There have been a lot of changes in ransomware over time. We want to help you protect your organization from this growing attack trend.
The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack is just part of a new onslaught of ransomware attacks that malicious actors are ramping up against high value victims. Why are we seeing this?
These malicious actors are after extortion money, and as such they are looking to target organizations that are more likely to pay if they can disrupt their business operations. In the past we saw this with targeting of government and education victims. The more pain that these actors can cause an organization, the more likely they will receive an extortion payment.
Ransomware attacks have gone through many iterations and we’re now seeing phase 4 of these types of attacks. To give you context, here are the four phases of ransomware:
1st phase: Just ransomware, encrypt the files and then drop the ransom note … wait for the payment in bitcoin.
2nd phase: Double extortion. Phase 1 + data exfil and threaten for data release. Maze was the first document to do this and the other threat actor groups followed suit
3rd phase: Triple extortion. Phase 1 + Phase 2 and threaten for DDoS. Avaddon was the first documented to do this
4th phase: Quadruple extortion. Phase 1 + (possibly Phase 2 or Phase 3) + directly emailing affected victim’s customer base. Cl0p was first documented doing this, as written by Brian Krebs
The majority of the time now we’re seeing a double extortion model, but the main shift we’re now seeing is the targeting of critical business systems. In this latest case, it does not appear that OT systems were affected but the IT systems associated with the network were likely targeted.
That may change though as many organizations have an OT network that is critical to their operations and could become a target. In this blog post we highlighted how manufacturers are being targeted with modern ransomware and the associated impact.
Taking down the systems that run an organization’s day-to-day business operations can cause financial and reputation damage.
But there could also be unintended consequences of going after victims that are too high profile, and this latest might be one example of this. Bringing down a major piece of critical infrastructure for a nation, even if the motive is only financial gain, might incur major actions against the actors behind this attack. So in the future, malicious actors may need to assess the potential ramifications of their target victim and decide if it makes good business sense to commence with an attack.
We will continue to see ransomware used in the future, and as such organizations need to take the time to put in place an incident response plan focused on the new model of ransomware attacks. Some things to think about as you go about this:
Understand that you will be a target. Every business can likely be on the radar of malicious actors, but those in critical infrastructure need to assess the likelihood of becoming a victim now.
Dedicated attackers will find a way into your network. Access as a Service (usually where another group performs the initial access and sells it to another group) is used regularly now, and whether via a phished employee, a vulnerable system open to the internet, or using a supply chain attack, the criminals will likely find a way in.
The malicious use of legitimate tools are a preferred tactic used across the entire attack lifecycle. Check out our recent blog on this topic.
Your key administrator and application account credentials will be targeted.
Ransomware actors will look to exfiltrate data to be used in the double extortion model.
The ransomware component will be the last option in their malicious activities as it is the most visible part of the attack lifecycle and as such you will then know you’ve been compromised.
For those organizations who have OT networks some key things to think about:
Understand your risk if your OT network is taken offline
Build a security model that protects the devices within the OT network, especially those that cannot support a security agent
Network segmentation is critical
If your OT network needs to be taken offline due to the IT network being compromised, you need to identify how to overcome this limitation
This latest attack is another call to action for all organizations to harden their networks against attacks and improve their visibility that malicious actors are in your network. Trend Micro has a multi-layered cybersecurity platform that can help improve your detection and response against the latest ransomware attacks and improve your visibility. Check out our Trend Micro Vision One platform or give us a call to discuss how we can help.
A new CVE was released recently that has made quite a few headlines – CVE-2020-1472. Zerologon, as it’s called, may allow an attacker to take advantage of the cryptographic algorithm used in the Netlogon authentication process and impersonate the identity of any computer when trying to authenticate against the domain controller.
To put that more simply, this vulnerability in the Netlogon Remote Protocol (MS-NRPC) could allow attackers to run their applications on a device on the network. An unauthenticated attacker would use MS-NRPC to connect to a Domain Controller (DC) to obtain administrative access.
According to Dustin Childs with Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), “What’s worse is that there is not a full fix available. This patch enables the DCs to protect devices, but a second patch currently slated for Q1 2021 enforces secure Remote Procedure Call (RPC) with Netlogon to fully address this bug. After applying this patch, you’ll still need to make changes to your DC. Microsoft published guidelines to help administrators choose the correct settings.”
But if there’s a patch, why is this a big deal? You might be thinking, “Well if there’s a patch, this really isn’t an issue.” But the idea of “just patch it” is not as easy as it sounds – check out this post (also from Dustin with the ZDI) for more insights on barriers to patching.
The average Mean Time to Patch (MTTP) is 60 to 150 days. This CVE was published in early August, so that would put the average time for implementing this patch between October 2020 and January 2021.
You have maybe heard the security industry joke that after Patch Tuesday comes Exploit Wednesday. That’s the comedic way to suggest that after a batch of patches for new CVEs are released the first Tuesday of every month from Microsoft and Adobe, attackers get to work reversing the patches to write exploits to take advantage of the bugs before patches have been applied.
Given the MTTP, that’s 2-5 months that your organization is left exposed to a known threat.
So what can I do to protect my organization? Fortunately, there are advanced protections available for organizations to stay protected, including virtual patching. This provides an extra layer of security to help protect against vulnerabilities before you apply the official vendor patch. As the name suggests, it’s very similar to a patch because it is specifically designed to protect your environment with intrusion protection system (IPS) capabilities in case someone attempted to exploit that vulnerability. In general, virtual patches can be a critical safety net to allow you to patch in the way that works for your organization.
With Trend Micro, our virtual patching technology helps you mitigate attacks focused on thousands of vulnerabilities, giving you the flexibility to patch regularly without breaking your operational processes for every emergency patch. Other features, such as log inspection, also help you get valuable insight into post-patch exploitation attempts on your network even after you have fully patched. To learn more about Trend Micro protection for CVE-2020-1472, read our knowledge base article here.
On September 11, 2020, detailed technical information was made public regarding a critical Microsoft Windows vulnerability (CVSS 10) that was included in Microsoft’s August 2020 Patch Tuesday set of updates and appears to affect all currently supported Windows Server (2008 R2 and above).
When originally disclosed in August, the vulnerability was given the official designation of CVE-2020-1472, but not much detail on the vulnerability itself was made public.
However, we know that this vulnerability, now dubbed “Zerologon,” may allow an attacker to take advantage of the cryptographic algorithm used in the Netlogon authentication process and impersonate the identity of any computer when trying to authenticate against the domain controller. From there, a variety of other attacks, including but not limited to disabling security features, changing passwords, and essentially taking over the domain are possible.
The entire attack as demonstrated, is very fast, and can be executed in approximately 3 seconds, so it could be very dangerous. In addition, Trend Micro is now aware of weaponized proof-of-concept code that has been made publicly available, meaning that real exploits could be close behind. DETAILS Mitigation and Protection
First and foremost, the first line of protection against this vulnerability is to ensure that all affected systems are patched with Microsoft’s latest security update. This continues to be the primary recommendation for protection against any exploit that that may arise from this vulnerability.
According to the research, there is one serious limitation to exploits of this vulnerability – specifically it cannot be exploited remotely. An attacker will first need to gain access to the network domain via other means (legitimately or not). So one major mitigation point would be to ensure that network access (both physical and remote) are carefully guarded. However, if an attacker has obtained access to a network via another vulnerability or legitimately, this could become a powerful exploit.
Trend Micro Protection
To assist customers, Trend Micro has created and released some additional layers of protection in the form of Deep Security and Cloud One – Workload Security IPS rules and TippingPoint filters that may help organizations strengthen their overall security posture, especially in situations where comprehensive patching may take time or is not feasible.
IPS Rules
Deep Security and Cloud One – Workload Security, Vulnerability Protection and Apex One Vulnerability Protection (iVP) Rule 1010519 – Netlogon Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability (CVE-2020-1472) Rule 1010521 – Netlogon Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability Over SMB (CVE-2020-1472) Rule 1010539 – Identified NTLM Brute Force Attempt (ZeroLogon) (CVE-2020-1472) Please note that the rules are already set to Prevent.
Worry-Free Business Security Services Microsoft Windows Netlogon Elevation Of Privilege Vulnerability Over SMB (CVE-2020-1472) Microsoft Windows Netlogon Elevation Of Privilege Vulnerability (CVE-2020-1472) TippingPoint Filter 38166: MS-NRPC: Microsoft Windows Netlogon Zerologon Authentication Bypass Attempt Filter 38235: MS-NRPC: Microsoft Windows NetrServerAuthenticate Request Please note that the posture on this filter has been changed to Enable by Default.
Deep Security Log Inspection 1010541 – Netlogon Elevation Of Privilege Vulnerability (Zerologon) (CVE-2020-1472) This Log Inspection (LI) rule for Deep Security gives administrators visibility into potential exploit activity. Due to the complexity of this vulnerability, the Log Inspection rule will only log activities against systems that have already applied the Microsoft patch. Administrators who have patched critical servers with Deep Security may find this information useful internally to help accelerate patching of endpoints and non-critical systems if there is evidence of activity in their environment.
Deep Discovery Inspector Rule 4453: CVE-2020-1472_DCE_RPC_ZEROLOGON_EXPLOIT_REQUEST Rule 4455: CVE-2020-1472_SMB2_ZEROLOGON_EXPLOIT_REQUEST
Trend Micro is continuing to aggressively look into other forms of detection and protection to assist our customers, but we do want to continue to reiterate that the primary recommendation is to apply the official Microsoft patches as soon as possible. We will continue to update this article and our customers if/when additional layers of protection are found.
References Trend Micro Blog: Zerologon” and the Value of Virtual Patching – https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/20/i/zerologon-and-value-of-virtual-patching.html Trend Micro Video (Youtube) – Cloud One – Workload Security about Zerologon Microsoft Advisory – https://portal.msrc.microsoft.com/en-US/security-guidance/advisory/CVE-2020-1472
We’ve all been spending more of our time online since the crisis hit. Whether it’s ordering food for delivery, livestreaming concerts, holding virtual parties, or engaging in a little retail therapy, the digital interactions of many Americans are on the rise. This means we’re also sharing more of our personal and financial information online, with each other and the organizations we interact with. Unfortunately, as ever, there are bad guys around every digital corner looking for a piece of the action.
The bottom line is that personally identifiable information (PII) is the currency of internet crime. And cyber-criminals will do whatever they can to get their hands on it. When they commit identity theft with this data, it can be a messy business, potentially taking months for banks and businesses to investigate before you get your money and credit rating back. At a time of extreme financial hardship, this is the last thing anyone needs.
It therefore pays to be careful about how you use your data and how you protect it. Even more: it’s time to get proactive and monitor it—to try and spot early on if it has been stolen. Here’s what you need to know to protect your identity data.
How identity theft works
First, some data on the scope of the problem. In the second quarter of 2020 alone 349,641 identity theft reports were filed with the FTC. To put that in perspective, it’s over half of the number for the whole of 2019 (650,572), when consumers reported losing more than $1.9 billion to fraud. What’s driving this huge industry? A cybercrime economy estimated to be worth as much as $1.5 trillion annually.
Specialized online marketplaces and private forums provide a user-friendly way for cyber-criminals and fraudsters to easily buy and sell stolen identity data. Many are on the so-called dark web, which is hidden from search engines and requires a specialized anonymizing browser like Tor to access. However, plenty of this criminal activity also happens in plain sight, on social media sites and messaging platforms. This underground industry is an unstoppable force: as avenues are closed down by law enforcement or criminal in-fighting, other ones appear.
At-risk personal data could be anything from email and account log-ins to medical info, SSNs, card and bank details, insurance details and much more. It all has a value on the cybercrime underground and the price fraudsters are prepared to pay will depend on supply and demand, just like in the ‘real’ world.
There are various ways for attackers to get your data. The main ones are:
Phishing: usually aimed at stealing your log-ins or tricking you into downloading keylogging or other info-stealing malware. Phishing mainly happens via email but could also occur via web, text, or phone. Around $667m was lost in imposter scams last year, according to the FTC.Malicious mobile apps disguised as legitimate software.Eavesdropping on social media: If you overshare even innocuous personal data (pet names, birth dates, etc.,) it could be used by fraudsters to access your accounts.Public Wi-Fi eavesdropping: If you’re using it, the bad guys may be too.Dumpster diving and shoulder surfing: Sometimes the old ways are still popular.Stealing devices or finding lost/misplaced devices in public places.Attacking the organizations you interact with: Unfortunately this is out of your control somewhat, but it’s no less serious. There were 1,473 reported corporate breaches in 2019, up 17% year-on-year.Harvesting card details covertly from the sites you shop with. Incidents involving this kind of “web skimming” increased 26% in March as more users flocked to e-commerce sites during lockdown.
The COVID-19 challenge
As if this weren’t enough, consumers are especially exposed to risk during the current pandemic. Hackers are using the COVID-19 threat as a lure to infect your PC or steal identity data via the phishing tactics described above. They often impersonate trustworthy institutions/officials and emails may claim to include new information on outbreaks, or vaccines. Clicking through or divulging your personal info will land you in trouble. Other fraud attempts will try to sell counterfeit or non-existent medical or other products to help combat infection, harvesting your card details in the process. In March, Interpol seized 34,000 counterfeit COVID goods like surgical masks and $14m worth of potentially dangerous pharmaceuticals.
Phone-based attacks are also on the rise, especially those impersonating government officials. The aim here is to steal your identity data and apply for government emergency stimulus funds in your name. Of the 349,641 identity theft reports filed with the FTC in Q2 2020, 77,684 were specific to government documents or benefits fraud.
What do cybercriminals do with my identity data?
Once your PII is stolen, it’s typically sold on the dark web to those who use it for malicious purposes. It could be used to:
Crack open other accounts that share the same log-ins (via credential stuffing). There were 30 billion such attempts in 2018.Log-in to your online bank accounts to drain it of funds.Open bank accounts/credit lines in your name (this can affect your credit rating).Order phones in your name or port your SIM to a new device (this impacts 7,000 Verizon customers per month).Purchase expensive items in your name, such as a new watch or television, for criminal resale. This is often done by hijacking your online accounts with e-tailers. E-commerce fraud is said to be worth around $12 billion per year.File fraudulent tax returns to collect refunds on your behalf.Claim medical care using your insurance details.Potentially crack work accounts to attack your employer.
How do I protect my identity online?
The good news among all this bad is that if you remain skeptical about what you see online, are cautious about what you share, and follow some other simple rules, you’ll stand a greater chance of keeping your PII under lock and key. Best practices include:
Using strong, long and unique passwords for all accounts, managed with a password manager.Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) if possible on all accounts.Don’t overshare on social media.Freeze credit immediately if you suspect data has been misused.Remember that if something looks too good to be true online it usually is.Don’t use public Wi-Fi when out-and-about, especially not for sensitive log-ins, without a VPN.Change your password immediately if a provider tells you your data may have been breached.Only visit/enter payment details into HTTPS sites.Don’t click on links or open attachments in unsolicited emails.Only download apps from official app stores.Invest in AV from a reputable vendor for all your desktop and mobile devices.Ensure all operating systems and applications are on the latest version (i.e., patch frequently).Keep an eye on your bank account/credit card for any unusual spending activity.Consider investing in a service to monitor the dark web for your personal data.
How Trend Micro can help
Trend Micro offers solutions that can help to protect your digital identity.
Trend Micro ID Security is the best way to get proactive about data protection. It works 24/7 to monitor dark web sites for your PII and will sound the alarm immediately if it finds any sign your accounts or personal data have been stolen. It features
Dark Web Personal Data Manager to scour underground sites and alert if it finds personal info like bank account numbers, driver’s license numbers, SSNs and passport information.Credit Card Checker will do the same as the above but for your credit card information.Email Checker will alert you if any email accounts have been compromised and end up for sale on the dark web, allowing you to immediately change the password.Password Checker will tell you if any passwords you’re using have appeared for sale on the dark web, enabling you to improve password security.
Trend Micro Password Manager enables you to manage all your website and app log-ins from one secure location. Because Password Manager remembers and recalls your credentials on-demand, you can create long, strong and unique passwords for each account. As you’re not sharing easy-to-remember passwords across multiple accounts, you’ll be protected from popular credential stuffing and similar attacks.
Finally, Trend Micro WiFi Protection will protect you if you’re out and about connecting to WiFi hotspots. It automatically detects when a WiFi connection isn’t secure and enables a VPN—making your connection safer and helping keep your identity data private.
In short, it’s time to take an active part in protecting your personal identity data—as if your digital life depended on it. In large part, it does.
It started with one weird tweet. Then another. Quickly, some of the most prominent accounts on Twitter were all sending out the same message;
I am giving back to the community.
All Bitcoin sent to the address below will be sent back double! If you send $1,000, I will send back $2,000. Only doing this for 30 minutes.
[- BITCOIN WALLET ADDRESS -]
Are Apple, Elon Musk, Barrack Obama, Uber, Joe Biden, and a host of others participating in a very transparent bitcoin scheme?
No. Of course, not. The question was whether or not individual accounts were compromised or if something deeper was going on.
User Account Protection
These high profile accounts are prime targets for cybercriminals. They have a broad reach, and even a brief compromise of one of these accounts would significantly increase a hacker’s reputation in the underground.
That is why these accounts leverage the protections made available by Twitter in order to keep their accounts safe.
While it’s believed that one or two of these accounts failed to take these measures, it’s highly unlikely that dozens and dozens of them did. So what happened?
Rumours Swirl
As with any public attack, the Twitter-verse (ironically) was abuzz with speculation. That speculation ramped up when Twitter took the reasonable step of preventing any verified account from tweeting for about three hours.
This step helped prevent any additional scam tweets from being published and further raised the profile of this attack.
While some might shy away from raising the profile of an attack, this was a reasonable trade-off to prevent further damage to affected accounts and to help prevent the attack from taking more ground.
This move also provided a hint as to what was going on. If individual accounts were being attacked, it’s unlikely that this type of movement would’ve done much to prevent the attacker from gaining access. However, if the attacker was accessing a backend system, this mitigation would be effective.
Had Twitter itself been hacked?
Occam’s Razor
When imagining attack scenarios, a direct breach of the main service is a scenario that is often examined in-depth, which is also why it is one of the most planned for scenarios.
Twitter — like any company — has challenges with its systems, but they center primarily around content moderation…their backend security is top-notch.
An example of this an incident in 2018. Twitter engineers made a mistake that meant anyone’s password could have been exposed in their internal logs. Just in case, Twitter urged everyone to reset their password.
While possible, it’s unlikely that Twitter’s backend systems were directly breached. There is a much simpler potential explanation: insider access.
Internal Screenshot
Quickly after the attack, some in the security community noticed a screenshot of an internal support tool from Twitter surfacing in underground discussion forums. This rare inside view showed what appeared to be what a Twitter support team member would see.
“We used a rep that literally done all the work for us.”
Anonymous Source
What remains unclear is whether this is a case of social engineering (tricking a privileged insider into taking action) or a malicious insider (someone internally motivated to attack the system).
The difference is important for other defenders out there.
The investigation is ongoing, and Twitter continues to provide updates via @TwitterSupport;
Social Engineering
Donnie Sullivan from CNN has a fantastic interview with the legendary Rachel Tobac showing how simple social engineering can be and the dangerous impact it can have;
If this attack was conducted through social engineering, the security team at Twitter would need to implement additional processes and controls to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
Such a situation is what your team also needs to look at. While password resets, account closures, data transfers, and other critical processes are at particular risk of social engineering, financial transactions are atop the cybercriminal’s target list.
Adding additional side-channel confirmations, additional steps for verifications, firm and clear approvals and other process steps can help organizations mitigate these types of social engineering attacks.
Malicious Insider
If the attack turns out to be from a malicious insider. Defenders need to take a different approach.
Malicious insiders are both a security problem and human resource one.
From the security perspective, two key principles help mitigate the potential of these attacks;
Making sure that individuals only have the technical access needed to complete their assigned tasks, and only that access is key to limiting this potential attack. Combined with the smart separation of duties (one person to request a change, another to approval it), this significantly reduces the possibility of these attacks causing harm.
The other—and not often spoken of—side of these attacks is the reason behind the malicious intent. Some people are just malicious, and when presented with an opportunity, they will take it.
Other times, it’s an employee that feels neglected, passed over, or is disgruntled in some other way. A strong internal community, regular communication, and a strong HR program can help address these issues before they escalate to the point where aiding a cybercriminal becomes an enticing choice.
Support Risks
Underlying this whole situation is a more challenging issue; the level of access that support has to any given system.
It’s easy to think of a Twitter account as “yours.” It’s not. It’s part of a system run by a company that needs to monitor the health of the system, respond to support issues, and aid law enforcement when legally required.
All of these requirements necessitate a level of access that most don’t think about.
How often are you sharing sensitive information via direct message? Those messages are most likely accessible by support.
What’s to prevent them from accessing any given account or message at any time? We don’t know.
Hopefully, Twitter—and others—have clear guardrails (technical and policy-based) in place to prevent abuse of support access, and they regularly audit them.
It’s a hard balance to strike. User trust is at stake but also the viability of running a service.
Clear, transparent policies and controls are the keys to success here.
Abuse can be internal or external. Support teams typically have privileged access but are also among the lowest paid in the organization. Support—outside of the SRE community—is usually seen as entry-level.
These teams have highly sensitive access, and when things go south, can do a lot of harm. Again, the principles of least privilege, separation of duties, and a strong set of policies can help.
What’s Next?
In the coming days, more details of the attack will surface. In the meantime, the community is still struggling to reconcile the level of access gained and how it was used.
Getting access to some of the world’s most prominent accounts and then conducting a bitcoin scam? Based on the bitcoin transactions, it appears the cybercriminals made off with a little over USD 100,000. Not insignificant, but surely there were other opportunities?
Occam’s razor can help here again. Bitcoin scams and coin miners are the most direct method fo cybercriminals to capitalized on their efforts. Given the high profile nature of the attack, the time before the discovery was always going to be sure. This may have been the “safest” bet for the criminal(s) to profit from this hack.
In the end, it’s a lesson for users of social networks and other services; even if you take all of the reasonable security precautions, you are relying on the service itself to help protect you. That might not always hold true.
It’s a harsh reminder that the very tooling you put in place to run your service may be its biggest risk for service providers and defenders…a risk that’s often overlooked and underestimated.
As the world adapts work from home initiatives, we’ve seen many organizations accelerate their plans to move from on-premises endpoint security and Detection and Response (EDR/XDR) solutions to Software as a Service versions. And several customers who switched to the SaaS version last year, recently wrote us to tell how glad to have done so as they transitioned to working remote. Here are 5 reasons to consider moving to a cloud managed solution:
No internal infrastructure management = less risk
If you haven’t found the time to update your endpoint security software and are one or two versions behind, you are putting your organization at risk of attack. Older versions do not have the same level of protection against ransomware and file-less attacks. Just as the threats are always evolving, the same is true for the technology built to protect against them.
With Apex One as a Service, you always have the latest version. There are no software patches to apply or Apex One servers to manage – we take care of it for you. If you are working remote, this is one less task to worry about and less servers in your environment which might need your attention.
High availability, reliability
With redundant processes and continuous service monitoring, Apex One as a Services delivers the uptime you need with 99.9% availability. The operations team also proactively monitors for potential issues on your endpoints and with your prior approval, can fix minor issues with an endpoint agent before they need your attention.
Faster Detection and Response (EDR/XDR)
By transferring endpoint telemetry to a cloud data lake, detection and response activities like investigations and sweeping can be processed much faster. For example, creating a root cause analysis diagram in cloud takes a fraction of the time since the data is readily available and can be quickly processed with the compute power of the cloud.
Increased MITRE mapping
The unmatched power of cloud computing also enables analytics across a high volume of events and telemetry to identify a suspicious series of activities. This allows for innovative detection methods but also additional mapping of techniques and tactics to the MITRE framework. Building the equivalent compute power in an on- premises architecture would be cost prohibitive.
XDR – Combined Endpoint + Email Detection and Response
According to Verizon, 94% of malware incidents start with email. When an endpoint incident occurs, chances are it came from an email message and you want to know what other users have messages with the same email or email attachment in their inbox? You can ask your email admin to run these searches for you which takes time and coordination. As Forrester recognized in the recently published report: The Forrester Wave™ Enterprise Detection and Response, Q1 2020:
“Trend Micro delivers XDR functionality that can be impactful today. Phishing may be the single most effective way for an adversary to deliver targeted payloads deep into an infrastructure. Trend Micro recognized this and made its first entrance into XDR by integrating Microsoft office 365 and Google G suite management capabilities into its EDR workflows.”
This XDR capability is available today by combining alerts, logs and activity data of Apex One as a Service and Trend Micro Cloud App Security. Endpoint data is linked with Office 365 or G Suite email information from Cloud App Security to quickly assess the email impact without having to use another tool or coordinate with other groups.
Moving endpoint protection and detection and response to the cloud, has enormous savings in customer time while increasing their protection and capabilities. If you are licensed with our Smart Protection Suites, you already have access to Apex One as a Service and our support team is ready to help you with your migration. If you are an older suite, talk to your Trend Micro sales rep about moving to a license which includes SaaS.
Welcome to our weekly roundup, where we share what you need to know about the cybersecurity news and events that happened over the past few days. This week, learn about 5 reasons your organization should consider moving to a cloud managed solution. Also, read about a massive online fraud operation that has been mimicking smart TVs to fool online advertisers and gain unearned profits from online ads.
As a global company with headquarters in Japan, Trend Micro has been exposed to COVID-19 from the very early days when it first erupted in Asia. During these difficult times, Trend Micro has also witnessed the amazing power of positivity and kindness around the world. In this blog, read more about the importance of compassion during these unprecedented times from Trend Micro’s CEO, Eva Chen.
Developers deploying containers to restricted platforms or “serverless” containers to the likes of AWS Fargate, for example, should think about security differently – by looking upward, looking left and also looking all-around your cloud domain for opportunities to properly security your cloud native applications.
Microsoft released its April 2020 Patch Tuesday security updates, its first big patch update released since the work-from-home era began, with a whopping 113 vulnerabilities. Microsoft has seen a 44% increase in the number of CVEs patched between January to April 2020 compared to the same time period in 2019, according to Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative – a likely result of an increasing number of researchers looking for bugs and an expanding portfolio of supported products.
As the world adopts work from home initiatives, we’ve seen many organizations accelerate their plans to move from on-premises endpoint security and detection and response (EDR/XDR) solutions to SaaS versions. In this blog, learn about 5 reasons you should consider moving to a cloud managed solution.
Containers are not, by any means, new. They have been consistently and increasingly adopted in the past few years, with security being a popular related topic. It is well-established that giving administrative powers to server users is not a good security practice. In the world of containers, we have the same paradigm. In this article, Trend Micro’s Fernando Cardoso explains why running a privileged container is a bad idea.
Over the past three decades, Trend Micro has observed the industry trends that have the biggest impact on its customers. One of the big things we’ve noticed is that threats move largely in tandem with changes to IT infrastructure. As digital transformation continues to remain a priority, it also comes with an expanded corporate attack surface, driving security leaders to demand enhanced visibility, detection and response across the entire enterprise — not just the endpoint.
Using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the norm in the cloud. From CloudFormation, CDK, Terraform, Serverless Framework and ARM, the options are nearly endless. IaC allows architects and DevOps engineers to version the application infrastructure as much as the developers are already versioning the code. So, any bad change, no matter if on the application code or infrastructure, can be easily inspected or, even better, rolled back.
The mass relocation of financial services employees from the office to their couch, dining table or spare room to stop the spread of the deadly novel coronavirus is a significant data security concern, according to several industry experts. In this article, learn how managers can support security efforts from Trend Micro’s Bill Malik.
For as long as cloud providers have been in business, discussing the Shared Responsibility Model has been priority when it comes to customer operation teams. It defines the different aspects of control, and with that control, comes the need to secure, manage, and maintain. In this blog, Trend Micro highlights some of the requirements and discusses the organization’s layout for responsibility.
Trend Micro discovered a potential cyberespionage campaign, dubbed Project Spy, that infects Android and iOS devices with spyware. Project Spy uses the COVID-19 pandemic as a lure, posing as an app called ‘Coronavirus Updates’. Trend Micro also found similarities in two older samples disguised as a Google service and, subsequently, as a music app. Trend Micro noted a small number of downloads of the app in Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Austria, Romania, Grenada and Russia.
Trend Micro has observed suspicious activities caused by adware, with common behaviors that include access to random domains with alternating consonant and vowel names, scheduled tasks, and in-memory execution via WScript that has proven to be an effective method to hide its operations. In this blog, Trend Micro walks through its analysis of three adware events linked to and named as Dealply, IsErIk and ManageX.
Cybersecurity firm and bot detection platform White Ops has discovered a massive online fraud operation that for the past few months has been mimicking smart TVs to fool online advertisers and gain unearned profits from online ads. White Ops has named this operation ICEBUCKET and has described it as “the largest case of SSAI spoofing” known to date.
Fake installers of popular messaging apps are being propagated via fraudulent download sites, as disclosed in a series of tweets by a security researcher from CronUp. Trend Micro has also encountered samples of the files. The sites and the apps are in Russian and are aiming to bait Russian users.
A campaign dubbed “Twin Flower” has been detected by Jinshan security researchers in a report published in Chinese and analyzed by Trend Micro. The files are believed to be downloaded unknowingly when visiting malicious sites or dropped into the system by another malware. The potentially unwanted application (PUA) PUA.Win32.BoxMini.A files are either a component or the main executable itself of a music downloader that automatically downloads music files without user consent.
Businesses are now turning to hybrid cloud environments to make the most of the cloud’s dependability and dynamicity. The hybrid cloud gives organizations the speed and scalability of the public cloud, as well as the control and reliability of the private cloud. A 2019 Nutanix survey shows that 85% of its respondents regard the hybrid cloud as the ideal IT operating model.
What do businesses have to be wary of when it comes to their video conferencing software? Vulnerabilities, for one. Threat actors are not shy about using everything they have in their toolbox and are always on the lookout for any flaw or vulnerability they can exploit to pull off malicious attacks. In this blog, learn about securing your video conferencing apps and best practices for strengthening the security of work-from-home setups.
In the last blog of this four-part series, Trend Micro delves deeper into regular monitoring and maintenance of home network security, to ensure you’re getting the best protection that Trend Micro Home Network Security can provide your connected home.
Surprised by the ICEBUCKET operation that has described as “the largest case of SSAI spoofing” known to date? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.
As more businesses leverage remote, mobile, and temporary workforces, the elements of business continuity planning are evolving and requiring that IT professionals look deep into the nuts and bolts of connectivity.
CISOs and their team members are facing new challenges each and every day, many of which have been driven by digital transformation, as well as the adoption of other productivity-enhancing technologies.
A case in point is the rapidly evolving need to support remote and mobile users as businesses change how they interact with staffers.
For example, the recent COVID-19 crisis has forced the majority of businesses worldwide to support employees that work from home or other remote locations.
Many businesses are encountering numerous problems with connection reliability, as well as the challenges presented by rapidly scaling connectivity to meet a growing number of remote workers.
Add to that security and privacy issues, and it becomes evident that CISOs may very well face what may become insurmountable challenges to keep things working and secure.
It is the potential for disruption that is bringing Business Continuity Planning (BCP) to the forefront of many IT conversations. What's more, many IT professionals are quickly coming to the conclusion that persistent WAN and Internet connectivity prove to be the foundation of an effective business continuity plan.
VPNs are Failing to Deliver
Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are often the first choice for creating secure connections into a corporate network from the outside world.
However, VPNs have initially been designed to allow a remote endpoint to attach to an internal local area network and grant that system access to data and applications stored on the network.
For occasional connectivity, with a focus on ease of use.
Yet, VPNs are quickly beginning to show their limitations when placed under the demand for supporting a rapidly deployed remote workforce.
One of the most significant issues around VPNs comes in the context of scalability; in other words, VPNs can be complicated to scale quickly.
For the most part, VPNs are licensed by connection and are supported by an appliance on the network side to encrypt and decrypt traffic. The more VPN users that are added, the more licenses and processing power that is needed, which ultimately adds unforeseen costs, as well as introducing additional latency into the network.
Eventually, VPNs can break under strain, and that creates an issue around business continuity. Simply put, if VPNs become overwhelmed by increased traffic, connectivity may fail, and the ability for employees to access the network may be impacted, the concept of business continuity suffers as a result.
VPNs are also used for site to site connections, where the bandwidth may be shared not only from a branch office to a headquarters office but also with remote users. A situation such as that can completely derail an organization's ability to do business if those VPNs fail.
Perhaps an even bigger concern with VPNs comes in the form of cybersecurity. VPNs that are used to give remote users access to a network are only as reliable as the credentials that are given to those remote users.
In some cases, users may share password and login information with others, or carelessly expose their systems to intrusion or theft. Ultimately, VPNs may pave the way for attacks on the corporate network by allowing bad actors to access systems.
ZTNA Moves Beyond VPNs
With VPN technology becoming suspect in the rapid expansion of remote workforces, CISOs and IT pros are looking for alternatives to ensure reliable and secure connections into the network from remote workers.
The desire to bridge security and reliability is driven by continuity, as well as operational issues. CISOs are looking to keep costs down, provide a level of security, without compromising performance, and still meet projected growth.
Many enterprises thought that the answer to the VPN dilemma could be found in SDP (Software Defined Perimeters) or ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Access), two acronyms that have become interchangeable in the arena of cybersecurity.
ZTNA has been built for the cloud as a solution that shifted security from the network to the applications. In other words, ZTNA is application-centric, meaning that users are granted access to applications and not the complete network.
Of course, ZTNA does much more than that. ZTNA can "hide" applications, while still granting access to authorized users. Unlike VPNs, ZTNA technology does not broadcast any information outside of the network for authentication, whereas VPN concentrators sit at the edge of the network for all to see, making them a target for malicious attackers.
What's more, ZTNA uses inside-out connections, which means IP addresses are never exposed to the internet. Instead of granting access to the network like a VPN, ZTNA technology uses a micro-segmentation approach, where a secure segment is created between the end-user and the named application.
ZTNA creates an access environment that provides private access to an application for an individual user, and only grants the lowest level of privileges to that user.
ZTNA technology decouples access to applications from access to the network, creating a new paradigm of connectivity. ZTNA based solutions also capture much more information than a VPN, which helps with analytics and security planning.
While a VPN may only track a device's IP address, port data, and protocols, ZTNA solutions capture data around the user identity, named application, latency, locations, and much more. It creates an environment that allows administrators to be more proactive and more easily consume and analyze the information.
While ZTNA may be a monumental step forward from legacy VPN systems, ZTNA solutions are not without their own concerns. ZTNA solutions do not address performance and scalability issues and may lack the core components of continuity, such as failover and automated rerouting of traffic.
In other words, ZTNA may require those additional third-party solutions to be added to the mix to support BCP.
Resolving ZTNA and VPN issues with SASE
A newer technology, which goes by the moniker of SASE (Secure Access Service Edge), may very well have the answer to the dilemmas of security, continuity, and scale that both ZTNA and VPNs introduce into the networking equation.
The Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) model was proposed by Gartner's leading security analysts, Neil MacDonald, Lawrence Orans, and Joe Skorupa. Gartner presents SASE as a way to collapse the networking and security stacks of SD-WANs into a fully integrated offering that is both easy to deploy and manage.
Gartner sees SASE as a game-changer in the world of wide-area networking and cloud connectivity. The research house expects 40% of enterprises to adopt SASE by 2024. However, a significant challenge remains, networking and cybersecurity vendors are still building their SASE offerings, and very few are actually available at this time.
One such vendor is Cato Networks, which offers a fully baked SASE solution and has been identified as one of the leaders in the SASE game by Gartner.
SASE differs significantly from the VPN and ZTNA models by leveraging a native cloud architecture that is built on the concepts of SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network). According to Gartner, SASE is an identity-driven connectivity platform that uses a native cloud architecture to support secure connectivity at the network edge that is globally distributed.
SASE gives organizations access to what is essentially a private networking backbone that runs within the global internet. What's more, SASE incorporates automated failover, AI-driven performance tuning, and multiple secure paths into the private backbone.
SASE is deployed at the edge of the network, where the LAN connects to the public internet to access cloud or other services. And as with other SD-WAN offerings, the edge has to connect to something beyond the four walls of the private network.
In Cato's case, the company has created a global private backbone, which is connected via multiple network providers. Cato has built a private cloud that can be reached over the public internet.
SASE also offers the ability to combine the benefits of SDP with the resiliency of an SD-WAN, without introducing any of the shortcomings of a VPN.
Case in point is Cato's Instant Access, a clientless connectivity model that uses a Software-Defined Perimeter (SDP) solution to grant secure access to cloud-delivered applications for authorized remote users.
Instant access offers multi-factor authentication, single sign-on, least privileged access, and is incorporated into the combined networking and security stacks. Since it is built on SASE, full administrator visibility is a reality, as well as simplified deployment, instant scalability, integrated performance management, and automated failover.
In Cato's case, continuous threat protection keeps remote workers, as well as the network, safe from network-based threats. Cato's security stack includes NGFW, SWG, IPS, advanced anti-malware, and Managed Threat Detection and Response (MDR) service. Of course, Cato isn't the only player in the SASE game; other vendors pushing into SASE territory include Cisco, Akamai, Palo Alto Networks, Symantec, VMWare, and Netskope.
SASE Address the Problems of VPNs, ZTNA -- and More
With VPNs coming up short and ZTNA lacking critical functionality, such as ease of scale and performance management, it is quickly becoming evident that CISOs may need to take a long hard look at SASE.
SASE addresses the all too common problems that VPNs are introducing into a rapidly evolving remote work paradigm, while still offering the application-centric security that ZTNA brings to the table.
What's more, SASE brings with it advanced security, enhanced visibility, and reliability that will go a long way to improving continuity, while also potentially lowering costs.
Welcome to our weekly roundup, where we share what you need to know about the cybersecurity news and events that happened over the past few days. This week, learn about how the data of train commuters in the U.K. who were using the free Wi-Fi in Network Rail-managed stations was unintentionally leaked due to an unsecured Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud storage. Also, read about how more than 200 million records containing property-related information on U.S. residents were exposed.
As DevOps and cloud computing has gained popularity, developers are coding online more and more, but this traction has also raised the questions of whether online integrated development environments (IDEs) are secure. In this blog, learn about two popular cloud-based IDEs: AWS Cloud9 and Visual Studio Online.
The company, which provides legal counsel and administration that counts banks, credit giants, and governments as customers, confirmed the attack hit on February 29. A source said the ransomware hit the organization’s entire fleet of computers across its 80 global offices.
Trend Micro has conducted an analysis into the behavior of the Geost trojan by reverse engineering a sample of the malware. The trojan employed several layers of obfuscation, encryption, reflection, and injection of non-functional code segments that made it more difficult to reverse engineer. Read this blog for further analysis of Geost.
Trend Micro this week announced new initiatives designed to enhance collaboration with global law enforcement and developing nations through cybersecurity outreach, support and training.The first agreement is with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), a government agency responsible for providing overseas development aid and nurturing social economic growth in developing nations.
The data of train commuters in the U.K. who were using the free Wi-Fi in Network Rail-managed stations was unintentionally leaked due to an unsecured Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud storage. Approximately 10,000 users were affected, and data thought to be exposed in the leak includes commuters’ travel habits, contact information such as email addresses, and dates of birth.
Netgear is warning users of a critical remote code execution bug that could allow an unauthenticated attacker to take control of its Wireless AC Router Nighthawk (R7800) hardware running firmware versions prior to 1.0.2.68. The warnings, posted Tuesday, also include two high-severity bugs impacting Nighthawk routers, 21 medium-severity flaws and one rated low.
To thwart increasingly dangerous cyber criminals, law enforcement agents are working to “burn down their infrastructure” and take out the tools that allow them to carry out their devastating attacks, FBI Director Christopher Wray said this week. Unsophisticated cyber criminals now have the power to paralyze entire hospitals, businesses and police departments, Wray also said.
More than 200 million records containing a wide range of property-related information on U.S. residents were left exposed on a database that was accessible on the web without requiring any password or authentication. The exposed data included personal and demographic information such as name, address, email address, age, gender, ethnicity, employment, credit rating, investment preferences, income, net worth and property-specific information.
Human security is what matters during a cybersecurity crisis, where skills and muscle memory can make the difference in make-or-break moments. Leaders and culture are the most important predictors of cyberattack outcomes, so it’s time to stop under-investing in human security.
There were at least 113 successful ransomware attacks on state and local governments last year, according to global cybersecurity company Emsisoft, and in each case, officials had to figure out how to respond. Read this article to find out how officials make the tough call.
So you suddenly have a lot of staff working remotely. Telework is not new and a good percentage of the workforce already does so. But the companies who have a distributed workforce had time to plan for it, and to plan for it securely.
A Lot of New Teleworkers All At Once
This event can be treated like a quick rollout of an application: there are business, infrastructure, and customer security impacts. There will be an increase of work for help desks as new teleworkers wrestle with remote working.
Additionally, don’t compound the problem. There is advice circulating to reset all passwords for remote workers. This opens the door for increased social engineering to attempt to lure overworked help desk staff into doing password resets that don’t comply with policy. Set expectations for staff that policy must be complied with, and to expect some delays while the help desk is overloaded.
Business continuity issues will arise as limited planning for remote workers could max out VPN licenses, firewall capacity, and application timeouts as many people attempt to use the same apps through a narrower network pipe.
Help Staff Make A Secure Home Office
In the best of times, remote workers are often left to their own devices (pun intended) for securing their work at home experience. Home offices are already usually much less secure than corporate offices: weak routers, unmanaged PCs, and multiple users means home offices become an easier attack path into the enterprise.
It doesn’t make sense to have workers operate in a less secure environment in this context. Give them the necessary security tools and operational tools to do their business. Teleworkers, even with a company-issued device, are likely to work on multiple home devices. Make available enterprise licensed storage and sharing tools, so employees don’t have to resort to ‘sketchy’ or weak options when they exceed the limits for free storage on Dropbox or related services.
A Secure Web Gateway as a service is a useful option considering that teleworkers using a VPN will still likely be split tunneling (i.e. not going through corporate security devices when browsing to non-corporate sites, etc.), unlike when they are in the corporate office and all connections are sanitized. That is especially important in cases where a weak home router gets compromised and any exfiltration or other ‘phone home’ traffic from malware needs to be spotted.
A simple way to get this information out to employees is to add remote working security tips to any regularly occurring executive outreach.
Operational Issues
With a large majority of businesses switching to a work-from-home model with less emphasis on in-person meetings, we also anticipate that malicious actors will start to impersonate digital tools, such as ‘free’ remote conferencing services and other cloud computing software.
Having a policy on respecting telework privacy is a good preventative step to minimize the risk of this type of attack being successful. Remote workers may be concerned about their digital privacy when working from home, so any way to inform them about likely attack methods can help.
Any steps to prevent staff trying to evade security measures out of a concern over privacy are likely a good investment.
Crisis Specific Risks
During any major event or crisis, socially engineered attacks and phishing will increase. Human engineering means using any lever to make it a little bit easier for targets to click on a link.
We’re seeing targeted email attacks taking advantage of this. Some will likely use tactics such as attachments named “attached is your Work At Home Allowance Voucher,” spoofed corporate guidelines, or HR documents.
Sadly, we expect hospitals and local governments will see increased targeting by ransomware due the expectation that payouts are likelier during an emergency.
But Hang On – It Is Not All Bad News
The good news is that none of these attacks are new and we already have playbooks to defend against them. Give a reminder to all staff during this period to be more wary of phishing, but don’t overly depend on user education – back it up with security technology measures. Here are a few ways to do that.
Give your remote workers the security and productivity tools they need to protect themselves and their non-corporate IT resources.
Include an enterprise managed cloud storage account for work documents so employees don’t find free versions that may not be safe.
Enable customers and supply chain partners, who may also be teleworking, to interact with you securely.
Welcome to our weekly roundup, where we share what you need to know about the cybersecurity news and events that happened over the past few days. This week, dive into a research study that explores the risks associated with common cybersecurity vulnerabilities in a factory setting. Also, read about how misconfigured Microsoft cloud databases containing 14 years of customer support logs exposed 250 million records.
Last week, Microsoft announced vulnerability CVE-2020-0601 and has already released a patch to protect against any exploits stemming from the vulnerability. Understanding how difficult it can be to patch systems in a timely manner, Trend Micro created a valuable tool that will test endpoints to determine if they have been patched against this latest threat or if they are still vulnerable.
Malicious hackers are targeting factories and industrial environments with a wide variety of malware and cyberattacks including ransomware and cryptocurrency miners. All of these incidents were spotted by researchers at Trend Micro who built a honeypot that mimicked the environment of a real factory. The fake factory featured some common cybersecurity vulnerabilities to make it appealing for hackers to discover and target.
Recently, 42 apps were removed from the Google Play Store after being installed eight million times over the period of a year, flooding victims’ screens with unwanted advertising. Trend Micro blocked more than 86 million mobile threats in 2018, and that number is expected to continue to increase. To learn how to protect your mobile device from hackers, read this blog from Trend Micro.
Trend Micro announced this week that it has joined non-profit community LOT Network in a bid to combat the growing threat posed to its business and its customers by patent assertion entities (PAEs).The community now has more than 500 members, including some of the world’s biggest tech companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Cisco.
Security researchers have released proof-of-concept (PoC) codes for exploiting CVE-2020-0601, a bug that the National Security Agency (NSA) reported. The vulnerability affects Windows operating systems’ CryptoAPI’s validation of Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) certificates and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) trust. Enterprises and users are advised to patch their systems immediately to prevent attacks that exploit this security flaw.
Misconfigured Microsoft cloud databases containing 14 years of customer support logs exposed 250 million records to the open internet for 25 days. The account information dates back as far as 2005 and as recent as December 2019 and exposes Microsoft customers to phishing and tech scams. Microsoft said it is in the process of notifying affected customers.
On January 17, Microsoft published an advisory (ADV200001) warning users about CVE-2020-0674, a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability involving Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) web browser. A patch has not yet been released as of the time of writing — however, Microsoft has acknowledged that it is aware of limited targeted attacks exploiting the flaw.
Researchers from Google’s Information Security Engineering team have detailed several security issues in the design of Apple’s Safari anti-tracking system, Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP). ITP is designed to restrict cookies and is Apple’s answer to online marketers that track users across websites. However, Google researchers argue in a new paper that ITP leaks Safari users’ web browsing habits.
A hacker has published the credentials of over 515,000 servers, routers, and IoT devices on a well-known hacking website. ZDNet reported that the list consists of IP addresses and the usernames and passwords used by each for unlocking Telnet services, the port that allows these devices to be controlled through the internet.
The first Pwn2Own hacking competition that exclusively focuses on industrial control systems (ICS) has kicked off in Miami. So far, a total of $180,000 has been awarded for pwning five different products. The contest hosts at Trend Micro’s Zero Day initiative (ZDI) have allocated more than $250,000 in cash and prizes for the contest, which is testing eight targets across five categories.
A new sextortion scheme has been found preying on victims’ fears through social engineering and follows in the footsteps of recent sextortion schemes demanding payment in bitcoin. Security researchers at Mimecast observed the scheme during the first week of the year. The scheme reportedly sent a total of 1,687 emails on Jan. 2 and 3, mostly to U.S. email account holders.
A recent business email compromise (BEC) campaign, purportedly coming from a small number of scammers in Germany, targets organizations by sending them emails with IMG file attachments hiding a NetWire remote access trojan (RAT). The campaign was discovered by IBM X-Force security researchers and involves sending an employee of the targeted organization an email masquerading as a corporate request.
