Digital Shadows

In this week’s Shadow Talk, Rafael Amado joins Michael Marriott to discuss Digital Shadows’ latest research on Business Email Compromise. We discuss how criminals are outsourcing this work, and how the exposure of 33,000 finance department credentials is increasing the ease for attackers. However, even without taking over accounts, criminals can get their hands on sensitive financial information. We dig into the 12.5 million exposed email archives that are available through misconfigured online file stores, including invoices, purchase orders, and payments. Finally, we provide advice for mitigating these risks.

Rick Holland, CISO of Digital Shadows, joins Richard Gold and Michael Marriott to discuss the latest cybersecurity news. In part one, we discuss the possible implications of Facebook security flaws affecting 50 million accounts. In part two, one year after reports of the Equifax breach surface, the UK arm has been fined £500,000 by the ICO. We look at the lessons learned.

Simon Hall and Richard Gold join Rafael Amado to focus on the trade-offs between security and usability, as well as the practice of security layering that can often make us more insecure. The team look over security measures such as regular complex password expiry policies that create headaches for organizations and end users, why it’s not easy to make security usable, whether certain security measures such as anti-virus software actually make us more insecure, and what alternative system defences can bridge the gap between security and usability. For the NCSC blog on security and usability, visit: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/security-and-usability-you-can-have-it-all

In this week’s ShadowTalk, Richard Gold and Simon Hall join Michael Marriott to discuss the latest spate of attacks by the threat actor known as Magecart. We dig into the history of Magecart, different approaches to web skimming, and provide advice on how organizations can best protect against this threat.

In this week’s ShadowTalk, Richard Gold and Rafael Amado join Michael Marriott to discuss the latest Department of Justice complaint against an individual working for Chosun Expo, an alleged front for the North Korean state. The individual is accused of involvement in a host of campaigns, including attacks against Sony Pictures Entertainment, banks, defense contractors, and the many victims of the WannaCry ransomware variant. We discuss the most interesting revelations, outlining the different techniques used, and what this all means for organizations.

Dr. Richard Gold and Simon Hall join Rafael Amado to discuss the age-old problem of credential hygiene. We’ve all heard of not reusing passwords, employing two factor authentication and using password vaults, but why then do organizations still struggle with good credential hygiene? We’ll cover the ways in which attackers steal and take advantage of credentials, what most companies are getting wrong, and the steps you can take to improve your overall credential hygiene practices.

This week it was revealed that six new domains registered by APT28, spoofing nonprofit, Senate, and Microsoft domains, have been sinkholed. With November’s US midterm elections fast-approaching, we dive into the latest threats and discuss how organizations can understand the threat posed to them by such malicious actors. Dr Richard Gold, Head of Security Engineering at Digital Shadows, joins Mike Marriott to discuss threat modeling; outlining the steps organizations can take to define their critical assets, understand the threat landscape, and create scenarios based on these. This enables organizations to identify security controls that are in place to mitigate, prevent and detect a specific threat actor's tradecraft, as well as uncover gaps in controls and establish a remediation plan.

Digital Shadows’ Strategic Intelligence manager Rose Bernard joins Rafael Amado to discuss four separate ATM stories making headlines this week. In Part I, they’ll cover an alert on an impending "ATM cash-out" campaign issued by the FBI, and how India's Cosmos Bank lost $13.5m in cyberattacks after actors bypassed the internal ATM switch system. In Part II, Rafael and Rose will look into flaws discovered in NCR ATM currency dispensers, and a new Bitcoin ATM malware advertised for sale on dark web. For more on how actors acquire and then use stolen payment card information, check out Digital Shadows’ Five Threats to Financial Services blog series, available on https://www.digitalshadows.com/blog-and-research/five-threats-to-financial-services-part-four-payment-card-fraud/

Digital Shadows’ Rose Bernard and Simon Hall join Rafael Amado to cover the arrest of three alleged members of the FIN7 organized criminal group. The team go over the United States Department of Justice’s indictment and provide some key observations on FIN7’s operations, including how sophisticated phishing and social engineering are the cornerstones of the group’s success. In Part II, the team look at phishing more generally, including the threats from business email compromise and malspam. For more analysis of the FIN7 arrests, visit https://www.digitalshadows.com/blog-and-research/fin7-arrests-and-developments/

In this week’s episode, JP Perez-Etchegoyen, CTO of Onapsis, joins Michael Marriott to talk about the exposure of SAP and Oracle applications, the increase in publicly-available exploits, and the threat actors we have observed targeting the sensitive data held within these applications. Download the full report to learn more: https://info.digitalshadows.com/ERPApplicationsUnderFire-Podcast.html

Richard Gold and Rose Bernard join Michael Marriott to talked about updates to the Satori botnet, which has expanded to incorporate new IoT devices using TCP port 5555. Amid news of a new wave of OIlRig attacks, a Middle Eastern espionage campaign, we dive into PowerShell security risks and provide advice on best practices for those using PowerShell. For more information on PowerShell Security Best Practices, check out our blog https://www.digitalshadows.com/blog-and-research/powershell-security-best-practices/. Finally, we assess the Dragonfly campaign against US power grids, and understand what it all means.

Rick Holland, CISO at Digital Shadows, discusses the latest 2018 Forrester New Wave for Digital Risk Protection. He discusses how security leaders must avoid blind spots with a more complete risk picture.

In today’s ShadowTalk, we take on the Robert Mueller indictment against 12 Russian individuals for alleged US election interference. However, rather than dwell on issues of attribution and geopolitics, we focus on the detailed tactics, techniques and procedures laid out in the indictment. Katie Nickels, a member of the MITRE team, joins Rafael Amado and Richard Gold us to discuss the ATT&CK™ framework in greater detail, as well as the key lessons that organizations can takeaway. For Digital Shadows’ analysis of the indictment, visit https://www.digitalshadows.com/blog-and-research/mitre-attck-and-the-mueller-gru-indictment-lessons-for-organizations/

In this week's ShadowTalk, Digital Shadows’ Russian-speaking security specialist discovered files and source code allegedly related to the Carbanak organized criminal group. The Carbanak malware is a backdoor used by the Anunak (Carbanak) Group to infiltrate financial institutions and steal funds. Richard Gold and Simon Hall join Rafael Amado to discuss the implications for financial services from these revelations. We ask whether this leak represents a threat to organizations, and how businesses can best defend themselves from the techniques used by sophisticated financial criminal groups such as Carbanak. For more analysis from the Security Engineering Team, visit https://www.digitalshadows.com/blog-and-research/alleged-carbanak-files-and-source-code-leaked-digital-shadows-initial-findings/

The Payment Card Industry recently passed a deadline requiring that all e-commerce sites and merchants cease supporting TLS 1.0. With this and older protocols such as SSL vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks, the fear is that attackers can intercept and tamper with data being sent across these channels. However, SSL interception is also performed by organizations for reasons that include blocking malware or improving data leakage prevention. Richard Gold and Simon Hall join Rafael Amado to discuss how SSL interception works, the different reasons for deploying it, the risks and privacy ramifications of interception, and the overall trade-offs for organizations looking to implement these methods.

Following news that a database containing 340 million records has been publicly exposed to the internet, Richard Gold and Simon Hall join Michael Marriott to discuss how (and why) you can reduce your attack surface. For more information on some of the tips provided in this pursuit, visit https://github.com/securitywithoutborders/hardentools.

Libby Fiumara is joined by Rose Bernard and Sophie Burke to discuss the launch of Digital Shadows’ Women’s Network, challenges facing women in security, and how companies can foster diversity in the workplace.

Simon Hall and Rich Gold join Michael Marriott to discuss the merits and perils of attribution, including the number of characteristics and variables required for a strong attribution, instances where attribution has succeeded, and whether organizations should care.

Simon Hall and Richard Gold join Rafael Amado to discuss misconceptions around vulnerabilities and exploits, other techniques for gaining code execution, and how organizations can prioritize the patching of vulnerabilities.

In this edition of Shadow Talk, Richard Gold joins us to discuss the issue of security debt, a term used to refer to the accumulation of security risks over time, such as missed patches, misapplied configurations, mismanaged user accounts. Richard looks into how many of the attacks we see on a regular basis are actually a result of security risks that build up over time, and how security debt is a ticking time bomb for most organizations. In Part II, Harrison Van Riper covers the recent website defacement attack and data breach incident targeting the event ticketing company, Ticketfly. Security debt resources:https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/286667/FAQ2_-_Managing_Information_Risk_at_OFFICIAL_v2_-_March_2014.pdf