Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

May 2024

Best Practices for Secure Communication During Business Trips in the APAC Region

Make no mistakes about it, we live in a world where information is power. Securing your information while you communicate on business trips is critical, especially within regions like APAC (Asia Pacific) where rapid technological advancement has led to increased risk of cyber threats.

91% of Every Ransomware Attack Today Includes Exfiltrating Your Data

New insight into ransomware attacks show that cyber attacks are a top concern for organizations – with many not aware they were a victim until after the attack. According to Arctic Wolf’s The State of Cybersecurity: 2024 Trends Report, 91% of reported ransomware attacks included a data exfiltration effort. This is far more than the sub-80% numbers we’ve seen from the Coveware quarterly reports we cover.

AI Threat Scenario, GuLoader, DarkGate, MirrorBlast, Kutaki Stealer and More - Hacker's Playbook Threat Coverage Round-up: May 2024

In this version of the Hacker’s Playbook Threat Coverage round-up, we are highlighting attack coverage for newly discovered or analyzed threats, including a newly created scenario that leverages AI Generated malware. SafeBreach customers can select and run these attacks and more from the SafeBreach Hacker’s Playbook to ensure coverage against these advanced threats. Additional details about the threats and our coverage can be seen below.

Combating the DDoS IoT Threat: Strategies to Protect Your Connected Devices

In the realm of IoT, DDoS attacks are not just a threat but a harsh reality. This article cuts through the complexity of DDoS IoT threats, offering a clear understanding of how IoT devices are hijacked for DDoS attacks and presenting actionable strategies to protect these devices. From recognising vulnerabilities to implementing robust defences, we provide the insights you need to secure your network against the dire consequences of DDoS attacks.

Data Destruction: The Final Line of Defense Against Cyber Attacks

Data is the lifeblood of modern organizations, and while watertight data protection policies are undeniably crucial, the need for robust data destruction methods has never been more pressing. Ultimately, all parties and vendors in your supply chain trust you to maintain the integrity of their data. Once that data is no longer needed, transparency about its whereabouts is vital.

What Is SEO Poisoning? 5 Signs You Could Be Impacted

Search engines are the Internet’s gateway, reliably guiding us to the information we seek. However, cybercriminals are increasingly exploiting this trust by using sophisticated techniques to manipulate search engine results to drive traffic to malicious websites by getting them ranked higher than real sites. This practice, known as SEO poisoning, poses a significant threat to individuals and businesses. In a notable example, a 2022 campaign saw 15,000 sites hacked in a Google SEO poisoning attack.

DDoS-as-a-Service: The Rebirth Botnet

In March 2024, the Sysdig Threat Research Team (TRT) began observing attacks against one of our Hadoop honeypot services from the domain “rebirthltdio). The threat actors operating the botnet are financially motivated and advertise their service primarily to the video gaming community, although there is no evidence that this botnet is not being purchased beyond gaming-related purposes, and organizations may still be at risk of falling victim to these botnets attacks.

Account Takeover, SQL Injection and DDoS Attack Simulation on APIs

Overview: According to TechTarget, 94% of organizations experience security problems in production APIs, and one in five suffers a data breach. The primary reason is that most tech leaders assume that having a strong authentication and authorisation framework is enough to secure APIs. As a result, cyberattacks on APIs increased from 35% in 2022 to 46% in 2023, and this trend continues to rise. Join Karthik Krishnamoorthy, CTO and Vivekanand Gopalan Gopalan, VP of Products at Indusface, in this webinar as they demonstrate how APIs can be hacked.

Growing Attack Surfaces Highlight the Need for Managed Detection and Response Services

One reason organizations have difficulty defending against cyber threats is their attack surfaces are constantly growing, creating more entry points for bad actors to target. And target they will, creating an onslaught of alerts that drive the need for managed detection and response (MDR) services and other measures to help thwart them. Numerous trends are driving the increase in attack surface, including the proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Mastering SQL Injection : A Comprehensive Guide to SQL Map

In this video we will learn about one of the most prevalent database threats today, SQL Injection attack which is a common method used by hackers to exploit vulnerabilities in web applications that interact with databases. Join us as we explore the inner workings of this malicious technique and understand how SQLMAP Tool, a powerful open-source penetration testing tool can be used to protect your data. With step-by-step examples and demonstrations, we will show how to install SQLMAP and take countermeasures.

How to Tell When a Cyber Attack is Coming

Predicting when a cyberattack will happen is a lot like forecasting the weather: It’s impossible to know with certainty exactly how events will play out. But with the right strategy and information, you may be able to predict cyberattacks before they start, or catch them in their beginning stages. We explain the early warning signs of each attack technique, as well as how to assess available data to determine how likely a cyber attack is to happen.

Why Embrace a Cloud Operating Model?

Taking on the concept of a cloud operating model is not just for people who want to be fashionable; it's a clever tactic that any business can use if they desire efficient scaling and better service delivery. This method uses the benefits of cloud computing to make operations simpler, more flexible and less costly.

Evolving Detection Engineering Capabilities with Breach & Attack Simulation (BAS)

Threat actors are constantly updating their tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs). In response, security teams must also continue to evolve their ability to detect the latest threats to avoid exploitation of security gaps that can result in costly breaches. This process, called detection engineering, refers to the method of fine-tuning security technologies to better detect malicious activity.

How to Use the Terraform Destroy Command to Control Cyber Attack Damage

In many cases, cutting something off is necessary to avoid bigger damage. This is the idea behind controlled infrastructure removal, the elimination of some parts of your cloud infrastructure to contain an attack or remove a potential attack surface. It is an important part of infrastructure-as-code (IaC) management and something organizations need to be familiar with as they secure their cloud environments and the apps they develop.

Phishing with Cloudflare Workers: Transparent Phishing and HTML Smuggling

Netskope Threat Labs is tracking multiple phishing campaigns that abuse Cloudflare Workers. The campaigns are likely the work of different attackers since they use two very different techniques. One campaign (similar to the previously disclosed Azorult campaign) uses HTML smuggling, a detection evasion technique often used for downloading malware, to hide the phishing content from network inspection.

What is SQL Injection? SQLI Prevention and Mitigation

SQL Injection is a kind of cyber-attack based on targeted databases by submitting malicious SQL code instead of input on web application fields. This code is created with the purpose of affecting the structure of the database query that the application interacts with the backend database, thus making it vulnerable to hackers who can breach its security, modify data or carry out malicious actions.

Mitigating Data Poisoning Attacks on Large Language Models

Large language models (LLMs) have experienced a meteoric rise in recent years, revolutionizing natural language processing (NLP) and various applications within artificial intelligence (AI). These models, such as OpenAI's GPT-4 and Google's BERT, are built on deep learning architectures that can process and generate human-like text with remarkable accuracy and coherence.

Email Security Must Remain a Priority in the Wake of the LabHost Takedown and BEC Operator's Conviction

Two positive steps were taken last month to limit the damage caused by phishing and Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks when a joint action by UK and EU law enforcement agencies compromised the infrastructure of the phishing-as-a-service operation LabHost and a major BEC operator was convicted in US Federal Court. While law enforcement operations are integral to defeating cybercrime, disrupting one or two adversary groups does not minimize the threat.

The Growing Threat: Understanding the Risks of Cyberattacks in Today's Digital World

In the modern digital landscape, where the safety of our online assets, including ensuring that our website is safe, is paramount, the prevalence of cyberattacks has escalated dramatically, posing a significant threat to individuals, businesses, and governments worldwide. With the advancement of technology, cybercriminals have developed increasingly sophisticated methods to exploit vulnerabilities in networks, systems and devices, leaving no stone unturned in their quest to compromise data security.

Cyber Insurance Claims Rise Due To Phishing and Social Engineering Cyber Attacks

New data covering cyber insurance claims through 2023 shows claims have increased while reaffirming what we already know: phishing and social engineering are the real problem. If you’ve read enough of my articles here, you already know my view is a bit skewed towards the need for organizations to be aware of the true dangers of email-based cyber attacks.

8 out of 10 Organizations Experience a Cyber Attack and Attribute Users as the Problem

Regardless of whether your environment is on-premises, in the cloud or hybrid, new data makes it clear that users are the top cybersecurity concern, and we cover what you can do about it. According to Netwrix’s 2024 Hybrid Security Trends Report, 79% of organizations experience one or more security incidents in the last 12 months. This is a 16% increase from the previous year, demonstrating that attacks are not subsiding one bit and that they are increasingly successful.

How to Protect Your Cloud Assets from Being Cryptojacked

Cryptojacking attacks have become the most prevalent type of attack on cloud native infrastructures. For example, in 2022, there were 139M cryptojacking attacks, but the following year there were over 1 billion! That translates to nearly 3M cryptojacking attacks every day, on average in 2023.

Analyzing Utilities Sector Cybersecurity Performance

With economic sanctions being levied by the US against Iran and a trade war heating up with China, some security experts are cautioning that attacks targeting US critical infrastructure may be inevitable. Are electric utilities prepared to defend themselves and their facilities against these attacks?

The Growing Threat of Identity-Related Cyberattacks: Insights Into the Threat Landscape

The last 12 months have witnessed a rapid-fire round of innovation and adoption of new technologies. Powerful new identities, environments and attack methods are shaping the quickly changing cybersecurity threat landscape, rendering it more complex and causing the diffusion of risk reduction focus. New CyberArk research indicates that the rise of machine identities and the increasing reliance on third- and fourth-party providers are deepening the existing threats and creating novel vulnerabilities.

User Training vs. Security Controls: Who's to Blame for Phishing Attacks?

In this thought-provoking clip, the hosts debate whether security awareness training is enough to prevent users from falling for phishing scams or if stronger controls are necessary. Drawing on insights from a recent NCSC blog, they explore the ethical dilemma of assigning blame when users, despite training, click on malicious email attachments. Should the onus be on the end user, or is it a failure of security controls? Tune in to understand the complexities of balancing trust and control in cybersecurity.

Using Trustwave DbProtect and Offensive Security Solutions to Protect Against Nation-State Cyber Threats

The US Director of National Intelligence (DNI) earlier this month gave a stark warning to the Senate Armed Services Committee detailing the cyberthreats arrayed against the US and the world from China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran.

How Cybersecurity Financial Quantification Helps CISOs Make Their Case to the Board

More enterprise business leaders are beginning to understand that cybersecurity risk equates to business risk—and getting a clearer sense of the impact that cyber exposures can have on the bottom line. Consider the MGM Resorts and Clorox Company cybersecurity incidents that occurred last year. Both suffered considerable attacks, reportedly led by the Scattered Spider cybercriminal group, causing widespread business disruption and substantial financial losses.

Attackers Leveraging XSS To Make Phishing Emails Increasingly Evasive

Attackers are exploiting Reflected Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) flaws to bypass security filters, according to a new report from Vipre. This technique allows attackers to send benign links in phishing emails that will redirect users to malicious sites. Vipre also found that attackers are increasingly using links instead of malicious attachments in their phishing emails. “Three years ago, it was a 50/50 split between phishing emails utilizing links versus attachments,” the researchers write.

"Unknown" Initial Attack Vectors Continue to Grow and Plague Ransomware Attacks

Trend analysis of ransomware attacks in the first quarter of this year reveals a continual increase in the number of "unknown" initial attack vectors, and I think I might understand why. There are two reports that you should be keeping an eye on—the updated Verizon Data Breach Report and ransomware response vendor Coveware’s Quarterly Ransomware Reports. In their latest report covering Q1 of this year, we see a continuing upward trend in “unknown” as the top initial attack vector.

Trustwave SpiderLabs Unveils the 2024 Public Sector Threat Landscape Report

Trustwave SpiderLabs’ latest report, the 2024 Public Sector Threat Landscape: Trustwave Threat Intelligence Briefing and Mitigation Strategies details the security issues facing public sector security teams as they try to strike a balance between supplying needed services and deploying the cybersecurity necessary to protect data placed in their charge. The need for the highest level of security has never been greater.

11 Best Practices for Preventing Credential Stuffing Attacks

Data breaches and their immediate impact on the organization are widely publicized. But what happens after the breach, especially with the breached credentials such as usernames and passwords? The breached credentials are often sold in the black market or leveraged by the attacker to attack the same or other organizations. This leads to credential stuffing attacks, where the stolen credentials are reused on different websites.

Have you seen any of these signs? #shorts #hacker #cybersecurity #cyberattack #phonetips #techtips

Discovering your phone's been hacked is a headache, but acting fast can limit the damage. Here's what to do: By taking these steps promptly, you can minimize the potential fallout from a hacked phone and regain control over your digital security.

The dangers of enterprise attack surface expansion: Lessons from 5 major breaches

Enterprise attack surface expansion has become a focal point for IT security teams. The relentless pursuit of securing every endpoint and countering new threats with the latest technology is not just costly; it's also unsustainable. Despite these efforts, breaches continue to occur, often through new or unorthodox attack vectors that bypass traditional perimeter defenses.

AsyncRAT Exposed: Investigating Email-Driven Cyber Attacks

Introduction AsyncRAT, also known as "Asynchronous Remote Access Trojan," represents a secretive form of malware meticulously crafted to infiltrate computer systems and exfiltrate critical data. Recently, McAfee Labs unveiled a novel avenue through which this insidious threat proliferates, elucidating its inherent peril and adeptness at circumventing security measures.

Analysis: A new ransomware group emerges from the Change Healthcare cyber attack

As the full scope of the Change Healthcare cyber attack and ransomware story unfolds, a new leading gang has emerged known as ‘RansomHub’. This ‘new’ group has been claiming more victims since the massive February ransomware and data breach attack. On April 8, Forescout Research – Vedere Labs obtained samples used by RansomHub affiliates in a separate incident.

Global DDoS Weapons in 2024: Bots Run Wild

What do you get when you bring soaring numbers of connected devices online around the world—more than 29 billion by 2027? For consumers and businesses, the Internet of Things (IoT) promises a life of ever-increasing convenience, efficiency, and insight. Unfortunately, cybercriminals have just as much to celebrate.

10 Cybercrimes Against Colleges and K-12 Schools, and How To Prevent Them

K-12 schools, colleges, and universities store massive amounts of personal information for students, parents, and employees. This means that, while they may not make the news as much as other breaches, schools, colleges, and universities are under constant attack by modern threat actors.

Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report 2024 Review

As with every year, the Verizon DBIR is released, with data involving more than 10,000 breaches that have been dissected and used to create the report’s baseline. Cyberint’s Research team inspected the document to understand where the cyber security realm is heading, the important trends in data breaches and incidents, and what we need to look for moving forward in 2024.

Asset hijacking: the digital supply chain threat hiding in plain sight

The digital supply chain refers to the chain of third-party digital tools, services and infrastructure that is depended on for a particular first-party service (such as your website or SaaS platform). In an ever-changing digital landscape, supply chains can be brittle with many unseen risks. The nature of supply chain risk is transitive; any part of the often long and complicated digital supply chain can be compromised, causing all components downstream of it to also be compromised.

How a Virtual Private Server Plays a Small Yet Effective Role in Enhancing Cybersecurity

Every year, there are an increasing number of cyberattacks. According to TechTarget, Skybox Security reported an increase of 25% in new vulnerabilities in 2022 compared to 2021. Moreover, the World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report 2023 predicts that the concerns around cybersecurity will persist in 2024, too.

LLMjacking: Stolen Cloud Credentials Used in New AI Attack

The Sysdig Threat Research Team (TRT) recently observed a new attack that leveraged stolen cloud credentials in order to target ten cloud-hosted large language model (LLM) services, known as LLMjacking. The credentials were obtained from a popular target, a system running a vulnerable version of Laravel (CVE-2021-3129). Attacks against LLM-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems have been discussed often, but mostly around prompt abuse and altering training data.

Detecting and Preventing Reconnaissance Attacks

In 2024, every business across the world is already aware of the looming potential of a cyber attack. With billions of dollars pouring into the cyber criminal market each year, hackers have more backing to create large-scale attacks, breaching financial records, private data, and customer information. Reconnaissance attacks are the first step in many of these major breaches. By scouting out a business, collecting information about its security posture, and aiming to identify vulnerabilities, these initial attacks give hackers the data they need to launch precise, damaging attacks.

What is DLL Hijacking? How to Identify and Prevent DLL Hijacking?

Ever happened – you clicked a random link by mistake but discovered your system working strangely? Maybe some programs crash, data goes missing, or pop-ups plague your screen. It could be a malicious threat within your system, or simply, your system is the victim of a DLL Hijacking. DLL Hijacking is a type of cyberattack that allows the attacker to steal your data or even take control of your system.

What is Unrestricted Code Execution? How to Defend Organizations Against this Attack?

Nowadays, with more organizations and individuals relying heavily on third-party software to execute their high-priority and covert tasks, the risks of data breaches or cyber-attacks are becoming a serious issue. A cyber attack is basically an attempt by cybercriminals, hackers, or other digital adversaries to access a computer network or system with a willingness to expose, alter, steal, or destroy your million-dollar information.

What Is a Silver Ticket Attack?

A ticket in cybersecurity is a set of credentials used to authenticate users. A silver ticket is a forged ticket an unauthorized user creates. With this forged silver ticket, threat actors can launch a cyber attack that involves exploiting the weaknesses of a Kerberos authentication system. In this system, a Ticket Granting Service (TGS) serves as the credential token, granting authorized users access to particular services.