Cybersecurity News & Trends for January 20, 2023

Curated cybersecurity news and trends from the industry’s leading bloggers and news outlets, for you from SonicWall.

SonicWall continues to make waves in the news with its products and executives. Read Business Info’s safety solutions to keep your business secure and see what our VP of Strategic Partnerships and Platform Architecture, Rick Meder, had to say to Silicon. We also hear from our CEO, Bob VanKirk, and our emerging threat expert, Immanuel Chavoya.

In industry news, we’re taking a peek at newly discovered vulnerabilities, artificial intelligence and the open sea. Dark Reading reports that everyone’s favorite AI chatbot, ChatGPT, is dabbling in writing polymorphic malware. Over at Bleeping Computer, the word is that a vendor’s exposed database has caused trouble at Nissan. The good folks at Hacker News warn of a Linux vulnerability that has caught the attention of malicious actors. From Trend Micro, GitHub CodeSpaces has a port forwarding issue that’s allowing easy malware delivery. Security Weekly alerts us about a ransomware attack that affected 1,000 ships across the globe.

SonicWall News

Royal Mail ‘Cyber Incident’ Causes Widespread Disruption

Strategic Risk, SonicWall News: There were 623 million ransomware attacks globally in 2021 according to SonicWall, representing a 105% year on year increase. The UK saw a 228% surge and a 65% increase in never-seen-before malware.

8 Safety Solutions to Keep Your Business Secure

Business Info, SonicWall News: Network security devices are essential for any business. They establish a firewall that will protect internal networks from external threats, such as attacks from the internet. The SonicWall TZ270 uses Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection to prevent cyber-attacks.

Safe Homes: Security Tech for Remote Workers

Silicon, SonicWall News: Speaking to Silicon UK, Rick Meder, VP of Strategic Partnerships and Platform Architecture at SonicWall, commented: “With most employees no longer within the protected perimeter of a traditional corporate network, the basic secure access tools in place for remote access workers have become quickly inadequate. The potential attack surface expands exponentially, oversite by security staff is met with extreme challenges, and policy complexity reaches levels like never before. Efforts to uphold an adequate security posture while maintaining workforce productivity quickly become overwhelming.”

Finally, Ransomware Victims Are Refusing to Pay Up

The Register, SonicWall News: SonicWall in October 2022 said that it saw a 31 percent drop in ransomware attacks in the first nine months of the year, but that also was coming off record numbers recorded in 2021. CEO Robert VanKirk at the time told The Register there was an “unstable cyberthreat landscape” fed by expanded attack surfaces, growing numbers of threats, and a tense geopolitical environment that included the Russia’s attack on Ukraine. The CEO also noted that even those the numbers in 2022 were down, they were still higher than in any year but 2021.

Top 7 AI Trends to Watch Out for in 2023

Silicon, SonicWall News: Immanuel Chavoya, emerging threat expert at cybersecurity company SonicWall, believes new AI software will give threat actors the ability to quickly exploit vulnerabilities and reduce the technical expertise required “down to a five-year-old level.”

All You Need to Know About The ‘Godfather’ Malware Targeting This Country’s Financial System

AMB Crypto, SonicWall News: “The research titled “2022 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report” from cybersecurity company SonicWall claims that cryptojacking attacks have increased in the banking sector by 269% year-to-date. This figure is nearly five times higher than cyberattacks directed at the retail sector. According to the study from SonicWall, the total number of crypto-jacking incidents increased by 30% to 66.7 million in the first half of 2022.”

An Evolving Landscape: Top 10 Cybersecurity Predictions For 2023

Silicon Republic, SonicWall News: “Spencer Starkey, channel sales EMEA VP for SonicWall, predicts that healthcare and education will be among the sectors most targeted by cyberattacks in 2023. The cybersecurity company claims the healthcare sector saw a 328pc year-on-year increase in ransomware attacks last year.”

Royal Mail’s Export Service Hit with Major Cyber Incident and Is Experiencing ‘Severe Disruption’

City AM, SonicWall News: “Terry Greer-King, Head of EMEA at SonicWall, a cybersecurity firm, linked this cyber incident to declining cyber safety in the UK. Greene told City AM: “The cyber incident at the Royal Mail shows that the public sector, like all other industries, is still vulnerable to mass cyber attack. As legacy IT concerns become more apart across the UK’s public sector, the state of its cybersecurity is still a main topic that must be addressed, especially after 2021 brought a 94% increase in malware on the global government sector. As a service that people and businesses alike depend on day-to-day, ensuring its digital infrastructure remains secure must be a top priority. To truly safeguard national public-sector cybersecurity, the government must take real concerted action now,” he added.

Study Find One in Four SMES Hit by Ransomware Last Year

Technology Magazine, SonicWall News: “Today, cyberattacks continue to present an ever-changing threat to businesses across all sectors. NCC Group’s Annual Threat Monitor report, which indicated ransomware attacks almost doubled in 2021, rising 92.7% on the previous year, while research by SonicWall found that 66% of customers were more concerned about cyberattacks last year.”

All You Need to Know About The ‘Godfather’ Malware Targeting This Country’s Financial System

Leading Cybersecurity Companies for The Food Industry

Just Food, SonicWall News: “Amongst the leading vendors of cybersecurity in food industry are Dragos, Eat IT Drink IT, NCR, Netskope, PDI Software, Preciate, Singtel, SonicWall, TitanHQ, VikingCloud, Auvesy-MDT, Cali Group, and Cardonet.”

Goodbye 2022, Hello 2023: Experts Weigh in With Channel Expectations

MicroScope, SonicWall News: “Matt Brennan, vice-president of North America channel sales at SonicWall, believes the effects of supply chain disruption will continue to have an impact on 2023: “Supply chain challenges have wreaked havoc across most industries around the world. IT has been affected across the board. Because of these challenges, brand loyalty will fade. [Customers] won’t hesitate to make purchases they can get now rather than wait for a specific brand product later – fulfillment is critical, regardless of how long customers have been brand loyal.” Brennan adds that this will lead to a shift in the market as customers learn that “staying brand loyal is not necessary to run their businesses successfully”.

Industry News

ChatGPT Trips the Alarm Over Polymorphic Malware

Researchers at Cyberark recently warned that OpenAI’s ChatGPT, an online chatbot that has been stirring up noise in the media recently, could be used to create polymorphic malware. Dark Reading reports that polymorphic malware is a highly advanced type of malware that actually contains no malicious code. That makes it exceedingly difficult to detect.

Cyberark also warned that the AI could be used to generate injection code. ChatGPT is free to use and has a simple user interface. This makes ChatGPT something that Cybersecurity experts should be keeping in their peripheral vision. It may not be causing many problems just yet, but the potential for malicious use is most certainly there.

Exposed Database Leaks Personal Data Of 18,000 Nissan Customers

On Monday, Nissan began sending out notifications to customers that their data had been breached. Nissan said in the memo that they had received notification in June of 2022 that one of their third-party software developers had experienced a breach. Bleeping Computer reports that Nissan gave data to the vendor to develop and test software for them. The automaker placed the blame on the vendor’s database being poorly configured.

Nissan conducted an investigation and found that an unauthorized user likely had access to the data. NMAC numbers (Nissan finance account numbers), full names, and dates of birth were all included in the leak. Nissan noted that there was no evidence the data had been misused, but they did offer affected customers a one-year membership of Experian identity protection.

Hack Alert: Recently Patched Linux Tool Is the Newest Target Of Malicious Actors

A widely-used Linux tool, Control Web Panel, is being actively exploited by malicious actors after a vulnerability was patched. The bug, listed as CVE-2022-44877, gave elevated privileges and allowed for unauthenticated remote code execution on some servers according to Hacker News. All software versions before 0.9.8.1147 are impacted.

So far, exploitation of the bug has been minimal, with GreyNoise reporting four unique IP addresses attempting to abuse it. All frequent users of CWP are advised to apply the most up-to-date patches to avoid any issues.

Github CodeSpaces Vulnerability Causes Concerns About Easy Malware Delivery

GitHub CodeSpaces is a cloud-based integrated development environment that was fully released to the public in November 2022. A feature of this IDE that allows forwarded ports to be shared publicly could be exploited by malicious actors. It seems that these features could be used to create a malware file server with a legitimate GitHub account. GitHub would usually be alerted by a user using their tools in this way. Due to this vulnerability, a user could be serving malicious content directly under GitHub’s nose, and GitHub would be none the wiser.

Trend Micro reports that no abuse of this exploit has been witnessed thus far. The exploit was discovered during an internal security check on the platform.

Ransomware Attack on Ship Management Software Disrupts Servers On 1,000 Ships

A recognized maritime advisor, DNV, was the victim of a ransomware attack on its ShipManager system servers. The attack resulted in 1,000 ships being impacted globally. This attack comes a mere two weeks after the LockBit ransomware gang carried out an attack on Portugal’s Port of Lisbon. The European shipping industry has been the victim of multiple such attacks over the course of the past year.

On January 19^th, DNV released a statement saying they are working to restore servers on the impacted ships. They made it clear that all of the impacted ships have maintained complete offline functionality throughout this ordeal.