Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

September 2022

Cyber Risk Retainers: Not Another Insurance Policy

The costs associated with a cyberattack can be significant, especially if a company does not have an Incident Response plan that addresses risk. The one-two punch of a cyberattack can be devastating. There is the breach and then the related mitigation costs. Implementing a comprehensive Incident Response (IR) game plan into a worst-case-scenario should not be a post-breach scramble. And when that IR strategy includes insurance, it also must address a business’s level of cyber risk.

What is a DDoS Attack?

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is an attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server. This is done by overwhelming the server, service or network being targeted with a flood of internet traffic, ultimately slowing the server down or causing it to crash completely. Think of it as being like a traffic jam, which causes all the cars on a road to slow down or come to a stop.

CrowdStrike Falcon Platform Identifies Supply Chain Attack via a Trojanized Comm100 Chat Installer

The market-leading CrowdStrike Falcon® platform, applying a combination of advanced machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI) and deep analytics across the trillions of security events captured in the CrowdStrike Security Cloud, has identified a new supply chain attack pattern during the installation of a chat based customer engagement platform.

How to Detect Pass-the-Ticket Attacks

In our first post of the series, we looked at ways to detect pass-the-hash attacks, which exploit NTLM authentication within an Active Directory domain. Pass-the-ticket is a related attack that which leverages Kerberos authentication to perform lateral movement. In this post, we will dive into how the pass-the-ticket attack works and what you can do to detect it.

DDoS Attack Cost Bandwidth.com Nearly $12 Million- How to Protect Your Site Against One?

Recent years have witnessed a sharp surge in DDoS attacks, and the cost of attack is also steadily increasing. SMEs spend, on average, $120k per attack. As more and more businesses move to the cloud, it is essential to be aware of the risks associated with DDoS attacks. The cost of DDoS attacks can affect your company’s bottom line as it can shut down its infrastructure, applications, communications, and other vital services.

Popular Cryptocurrency Exchange dYdX Has Had Its NPM Account Hacked

San Francisco-based dYdX, a widely used decentralized crypto exchange with roughly $1 billion in daily trades, has had its NPM account hacked in a software supply chain attack that was likely aimed at gaining access to the company’s production systems. The company, founded by ex-Coinbase and Uber engineer Antonio Juliano, dYdX has raised a total of $87 million in funding over 4 rounds and is backed by some powerhouse investors, including Paradigm, a16z, and Polychain. Here is what we know.

Uber data breach 2022: How the hacker annoyed his way into the network (and our learnings)

Illustration by jcomp On Sept. 15, Uber Technologies Inc. was breached by an 18-year-old. The hacker purchased an employee’s stolen credentials from the dark web and pushed a flood of multi-factor authentication (MFA) requests and fake IT messages to them in hopes of getting into their account. Irritated by the non-stop pop-ups, the employee caved in and approved the request, unwittingly setting off a cyberattack.

Explaining the csurf vulnerability: CSRF attacks on all versions

On September 11th, 2022, Snyk published a vulnerability report for the popular CSRF token management csurf npm package. The vulnerability impacts all known versions, which are currently yielding more than 400,000 downloads per week. The vulnerability report is based on the public disclosure by security consultant Adrian Tiron and their write-up on the Fortbridge blog.

What We Can Learn from the 'Prompt-bomb' Uber Hack

It was the worst-case scenario for Uber, the popular ride-sharing app, when the company suffered a major data breach in early September. While the extent of the damage, and the data potentially stolen, is still being uncovered, the attack — and the methods used to execute it — can be examined and used to teach other organizations what (and what not) to do.

Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Cyber Attacks

Ransomware and other malicious threats have become commonplace around the globe. But the reality is, whether it be encrypted records, stolen email credentials, or exfiltrated financial statements, these incidents generally involve a limited number of individuals or groups. Before your feathers are completely ruffled, understand that by no means am I minimizing the impact cybercriminals can have on a business. But have you considered attacks of greater scale? Perhaps those that affect the populus?

Initial Access Brokers: What They Are, How They Gain Access, and Who Uses Their Services

Imagine a burglar. They’ve spent large amounts of time researching their target — your house. They’ve perfected their infiltration techniques, found your weak points, learned your schedule, and know the best time to strike. They’ve shown up when you least expect it and jimmied open the lock on the back door. And now, rather than head inside and steal your valuables, they hold the door open for someone else.

Nowhere to Hide: 2022 CrowdStrike Falcon Overwatch Threat Hunting Report

Every year, CrowdStrike’s proactive 24/7 threat hunting team, Falcon OverWatch™, publishes its findings and technical analysis detailing the novel and prominent adversary tradecraft and emerging intrusion trends the team unearthed during the preceding 12-month period from July 1, 2021 through June 30, 2022. This past year in particular, OverWatch observed striking shifts in how attackers design and deploy their attacks.

Uber Investigating Alleged Breach of Critical SaaS and Cloud Security Systems

On Thursday evening, around 6:25 PM, Uber announced that it was responding to a cybersecurity incident. While Uber hasn’t gone into details about what happened, the purported threat actor has openly corresponded with several security professionals, including Sam Curry at Yuga Labs, Corben Leo at Zellic.io and The New York Times. According to both Curry and Leo, multiple systems were impacted.

Cyber Attack on IHG Disrupts Hotel Booking System | Concerns on Private Data Leakage

IHG Hotels & Resorts, the hotel group that owns the Holiday Inn and Intercontinental brands, experienced a cyber attack in the first week of September. The attack has impacted the central hotel’s booking system and mobile apps, causing a service outage for several days. Loyalty program members could not log in or create new bookings during this time.

Retaliation by the Pro-Russian Group KillNet

At the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, KillNet - a Russian cybergang - began actively collecting open-source intelligence (OSINT), which drew interest from various threat actor groups. Heightened interest in the OSINT data led to additional actors joining , growing its membership to include not only Russian cyber criminals, but uniting other cyber gangs sympathetic to Russia.

Attackers Continue to Abuse Google Sites and Microsoft Azure to Host Cryptocurrency Phishing

On August 9, 2022, we released a blog post about a phishing campaign where attackers were abusing Google Sites and Microsoft Azure Web Apps to steal cryptocurrency wallets and accounts from different targets, namely Coinbase, MetaMask, Kraken, and Gemini. The attackers were abusing SEO techniques to spread the pages and using advanced techniques to steal data, such as using live chats to interact with victims.

Four Key Areas Every Cybersecurity Leader Should Focus on to Ensure Their Company is Protected

As cyberattacks become more sophisticated and frequent, developers and security teams often become overextended in their efforts to protect their software and applications. In an article for Security, Daniel Elkabes, Mend’s vulnerability research team leader, highlights what cybersecurity leaders should invest in now to help set up their teams for the future.

Is your security strategy too focused on the next SolarWinds or Log4j?

Cyber-attacks happen around the clock, far more often than can ever be reported outside of the organizations they affect. But sometimes an attack is so widespread and devastating that it sends shockwaves through the business world and even into the mainstream media. Incidents like SolarWinds and Log4j were front page news, sending organizations scrambling to patch them.

Cybersecurity Threats to the US Water Industry

In an increasingly digital world, cybersecurity is a significant – and relevant – threat to individuals and companies alike. Cybercriminals are constantly devising new ways to steal information for personal gain through exploitation or ransom demands. It’s become unfortunately commonplace to hear tales of drained checking accounts, leaked photos, and private documents being published to the masses.

Ransomware Trends in 2022H1: State-Sponsored Ransomware, New Popular Targets and Evolving Extortion Techniques

Throughout the first half of 2022, Vedere Labs published analyses of prominent ransomware families, such as Conti, Night Sky and ALPHV. We also examined well-known ransomware incidents such as the attacks on the NFL’s SF 49ers by the BlackByte group; on a UK water utility, where the Clop gang managed to access their SCADA system; and on an NHSsoftware provider, where an unknown group managed to disrupt healthcare services in the UK for weeks.

How can healthcare reinvent itself in the Cloud to prevent cyber threats?

Technological advances in the healthcare sector have led to increased interconnectivity and Cloud-based infrastructures in order to maintain physical distance due to COVID-19 and address the urgent need to deal with overwhelming patient volumes through online care. According to data from Global Markets Insights, the healthcare Cloud computing market was valued at over $29 billion in 2020 and is expected to be worth $79.3 billion by 2027, with a CAGR of 13.4%.

Why does preparing for AI attacks need to be your next big agenda?

This blog has been written by an independent guest blogger. Since its advent, the debate over its ethical and unethical use of AI has been ongoing. From movies to discussions and research, the likely adversarial impact AI has had over the world has been a constant cause of concern for every privacy and security-conscious person out there.

Security Insights on the Low-Code / No-Code Attack Vector

The August 4th compromise of Twilio via a targeted smishing attack has been a topic of wide concern and discussion on social media. My first thoughts on hearing of the attack were to virtually “pat myself down” with regard to exposure risk. Kind of like that feeling when you’re not sure if your car keys or wallet are in your pocket a few blocks after walking away from your parking space. Is my company affected by the breach? Did we receive a notification email from them?

LastPass hacked: Why you should still trust password managers

In August 2022, password management company LastPass fell victim to a cyberattack, in which hackers breached its systems and stole its source code. LastPass’s success is built around offering secure, trustworthy software, so a hack like this could be seen as a knock against the company — but it also impacts wider public trust in password management software.

Cyber Security News: The NHS 111 Attack

In a recent article looking at cyber security trends, we highlighted the potential for incidents to occur from supply chain attacks, as well as the prevalence of ransomware across the Internet. No organisation is safe from attack, as illustrated by the NHS 111 attack at the beginning of the month.

How attack surface management helps during an M&A process

There is always the risk that sensitive data will be exposed during mergers and acquisitions. Throughout the M&A process, you’re adding new ways for hackers to enter your systems, enabling them to access sensitive customer information. This is because the merging of companies usually results in an increase in the attack surface, therefore, increasing the number of unknown security risks the acquiring company is unaware of. The numbers don’t lie.

Prevent API Exploitation: Know the Unknown, Protect the Unprotected

Almost a year ago, Gartner predicted that API attacks would be the most frequent enterprise attack vector in 2022. Strengthening API security is more critical today than ever and must be at the core of cybersecurity strategy to prevent API exploitation. To make matters worse, the lack of API visibility weakens core security principles. More organizations don’t have an accurate inventory of APIs, and it is not surprising for 30% of APIs to be unknown.