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Before yesterdaySecurity

Charming Kitten, Slack RCE, & KryptoCibule Malware - SWN #61

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, Dr. Doug talks Tesla, Slack, Charming Kitten returns, KryptoCibule, and Tweets from the great beyond! In the Expert Commentary, we welcome Ian McShane, VP, Product Marketing at CrowdStrike, to discuss remote work/return to office, and the challenges therein!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/swn61

Visit https://securityweekly.com/crowdstrike to learn more about them!

 

Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/swn for all the latest episodes!

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  • September 1st 2020 at 21:00

Little Bit Too High - ASW #120

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, we welcome Marc Tremsal, Director of Product Management of Security at Datadog, to discuss Detecting Threats & Avoiding Misconfigs In The Cloud-Age! In the Application Security News, A Tale of Escaping a Hardened Docker container, Four More Bugs Patched in Microsoft’s Azure Sphere IoT Platform, Upgrading GitHub to Ruby 2.7, Upgrading GitHub to Ruby 2.7, Redefining What CISO Success Looks Like, and Lessons from Uber: Be crystal clear on the law and your bug bounty policies!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/asw120

Visit https://securityweekly.com/datadog to learn more about them!

 

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  • September 1st 2020 at 20:00

Exposed Windows Domain Controllers Used in CLDAP DDoS Attacks, (Tue, Sep 1st)

LDAP, like many UDP based protocols, has the ability to send responses that are larger than the request. With UDP not requiring any handshake before data is sent, these protocols make ideal amplifiers for reflective distributed denial of service attacks. Most commonly, these attacks abuse DNS and we have talked about this in the past. But LDAP is another protocol that is often abused.
  • September 1st 2020 at 18:04

The Life Cycle of a Compromised (Cloud) Server

By Bob McArdle

Trend Micro Research has developed a go-to resource for all things related to cybercriminal underground hosting and infrastructure. Today we released the second in this three-part series of reports which detail the what, how, and why of cybercriminal hosting (see the first part here).

As part of this report, we dive into the common life cycle of a compromised server from initial compromise to the different stages of monetization preferred by criminals. It’s also important to note that regardless of whether a company’s server is on-premise or cloud-based, criminals don’t care what kind of server they compromise.

To a criminal, any server that is exposed or vulnerable is fair game.

Cloud vs. On-Premise Servers

Cybercriminals don’t care where servers are located. They can leverage the storage space, computation resources, or steal data no matter what type of server they access. Whatever is most exposed will most likely be abused.

As digital transformation continues and potentially picks up to allow for continued remote working, cloud servers are more likely to be exposed. Many enterprise IT teams, unfortunately, are not arranged to provide the same protection for cloud as on-premise servers.

As a side note, we want to emphasize that this scenario applies only to cloud instances replicating the storage or processing power of an on-premise server. Containers or serverless functions won’t fall victim to this same type of compromise. Additionally, if the attacker compromises the cloud account, as opposed to a single running instance, then there is an entirely different attack life cycle as they can spin up computing resources at will. Although this is possible, however, it is not our focus here.

Attack Red Flags

Many IT and security teams might not look for earlier stages of abuse. Before getting hit by ransomware, however, there are other red flags that could alert teams to the breach.

If a server is compromised and used for cryptocurrency mining (also known as cryptomining), this can be one of the biggest red flags for a security team. The discovery of cryptomining malware running on any server should result in the company taking immediate action and initiating an incident response to lock down that server.

This indicator of compromise (IOC) is significant because while cryptomining malware is often seen as less serious compared to other malware types, it is also used as a monetization tactic that can run in the background while server access is being sold for further malicious activity. For example, access could be sold for use as a server for underground hosting. Meanwhile, the data could be exfiltrated and sold as personally identifiable information (PII) or for industrial espionage, or it could be sold for a targeted ransomware attack. It’s possible to think of the presence of cryptomining malware as the proverbial canary in a coal mine: This is the case, at least, for several access-as-a-service (AaaS) criminals who use this as part of their business model.

Attack Life Cycle

Attacks on compromised servers follow a common path:

  1. Initial compromise: At this stage, whether a cloud-based instance or an on-premise server, it is clear that a criminal has taken over.
  2. Asset categorization: This is the inventory stage. Here a criminal makes their assessment based on questions such as, what data is on that server? Is there an opportunity for lateral movement to something more lucrative? Who is the victim?
  3. Sensitive data exfiltration: At this stage, the criminal steals corporate emails, client databases, and confidential documents, among others. This stage can happen any time after asset categorization if criminals managed to find something valuable.
  4. Cryptocurrency mining: While the attacker looks for a customer for the server space, a target attack, or other means of monetization, cryptomining is used to covertly make money.
  5. Resale or use for targeted attack or further monetization: Based on what the criminal finds during asset categorization, they might plan their own targeted ransomware attack, sell server access for industrial espionage, or sell the access for someone else to monetize further.

 

lifecycle compromised server

The monetization lifecycle of a compromised server

Often, targeted ransomware is the final stage. In most cases, asset categorization reveals data that is valuable to the business but not necessarily valuable for espionage.

A deep understanding of the servers and network allows criminals behind a targeted ransomware attack to hit the company where it hurts the most. These criminals would know the dataset, where they live, whether there are backups of the data, and more. With such a detailed blueprint of the organization in their hands, cybercriminals can lock down critical systems and demand higher ransom, as we saw in our 2020 midyear security roundup report.

In addition, while a ransomware attack would be the visible urgent issue for the defender to solve in such an incident, the same attack could also indicate that something far more serious has likely already taken place: the theft of company data, which should be factored into the company’s response planning. More importantly, it should be noted that once a company finds an IOC for cryptocurrency, stopping the attacker right then and there could save them considerable time and money in the future.

Ultimately, no matter where a company’s data is stored, hybrid cloud security is critical to preventing this life cycle.

 

The post The Life Cycle of a Compromised (Cloud) Server appeared first on .

What is a VPN and How Does it Increase Your Online Security and Privacy?

By Trend Micro

The number of VPN users has grown considerably over the past few years. According to the report of Go-Globe, 25% of netizens worldwide have used a VPN at least once in the last 30 days. Recently, VPN usage has surged in many countries and its popularity may see VPN usage surpass the estimated profit of USD$27.10 billion by the end of 2020. The VPN global market only seems to increase as time goes by. So, why is that? What do VPNs provide that make them so attractive?

What is a VPN?

A VPN, or a Virtual Private Network, creates a secure communication “tunnel” from your computer to the internet. It encrypts your connection and prevents others from seeing the data you’re transferring. This keeps your data secure from any spying attempts—including from home over your wired connection, but particularly on public Wi-Fi networks, when you’re out and about in places such as coffee shops, restaurants, airports and hotels. It helps ensure that no one can steal your personal details, passwords, or credit card information.

How does a VPN work and why you need a VPN service?

Among other things, a VPN can conceal your IP address to make your online actions virtually untraceable and anonymous, providing greater privacy for everything you do. In fact, there are so many ways a VPN can protect your privacy and security, we need to take a deeper look at what other benefits a VPN can provide.

    1. Safeguard personal information

    This is the era of mobility and most transactions are being done by people on-the-go using their mobile devices to exchange data over public networks. From online shopping, to mobile banking or simply checking emails and social media accounts, these activities can expose your personal information and sensitive data to hackers and cybercriminals. This particularly applies to users relying on public Wi-Fi. Using a VPN will help to mitigate unwanted leakage or theft by securing data in transit to and from the systems that typically try to collect and store your private data.

      1. Access better streaming contents from other locations

      One of the main drivers for using a VPN is to access better streaming content and restricted websites from the region you’re accessing the internet from. This may be true in your own country, but when traveling abroad, there are also chances that you cannot visit a popular website or a social media platform from the country you’re visiting. While using a VPN, you can connect to an IP address in your country and have full access to your favorite media contents and avoid wasting membership fees that you will likely pay for this streaming service.

        1. Enhance browsing privacy

        Some retail apps, social media platforms, and search engines continuously collect and analyze results of your search history. They keep track of all your browsing activities such as items you viewed, contents you liked, and things you tapped and clicked, so they can provide you with more targeted contents and monetize these by showing the same information in your feed through ads.

        Note that, simply clearing your browsing history does not completely remove traces of these searches, and targeted ads can get annoying. This is where a VPN can help enhance your browsing privacy. The VPN hides your browser cached data and location from advertisers, which prevents them from serving up content based on your searches and location.

          1. Save cost on communicating with family and friends abroad

          Another motivating factor for the use of a VPN is to save on the cost of communicating with families and friends abroad. There are countries implementing restrictions on the use of certain messaging apps, banning their services. If you are planning to visit a country with such a restriction, a VPN can bypass this constraint, which allows you to make use of your trusted messaging app, eliminate the cost of long-distance calls to family and friends while abroad—and at the same time, maintain the level of security and encryption the messaging app provides.

            1. Escape content-based bandwidth-throttling

            The internet has evolved into streaming more content—videos, music, and more—and ISPs have responded by making higher data usage and higher throughput (bandwidth) pay-as-you-use-more services. But content is still at issue, particularly after the December 2017 FCC ruling. Potential ISP throttling based on content type, source, or destination (e.g., BitTorrent traffic), which could give priority to business over personal usage, is one of the reasons why everyday people are using VPN services, because a VPN provides more usage anonymity, preventing ISPs from potentially tracking your activities and limiting your bandwidth usage accordingly.

            Choosing the right VPN for you

            Now that you have some understanding of what a VPN is, and what benefits it can give you, it is also important to choose the right VPN for you.

            Due to regulatory requirements and laws governing data privacy and securing personal information online, the demand for VPNs is growing. In response, there are a large number of VPN providers in the market today. So how do you choose a reliable VPN? Here are some criteria to help you pick one that best suits your needs:

            • Faster and more data is better. Using a VPN can often decrease the speed of your internet connection, so you should pick a provider that has a good number of servers and locations and doesn’t pre-throttle your bandwidth. Some also have data limits, so you should opt for those with a higher data limit per month
            • Provides the best encryption. Look for a VPN providing sophisticated ciphers such as 256-bit AES end-to-end encryption.
            • Ensures safe browsing. Look for VPN that can filter and block malicious websites, online fraud, and internet scams and automatically safeguard your internet connection.
            • Provides full anonymity. It is crucial that a VPN vendor has a clear privacy policy. Trusted VPNs will not track the user’s websites, payment information, or online transactions, and do not keep logs.
            • Supports simultaneous devices. Select a VPN that is compatible with your devices and operating systems and can provide you a good number of simultaneous connections on your devices.
            • Cost versus use case. Heavier business usage should be contrasted with everyday consumer use. To pay less for the service (VPNs typically cost from $5 to $12 per month per device, though multi-device bundles are less), you might accept some data limits, if your use case is lighter; sacrifice some speed, if you’re not streaming movies when you’re out and about, (unlikely during the coronavirus lockdown); or some cross-regional server-selection capability, if you’re not travelling in content-restricted regions (since out-of-country travel is also being hampered by the pandemic).

            Trend Micro’s Home Division provides two low-cost, safety-focused VPN solutions for everyday users: Trend Micro VPN Proxy One and Trend Micro Wi-Fi Protection, both of which can address light-to-medium VPN needs and meet most of the checklist criteria above.

            Trend Micro VPN Proxy One offers fast, secure, stable and anonymous proxy connections for you to access various websites and applications. It connects to the best Trend Micro VPN server intelligently, without you having to do it, and does not limit bandwidth consumption. Trend Micro VPNs do not track your online activities, ensuring you a secure digital life and protecting your online privacy. Trend Micro VPN Proxy One is targeted to Mac and iOS devices.

            Trend Micro Wi-Fi Protection turns any public hotspot into a secure Wi-Fi network and VPN with bank-grade data encryption to keep your information safe from hackers. While your VPN is active, Trend Micro Wi-Fi Protection provides exceptional web threat protection and checks websites you visit to safeguard your browsing from online fraud and internet scam. The VPN automatically kicks in when connecting to a Wi-Fi network with low security, such as one with no encryption. Trend Micro Wi-Fi Protection is available for all platforms (PC, Mac, Android, and iOS). Bundles can be purchased for multiple devices and platforms and some bundles can include other Trend Micro products, depending on the region.

            Go to the Apple App Store for more details on Trend Micro VPN Proxy One; or for a 30-day trial or to buy, go here: Mac | iOS.

            Or visit Trend Micro Wi-Fi Protection for more information, or to buy the multi-platform solution.

            The post What is a VPN and How Does it Increase Your Online Security and Privacy? appeared first on .

            Finding The Original Maldoc, (Mon, Aug 31st)

            Xavier wrote about a "Malicious Excel Sheet with a NULL VT Score" and I showed how to extract the VBA code from the maldoc cleaned by AV.
            • August 31st 2020 at 07:02

            Malicious Excel Sheet with a NULL VT Score: More Info, (Sat, Aug 29th)

            The maldoc Xavier mentioned in diary entry "Malicious Excel Sheet with a NULL VT Score" is indeed corrupt, and that explains its low score on VT. I believe this maldoc has been cleaned by an anti-virus program: (incomplete) deletion of VBA modules.
            • August 30th 2020 at 10:03

            Floppies Are Burning In The Driveway - PSW #664

            By paul@securityweekly.com

            This week, first we talk Security News! We'll be discussing how a Google Researcher Reported 3 Flaws in Apache Web Server Software, Medical Data Leaked on GitHub Due to Developer Errors, Experts hacked 28,000 unsecured printers to raise awareness of printer security issues, Tesla Is Cracking Down On Performance-Enhancing Hacks For The Model 3, Former Uber CSO Charged Over Alleged Breach Cover-Up, and Researchers Sound Alarm Over Malicious AWS Community AMIs! In our second segment, we air two pre recorded interviews from Security Weekly's Virtual Hacker Summer Camp, with Ferruh Mavituna, CEO of Netsparker, and Paul Battista, CEO and Founder of Polarity! In our final segment, we air one more pre recorded interview with Roi Cohen, Co-Founder and VP of Sales at Vicarius, and Shani Dodge, C++ Developer at Vicarius, discussing Predicting Vulnerabilities in Compiled Code!

             

            Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/psw664

            Visit https://securityweekly.com/vicarius to learn more about them!

            Take the Polarity Challenge! Get your free community edition by visiting: www.polarity.io/sw

            Visit https://securityweekly.com/netsparker to get a trial of the best dynamic application scanning solution on the market!

             

            Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/psw for all the latest episodes!

            Visit https://securityweekly.com/acm to sign up for a demo or buy our AI Hunter!

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            • August 29th 2020 at 09:00

            Let That Sink In - ESW #196

            By paul@securityweekly.com

            This week, first we talk Enterprise News, discussing Checkmarx Announces GitLab Integration, Panaseer Automates IRM with Archer Integration, How Attivo Networks Strengthens Active Directory Defense, Elastic Security 7.9 delivers a major milestone toward endpoint security integrated into the Elastic Stack, VMware brings Kubernetes to its VMware Fusion and VMware Workstation solutions, and more! In our second segment, we welcome Kwan Lin, Principal Data Scientist at Rapid7, to discuss "Under the Hoodie:" Rapid7's 2020 Pen Testing Report! In our final segment, we welcome Patrick Carey, Director of Product Marketing at Synopsys, to talk about Building Security into Application Development!

             

            Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw196

            Visit https://securityweekly.com/rapid7 to learn more about them!

            Visit https://securityweekly.com/synopsys to learn more about them!

             

            Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes!

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            • August 28th 2020 at 22:00

            MITRE Shield Matrix, Zoom Outages, & 'SourMint' - Wrap Up - SWN #60

            By paul@securityweekly.com

            This week, Dr. Doug talks MITRE, COBALT, SNYK, CISOs behaving badly at Uber, Zoom says it's all better now, and Amazon AI wants you to send nudes for criticism, and all the show wrap ups from this past week!

             

            Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/swn60

            Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/swn for all the latest episodes!

             

            Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/securityweekly

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            • August 28th 2020 at 20:11

            This Week in Security News: Trend Micro and Snyk Partner to Fight Open Source Security Flaws and Ransomware Has Gone Corporate

            By Jon Clay (Global Threat Communications)

            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 Trend Micro and Snyk’s new co-developed solution to help manage the risk of open source vulnerabilities. Also, read about a new ransomware strain that emulates the practices of a legitimate enterprise.

            Read on:

            Trend Micro, Snyk Fight Open Source Security Flaws

            This week, Trend Micro announced plans for a new, co-developed solution with Snyk, which expands on the company’s ongoing strategic partnership to enhance DevOps security. The joint solution will help security teams manage the risk of open source vulnerabilities from the moment open source code is introduced without interrupting the software delivery process. Trend Micro’s COO Kevin Simzer shares more details on the solution in this article.

            Securing the Pandemic-Disrupted Workplace: Trend Micro 2020 Midyear Cybersecurity Report

            Trend Micro’s 2020 Midyear Security Roundup examines pressing security issues during the first half of this year, including Covid-19-related threats and targeted ransomware attacks, and offers recommendations to help enterprises secure their systems from cybercriminals in the new normal terrain.

            Ransomware Has Gone Corporate—and Gotten More Cruel

            DarkSide is the latest strain of ransomware built to shake down big-game targets for millions—with attacks that seem legitimate by including guaranteed turnaround times, real-time chat support and brand awareness. As ransomware becomes big business, its purveyors have embraced the tropes of legitimate enterprises, down to corporate responsibility pledges. Ed Cabrera, chief cybersecurity officer at Trend Micro, comments on the serious risks of ransomware in this article.

            Probing Attempts on Home Routers Increase in 1H 2020

            The current reality of having many connected devices in the home has given rise to incidents of potential home network intrusions. In the first half of 2020, Trend Micro detected more than 10.6 billion suspicious connection attempts on routers’ unavailable TCP ports. TCP port 23, in particular, had the most detections of suspicious connection attempts, with more than 5.3 billion.

            Hackers Exploit Autodesk Flaw in Recent Cyberespionage Attack

            Threat actors exploited a vulnerability in the popular 3D computer graphics Autodesk software to launch a recent cyber-espionage attack against an international architectural and video production company. Researchers said that further analysis of the attack points to a sophisticated, APT-style group that had prior knowledge of the company’s security systems and used software applications, carefully planning their attack to infiltrate the company and exfiltrate data undetected.

            CVE-2020-1380: Analysis of Recently Fixed IE Zero-Day

            Microsoft recently patched a zero-day vulnerability that targeted Internet Explorer (IE) 11. It’s a use-after-free (UAF) bug in IE’s JavaScript engine, jscript9.dll. Previously, Trend Micro observed that zero-day attacks against IE usually exploit vbscript.dll and jscript.dll to run shellcode. This time, the target changed to jscript9.dll and used the modern JavaScript engine’s Just-In-Time (JIT) engine to trigger the bug, so Trend Micro decided to dive into the jscrtip9.dll JIT engine to figure out the root cause of CVE-2020-1380.

            CSO Insights: Ricoh USA’s David Levine on Employing a Cloud- and Cybersecurity-First Strategy

            In this blog, David Levine, vice president of corporate and information security and CSO for Ricoh USA, Inc., shares how his organization accommodates mobility by reinforcing a security-first mindset, employing a cloud-first strategy, managing risk, and enabling employees in the ‘new normal’.

            Is the Electric Grid Closer to a Devastating Cyberattack that Could Mean Lights Out?

            Could the electric grid be taken down with a $50 device secreted in the bottom of a coffee cup as researchers have claimed? Maybe, but the more likely threat comes from bad actors with improved capabilities who’ve ramped up their attacks on critical infrastructure and utilities. Seventy percent of industrial controls system (ICS) vulnerabilities disclosed in the first half of 2020 can be exploited remotely, according to a report from Claroty.

            The Basics of Keeping Your Kubernetes Cluster Secure: Part 1

            With Kubernetes’ popularity and increasingly high adoption rates, its security should always be prioritized. In this blog, Trend Micro provides vital tips and recommendations on keeping the master node, the API server, etcd, RBAC, and network policies secure.

            After a Decade, Qbot Trojan Malware Gains New, Dangerous Tricks

            The Qbot Trojan has been plaguing computer users and businesses for over a decade and the cybercriminals behind it are still coming up with new tricks that keep it one of the most prevalent and successful malware threats. The latest technique observed by security researchers involves the malware inserting itself into the legitimate email threads of their victims to spread.

            Surprised by the DarkSide ransomware’s professionalism? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.

            The post This Week in Security News: Trend Micro and Snyk Partner to Fight Open Source Security Flaws and Ransomware Has Gone Corporate appeared first on .

            Are employees the weakest link in your security strategy? Train them!

            By Joyce Huang

            Email is the number one threat vector. There’s no exception, even with a global pandemic, on the contrary: COVID-19 has been used as an appealing hook by cyber criminals. Data from Trend Micro Smart Protection Network shows that for the first five months of 2020, 92 per cent of all the cyber threats leveraging COVID-19 were spam or phishing email messages.

            Email scams can have a big impact, both on the organization and the individual. This was highlighted in a recent report from BBC News where a finance professional from Glasgow, Scotland was targeted by a business email compromise scam. The hackers disguised themselves as the employee’s CEO, and managed to convince her to transfer £200k to their bank account. When the organization realized what happened, they were able to retrieve half of the loss. However, the employee was fired and then pursued in the courts for the remaining sum. Her lawyers argued successfully that she had not received any training to identify these scams and the case was subsequently dismissed. This took a big personal toll on the employee who not only lost her job, but worried about losing her home as well. Her employer suffered financially and their reputation also took a hit. There were no winners in this case, but it really emphasized the importance of security awareness; companies need to arm their employees with the knowledge to protect the business, and ultimately themselves.

            A great email security solution can block the majority of threats, but no product can catch 100 per cent of email scams. This means that humans are our last line of defense. Trend Micro Phish Insight service helps you to increase your employees’ awareness of phishing emails and other cyber threats. Best of all, it is completely free, allowing you to increase your cybersecurity while using this budget for other critical initiatives.

            Let’s take a look at a customer use case:

            A Phish Insight customer in the U.S. launched two phishing simulation campaigns for 1,500 employees in the first half of 2020.  The two campaigns were four months apart and targeted the same employees.
            The first campaign was a fake email from CDC with a link that claimed to check new COVID-19 cases. It asked for the user’s log-in information after the link was clicked.

             

             

            The second campaign is an email pretending to be from the organization’s IT department. It requested users to verify their account due to an Office 365 inbox storage limitation.

             

             

            Both emails are very realistic looking with important and engaging topics that users care about.

            So, what do the results look like?

            Among the employees getting the emails, the result for the two campaigns shows a positive behavior change in recognizing a phishing email.

            • Percentage of employees that clicked the embedded URL in email reduced significantly (11 per cent vs. 7 per cent)
            • Percentage of employees that reported the phishing email to IT has increased significantly (11 per cent vs. 24 per cent)

            However, when introducing a more challenging phishing attack (the 2nd campaign), the percentage of employees who posted their credentials to the phishing site has significantly increased (0.3 per cent vs. 3.4 per cent). While the company’s overall phishing awareness increased (reduced clicks), those who fell victim had a higher chance of giving out their credentials.

            The result also shows that back office teams have a higher percentage of phished employees and the importance of on-going training. In addition to continuing phishing awareness training to all employees, the IT department will focus more on back office teams.

            Using Phish Insight, the company successfully increased employees’ awareness while being able to target more at risk user groups and identify those that need more help.

            Want to train your organization?

            To start a phishing simulation for your users, you need $0 budget and only five minutes. With a really simple user experience, you can get up and running with your first simulation today.

            Try Phish Insight with no obligation: phishinsight.trendmicro.com

            The post Are employees the weakest link in your security strategy? Train them! appeared first on .

            Example of Malicious DLL Injected in PowerShell, (Fri, Aug 28th)

            For a while, PowerShell remains one of the favorite languages for attackers. Installed by default (and almost impossible to get rid of it), powerful, perfectly integrated with the core operating system. It's very easy to develop specific PowerShell functions that will provide interesting features for an attacker but, if written in PowerShell, they could easily ring a bell for the defenders (example: by using many suspicious API calls). Another technique to expand the language with more functions is just to load a DLL! I found a sample that exfiltrates data from the victim's computer.
            • August 28th 2020 at 06:44

            Security.txt - one small file for an admin, one giant help to a security researcher, (Thu, Aug 27th)

            During the last few months, I’ve noticed a significant increase in the number of vulnerability reports for domains registered to some of our customers. I would guess that this increase probably stems from more time being devoted by bug bounty hunters and security researchers to finding vulnerabilities due to their Covid-19 related self-isolation. Whatever the cause is however, the increased number of reports is probably felt by many organizations around the world.
            • August 27th 2020 at 07:09

            The Memes Are Killing Me - SCW #40

            By paul@securityweekly.com

            This week, Jeff, John, Josh, and Scott talk Pragmatic Approaches to Cybersecurity Maturity! There are a lot of ways to measure/assess the level of organizational maturity of security programs. But, how do you mature your organization? We will discuss practical steps, like prioritizing the to-do list, the balance between people, process, and technology, as well as the balance between policies, standards, procedures vs. technical controls, to develop a pragmatic approach to mature your cybersecurity program.

             

            Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/scw40

            Reference Slides: https://securityweekly.com/scw-episode-40-reference-slides/

             

            Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/scw for all the latest episodes!

            Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/securityweekly

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            • August 26th 2020 at 16:00

            A New Strategy for DDoS Protection: Log Analysis on Steroids

            Anyone whose business depends on online traffic knows how critical it is to protect your business against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. And with cyber attackers more persistent than ever – Q1 2020 DDoS attacks surged by 80% year over year and their average duration rose by 25%—you also know how challenging this can be.

            Now imagine you’re responsible for blocking, mitigating, and neutralizing DDoS attacks where the attack surface is tens of thousands of websites. That’s exactly what HubSpot, a top marketing and sales SaaS provider, was up against. How they overcame the challenges they faced makes for an interesting case study in DDoS response and mitigation.

            Drinking from a Firehouse

            HubSpot’s CMS Hub powers thousands of websites across the globe. Like many organizations, HubSpot uses a Content Delivery Network (CDN) solution to help bolster security and performance.

            CDNs, which are typically associated with improving web performance, are built to make content available at edges of the network, providing both performance and data about access patterns across the network. To handle the CDN log data spikes inherent with DDoS attacks, organizations often guesstimate how much compute they may need and maintain that higher level of resource (and expenditure) for their logging solution. Or if budgets don’t allow, they dial back the amount of log data they retain and analyze.

            In HubSpot’s case, they use Cloudflare CDN as the first layer of protection for all incoming traffic on the websites they host. This equates to about 136,000 requests/second, or roughly 10TB/day, of Cloudflare log data that HubSpot has at its disposal to help triage and neutralize DDoS attacks. Talk about drinking from a firehouse!

            HubSpot makes use of Cloudflare’s Logpushservice to push Cloudflare logs that contain headers and cache statuses for each request directly to HubSpot’s Amazon S3 cloud object storage. In order to process that data and make it searchable, HubSpot’s dedicated security team deployed and managed their own open-source ELK Stack consisting of Elasticsearch (a search database), Logstash (a log ingestion and processing pipeline), and Kibana (a visualization tool for log search analytics). They also used open source Kafka to queue logs into the self-managed ELK cluster.

            To prepare the Cloudflare logs for ingestion into the ELK cluster, HubSpot had created a pipeline that would download the Cloudflare logs from S3 into a Kafka pipeline, apply some transformations on the data, insert into a second Kafka queue whereby Logstash would then process the data, and output it into the Elasticsearch cluster. The security team would then use Kibana to interact with the Cloudflare log data to triage DDoS attacks as they occur.

            Managing an Elasticsearch cluster dedicated to this Cloudflare/DDoS mitigation use case presented a number of continuing challenges. It required constant maintenance by members of the HubSpot Elasticsearch team. The growth in log data from HubSpot’s rapid customer base expansion was compounded by the fact that DDoS attacks themselves inherently generate a massive spike in log data while they are occurring. Unfortunately, these spikes often triggered instability in the Elastic cluster when they were needed most, during the firefighting and mitigation process. 

            Cost was also a concern. Although Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana open source applications can be acquired at no cost, the sheer volume of existing and incoming log data from Cloudflare required HubSpot to manage a very large and increasingly expensive ELK cluster. Infrastructure costs for storage, compute, and networking to support the growing cluster grew faster than the data. And certainly, the human capital in time spent monitoring, maintaining, and keeping the cluster stable and secure was significant. The team constantly had discussions about whether to add more compute to the cluster or reduce data retention time. To accommodate their Cloudflare volume, which was exceeding 10TB/day and growing, HubSpot was forced to limit retention to just five days. 

            The Data Lake Way

            Like many companies whose business solely or significantly relies on online commerce, HubSpot wanted a simple, scalable, and cost-effective way to handle the continued growth of their security log data volume.

            They were wary of solutions that might ultimately force them to reduce data retention to a point where the data wasn’t useful. They also needed to be able to keep up with huge data throughput at a low latency so that when it hit Amazon S3, HubSpot could quickly and efficiently firefight DDoS attacks.

            HubSpot decided to rethink its approach to security log analysis and management. They embraced a new approach that consisted primarily of these elements:

            - Using a fully managed log analysis serviceso internal teams wouldn’thave to manage the scaling of ingestion or query side components and could eliminate compute resources

            - Leveraging the Kibana UIthat the security team is already proficient with

            - Turning their S3 cloud object storage into a searchable analytic data lakeso Cloudflare CDN and other security-related log data could be easily cleaned, prepared, and analyzed in place, without data movement or schema management

            By doing this, HubSpot can effectively tackle DDoS challenges. They significantly cut their costs and can easily handle the 10TB+/day flow of Cloudflare log data, without impacting performance.

            HubSpot no longer has to sacrifice data retention time. They can retain Cloudflare log data for much longer than 5 days, without worrying about costs, and can dynamically scale resources so there is no need to invest in compute that’s not warranted. This is critical for long-tail DDoS protection planning and execution, and enables HubSpot to easily meet SLAs for DDoS attack response time.

            Data lake-based approaches also enable IT organizations to unify all their security data sources in one place for better and more efficient overall protection. Products that empower data lake thinking allow  new workloads to be added on the fly with no provisioning or configuration required, helping organizations gain even greater value from log data for security use cases. For instance, in addition to storing and analyzing externally generated log data within their S3 cloud object storage, HubSpot will be storing and monitoring internal security log data to enhance insider threat detection and prevention.

            Incorporating a data lake philosophy into your security strategy is like putting log analysis on steroids. You can store and process exponentially more data volume and types, protect better, and spend much less.

            About the author: Dave Armlin is VP of Customer Success and Solutions Architecture at ChaosSearch. Dave has spent his 25+ year career building, deploying, and evangelizing secure enterprise and cloud-based architectures.

            Copyright 2010 Respective Author at Infosec Island
            • August 26th 2020 at 06:49

            Malicious Excel Sheet with a NULL VT Score, (Wed, Aug 26th)

            Just a quick diary today to demonstrate, once again, that relying only on a classic antivirus solution is not sufficient in 2020. I found a sample that just has a very nice score of 0/57 on VT. Yes, according to all AV's the file is safe. Really? If it matched one of my hunting rules, there is for sure something suspicious inside. Let's have a look at it.
            • August 26th 2020 at 06:03

            COVID-19 Aside, Data Protection Regulations March Ahead: What To Consider

            COVID-19 may be complicating organizations’ cybersecurity efforts as they shift more of their operations online, but that doesn’t lessen the pressure to comply with government regulations that are placing increased scrutiny on data privacy.

            Despite the pandemic, companies are obligated to comply with many laws governing data security and privacy, including the two most familiar to consumers -- the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). With CCPA enforcement set to begin July 1, organizations’ regulatory responsibilities just got tougher.

            The CCPA is similar to GDPR in that it is designed to improve privacy rights and consumer protection, giving Californians the right to know when their personal data is being collected, whether their personal data is being disclosed or sold, and to whom. It allows them to access their personal data, say no to its sale, and request that a business delete it.

            The law applies to any business with gross revenues over $25 million and that has personal information on 50,000 or more California citizens, whether the company is based in California or not. Violations can result in stiff fines.

            Like GDPR before it, CCPA makes data security and regulatory compliance more of a challenge and requires businesses to create a number of new processes to fully understand what data they have stored in their networks, who has access to it, and how to protect it.

            The challenge is especially rigorous for large organizations that collect and store high volumes of data, which is often spread across multiple databases and environments. And CCPA’s enforcement date comes as companies have already been scrambling to deal with COVID-19’s impact – enabling remote workforces while guarding against hackers trying to exploit fresh openings to infiltrate networks.

            Here are four things that every business should consider in maintaining a rigid security posture to protect its most important asset – its data – and meet rising regulatory requirements:

            1.    Protect headcount.

            We may be in an economic downturn, but now is not the time to lay off anyone with data security and privacy responsibility. Oftentimes when a company is forced to fire people, the pain is spread equally across the organization – say 10 percent for each department. Because the CISO organization (as well as the rest of IT) are usually considered “general and administrative” overhead, the target on its back can be just as large.

            In the current environment, security staff certainly needs to be exempt from cuts. Most security teams have little to no overlap – there is a networking expert, an endpoint specialist, someone responsible for cloud, etc. And one person who focuses on data and application security, if you’re lucky enough to have this as a dedicated resource.

            The data and application security role has never been more vital, both to safeguard the organization as more data and applications move online and to handle data security regulatory compliance, an onus companies continue to carry despite the pandemic. This person should be considered untouchable in any resource action.

            2.    Don’t drop the ball on breach notification.

            It’s a question mark to what extent officials are aggressively conducting audits to vigorously enforce these laws during the pandemic. However, I would advise companies to assume that stringent enforcement remains the norm.

            This is another reason that fostering strong security is all the more crucial now. For example, companies are still required to notify the relevant governing body if it suffers a breach. This initiates a process involving its IT, security, and legal teams, and any other relevant departments. Who wants that distraction anytime, and especially during a global crisis?

            Beyond regulatory factors, companies simply owe it to their customers to handle their data responsibly. This was of course true before COVID-19 and CCPA enforcement, but its importance has intensified. A Yahoo-style scandal now could cause reputational damage that the company never recovers from.

            3.    Ask the critical questions that regulations raise.

            Where is personal data stored? Companies must scan their networks and servers to find any unknown databases, identify sensitive data using dictionary and pattern-matching methods, and pore through database content for sensitive information such as credit card numbers, email addresses, and system credentials

            Which data has been added or updated within the last 12 months? You need to monitor all user database access -- on-premises or in the cloud -- and retain all the audit logs so you can identify the user by role or account type, understand whether the data accessed was sensitive, and detect non-compliant access behaviors.

            Is there any unauthorized data access or exfiltration? Using machine learning and other automation technologies, you need to automatically uncover unusual data activity, uncovering threats before they become breaches.

            Are we pseudonymizing data? Data masking techniques safeguard sensitive data from exposure in non-production or DevOps environments by substituting fictional data for sensitive data, reducing the risk of sensitive data exposure.

            4.    Assume more regulation will come.

            As digital transformation makes more and more data available everywhere, security and privacy concerns keep growing. One can assume that GDPR and CCPA may just be the tip of the regulatory iceberg. Similar initiatives in Wisconsin, Nevada, and other states show that it behooves organizations to get their data protection houses very much in order. Compliance will need to be a top priority for organizations for many years into the future.

            About the author: Terry Ray has global responsibility for Imperva's technology strategy. He was the first U.S.-based Imperva employee and has been with the company for 14 years. He works with organizations around the world to help them discover and protect sensitive data, minimize risk for regulatory governance, set data security strategy and implement best practices.

            Copyright 2010 Respective Author at Infosec Island
            • August 26th 2020 at 05:53

            Dharma Ransomware, Zoom Crash, & Elon Musk's Neuralink - SWN #59

            By paul@securityweekly.com

            This week, Dr. Doug talks Zoom crash, Apple insecurities, Dharma, MITRE, Elon Musk is about to eat your brain, and Jason Wood returns with Expert Commentary on Ex-Uber chief security officer charged, accused of covering up theft of personal info from databases by hackers!

             

            Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/swn59

            Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/swn for all the latest episodes!

             

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            • August 25th 2020 at 22:00

            Set It & Forget It - BSW #185

            By paul@securityweekly.com

            This week, we welcome Ed Amoroso, CEO at TAG Cyber, to discuss Disrupting Traditional Security Research & Advisory! In the Leadership and Communications section, Why Do Your Employees Resist New Tech?, Who’s Responsible for a Safer Cloud?, Publicly Reported Data Breaches Stand at its Lowest Point in 5 Years, and more!

             

            Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/bsw185

            Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/bsw for all the latest episodes!

             

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            • August 25th 2020 at 21:00

            Removing Open Source Visibility Challenges for Security Operations Teams

            By Trend Micro

             

            Identifying security threats early can be difficult, especially when you’re running multiple security tools across disparate business units and cloud projects. When it comes to protecting cloud-native applications, separating legitimate risks from noise and distractions is often a real challenge.

             

            That’s why forward-thinking organizations look at things a little differently. They want to help their application developers and security operations (SecOps) teams implement unified strategies for optimal protection. This is where a newly expanded partnership from Trend Micro and Snyk can help.

             

            Dependencies create risk

             

            In today’s cloud-native development streams, the insatiable need for faster iterations and time-to-market can impact both downstream and upstream workflows. As a result, code reuse and dependence on third-party libraries has grown, and with it the potential security, compliance and reputational risk organizations are exposing themselves to.

             

            Just how much risk is associated with open source software today? According to Snyk research, vulnerabilities in open source software have increased 2.5x in the past three years. https://info.snyk.io/sooss-report-2020. What’s more, a recent report claimed to have detected a 430% year-on-year increase in attacks targeting open source components, with the end goal of infecting the software supply chain. While open source code is therefore being used to accelerate time-to-market, security teams are often unaware of the scope and impact this can have on their environments.

             

            Managing open source risk

             

            This is why cloud security leader Trend Micro, and Snyk, a specialist in developer-first open source security, have extended their partnership with a new joint solution. It’s designed to help security teams manage the risk of open source vulnerabilities from the moment code is introduced, without interrupting the software delivery process.

             

            This ambitious achievement helps improve security for your operations teams without changing the way your developer teams work. Trend Micro and Snyk are addressing open source risks by simplifying a bottom-up approach to risk mitigation that brings together developer and SecOps teams under one unified solution. It combines state-of-the-art security technology with collaborative features and processes to eliminate the security blind spots that can impact development lifecycles and business outcomes.

             

            Available as part of Trend Micro Cloud One, the new solution being currently co-developed with Snyk will:

            • Scan all code repositories for vulnerabilities using Snyk’s world-class vulnerability scanning and database
            • Bridge the organizational gap between DevOps & SecOps, to help influence secure DevOps practices
            • Deliver continuous visibility of code vulnerabilities, from the earliest code to code running in production
            • Integrate seamlessly into the complete Trend Micro Cloud One security platform

            CloudOne

             

             

            This unified solution closes the gap between security teams and developers, providing immediate visibility across modern cloud architectures. Trend Micro and Snyk continue to deliver world class protection that fits the cloud-native development and security requirements of today’s application-focused organizations.

             

             

             

            The post Removing Open Source Visibility Challenges for Security Operations Teams appeared first on .

            Keep An Eye on LOLBins, (Tue, Aug 25th)

            Don't misread, I won't talk about "lolcats" today but "LOLBins" or "Living Off The Land Binaries". All operating systems provide a rich toolbox to achieve multiple day-to-day tasks like maintenance of the certificates, installation of patches and applications, management of files, and many more. Those tools are installed by default and available to all users without specific access rights (most of the time). Also very important, they are signed by the operating system so they are usually considered safe by default. 
            • August 25th 2020 at 07:25

            Heavy Pressure - ASW #119

            By paul@securityweekly.com

            This week, we welcome Sundar Krish, CEO & Co-Founder at Sken.ai, to talk about DevOps-First Application Security For Mid-Markets! In the Application Security News, The Confused Mailman: Sending SPF and DMARC passing mail as any Gmail or G Suite customer, ATM makers Diebold and NCR deploy fixes for 'deposit forgery' attacks, Control Flow Guard for Clang/LLVM and Rust, Fuzzing Services Help Push Technology into DevOps Pipeline, and 7 Things to Make DevSecOps a Reality!

             

            Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/asw119

            Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes!

             

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            • August 24th 2020 at 22:00

            Tracking A Malware Campaign Through VT, (Mon, Aug 24th)

            During the weekend, I found several samples from the same VBA macro. The only difference between all the samples was the URL to fetch a malicious PE file. I have a specific YARA rule to search for embedded PowerShell strings and my rule fired several times with the same pattern and similar size. Here is the pattern:
            • August 24th 2020 at 07:34

            Small Challenge: A Simple Word Maldoc - Part 4, (Sun, Aug 23rd)

            I diary entry "Small Challenge: A Simple Word Maldoc - Part 2", we used my tool numbers-to-string.py to convert and decode the numbers in malicious VBA macro code to a BAT command.
            • August 23rd 2020 at 19:22

            Remote Desktop (TCP/3389) and Telnet (TCP/23), What might they have in Common? , (Sat, Aug 22nd)

            I'm glad you asked. I'm always interested in trends and reviewing the activity capture by my honeypot over this past week, it shows that no matter what port the RDP service is listening on, a specific RDP string (Cookie: mstshash=) might be sent to any ports to find out if it is listing for this service. Here are some examples: 
            • August 22nd 2020 at 20:25

            Hacking Naked & Not Afraid - PSW #663

            By paul@securityweekly.com

            This week, we welcome back Harry Sverdlove, Founder and CTO of Edgewise, and Dan Perkins, Principal Product Manager at ZScaler, to talk about Protecting Critical Infrastructure and Workloads In Hybrid Clouds! In our second segment, it's the Security News! We'll be talking about how New Microsoft Defender ATP Capability Blocks Malicious Behaviors, Voice Phishers Targeting Corporate VPNs, IBM finds vulnerability in IoT chips present in billions of devices, Marriott faces London lawsuit over vast data breach, US firm accused of secretly installing location tracking SDK in mobile apps, and Disrupting a power grid with cheap equipment hidden in a coffee cup! In our final segment, we air two pre recorded interviews from Security Weekly's Virtual Hacker Summer Camp, with Corey Thuen, Co-Founder of Gravwell, and Deral Heiland, Principal Security Researcher for IoT at Rapid7!

             

            Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/psw663

            Visit https://securityweekly.com/edgewise to learn more about them!

            To learn more, visit: https://www.gravwell.io/summercamp2020

            Visit https://securityweekly.com/rapid7 to learn more about them!

             

            Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/psw for all the latest episodes!

            Visit https://securityweekly.com/acm to sign up for a demo or buy our AI Hunter!

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            • August 21st 2020 at 21:00

            Locate X, FritzFrog Botnet, & 'Spear Vishing' - Wrap Up - SWN #58

            By paul@securityweekly.com

            This week, Dr. Doug White talks 3D keys, Emotet returns, FritzFron, Voice Phishing, ICS, coffee cup magnets, and how the Secret Service is buying your location data!

             

            Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/swn58

            Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/swn for all the latest episodes!

             

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            • August 21st 2020 at 20:40

            This Week in Security News: Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative Celebrates 15 Years and 24 Million Customers Affected after Experian Data Breach

            By Jon Clay (Global Threat Communications)

            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, read how the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) has awarded more than $25 million in bounty rewards to security researchers over the past decade and a half as it celebrates its 15th birthday. Also, learn about a new data breach from Experian affecting 24 million customers in South Africa.

            Read on:

            Bug Bounty Platform ZDI Awarded $25M to Researchers Over the Past 15 Years

            Bug bounty platform pioneer Zero-Day Initiative (ZDI) awarded more than $25 million in bounty rewards to security researchers over the past decade and a half. In an anniversary post celebrating its 15-year-old birthday, ZDI said the bounty rewards represent payments to more than 10,000 security researchers for more than 7,500 successful bug submissions.

            24 Million Customers Affected after Experian Data Breach

            Leading consumer credit reporting agency Experian is in news again for a data breach. This week, a fraudster contacted the agency posing as a representative of a ‘legitimate client’ and obtained personal details of its South African customers. The company notes that it is an ‘isolated incident in South Africa involving a fraudulent data inquiry.’

            Connected Security Solutions Helps City of Tyler’s CIO to Reduce Costs While Enabling Delivery of Enhanced Community & Public Safety Services

            Benny Yazdanpanahi, CIO for the City of Tyler, knows that a highly secure IT environment is essential to the city’s continued success. To accomplish their security goals with limited resources and staff, Tyler’s leaders have been collaborating with Trend Micro for several years. Read this blog to learn more about how Trend Micro has strengthened the city’s security posture and empowers the IT team to focus on serving the community.

            Over 94% of Cyber Attacks Involve Email: VP of Trend Micro’s Cyber Security

            Greg Young, vice president of cybersecurity at Trend Micro, joins BNN Bloomberg to discuss his take on the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) attack and Trend Micro’s new report on security risks for remote working since the pandemic lockdown. Watch the video to learn more.

            The Cybersecurity Blind Spots of Connected Cars

            With more people relying on connected car technologies for safety, accessibility, and infotainment—and with connected cars producing up to 30 terabytes of data each day—it’s important to keep connected cars protected against a range of ever-evolving risks and threats. Trend Micro’s recent research paper offers an examination of the cybersecurity blind spots of connected cars to help developers and manufacturers create secure and smart vehicles.

            How Unsecure gRPC Implementations Can Compromise APIs, Applications

            In this blog, Trend Micro discusses the security pitfalls that developers might face when shifting to gRPC and implementing gRPC in their projects. Because secure gRPC APIs play a pivotal role in overall application security, Trend Micro provides recommendations on how to protect gRPC implementations from threats and mitigate against risks.

            Human Error Threatens Cloud Security

            Virtually all security professionals believe that human error could put the security of cloud data at risk, according to new research published this week. A survey commissioned by Tripwire and carried out last month by Dimensional Research found that 93% of security professionals were concerned that human error could result in the accidental exposure of their cloud data.

            Influential Facebook Brand Pages Stolen via Credential Phishing

            Trend Micro has observed an increase in the number of compromised Facebook pages of influential personalities since June. Through an analysis of the surge, we found fake Facebook accounts posting notification messages on pages allegedly hacked with an attached link. The fake accounts also steal the owner or admins’ credentials to sell the page, change the details and name, and/or disguise the page to make another phishing account. 

            Malicious Docker Hub Container Images Used for Cryptocurrency Mining

            Increased adoption of containers has given rise to a range of potential threats to DevOps pipelines. Many of the attacks Trend Micro observed involved the abuse of container images to carry out malicious functionalities. For Docker-related threats, Trend Micro recently encountered an attack where the threat actor uploaded two malicious images to Docker Hub for cryptocurrency mining.

            How Hackers Bled 118 Bitcoins Out of Covid Researchers in U.S.

            Hackers locked down several servers used by the epidemiology and biostatistics department at the University of California at San Francisco and wanted a $3 million ransom to give them the keys. Transcripts reveal University of California at San Francisco’s weeklong negotiation to free its ransomware-locked servers. The haggling worked, sort of.

            Threat Recap: Darkside, Crysis, Negasteal, Coinminer

            In the past few weeks, Trend Micro has spotted notable developments for different types of threats. For ransomware, a new family named Darkside surfaced, while operators behind Crysis/Dharma released a hacking toolkit. For messaging threats, a targeted email campaign was used to propagate Negasteal/Agent Tesla. For fileless threats, a coinminer was seen bundled with legitimate applications.

            Diving into End-to-End Deep Learning for Cybersecurity

            New methods for detecting threats using AI challenges the need for human input and involves end-to-end deep learning solutions, which are being touted as the next big thing in malware detection. In the pipeline of such solutions, expert handcrafted input is replaced with ones provided by automated processes. The absence of expert handcrafted input gives rise to the question of whether human input is still relevant in the process of developing an efficient AI-powered cybersecurity solution.

            Black Hat Trip Report – Trend Micro

            At Black Hat USA 2020, Trend Micro presented two important talks on vulnerabilities in Industrial IoT (IIoT). The first discussed weaknesses in proprietary languages used by industrial robots, and the second talked about vulnerabilities in protocol gateways. Any organization using robots, and any organization running a multi-vendor OT environment, should be aware of these attack surfaces. In this blog, find a summary of the key points from each talk.

            Have you seen an uptick in hacked Facebook pages recently? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.

            The post This Week in Security News: Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative Celebrates 15 Years and 24 Million Customers Affected after Experian Data Breach appeared first on .

            Snake Oil - ESW #195

            By paul@securityweekly.com

            This week, first we talk Enterprise News, discussing how ThreatConnect Integrates with Microsoft Graph Security API to Strengthen Security Automation, Sectigo unveils Sectigo Quantum Labs to help orgs prepare for quantum computers, Trend Micro to offer comprehensive network and endpoint protection for IoT and 5G private networks, Thycotic Releases Thycotic Identity Bridge, and more! In our second segment, we air two pre recorded interviews from Security Weekly Virtual Hacker Summer Camp with Chris Morales from Vectra, and Anton Chuvakin from Google Cloud & Matt Hastings from Tanium! In our final segment, we air two more precorded interviews from Virtual Hacker Summer Camp with Dan DeCloss from PlexTrac, and Gabe Gumbs from Spirion!

             

            Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw195

            To get one month of PlxTrac for free, visit: https://securityweekly.com/plextrac

            Visit https://securityweekly.com/spirionbh to learn more about them!

            Visit https://securityweekly.com/tanium to learn more about them!

            To see how Vectra can detect attacks in SaaS like Office 365, please visit: https://www.vectra.ai/o365

             

            Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes!

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            • August 20th 2020 at 21:00

            Office 365 Mail Forwarding Rules (and other Mail Rules too), (Thu, Aug 20th)

            If you haven't heard, SANS suffered a "Data Incident" this summer, the disclosure was released on August 11.  Details can be found in several locations:
            • August 20th 2020 at 15:43

            Connected Security Solutions Helps City of Tyler’s CIO to Reduce Costs While Enabling Delivery of Enhanced Community & Public Safety Services

            By Trend Micro

            “We’re here to serve” is Benny Yazdanpanahi’s motto as CIO for City of Tyler located in Texas. Supporting a population of approximately 107,000, Yazdanpanahi’s vision for his city relies on the use of data to deliver exceptional services to citizens, today and into the future.

             

            Since joining the city nearly 19 years ago, Yazdanpanahi has continually challenged himself and his small IT team to stay agile and to keep the needs of the city’s citizens at the forefront. Today, Yazdanpanahi and his team use IT systems to make more informed decisions, enhance community services, and improve public safety.

             

            “Our citizens, and especially the younger generation, want immediate access to information and online services,” said Yazdanpanahi. “We want to keep pace with the latest technologies, not only for citizens but also to make our city employees more effective and efficient.”

            But Yazdanpanahi knows that a highly secure IT environment is essential to their continued success. “Many US cities have been hacked, so security is on top of everyone’s mind. As a city, we want to provide great services, but we have to provide them in a highly secure manner.”

            To accomplish those security goals with limited resources and staff, Tyler’s leaders have been collaborating with Trend Micro for several years. The cybersecurity giant has brought a hands-on approach and an ability to stay ahead of the threats. Their adaptability to the threat landscape strengthens the city’s security posture and empowers the IT team to focus on serving the community.

             

            The city has been able to stay secure without additional staff and resources. City employees don’t spend time resolving IT issues and improve their productivity to focus on things that mater for the city.

             

            “If you don’t collaborate with a partner that’s highly experienced in the security field, you can easily get blindsided,” said Yazdanpanahi. “We need someone there, day in and out, focused on security. Trend Micro knows how to protect cities like us. They provide the kind of north, south, east, and west protection that makes my job easier and allows us to use our data to accomplish new, exciting things for our city.”

             

            Read more about Benny’s journey to securing the city:

            https://www.trendmicro.com/en_ca/about/customer-stories/city-of-tyler.html

             

             

            The post Connected Security Solutions Helps City of Tyler’s CIO to Reduce Costs While Enabling Delivery of Enhanced Community & Public Safety Services appeared first on .

            Keys to the Castle - SCW #39

            By paul@securityweekly.com

            This week, we welcome Matt Tarr, Principal Solutions Engineer at CyberArk! He talks about how his 15 years in Systems and Sales Engineering roles adds a layer of experience at CyberArk. Matt will then explain how CyberArk provides Security for the Heart of the Enterprise by adding a layer of security around privileged accounts. Matt will also discuss the overarching importance of securing privileged access throughout the organization as it relates to the overall security posture and compliance requirements!

             

            Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/scw39

            Visit https://securityweekly.com/cyberark to learn more about them!

            Endpoint Privilege Manager Free Trial: https://www.cyberark.com/products/privileged-account-security-solution/endpoint-privilege-manager/endpoint-privilege-manager-free-trial/

            Blueprint for PAM Implementation: https://www.cyberark.com/blueprint/

             

            Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/scw for all the latest episodes!

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            • August 19th 2020 at 21:00

            Example of Word Document Delivering Qakbot, (Wed, Aug 19th)

            Qakbot[1] is back on stage at the moment! Many security companies already reported some peaks of activity around this malware. On my side, I also spotted several samples. The one that I'll cover today has been reported by one of our readers (thanks to him) and deserves a quick analysis of the obfuscation used by the attackers. It is not available on VT at this time (SHA256:507312fe58352d75db057aee454dafcdce2cdac59c0317255e30a43bfa5dffbc)
            • August 19th 2020 at 05:13

            'EmoCrash' Exploit, IcedID, & TeamTNT - SWN #57

            By paul@securityweekly.com

            This week, Dr. Doug talks Russel Kirsch, Carol Baskin, IcedID, Emotet, TeamTNT, and the CRA! Jason Wood returns for Expert Commentary on how the Secret Service reportedly paid to access phone location data!

             

            Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/swn57

            Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/swn for all the latest episodes!

             

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            • August 18th 2020 at 20:30

            The Juicy Secrets - BSW #184

            By paul@securityweekly.com

            This week, we welcome Jeff Costlow, Deputy CISO at ExtraHop, to discuss the challenges of detecting and patching Ripple20! Ripple 20 is a series of zero-day vulnerabilities in a widely used low-level TCP/IP software library developed by Treck, Inc. In the Leadership and Communications section, CISOs say new problem solving strategies required, How Remote Work is Reshuffling Your Security Priorities and Investments, Security Jobs With a Future -- And Ones on the Way Out and more!

             

            Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/bsw184

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            • August 18th 2020 at 16:30

            Black Hat Trip Report – Trend Micro

            By William "Bill" Malik (CISA VP Infrastructure Strategies)

            At Black Hat USA 2020, Trend Micro presented two important talks on vulnerabilities in Industrial IoT (IIoT). The first discussed weaknesses in proprietary languages used by industrial robots, and the second talked about vulnerabilities in protocol gateways. Any organization using robots, and any organization running a multi-vendor OT environment, should be aware of these attack surfaces. Here is a summary of the key points from each talk.

            Rogue Automation

            Presented at Black Hat, Wednesday, August 5. https://www.blackhat.com/us-20/briefings/schedule/index.html#otrazor-static-code-analysis-for-vulnerability-discovery-in-industrial-automation-scripts-19523 and the corresponding research paper is available at https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/internet-of-things/unveiling-the-hidden-risks-of-industrial-automation-programming

            Industrial robots contain powerful, fully capable computers. Unlike most contemporary computers, though, industrial robots lack basic information security capabilities. First, at the architectural level, they lack any mechanism to isolate certain instructions or memory. That is, any program can alter any piece of storage, or run any instruction. In traditional mainframes, no application could access, change, or run any code in another application or in the operating system. Even smartphone operating systems have privilege separation. An application cannot access a smartphone’s camera, for instance, without being specifically permitted to do so. Industrial robots allow any code to read, access, modify, or run any device connected to the system, including the clock. That eliminates data integrity in industrial robots and invalidates any audit of malfunctions; debugging becomes exceptionally difficult.

            Industrial robots do not use conventional programming languages, like C or Python. Instead, each manufacturer provides its own proprietary programming language. That means a specialist using one industrial robot cannot use another vendor’s machine without training. There are no common information security tools for code validation, since vendors do not develop products for fragmented markets. These languages describe programs telling the robot how to move. They also support reading and writing data, analyzing and modifying files, opening and closing input/output devices, getting and sending information over a network, and accessing and changing status indicators on connected sensors. Once a program starts to run on an industrial robot, it can do anything any fully functional computer can do, without any security controls at all. Contemporary industrial robots do not have any countermeasures against this threat.

            Most industrial robot owners do not write their own programs. The supply chain for industrial robot programs involves many third-party actors. See Figure 1 below for a simplified diagram. In each community, users of a particular vendor’s languages share code informally, and rely on user’s groups for hints and tips to solve common tasks. These forums rarely discuss security measures. Many organizations hire third-party contractors to implement particular processes, but there are no security certifications relevant to these proprietary languages. Most programmers learned their trade in an air-gapped world, and still rely on a perimeter which separates the safe users and code inside from the untrusted users and code outside. The languages offer no code scanners to identify potential weaknesses, such as not validating inputs, modifying system services, altering device state, or replacing system functions. The machines do not have a software asset management capability, so knowing where the components of a running program originated from is uncertain.

            Figure 1: The Supply Chain for Industrial Robot Programming

            All is not lost – not quite. In the short term, Trend Micro Research has developed a static code analysis tool called OTRazor, which examines robotic code for unsafe code patterns. This was demonstrated during our session at Black Hat.

            Over time, vendors will have to introduce basic security checks, such as authentication, authorization, data integrity, and data confidentiality. The vendors will also have to introduce architectural restrictions – for instance, an application should be able to read the clock but not change it.. Applications should not be able to modify system files, programs, or data, nor should they be able to modify other applications. These changes will take years to arrive in the market, however. Until then, CISOs should audit industrial robot programs for vulnerabilities, and segment networks including industrial robots, and apply baseline security programs, as they do now, for both internally developed and procured software.

            Protocol Gateway Vulnerabilities

            Presented at Black Hat, Wednesday, August 5, https://www.blackhat.com/us-20/briefings/schedule/index.html#industrial-protocol-gateways-under-analysis-20632, with the corresponding research paper available here: https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/internet-of-things/lost-in-translation-when-industrial-protocol-translation-goes-wrong.

            Industry 4.0 leverages the power of automation alongside the rich layer of software process control tools, particularly Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and its bigger cousin, Supply Chain Management (SCM). By bringing together dynamic industrial process control with hyper-efficient “just-in-time” resource scheduling, manufacturers can achieve minimum cost, minimum delay, and optimal production. But these integration projects require that IIoT devices speak with other technology, including IIoT from other manufacturers and legacy equipment. Since each equipment or device may have their own communication protocol, Industry 4.0 relies heavily on protocol converters.

            Protocol converters are simple, highly efficient, low-cost devices that translate one protocol into another. Protocol converters are ubiquitous, but they lack any basic security capabilities – authentication, authorization, data integrity or data confidentiality – and they sit right in the middle of the OT network. Attackers can subvert protocol converters to hijack the communication or change configuration. An attacker can disable a safety thresholds, generate a denial of service attack, and misdirect an attached piece of equipment.

            In the course of this research, we found nine vulnerabilities and are working with vendors to remediate the issues. Through our TXOne subsidiary, we are developing rules and intelligence specifically for IIoT message traffic, which are then embedded in our current network security offerings, providing administrators with better visibility and the ability to enforce security policies in their OT networks.

            Protocol converters present a broad attack surface, as they have limited native information security capabilities. They don’t validate senders or receivers, nor do they scan or verify message contents. Due to their crucial position in the middle of the OT network, they are an exceptionally appealing target for malicious actors. Organizations using protocol converters – especially those on the way to Industry 4.0 – must address these weak but critical components of their evolving infrastructure.

            What do you think? Let me know in the comments below or @WilliamMalikTM

            The post Black Hat Trip Report – Trend Micro appeared first on .

            Using API's to Track Attackers, (Tue, Aug 18th)

            For a few days, I’m keeping an eye on suspicious Python code posted on VT. We all know that VBA, JavaScript, Powershell, etc are attacker’s best friends but Python is also a good candidate to perform malicious activities on a computer. Even if Python isn't installed by default, it’s easy to “compile” a Python script to make it portable via a PE file. There exists multiple tools to achieve this, my favorite being 'pyinstaller':
            • August 18th 2020 at 06:52

            ISC Blocked, (Tue, Aug 18th)

            This morning at the ISC was a bit more interesting than usual.  As I was skimming through the emails I found the usual great submissions from readers, but what got my attention was an email from Iztok, and others, indicating that the ISC was inaccessible because the ISC site was placed on a blocklist by Cisco Talos.
            • August 18th 2020 at 00:21

            Password Reuse Strikes Again!, (Mon, Aug 17th)

            Over the weekend the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), the Canadian equivalent of the U.S. IRS, shut down their online accounts due to account compromises which began at least a couple of weeks. Once the bad guys had access to the accounts they would change the users email address and banking information and attempt to apply for or redirect COVID-19 benefits.  
            • August 17th 2020 at 23:12

            Positive Drift - ASW #118

            By paul@securityweekly.com

            This week, we welcome back Cesar Rodriguez, Head of Developer Advocacy at Accurics, to discuss Immutable Security For Immutable Infrastructure! In the Application Security News, Microsoft Bug Bounty Programs Year in Review: $13.7M in Rewards, In-band key negotiation issue in AWS S3 Crypto SDK for golang, Re VoL TE attack can decrypt 4G (LTE) calls to eavesdrop on conversations, Hardware Security Is Hard: How Hardware Boundaries Define Platform Security, How to make your security team more business savvy, and more!

             

            Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/asw118

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            • August 17th 2020 at 21:30

            Small Challenge: A Simple Word Maldoc - Part 3, (Sun, Aug 16th)

            In the solution I presented last weekend for "Small Challenge: A Simple Word Maldoc", I forgot to address one point when converting and decoding the numbers in the VBA code with my tool numbers-to-string.py, you can see it here:
            • August 16th 2020 at 09:21

            Wireshark 3.2.6 Released, (Sat, Aug 15th)

            Wireshark version 3.2.6 was released.
            • August 15th 2020 at 20:02

            Tyler's Dieting Tips - PSW #662

            By paul@securityweekly.com

            This week, we welcome back Mike Nichols, Head of Product at Elastic Security, to discuss Why Elastic Is Making Endpoint Security 'Free And Open'! In our second segment, it's the Security News! We'll be talking about how Amazon Alexa One-Click Attack Can Divulge Personal Data, Researcher Publishes Patch Bypass for vBulletin 0-Day, Threat actors managed to control 23% of Tor Exit nodes, a Half a Million IoT Passwords were Leaked, Hackers Are Exploiting a 5-Alarm Bug in Networking Equipment, and a Zoom zero-day flaw allows code execution on victim's Windows machine! In our final segment, we air a pre recorded interview with Michael Assraf, CEO and Co-Founder at Vicarius, to talk about Vulnerability Rich - Contextually Blind!

             

            Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/psw662

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            • August 14th 2020 at 21:00

            ReVoLTE, Tor Exit Nodes, & Drovorub Malware - Wrap Up - SWN #56

            By paul@securityweekly.com

            This week, Dr. Doug wraps up Fancy Bear, Alexa flaws, 747's fly with 3.5 inch floppies, Drovorub, Volte/Revolte LTE hacks, and how Cybersecurity Earnings are up!

             

            Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/swn56

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            • August 14th 2020 at 19:28
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