaccine development programmes based at Oxford University and Imperial College London.

Counterfeit Cisco switches raise network security alarms

In a disconcerting event for IT security professionals, counterfeit versions of Cisco Catalyst 2960-X Series switches were discovered on an unnamed business network, and the fake gear was found to be designed to circumvent typical authentication procedures, according to a report.

researcher say their investigators found that while the counterfeit Cisco 2960-X units did not have any backdoor-like features, they did employ various measures to fool security controls. For example, one of the units exploited what F-Secure believes to be a previously undiscovered software vulnerability to undermine secure boot processes that provide protection against firmware tampering.

Vulnerability in Windows DNS servers

Microsoft has reported a critical vulnerability in Windows DNS server under CVE-2020-1350.

Bad news: The vulnerability scored 10 on the CVSS scale, which means it’s critical. Good news: Cyber criminals can exploit it only if the system is running in DNS server mode; in other words, the number of potentially vulnerable computers is relatively small. Moreover, the company has already released patches and a workaround.

The vulnerability lets a malefactor force DNS servers running Windows Server to execute malicious code remotely. In other words, the vulnerability belongs to the RCE class. To exploit CVE-2020-1350, one just has to send a specially generated request to the DNS server.

Installing the Microsoft patch modifies the method of handling requests by DNS servers. The patch is available for Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server version 1903, Windows Server version 1909, and Windows Server version 2004.

Threat actors are scanning the Internet for Citrix systems affected by the recently disclosed vulnerabilities.

This week Citrix has addressed 11 vulnerabilities affecting the ADC, Gateway, and SD-WAN WANOP networking products. The vulnerabilities could be exploited by attackers for local privilege escalation, to trigger a DoS condition, to bypass authorization, to get code injection, and to launch XSS attacks.

Some of the addressed flaws could be exploited only if the attackers have access to the targeted system and request user interaction, or other conditions must be verified. For this reason, Citrix believes the flaws are less likely to be exploited.

Now, hackers are scanning the web for systems affected by the recently disclosed Citrix vulnerabilities.

Iranian Spies Accidentally Leaked Videos of Themselves Hacking

A security team obtained five hours of Iranian state actor group APT35 hacking operations, showing exactly how the group steals data from email accounts—and who it’s targeting.

Normally security researchers need to painstakingly piece together the blow-by-blow of a state-sponsored hacking operation, they're usually following a thin trail of malicious code samples, network logs, and connections to faraway servers. That detective work gets significantly easier when hackers record what they’re doing and upload the video to an unprotected server on the open internet. Which is precisely what a group of Iranian hackers may have unwittingly done.

Amazon-Themed Phishing Campaigns Swim Past Security Checks

A pair of recent campaigns aim to lift credentials and other personal information under the guise of Amazon package-delivery notices.

Amazon in the era of COVID-19 has become a staple of many people’s lives, as they order everything from sourdough starter to exercise equipment. Cybercrooks have latched onto the delivery behemoth as a lure for phishing emails, knowing that plenty of legitimate delivery messages are also making it into people’s inboxes and offering cover.

Researchers recently spotted a pair of savvy campaigns leveraging Amazon: A credential-phishing attempt using a purported Amazon delivery order failure notice; and a voice phishing (vishing) attempt also using Amazon delivery order. Both are examples of the ever-more sophisticated phishing efforts being developed by fraudsters that are aimed at gaming traditional email security efforts, researchers said.

Malicious Router Log-Ins Soar Tenfold in Botnet Battle

Home users are being urged to ensure their routers are adequately protected after experts revealed a tenfold spike in brute force log-in attempts.

According to the latest research from Trend Micro “Worm War: The Botnet Battle for IoT Territory”, describes a threat landscape in which rival cyber-criminals are competing against each other in a race to compromise as many devices as possible, to conscript into botnets.

The vendor claimed that automated log-in attempts against routers rose from 23 million in September to nearly 249 million attempts in December 2019. As recently as March this year, it detected almost 194 million brute force logins.

The report also revealed an uptick in routers attempting to open telnet sessions with other devices. As telnet is unencrypted it’s a favorite way for hackers or their botnets to sniff user credentials and therefore infect more routers or IoT devices.

Nearly 16,000 devices attempted to open telnet sessions with other IoT devices in a single week in mid-March, according to the data.

The report warned that these mass compromises could cause serious disruption for home networks at a time when many global users are being forced to work and study from home.

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.

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BBC Radio Guernsey and BBC Radio Jersey interview with our CEO Tony Cleal following the Twitter hack and what individuals and businesses can do to defend themselves

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Free initial conversations for start-ups and entrepreneurs - Cyber Tip Tuesday video for 14 July 2020

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Cyber Weekly Flash Briefing 10 July 2020: firms concerned by cloud security: most already breached, 15 Billion passwords on sale, routers present huge risk, BMW cust breach, NK hackers target retail

Majority of firms concerned about public cloud security, most have suffered breach

Most businesses are worried about the current state of their public cloud security, with 70% admitting they have experienced a breach over the past year including 93% in India, where this figure is highest worldwide. Companies that used more than one public cloud platforms reported more security incidents than their peers that used only one platform.

In addition, system misconfigurations enabled 66% of cyber attacks either because attackers were able to exploit a misconfigured system or tap flaws in the firewall applications to steal credentials of cloud provider accounts. Data loss or leak was the biggest security concern, with 44% of organisations pointing to this as a top focus area, according to Sophos' State of Cloud Security 2020 study.

The survey polled 3,521 IT managers across 26 markets including 158 in Singapore, 227 in India, 162 in China, 148 in Australia, 126 in Japan, 191 in the UK, and 413 in the US. These respondents used services from at least one of the following public cloud providers: Amazon Web Services (AWS) and VMWare Cloud on AWS, Microsoft Azure, Alibaba Cloud, and Oracle Cloud. They also might have used Google Cloud and IBM Cloud.

15 Billion Stolen Passwords On Sale On The Dark Web, Research Reveals

There are more than 15 billion stolen account credentials circulating on criminal forums within the dark web, a new study has revealed.

Researchers discovered usernames, passwords and other login information for everything from online bank accounts, to music and video streaming services.

The majority of exposed credentials belong to consumers rather than businesses, the researchers found, resulting from hundreds of thousands of data breaches.

Unsurprisingly, the most expensive credentials for sale were those for bank and financial services. The average listing for these was £56 on the dark web – a section of the internet notorious for criminal activity that is only accessible using specialist software.

Researched stated that the sheer number of credentials available is staggering.

Check your router now - it could be a huge security risk

Many of the most popular home routers available to buy today feature a worrying number of security flaws and vulnerabilities, new research has found and your router might be the biggest security hole in your network.

A report from Germany discovered that the firmware present in a large number of leading routers was susceptible to hugely damaging security issues.

Many routers were found to never have received a single security firmware update in their lifetime, despite the risk that this could pose to users at home and at work, and were vulnerable to hundreds of well-known security issues.

The study looked at 127 home routers from seven brands (Netgear, ASUS, AVM, D-Link, Linksys, TP-Link and Zyxel), examining the product firmware for any known security vulnerabilities.

46 of the products it tested had not received any kind of security update within the past 12 months, with some vendors shipping firmware updates without fixing known vulnerabilities, and one set of products not seeing a firmware update for more than five years.

Data Breach Affects 384,319 BMW Customers in the U.K.

Researchers at an intelligence firm discovered that a hacker group “KelvinSecurity” compromised the personal information of 384,319 BMW customers in the U.K. and put them for sale on various darknet forums.

The hacker group claimed that they got the BMW database from a call centre that handles customers’ information of various automobile brands. The stolen database contains over 500,000 customer records dated between 2016 and 2018, affecting U.K. owners of other car manufacturers, including Honda, Mercedes, SEAT, and Hyundai in the U.K.

The exposed BMW owners’ information included sensitive information such as surnames, emails, vehicle registration numbers, residential address, dealer names, car registration information, names of dealerships. The researchers also discovered multiple databases exposed by KelvinSecurity, including data related to the U.S. government contractors and the Russian military weapons development. The hacker group also exposed over 28 databases on various darknet forums for free, affecting organizations in Iran, Australia, Mexico, U.S., Sweden, Indonesia, and France.

SurveyMonkey Phishers Go Hunting for Office 365 Credentials

Security researchers are warning of a new phishing campaign that uses malicious emails from legitimate SurveyMonkey domains in a bid to bypass security filters.

The phishing emails in question are sent from a real SurveyMonkey domain but crucially have a different reply-to domain.

Within the body of the email is a hidden redirect link appearing as the text ‘Navigate to access statement’ with a brief message ‘Please do not forward this email as its survey link is unique to you’” it explained. Clicking on the link redirects to a site hosted on a Microsoft form submission page. This form asks the user to enter their Office 365 email and password. If the user is not vigilant and provides their credentials, the user account would be compromised.

The attack is effective for several reasons: its use of a legitimate SurveyMonkey email sender, the concealing of the phishing site URL and the description of the email as unique to every user.

Microsoft takes legal action against COVID-19-related cybercrime

This week a Court in the US unsealed documents detailing Microsoft’s work to disrupt cybercriminals that were taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic in an attempt to defraud customers in 62 countries around the world. The civil case has resulted in a court order allowing Microsoft to seize control of key domains in the criminals’ infrastructure so that it can no longer be used to execute cyberattacks.

Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) first observed these criminals in December 2019, when they deployed a sophisticated, new phishing scheme designed to compromise Microsoft customer accounts. The criminals attempted to gain access to customer email, contact lists, sensitive documents and other valuable information. Based on patterns discovered at that time, Microsoft utilized technical means to block the criminals’ activity and disable the malicious application used in the attack. Recently, Microsoft observed renewed attempts by the same criminals, this time using COVID-19-related lures in the phishing emails to target victims.

North Korea's Lazarus hackers are planting skimmers on US and European retail websites, researchers warn

Researchers claim to have found evidence to suggest that North Korean state-sponsored actors are planting skimmers on the web stores of many American and European retailers in efforts to steal payment card details of unsuspecting shoppers.

The activities have been ongoing since at least May 2019, the researchers say, and can be attributed to hackers linked with the North Korean-backed Lazarus group.

The new research shows that in the last year, Lazarus has been able to infiltrate web stores of many retailers, such as international fashion chain Claire's. The group has also developed a global exfiltration network that uses authentic websites to transfer stolen assets to attackers. These websites are first hijacked and then repurposed to mask the malicious activities of the hackers.

British Army ‘to be slashed by 20,000 troops to make way for cyber warfare’

In a clear indication of the expectations of how future conflicts will be fought the British Army could be cut by more than a quarter under spending review plans dawn up by UK defence chiefs.

Up to 20,000 troops could be let go, while airfields are closed and helicopters are taken out of service. The Royal Marines commando brigade may also be disbanded and Royal Navy minesweepers could also be axed.

Security sources have claimed Johnson’s top adviser Dominic Cummings has been pushing to divert a sizeable amount of money from the army to fund cyber warfare, space and artificial intelligence projects.

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.

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What are the different risk controls, an introduction - Cyber Tip Tuesday video

What are the different risk controls - an introduction - Cyber Tip Tuesday video

Black Arrow Admin 04/07/2020 Black Arrow Admin 04/07/2020

Cyber Weekly Flash Briefing 03 July 2020: Ransomware attacks increasing, Microsoft emergency updates, ransomware gang auction data, 'return to work' traps, new Windows botnet, Cisco SMB router flaws

Ransomware attacks are increasing, do you have an emergency plan in place?

Cyber attacks and data breaches can have serious implications for organisations in terms of downtime, financial damage and reputation of the business. Ransomware attacks that seek to encrypt a victim’s data and demand a fee to restore it continue to be prevalent. Unfortunately, the damage caused can be severe and widespread, yet 39% of organizations either have no ransomware emergency plan in place or are not aware if one exists. This is despite more ransomware attacks being recorded in the past 12 months than ever before.

The largest ransomware attack to date – WannaCry – was estimated to have affected more than 200,000 computers across 150 separate countries. Ransomware today is rife and has been exacerbated by the current work-from-home trend.

21% of respondents to a recent survey said they had experienced a ransomware attack, and of those, 26% admitted they couldn’t access any working backup after the attack. Even when organisations could access a working backup, 22% of them could either only restore a partial amount of data or none at all.

In most countries, employees have been working under a completely different set of parameters for a couple of months; ones where new security risks are high and where cybercriminals are finding new ways to exploit any weaknesses they can find.

Further reading: The 11 Biggest Ransomware Attacks Of 2020 (So Far) https://www.crn.com/slide-shows/security/the-11-biggest-ransomware-attacks-of-2020-so-far-?itc=refresh

Microsoft releases emergency update to fix two serious Windows flaws

Microsoft on Tuesday released emergency security patches to plug a pair of serious vulnerabilities in its Windows Codecs library that impact several Windows 10 and Windows Server versions. Indexed as CVE-2020-1425 and CVE-2020-1457, the two remote-code execution (RCE) flaws are rated as ‘critical’ and ‘important’ in severity, respectively.

Both security loopholes have to do with how Microsoft Windows Codecs Library handles objects in memory. An attacker of the first flaw could obtain information to further compromise the user’s system, while successful exploitation of the second flaw could enable attackers to execute arbitrary code on the targeted machine.

Details are very sparse and there’s no word on specific attack vectors, but Microsoft said that exploitation of either vulnerability “requires that a program process a specially crafted image file”. This could, for example, involve luring the target into downloading and opening a malicious image file shared via email or a compromised website.

Researchers Find New Calendar-Based Phishing Campaign

Researchers have once again spotted crooks using calendar invitations to mount phishing attacks using iCalendar. iCalendar is a media type that lets users store and exchange calendaring and scheduling information, including events and tasks.

Whilst this is evidence of a new campaign, this is not a new technique. A similar attack cropped up last June, when researchers found attackers using Google's auto-add feature. In that attack, smartphone users would see the invitation as a pop-up invitation, displaying a link to a phishing URL that asked for their credit card data and personal information.

REvil Ransomware Gang Adds Auction Feature for Stolen Data

The REvil ransomware gang (also known as Sodinokibi) has added an auction feature to its underground website that allows anonymous bidding on information stolen in its targeted ransomware campaigns.

The auction capability appeared at the beginning of June and in announcing the feature, REvil included details on its first lot, the firm said, containing accounting information, files and databases stolen from a Canadian agricultural company.

A few days later on June 8, bidding went live, giving interested parties the choice to submit a bid (starting at $50,000) or buy the data outright, with a higher “blitz” price ($100,000).

Other victims whose data went up for sale in auction include a U.S. food distributor (accounts and documents with a starting price of $100,000 and a blitz price of double that); a U.S. law firm (50GB of data including confidential and personal information on clients, with a starting price of $30,000 and a blitz price of $50,000); and a U.S. intellectual property law firm (1.2TB of data including ‘all’ internal documentation, correspondence, patent agreements and client confidential information with a starting price of $1 million and a blitz price of $10 million).

As for why the latter’s data is so valuable, “data stolen from the intellectual property law firm reportedly includes information related to new technologies and unfiled patents that, given the high-profile client list, likely explains the high starting and blitz prices,” the firm noted in a report Monday, adding that the data would possibly be of interest to competitors or even a nation-state seeking to gain economic advantages.

Criminals set 'return to work' traps

Just because workers are returning to their offices, that doesn't mean criminals can't still abuse Covid-19 to spread malware and steal sensitive data.

According to a new report criminals are setting “return to work traps”, taking advantage of the training employees need to go through as they return to the office in its new form.

Many workers now need to go through various tutorials, webinars and training sessions, to ensure they are compliant with new workplace rules set up to prevent viral transmission. Sensing an opportunity, cybercriminals are disguising malware as webinar recordings and other educational material.

According to the report, these new practices are mostly reserved for businesses in North America and Europe, where lockdown measures are slowly being eased up and people are being allowed to return to work.

This new botnet has recruited an army of Windows devices

A new botnet is exploiting close to a dozen high and critical-severity vulnerabilities in Windows systems to turn them into cryptomining clients as well as to launch DDoS attacks.

The malware behind the botnet has been given the name Satan DDoS though security researchers have taken to referring to its as Lucifer in order to avoid confusion with the Satan ransomware.

A security firm began looking into the botnet after discovering it while following multiple incidents involving the exploitation of a critical vulnerability in a component of a web framework which can lead to remote code execution.

At first the Lucifer malware was believed to be used to mine the cryptocurrency Monero. However, it later become apparent that the malware also contains a DDoS component as well as a self-spreading mechanism that uses severe vulnerabilities and brute-forcing to its advantage.

Cisco SMB routers hit with another major security flaw

Security researchers have discovered a significant cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the web admin interface of two small business routers from Cisco.

The XSS vulnerability exists in the company's RVO42 and RV042G routers and it provides attackers with an easy way to take control of the devices' web configuration utility.

This could allow an attacker to perform a number of admin actions from viewing and modifying sensitive information to taking control of the router or even having the ability to move laterally and gain access to other systems on the network.

Xerox apparently victim of Maze attack

It appears that Xerox is the latest victim of Maze ransomware attackers, if screenshots posted by the ransomware’s operators are legitimate.

The hackers claim to have obtained more than 100GB of information and are threatening to publish it, according to a reports.

Maze has hit a number of high-profile targets and in recent months has joined forces with other ransomware groups.

FakeSpy Android Malware Spread Via ‘Postal-Service’ Apps

Android mobile device users are being targeted in a new SMS phishing campaign that’s spreading the FakeSpy infostealer. The malware, which is disguised as legitimate global postal-service apps, steals SMS messages, financial data and more from the victims’ devices.

The campaign was first discovered several weeks ago targeting South Korean and Japanese speakers, but it has now expanded that targeting to China, Taiwan, France, Switzerland, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. The attacker uses text messages as an initial infection vector, prompting the Android recipients to click on a malicious link, in a practice known as SMS phishing or “smishing.”

New Mac Ransomware Is Even More Sinister Than It Appears

There haven't been too many strains tailored specifically to infect Apple's Mac computers since the first full-fledged Mac ransomware surfaced four years ago but new findings published this week have highlighted a new example of Mac ransomware called ThiefQuest.

In addition to ransomware, ThiefQuest has a whole other set of spyware capabilities that allow it to exfiltrate files from an infected computer, search the system for passwords and cryptocurrency wallet data, and run a robust keylogger to grab passwords, credit card numbers, or other financial information as a user types it in. The spyware component also lurks persistently as a backdoor on infected devices, meaning it sticks around even after a computer reboots, and could be used as a launchpad for additional, or "second stage," attacks. Given that ransomware is so rare on Macs to begin with, this one-two punch is especially noteworthy.

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.

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What is the Dark Web? Cyber Tip Tuesday video explainer

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Cyber Weekly Flash Briefing 26 June 2020: Covid changes infosec landscape, ransomware actors lurk post attack, hacker earns millions, rogue bank staff steal $3.2m, massive DDoS against European bank

If you’re pressed for time watch the 60 second quick fire video summary of the top Cyber and InfoSec stories from the last week:

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.

Businesses believe the pandemic will change the security landscape forever

After Covid-19, nothing will ever be the same again, at least in terms of how businesses approach cyber security. This is according to a new report based on a poll of 6,700 infosec professionals around the world.

The report states that 81 percent expect long-term changes to the way their business operates, mostly because of remote working.

With this in mind, examining how remote employees approach cyber security will become paramount if an organisation is to maintain a strong security posture.

A third of respondents said they worry employees may feel more relaxed about cyber security than when they are working out of the office. Employees may also be less likely to follow protocol at home, particularly when it comes to identifying and flagging suspicious activity.

Further, almost a third (31 percent) fear employees might unintentionally leak sensitive data or fall prey to a phishing scam and a quarter are afraid staff might fall victim to malware attacks.

Of the largest risks associated with remote working, respondents singled out “using untrusted networks” as the most significant. Other people accessing employees' company devices, the use of personal messaging services for work, and the unintentional sharing of company data are also high on the list of risks.

Ransomware operators lurk on your network after their attack

When a company suffers a ransomware attack, many victims feel that the attackers quickly deploy the ransomware and leave so they won't get caught. Unfortunately, the reality is much different as threat actors are not so quick to give up a resource that they worked so hard to control.

Instead, ransomware attacks are conducted over time, ranging from a day to even a month, starting with a ransomware operator breaching a network.

This breach is through exposed remote desktop services, vulnerabilities in VPN software, or via remote access given by malware such as TrickBot, Dridex, and QakBot.

Once they gain access, they use tools such as Mimikatz, PowerShell Empire, PSExec, and others to gather login credentials and spread laterally throughout the network.

As they gain access to computers on the network, they use these credentials to steal unencrypted files from backup devices and servers before deploying the ransomware attack.

Once the ransomware is deployed, many victims believe that while their network is still compromised, they think the ransomware operators are now gone from the system.

This belief is far from the truth, as illustrated by a recent attack by the Maze Ransomware operators.

Read the full article here: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ransomware-operators-lurk-on-your-network-after-their-attack/

Prolific Hacker Made Millions Selling Network Access

A notorious Russian cyber-criminal made over $1.5m in just the past three years selling access to corporate networks around the world, according to a new report.

The study profiles the work of “Fxmsp” on underground forums where he published his first ad selling access to business networks in 2017.

Over the following years he would compromise banks, hotels, utilities, retailers, tech companies and organisations in many more verticals.

In just three years he claimed to have compromised over 130 targets in 44 countries, including four Fortune 500 firms. Some 9% of his victims were governments.

The report calculated the $1.5m figure purely from publicised sales, although 20% of those Fxmsp compromised were made through private sales, meaning the hacker’s trawl is likely to be even bigger.

Fxmsp even hired a sales manager in early 2018.

Rogue Postbank employees steal master encryption key; make off with $3.2 million

South Africa's Postbank has been forced to replace 12 million bank cards after a calamitous security breach that saw the bank's master encryption key printed off in plain, unencrypted language.

According to internal documents acquired by the Sunday Times of South Africa, the 36-digit code security key “allows anyone who has it to gain unfettered access to the bank’s systems, and allows them to read and rewrite account balances, and change information and data on any of the bank’s 12-million cards".

The master key was apparently printed out on plain paper in a data centre in Pretoria in 2018, enabling the fraudsters to make over 25,000 fraudulent transactions, mostly from cards used by people receiving social benefits from the government.

The crime, which is being pinned on a number of rogue bank employees, went unnoticed for months. More than $3.2 million was stolen in the raid.

The cost to the bank of replacing all the compromised cards is expected to reach $58 million.

Massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack launched against European bank

This week, security firm Akamai mitigated what it claims to be the “largest ever packet per second (pps) DDoS attack”, launched against an unnamed European bank.

The attack reportedly generated 809 million packets per second (Mpps) - a new high for pps-focused attacks, and well over double the size of the previous record attack identified by the Akamai platform.

What also makes this DDoS attack unique is the “massive increase” in the quantity of source IP addresses observed. During the attack, Akamai identified more than 600 times average number of source IP addresses per minute, suggesting the attack was highly distributed in nature.

Further, most of the traffic came from previously unknown IP addresses (96.2 percent), which could indicate the assault was driven by an emerging botnet. Given that most of the source IP addresses could be identified within large ISPs via AS lookups, Akamai believes most of the devices used were compromised end user machines.

The speed at which the attack reached its peak was also remarkable. The company claims it grew from normal traffic levels to 418 Gbps in seconds, and took roughly two minutes to hit 809 Mpps. The attack lasted for a total of 10 minutes and was fully mitigated.

'Unstoppable' Malware Uses Bitcoin To Retrieve Secret Messages - Report

Glupteba, a sneaky malware that can be controlled from afar includes a range of components to cover its tracks, and it updates itself using encrypted messages hidden in the Bitcoin blockchain.

The Glupteba bot is a malware campaign that creates backdoors with full access to contaminated devices, which are added to its growing botnet. The analysis describes it as a “highly self-defending malware” with “enhancing features that enable the malware to evade detection.”

The most interesting aspect of Glupteba is that it uses the Bitcoin blockchain as a communication channel for receiving updated configuration information, given that bitcoin transactions can also include a comment of up to 80 characters.

Glupteba uses this messaging space for encrypted messages. These messages contain secrets, such as command-and-control server names, thus cleverly hiding them in the public blockchain - in plane sight.

Woman who deliberately deleted firm’s Dropbox is sentenced

58-year-old Danielle Bulley may not look like your typical cyber criminal, but the act of revenge she committed against a company had just as much impact as a conventional hacker breaking into a business’s servers and causing havoc.

Bulley has been successfully prosecuted under the UK’s Computer Misuse Act after deleting thousands of important files from a company that went on to collapse.

She was a director of a business called Property Press that produced a weekly property newspaper focused on south east Devon. Things turned sour, and Bulley resigned her position at the firm in 2018 before the company went into liquidation. However, fellow director Alan Marriott started a new business venture – without Bulley’s involvement – using the assets of the old firm.

Things clearly didn’t sit well with Bulley after her departure from the business, and several months after her resignation she managed to gain unauthorised access to the new company’s Dropbox account.

More than 5,000 documents were permanently erased, and the company claimed that the damage to business was so great that it could no longer operate, with people losing their jobs and a loss of almost £100,000.

The Police warned other companies of the threat which can be posed by former employees:

Ex-employees can pose a serious risk to a business because they are familiar with the company’s IT infrastructure and procedures. This can make it easier for them to carry out cyber crimes against their former organisation.

If someone is leaving your company, especially if they are quitting your firm under something of a cloud, you would be wise to check that they don’t know your business’s passwords or have retained access to sensitive information.

Passwords should be changed, and additional authentication methods should be in place to prevent unauthorised access. Dropbox, for instance, provides a two-step verification feature which all users would be wise to enable.

EasyJet Lawsuit Over Data Breach Attracts 10,000 Passengers

EasyJet Plc faces a lawsuit over a data breach disclosed last month that potentially exposed private details of 9 million passengers.

More than 10,000 people have joined the suit since it was filed last month, according to the law firm handling the lawsuit. Victims are entitled to as much as £2,000 in compensation, meaning the case could be worth as much as £18 billion.

EasyJet said last month that the email addresses and travel data of about 9 million customers were taken by hackers in one of the biggest privacy breaches to hit the airline industry. The credit card details of roughly 2,200 people was also accessed.

“This is a monumental data breach and a terrible failure of responsibility that has a serious impact on EasyJet’s customers, who are coming forward in their thousands,” the law firm said in a statement. “This is personal information that we trust companies with, and customers should expect that every effort is made to protect their privacy.”

Twitter apologises for business data breach

Twitter has emailed its business clients to tell them that personal information may have been compromised.

Unbeknownst to users, billing information of some clients was stored in the browser's cache, it said.

In an email to its clients, Twitter said it was "possible" others could have accessed personal information.

The personal data includes email addresses, phone numbers and the last four digits of clients' credit card numbers.

The tech company says that there is no evidence that clients' billing information was compromised.

Huge Data Dump of Police Files Dubbed “Blue Leaks” Leaked Online

Nearly 270 gigabytes worth of sensitive files including FBI, “fusion center” and police department data from across the US dubbed “Blue Leaks” has been stolen and leaked online on June 19 by a collective called DDoSecrets.

Fusion centres are hubs for threat and intelligence sharing. The concept was created after September 11, in a bid by the Department of Homeland Security to improve cooperation between state, local, and territorial law enforcement

The National Fusion Centre Association (NFCA) says that the data was taken after a security breach at web development firm Netsential in Houston, Texas. It includes 490 documents pertaining to the UK. Computer Business Review was not immediately able to open these to assess the contents.

DDoSecrets stated that the Blue Leaks archive spans “ten years of data from over 200 police departments, fusion centres and other law enforcement training and support resources […] among the hundreds of thousands of documents are police and FBI reports, bulletins, guides and more”.

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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