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Cybersecurity News & Trends – 12-10-21

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As the year winds down, SonicWall’s threat reports stand out as reliable sources for US and European news organizations wanting to show the scope of attacks this year. Industry News proves that the crisis continues, and IT managers worldwide are on alert. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and ten countries conducted a simulated global attack on the global financial system (and the results were awful). In other news, a post-attack assessment reveals that the hackers saved the Irish Health System, Chinese hackers almost shut down power for three million Australians, and Lloyds of London quits cybersecurity insurance policies.

SonicWall in the News

Why Cybersecurity Must Be First

ARN Net (Australia): Why cybersecurity first should resonate with everyone is all over the news. Ransomware attacks rose to 304.6 million during the first six months in 2020, up 62% over 2019, according to our own widely quoted Mid-Year Update on the 2021 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report.

Retail’s Looming Holiday Threat: Ransomware

Politico: Part of a trend: Malware has long been a Black Friday and Cyber Monday concern. In 2019, security threat researchers at SonicWall estimated that cybergangs and individuals deployed 129.3 million malware attacks during the week of Thanksgiving, a 63 percent increase from the year before.

At EvCC, ‘The Wall’ Teaches Students How to Thwart Cybercrime

Herald NET: Everett college is the first in the nation to have a tool that can model cyber attacks aimed at vital infrastructure. During the first six months of 2021, there were more than 305 million attempted ransomware attacks compared to 306 million attempts in all of 2020, according to a mid-year 2021 SonicWall Cyber Threat report. Some three-quarters of those attempts targeted US organizations, the report said. “It’s gotten so bad that insurance companies are raising their rates on cyber liability coverage or dropping coverage altogether,” Hellyer said. “This sort of training is very important to our national and local security and economic interests.”

Do You Know Who is Responsible for Disaster Recovery in the Cloud?

MeriTalk: Ransomware is a disaster that isn’t rare. The 2021 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report found a 158% increase in ransomware attacks in North America in 2020. As a result, agencies that may have been slow to migrate to the cloud are now looking to the cloud as a cost-effective backup and disaster recovery solution to protect Federal systems against cyberattacks and data loss.

Ransomware Set To Break Records This Black Friday 2021

Information Security Buzz (Australia): Dmitriy Ayrapetov, Vice President Platform Architecture for SonicWall, offered expert commentary on cybercrime activity. He cited data from SonicWall’s recent threat reports, including 495 million global ransomware attacks logged this year to date, an increase of 148%.

12 Days of Phish-mas: A Festive Look at Phishing

Hashed Out: Experimenting with phishing examples using Microsoft products, the author received a fake request for a quote that contains a potentially malicious Microsoft Office file attachment. Office files, including Word docs and Excel spreadsheets, commonly spread malware and embedded phishing links via email. The author notes that SonicWall’s research shows that weaponized Microsoft Office files increased 67% in 2020.

Cybersecurity Terms & Definitions Integrators Should Know

CEPro: In the first six months of 2021, globally, the education sector saw a 615% spike in ransomware incidents compared to 151% across all industries, according to a study from SonicWall.

700M Attacks in 2021 and Counting: Can Businesses Fight the Ransomware Tsunami?

Toolbox: Asking whether businesses are investing enough into technology or “organizational culture” is to blame, the writer observes surprise at the enormous rise in breaches this year. They also cite SonicWall’s recently released Q3 Threat Report. From the scale of the attacks, we get a peek into how cybercriminals leverage ransomware as their weapon of choice to hit anyone.

SonicWall Applauded by Frost & Sullivan

Business Chief: SonicWall is recognized for delivering excellent and reliable cybersecurity tools to worldwide organizations. The publication also mentions that Frost & Sullivan recognized SonicWall’s industry-leading network firewall solutions that enhance organizational security, efficiency, and reliability.

The True Cost Of Rising Cyber Threats

Forbes: The actual cost of ignoring rising cyber threats and ‘being too late’ is not lost on today’s business leaders, and cybersecurity is annually rated as a top priority for company IT budgets. SonicWall predicted that by the end of 2021, the ransomware attack total would be near 714 million, a 134% year-on-year increase.

How to Cut Down on Data Breach Stress and Fatigue

Security Intelligence: If you’re tired of hearing the words’ data breach’, you’re not alone. It’s looking like 2021 might end up becoming the year with the most ransomware attacks on record. In August, SonicWall reported that the global ransomware attack volume had increased 151% during the first six months compared to 2020.

Industry News

IMF, 10 Countries Simulate Cyberattack on Global Financial System

Reuters: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) along with the national banks from 10-countries simulated a major cyberattack on the global financial system. The program, called “Collective Strength,” was intended to increase global cooperation that could help minimize any potential damage to financial markets and banks. The simulated “war game,” as Israel’s Finance Ministry called it, was planned over the past year and evolved over ten days. The simulation result ended with sensitive financial data emerging on the Dark Web and resulted in fake news reports that caused chaos in global markets and a run on banks. Participants in the initiative included treasury officials from Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Thailand, as well as representatives from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Bank of International Settlements.

New Policy Gives Some Federal Agencies 24 Hours to Assess Major Cyberattacks

The Hill: A new policy recently rolled out by the White House gives certain federal agencies as little as 24 hours to assess the impact of a cyberattack and report the attack if it rises to a significant level of concern. According to a copy of the memo issued by the White House National Security Council (NSC), the policy applies to national security and intelligence agencies, including the FBI. The new policy gives agencies only 24 hours to report a cyberattack they assess as “a national security concern” to the White House.

The Irish Health System Was Saved By The Hackers

BBC: In March, someone working in the offices of the Irish Health Service Executive (HSE) opened a spreadsheet that had been sent to them by email two days earlier. The file was compromised with malware, and the gang behind it spent the next two months hacking their way through the networks and laying out data traps. There were multiple warning signs at work, but no investigation was launched, which meant IT managers missed a crucial opportunity to intervene. So, when the criminals unleashed their ransomware, the impact was devastatingly total. However, three months later, the attackers posted a link to a key so that the department managers could decrypt their files. The hackers gave no reasons, nor did they make any statements. Maybe the hackers had a change of heart; perhaps it was a test for something much worse. Nevertheless, this one act of mercy by the hackers allowed Irish health to embark on the road to recovery. According to an independent assessment report, without the decryption key, “it is unknown whether systems could have been recovered fully, or how long it would have taken to recover systems from back-ups, but it is highly likely that the recovery timeframe would have been considerably longer.”

Krebs: Cyberattacks Could Be Used To “Disrupt” Decision-Making

Axios: Former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Christopher Krebs told Axios at an event Thursday that America’s adversaries could use cyberattacks in the future to “disrupt” US decision-making. The big picture: Krebs, using China as an example, said that future cyber attacks could be part of “a larger, more complex approach by an adversary.” What he’s saying: “If things get hot in Taiwan, there’s a possibility that the Chinese government could use some sort of cyber capability to make us focus here rather than over there.”

Chinese Cyberattack Almost Shut Off Power for THREE MILLION Australians

Daily Mail: Chinese hackers came within minutes of shutting off power to three million Australian homes but were thwarted at the final hurdle. The Communist regime launched a ‘sustained’ ransomware attack on CS Energy’s two thermal coal plants in Queensland on November 27 – showing what Beijing could be capable of in a wartime scenario. There were panic stations within the energy firm as employees lost access to their emails and other critical internal data. IT specialists came up with a brilliant last-minute move to stop Beijing from gaining access by separating its corporate and operational computer systems. Once IT managers cut the network in half, hackers had no way of seizing control of the generators. Sources with knowledge of the hack attempt said the cyber-attackers were less than 30 minutes away from shutting down power.

Lloyd’s of London Calls it Quits for Cyber Insurance

CPO Magazine: Major insurance firm Lloyd’s of London has issued a bulletin indicating that its cyber insurance products will no longer cover the fallout of cyberattacks exchanged between nation-states. The insurer said last week that they would no longer cover damages from “cyber war” between countries and that this definition extends to operations that have a “major detrimental impact on the functioning of a state.” So, the looming question, if the cyber insurance firm no longer covers the fallout of digital war, do attacks infrastructure count? Quick to answer from Lloyd’s: No. The firm says that it no longer wants to deal in losses that result from “cyber war,” which the firm includes attacks that have a “major detrimental impact” on a state’s function, implying attacks on critical infrastructure.

The Top Data Breaches Of 2021

Security Magazine: A list of 2021’s top 10 data breaches and exposures and a few other noteworthy mentions. Particularly important is how the manufacturing and utilities sector was deeply impacted, with 48 compromises and a total of 48,294,629 victims. The healthcare sector followed, with 78 compromises resulting in more than 7 million victims. Other sectors that were hit resulted in 3.5 million victims, including financial services (1.6 million victims), government (1.4 million victims) and professional services (1.5 million victims). As SonicWall threat data has also shown, this is the year of the ransomware, and we still have four weeks to go!

In Case You Missed It

Cybersecurity News & Trends – 12-03-21

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SonicWall’s widely quoted threat reports are still pulling in massive attention from the US and European news organizations, helped along by the Agence France-Presse (AFP). Several news outlets also noted SonicWall’s launch of the Gen7 NGFW products and winning the Frost & Sullivan’s 2021 Global Competitive Strategy Leadership Award. Meanwhile, in Industry News, the FBI netted international arrests by selling a “secure” communication app, damage from ‘Double-Extortion’ ransomware rises 935%, and civilians find themselves in the crossfire of a rising cyberwar between Iran and Israel.

SonicWall in the News

China’s Missile Turducken

Politico: In 2019, security threat researchers at SonicWall Capture Labs estimated that ransomware gangs deployed 129.3 million malware attacks during the week of Thanksgiving, a 63% increase from the year before.

700M Attacks in 2021 and Counting: Can Businesses Fight the Ransomware Tsunami?

Toolbox: Asking whether businesses are investing enough into technology, or “organizational culture” is to blame, the writer observes surprise at the enormous rise in breaches this year. They also cite SonicWall’s recently released Q3 Threat Report. From the scale of the attacks, we get a peek into how cybercriminals leverage ransomware as their weapon of choice to hit anyone.

SonicWall Applauded by Frost & Sullivan

Business Chief: SonicWall is recognized for delivering excellent and reliable cybersecurity tools to worldwide organizations. The publication also mentions that Frost & Sullivan recognized SonicWall’s industry-leading network firewall solutions that enhance organizational security, efficiency, and reliability.

The True Cost Of Rising Cyber Threats

Forbes: The actual cost of ignoring rising cyber threats and ‘being too late’ is not lost on today’s business leaders, and cybersecurity is annually rated as a top priority for company IT budgets. SonicWall predicted that by the end of 2021, the ransomware attack total would be near 714 million, a 134% year-on-year increase.

Frost & Sullivan recognizes SonicWall

Yahoo Finance: Based on its recent analysis of the network firewall market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes SonicWall with the Frost & Sullivan’s 2021 Global Competitive Strategy Leadership Award for redefining and leading the network market roadmap.

Did the Cybersecurity Stakes Get Even Higher in 2021?

Government Technology: In 2021, cybersecurity will get more serious. Already a growing threat, ransomware exploded, with attacks becoming more frequent and costly. The volume of ransomware attacks against US targets rose 185 percent year over year in the first half of 2021, according to Internet security solutions provider SonicWall.

SonicWall’s new firewall models protect enterprises from the most advanced cyberattacks

ITWire: SonicWall adds three new firewall models— NSa 5700, NSsp 10700, and NSsp 11700—to its Generation 7 cybersecurity evolution, touted to be the most extensive product launch in the company’s 30-year history.

How to Cut Down on Data Breach Stress and Fatigue

Security Intelligence: If you’re tired of hearing the words’ data breach’, you’re not alone. It’s looking like 2021 might end up becoming the year with the most ransomware attacks on record. In August, SonicWall reported that the global ransomware attack volume had increased 151% during the first six months compared to 2020.

SonicWall’s new firewalls: Trimmed for throughput

Market Research Telecast: SonicWall adds the three firewalls NSa 5700, NSsp 10700 and NSsp 11700 to its cybersecurity portfolio MSSPs (Managed Security Service Providers). The design goal of the new products was primarily performance.

Act now to protect yourself against cybercrime, says former hacker Marshal Webb

Daily Record (UK): Cybercrime is a fast-growing threat to every organisation online. According to the 2021 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report, in the first half of this year, there were 304.7 million ransomware threats – a rise of more than 150% on the same time last year. Former hacker turned cybersecurity expert Marshal Webb is calling for organisations to protect themselves and their customers.

Cryptocrimes Proliferate: Ransomware, New Threat Campaigns

BankInfo Security: The cryptocurrency sector has witnessed ransomware incidents, malware campaigns and a cryptocurrency address-altering attack. SonicWall security researcher Dmitriy Ayrapetov said, “The new campaign is another example of how relentless cybercriminals are in their search for profit.”

Tech 2022 trends: Meatless meat, Web 3.0, Big Tech battles

AFP, Dunyan News (India): Cybersecurity company SonicWall wrote in late October: “With 495 million ransomware attacks logged by the company this year to date, 2021 will be the most costly and dangerous year on record.”

Trends for 2022: Big Tech battles

AFP, Manila Times (Philippines): The spike toward record ransomware attacks and data leaks in 2021 looks likely to spill over into the coming year. Cybersecurity company SonicWall wrote in late October: “With 495 million ransomware attacks logged by the company this year to date, 2021 will be the most costly and dangerous year on record.”

Tech 2022 trends: Web 3.0 and crypto, Big Tech battles

AFP, ET Telecom (India): After a year that made the terms like ‘work from home’ and metaverse instantly recognizable, cybersecurity company SonicWall reported that 495 million ransomware attacks were logged by the company this year. They said that “2021 will be the most costly and dangerous year on record.”

Industry News

How a Complicated Cybersecurity Story Got More Complicated

Slate: In one of the more unusual cybersecurity policing stories of the past year, the FBI announced in June that it had created its own company, called ANOM, to sell devices with a pre-installed encrypted messaging app to criminals. They marketed the ANOM app as providing end-to-end encrypted messaging, comparable to the security protections offered by services like Signal, WhatsApp, and iMessage. However, the messages were intercepted by law enforcement, which had designed the app for precisely that purpose. The effort’s success surprised even the FBI with more than 12,000 ANOM devices and services sold. The operation, named Operation Trojan Shield, led to the arrests of 800 people worldwide along with the seizure of contraband, 250 firearms, and more than $48 million.

Ransomware attack on Planned Parenthood steals data of 400,000 patients

ARS Technica: Hackers broke into a Planned Parenthood network and accessed medical records or sensitive data for more than 400,000 patients. The organization says that the intrusion and data theft were limited to Planned Parenthood’s Los Angeles chapter patients. Organization personnel first noticed the hack on October 17 and investigated.

‘Double-Extortion’ Ransomware Damage Skyrockets 935%

Threat Post: The ransomware business is booming, and researchers say that inadequate corporate security and a flourishing ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) affiliate market are to blame. Access to compromised networks is cheap, thanks to a rise in the number of initial-access brokers, and RaaS tools can turn everyday petty crooks into full-blown cybercriminals in an afternoon for just a few bucks.

New Ransomware Variant Could Become Next Big Threat

Dark Reading: Yanluowang is one among numerous new ransomware variants that have surfaced this year. Just this week, Red Canary researchers reported observing a threat actor exploiting the ProxyShell set of vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange to deploy a new ransomware variant called BlackByte, which others, such as TrustWave’s SpiderLabs, have recently warned about as well.

Israel and Iran Broaden Cyberwar to Attack Civilian Targets

New York Times: Iranians couldn’t buy gas. Israelis found their intimate dating details posted online. As a result, the Iran-Israel shadow war is now hitting ordinary citizens. Millions of ordinary people in Iran and Israel recently found themselves caught up in the crossfire of a cyberwar between their countries. The escalation comes as American authorities have warned of Iranian attempts to hack hospitals’ computer networks and other critical infrastructure in the United States. As hopes fade for a diplomatic resurrection of the Iranian nuclear agreement, such attacks are only likely to increase.

In Case You Missed It

7 Factors to Consider When Evaluating Endpoint Protection Solutions

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The threat landscape is evolving. Attackers are getting craftier with infiltrating secure environments. Is your endpoint protection able to keep up? In many cases, organizations just aren’t sure.

The increase in the number of cyberattacks targeting endpoints — and attackers using craftier methods to gain access to user machines — has lead to a highly competitive endpoint protection market. There’s plenty of confusion surrounding what differentiates one endpoint protection solution from another, let alone which product will meet your unique business needs.

Among the claims and counter-claims about which solution is best, the reality is that the right solution for your organization is not necessarily the one with the loudest voice in the marketplace.

Instead, consider whether your approach to endpoint protection matches that of the providers you evaluate. With rapid changes in the way malware and threat actors are compromising victims, which security solutions are keeping up?

Let’s take a look at seven basic checks that can help enhance endpoint compliance and lead to better protection against cyberattacks.

  1. Don’t underestimate the risks of mobility

    The traditional approach that legacy AV software is just there to protect your devices from malware and data loss creates a blind spot in defensive thinking. The task is to protect your network from both internal and external threats, and that includes the potential threat from end-user behavior when they’re mobile and off-network.

    Today, users who login from airports and cafés using public and open access points pose a greater threat to the corporate network.

    Modern, integrated security thinking understands that this means more than just anti-malware or AV coverage on the device. Off-network content filtering and media control are necessary adjuncts to protect your entire network, regardless of where the threat may come from.

    And in the event a verdict from the agent doesn’t have confidence, having a second layer of defense via a cloud-based malware analysis engine helps handle it in real-time.

  2. Avoid drowning in the noise of alerts

    Even today, some endpoint vendors still believe that the quantity — rather than the quality — of alerts is what should differentiate a superior product from the rest. But alerts that go unnoticed because they are swimming in a sea of hundreds of other alerts clamoring for attention are as good as no alerts at all.

    The Target Corporation learned this lesson at a great cost. False positives (i.e., the boy who cried wolf) condition weary admins and SOC specialists to “tune out” things that may be the next big threat because they simply cannot cope with the quantity of work.

    Rather than a security solution that provides hundreds of single alerts for each command with little or no context, choose one that provides a single alert with the telemetry and details of all the related commands — whether that be one or 100 — automatically mapped into the context of an entire attack storyline.

  3. Secure the endpoint locally

    We live in the age of the cloud, but malicious software acts locally on devices, and that’s where your endpoint detection needs to be, too.

    If your security solution needs to contact a server before it can act (e.g., get instructions or check files against a remote database), you’re already one step behind the attackers.

    Make sure that your endpoint protection solution has the capability to secure the endpoint locally by taking into consideration the behavioral changes and identify malicious processes without cloud dependency.

    And when using a cloud-based second layer, make sure the suspected threat is contained to eliminate impact while a verdict is made.

  4. Keep it simple, silly

    There’s power in simplicity, but today’s threat landscape is increasingly sophisticated. While some vendors think the number of tools they offer is a competitive advantage, it just increases the workload on your staff and locks knowledge into specialized employees who may one day take themselves — and that knowledge — elsewhere.

    You want to be able to eliminate threats fast and close the gaps without needing a large or dedicated SOC team. Look for endpoint protection that takes a holistic approach, builds all the features you need into a unified client and is managed by a user-friendly console that doesn’t require specialized training.

  5. Build for the worst-case scenario

    Let’s face it, ANY protection layer can fail. It’s the nature of the game that attackers will adapt to defenders. If you can’t see what your endpoints are doing, how can you be sure that one of them hasn’t been compromised?

    Has a remote worker clicked a phishing link and allowed an attacker access to your network? Is a vulnerability in a third-party application allowing cybercriminals to move around inside your environment undetected? Have you factored for attackers who have now embraced encrypted threats (e.g., HTTPs vectors) and acquired their own SSL certificates?

    The modern cyber threat landscape requires a defense-in-depth posture, which includes SSL/TLS decryption capabilities to help organizations proactively use deep packet inspection of SSL (DPI-TLS/SSL) to block encrypted attacks. DPI-SSL technology provides additional security, application control, and data leakage prevention for analyzing encrypted HTTPs and other SSL-based traffic.

    In addition, drive visibility into application vulnerability risk and control over web content access to reduce the attack surface.

  6. Drive compliance across all endpoints

    It’s the quiet ones at the back you have to look out for. If your enterprise is 95% harnessed to one platform, it doesn’t mean you can write-off the business risk presented by the other 5% as negligible.

    Attackers are able to exploit vulnerabilities in one device and jump to another, regardless of what operating system the device itself may be running. To avoid the risk of vulnerable endpoints connecting to your corporate network, integrate endpoint security with your firewall infrastructure and restrict network access for endpoints that don’t have endpoint protection installed on the machine.

    Remember, you’re only as strong as your weakest link.

  7. Don’t trust blindly

    Blocking untrusted processes and whitelisting the known “good guys” is a traditional technique of legacy AV security solutions that attackers have moved well beyond, and businesses need to think smarter than that, too.

    With techniques like process-hollowing and embedded PowerShell scripts, malware authors are well-equipped to exploit AV solutions that trust once and allow forevermore. Endpoint protection needs to look beyond trust and inspect the behavior of processes executing on the device. Is that “trusted” process doing what it’s supposed to be doing or is it exhibiting suspicious behavior?

Endpoint protection integrated across your environment

SonicWall Capture Client is a unified endpoint offering with multiple protection capabilities. With a next-generation malware protection engine powered by SentinelOne, Capture Client applies advanced threat protection techniques, such as machine learning, network sandbox integration and system rollback.

The solution uses automated intelligence to adapt and detect new strains of malware through advanced behavior analytics. It provides multi-layered defense against advanced threats, like fileless malware and side-channel attacks, using SentinelOne’s AI-driven behavioral analysis and SonicWall Real-Time Deep Memory InspectionTM (RTDMI) engine with the Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) sandbox service.

The solution also delivers granular visibility into threat behavior, helping identify potential impact and remediation actions. A sound endpoint protection solution also should be paired with a defense-in-depth security strategy across all the key layers of transport, including email, network and cloud.

Inside the Modern Phishing Campaigns of 2019

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The world of cybersecurity is dominated by headlines of malware, ransomware, data breaches, app vulnerabilities, IoT threats and botnet attacks. But phishing has been a serious threat since the early 2000s and is widely regarded as the most common attack vector for cybercriminals.

Today, phishing is not about volume. These email threats are now tuned to successfully trick a high-value target into taking a desired action: clicking on a malicious link, opening a malware-laden file, providing a password or authorizing financial transactions.

In the current cyber arms race, threat actors are constantly trying to get around security systems. In the context of email as a threat vector, phishing has evolved into spear-phishing, impersonation and Business Email Compromise (BEC) types of attacks. These messages are highly targeted with extensive social engineering efforts to carefully select and study the victim.

Global phishing volume down, attacks more targeted

Published in the 2019 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report, our Capture Labs threat researchers recorded 26 million phishing attacks worldwide, a 4.1 percent drop from 2017. During that time, the average SonicWall customer faced 5,488 phishing attacks.

2018 Global Phishing Volume

As businesses get better at blocking email attacks and ensuring employees can spot and delete suspicious emails, attackers are shifting tactics. New data suggests they’re reducing overall attack volume and launching more highly targeted phishing attacks (e.g., Black Friday and Cyber Monday attacks).

Explore the five common tactics phishers are using to steal credentials, deploy malware, infiltrate networks and damage brands.

  1. Malicious URLs and fake or spoofed websites
    With improvements in secure email solutions that mitigate phishing, cybercriminals are resorting to innovative methods to execute targeted attacks, such as using weaponized URLs in email to deliver malicious payloads or creating phishing websites with fake login pages to harvest user login credentials.In late 2017, it was reported that nearly 1.5 million phishing sites are created each month. And the detection of phishing sites has become harder because phishers are obfuscating phishing URLs with multiple redirections and URL shortners.

    In addition, about half of these phishing sites are using HTTPS and SSL certificates, which make it easier for cybercriminals to deceive their victims.

    Source: “PhishPoint: New SharePoint Phishing Attack Affects an Estimated 10% of Office 365 Users,” Avanan, August 2018.

    According to Microsoft’s security intelligence report, “attackers increasingly use popular document sharing and collaboration sites and services to distribute malicious payloads and fake login forms that are used to steal user credentials.”

  2. Phishing targeting Office 365 applications, users
    SaaS and webmail services are increasingly targeted by phishing campaigns. According to the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), phishing that targeted SaaS and webmail services doubled in the fourth quarter of 2018.As Office 365 gains adoption as the most popular choice of cloud email platform across organizations of all sizes and verticals, it comes as no surprise that Microsoft is the most impersonated brand.

    “As Microsoft’s SEG market share increases, smart attackers will specifically target Microsoft’s defenses,” reports Gartner.

    This is not unconceivable because an Office 365 subscription is available to anyone with a credit card, making its security features very accessible to cybercriminals. This theoretically enables criminal groups to design phishing campaigns that can evade Microsoft’s native defenses. In fact, in another report, researchers found 25% of phishing emails bypass Office 365 security.

  3. Compromised credentials
    In January 2019, security researcher Troy Hunt discovered “Collection 1,” a trove of 773 million email addresses and 21 million passwords available for sale on Hacker Forum.These compromised user IDs and password combinations are used to carry out attacks from the inside. A common attack includes account takeover that involves threat actors compromising employee corporate credentials by either launching a credential phishing campaign against an organization or buying credentials on the Darkweb due to third-party data leaks. The threat actor can then use the stolen credentials to gain additional access or escalate privileges. Compromised credentials may remain undiscovered for months or years.
  4. Impersonation, CEO fraud and Business Email Compromise (BEC)
    According to the FBI, Business Email Compromise, or BEC, is a scam targeting businesses working with foreign suppliers and/or businesses regularly performing wire transfer payments. These sophisticated scams are carried out by fraudsters compromising email accounts through social engineering or computer intrusion techniques to conduct unauthorized transfer of funds.These types of attacks are hard to stop because they do not contain malicious links or attachments, but a message to the victim seemingly from a trusted sender requesting transfer of funds.

    The FBI Internet Complaint Center (IC3) reported last summer that from October 2013 to May 2018, total losses worldwide for known BEC scams hit $12.5 billion.

  5. Malicious PDF files and Office doc attachments
    Email attachments are a popular delivery mechanism for malicious payloads, such as ransomware and never-before-seen malware. SonicWall Capture Labs threat researchers recently found a substantial increase of malicious or fraudulent PDF files.These fraud campaigns take advantage of recipients’ trust in PDF files as a “safe” file format that is widely used and relied upon for business operations. I recommend reading “New PDF Fraud Campaign Spotlights Shifting Cybercriminal Phishing Tactics, written by Dmitriy Ayrapetov, Executive Director of Product Management, to learn more about these types of phishing campaigns and how you can stop them.

New PDF Fraud Campaign Spotlights Shifting Cybercriminal Phishing Tactics

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PDF cyberattacks are nothing new. They are, however, growing in volume, deception, sophistication and are now used as vehicles to modernize phishing campaigns.

SonicWall Capture Labs Threat Researchers announced a substantial increase of malicious or fraudulent PDF files. These fraud campaigns take advantage of recipients’ trust in PDF files as a “safe” file format that is widely used and relied upon for business operations.

In March 2019 alone, SonicWall Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection (RTDMI™) discovered more than 73,000 new PDF-based attacks. In comparison, we found 47,000 new attack variants in PDF files in all of 2018.

“Increasingly, email, Office documents and PDFs are the vehicle of choice for malware and fraud in the cyber landscape,” said SonicWall President and CEO Bill Conner in the official announcement. “SonicWall Capture ATP with its RTDMI technology is at the forefront of catching new cyberattacks that elude traditional security sandbox technology.”

Last year, RTDMI identified over 74,000 never-before-seen cyberattacks, a number that has already been surpassed in the first quarter of 2019 with more than 173,000 new variants detected.

In March, the patent-pending technology identified over 83,000 unique, never-before-seen malicious events, of which over 67,000 were PDFs linked to scammers and more than 5,500 were PDFs with direct links to other malware.

Since 2017, Capture ATP with RTDMI has discovered increasing volumes of new threats leveraging PDFs and Office files.

Most traditional security controls cannot identify and mitigate malware hidden in PDF file types, greatly increasing the success of the payload. This increase implies a growing, widespread and effective strategy against small- and medium-sized businesses, enterprises and government agencies.

That’s where SonicWall RTDMI is unique. The technology analyzes documents dynamically via proprietary exploit detection technology, along with static inspection, to detect many malicious document categories, including PDFs, Office files, and a wide range of scripts and executables.

PDF malware attacks: A technical autopsy

SonicWall Capture Labs threat researchers dissected specific paths these fraudulent PDF campaigns take victims to infect them with malware.

In one example (see image below), Capture Labs cross-referenced a malicious file, at the time of detection, with popular collaboration tools from VirusTotal and ReversingLabs. No results were found, indicating the effectiveness of the RTDMI engine.

Targets of the scam email campaigns receive malicious documents from businesses luring victims with PDF files that are made to look deceivingly realistic with misleading links to fraudulent pages. The proposed “business offer” within the PDF is enticing to recipients, often promising free and profitable opportunities with just the click of a link.

Pictured below, the victim is sent to a fraudulent landing page masquerading as a legitimate money-making offer.

SonicWall hypothesizes that by using PDFs as delivery vehicles within their phishing campaigns, attackers are attempting to circumvent email security spam filters and next-generation firewalls — a core reason RTDMI is finding so many new malicious PDFs.

What does this PDF fraud campaign mean?

PDFs are becoming a very attractive tool for cybercriminals. Whether or not these are new attacks — or we are just developing the ability to detect them with RTDMI — the volume indicates that they are a serious problem for SMBs, enterprises, governments and organizations across a wide range of industries.

What’s the motive?

While SonicWall data doesn’t help us understand motivation, it does show that the amount of malicious, PDF-related activity is on the rise. We believe that this is happening for a variety of reasons, including:

  • Better awareness. Users have learned that executables sent to them are potential dangerous and could contain viruses, so they are more hesitant to click .exe files, forcing attackers to try new techniques.
  • Deprecation of Flash. Adobe Flash was a key attack vector in the past, but has been deprecated and will be completely end of life in 2020. So, attackers’ ability to use Flash exploits have been greatly reduced, forcing them to change tactics.
  • Must-trust files. Businesses move fast. Users are under constant pressure and don’t have the time, experience or know-how to vet every file type that hits their inbox. As such, users make assumptions that trusted file types (e.g., PDFs, Office files) used daily are, for the most part, safe. So, users are more likely to read and click links within them without considering the source or ramifications.

What is the impact of the PDF fraud campaigns?

This is very difficult to determine. In the 2019 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report, Capture Labs reported that 34% of the new attack variants found by Capture ATP were either PDF or Office files — a figure that had grown from 13% since the last half of 2017. This data implies that this attack vector is growing, is widespread and is an effective strategy.

Who is behind this?

While attribution is difficult, SonicWall believes the latest spike in malicious PDF activity is Russian-based because of the use of many .ru top-level domains leveraged across analyzed campaigns.

How to stop cyberattacks that use PDF and Office files

  • Force attacks to reveal intentions. SonicWall RTDMI operates in parallel with the SonicWall Capture ATP sandbox service to quickly get a verdict on any suspicious piece of code as it operates in memory, including malicious PDFs and Office files.
  • Protect the most common attack vectors. Another important layer of defense against malicious PDFs is email security. SonicWall offers cloud, hosted and on-premises email security solutions. SonicWall leverages advanced security controls to examine files, senders, domains and URLs to look for malicious activity.
  • Make training a policy. Improve awareness by implementing employee training protocols to ensure users know how to examine PDF and Office file attachments carefully before opening or clicking unknown links.
  • Use endpoint protection. SonicWall recommends using advanced endpoint security, such as Capture Client powered by SentinelOne, to constantly monitor the behavior of a system to scout for malicious behavior, including PDF attacks.

Stopping PDF Attacks: 5 Ways Users & Organizations Can Work Together

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Leveraging malicious PDFs is a great tactic for threat actors because the file format and file readers have a long history of exposed and, later, patched flaws.

Because of the useful, dynamic features included in the document format, it’s reasonable to assume further flaws will be exposed and exploited by adversaries; these attacks may not go away for some time. Furthermore, there’s no way for the average user to diagnose a benign or malicious PDF as it opens.

Since the average SonicWall customer will see nearly 5,500 phishing and social engineering attacks targeting their users each year, it’s vital to remain vigilant about the dangers of PDFs and deploy advanced security to prevent attacks.

Why are malicious PDFs being used in cyberattacks?

In many kinds of malicious PDF attacks, the PDF reader itself contains a vulnerability or flaw that allows a file to execute malicious code. Remember, PDF readers aren’t just applications like Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat. Most web browsers contain a built-in PDF reader engine that can also be targeted.

In other cases, attackers might leverage AcroForms or XFA Forms, which are scripting technologies used in PDF creation that were intended to add useful, interactive features to a standard PDF document. To the average person, a malicious PDF looks like another innocent document and they have no idea that it is executing code. According to Adobe, “One of the easiest and most powerful ways to customize PDF files is by using JavaScript.”

If you are a threat actor reading this, you are well versed in the above. And your victims are not. If you are an administrator responsible for keeping threats out and their damage to a minimum, it’s time to take some necessary precautions.

Stop PDF attacks with user-side prevention

First, there are a couple of things users can do to help reduce exposure to PDF-based attacks. Most readers and browsers will have some form of JavaScript control that will require adjustment.

  • Change you preferences. In Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, for example, you can disable Acrobat JavaScript in the preferences to help manage access to URLs.
  • Customize controls. Similarly, with a bit of effort, users can also customize how Windows handles NTLM authentication.

While these mitigations are “nice to have” and certainly worth considering, these features were added, just like Microsoft Office Macros, to improve usability and productivity. Therefore, be sure that you’re not disabling functionality that is an important part of your own or your organization’s workflow.

Stop PDF attacks with company-wide protections

Thankfully, SonicWall technology can quickly decode PDFs to see what the malware wants to really do, such as contact malicious domains or steal credentials. Here are three key ways organizations can limit exposure to PDF-based attacks.

  • Implement advanced email security. The first line of defense against malicious PDFs is email security. SonicWall offers cloud, hosted and on-premises email security solutions. SonicWall leverages advanced security controls to examine files, senders, domains and URLs to look for malicious activity.
  • Use endpoint protection. SonicWall recommends using advanced endpoint security, such as Capture Client powered by SentinelOne, to constantly monitor the behavior of a system to scout for malicious behavior. Capture Client stops threats before they execute and has great EDR capabilities to stop them as they do, see where they came from, and remediation steps, such as rollback in case they fully do.
  • Identify new threats. One thing that separates SonicWall from the rest is our patent-pending Real-Time Deep Memory InspectionTM (RTDMI). RTDMI operates in parallel with the SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) sandbox service. This is just one of our parallel engines in the sandboxing environment that gives us the ability to quickly get a verdict on any suspicious piece of code as it operates in memory, including malicious PDFs and Office files.

Malicious PDFs will be around for the foreseeable future, but through advanced security and good end-user awareness, your company will be better suited to prevent attacks.

For a more technical view on this, I recommend reading Philip Stokes’ blog from SentinelOne that inspired and supplied part of the content for this story. I also recommend watching our on-demand webinar, “Best Practices for Protecting Against Phishing, Ransomware and Email Fraud.”

5 Tips to Keep You Cybersecure During Holiday Travel

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The holiday season is one of the busiest times of the year for travel, which means it’s also one of the most vulnerable times of the year for travelers’ belongings, including sensitive personal data.

Those looking forward to spending time away from the office and relaxing with friends and family are likely making plans to secure their belongings at home, but what about securing devices and data?

Year-to-date attack data through November 2018 shows an increase in attacks across nearly all forms of cybercrime, including increases in intrusion attempts, encrypted threats, and malware attacks.

Below are some simple ways to consider protecting your cyber assets and have peace of mind during a well-earned holiday break.

  1. Lock Devices Down
    While traveling, lock all your mobile devices (smartphones, laptops, and tablets) via fingerprint ID, facial recognition, or a PIN number. This will be the first line of defense against a security breach in the event that any of your devices have been momentarily misplaced or forgotten.
  2. Minimize Location Sharing
    We get it! You want to share the fun memories from your trip with your friends and family on social media. However, excessive sharing, especially sharing of location data, creates a security threat at home.If you’re sharing a photo on a boat or at the Eiffel Tower, it’s easy for a criminal to determine you’re not at home or in your hotel room, which leaves your personal property left behind vulnerable to theft of breach. If you must share location data, wait until after you have returned home to geotag that selfie from your trip.
  3. Bring Your Own Cords and Power Adapters
    Cyber criminals have the ability to install malware in public places such as airport kiosks and USB charging stations. If you are unable to find a secure area to charge your devices or you are unsure of the safety of the charging area, power your device down prior to plugging it in.
  4. Disable Auto-Connect
    Most phones have a setting that allows a device to automatically connect to saved or open Wi-Fi networks. This feature is convenient when used at home, but can leave your device vulnerable to threat actors accessing these features for man-in-the-middle attacks.Disable the auto-connect features on your devices and wipe saved network SSIDs from the device prior to your trip to avoid exploitation.
  5. Be Cautious of Public Wi-Fi
    Free Wi-Fi access can often be found at coffee shops and in hotel lobbies as a convenience to travelers, but unencrypted Wi-Fi networks should be avoided. Before you connect to a new Wi-Fi source, ask for information regarding the location’s protocol and if you must use a public Wi-Fi connection, be extra cautious.Use a VPN to log in to your work networks and avoid accessing personal accounts or sensitive data while connected to a public Wi-Fi source.

Cybercrime is Trending up During the Holiday Season

For the 2018 holiday shopping season, SonicWall Capture Labs threat researchers collected data over the nine-day Thanksgiving holiday shopping window and observed a staggering increase in cyberattacks, including a 432 percent increase in ransomware and a 45 percent increase in phishing attacks.

LIVE WORLDWIDE ATTACK MAP

Visit the SonicWall Security Center to see live data including attack trends, types, and volume across the world. Knowing what attacks are most likely to target your organization can help improve your security posture and provide actionable cyber threat intelligence.

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October 2018 Cyber Threat Data: Web App Attacks, Ransomware Continue Upward Trend

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Throughout 2018, we’ve been sharing monthly updates on the cyber threat data recorded and analyzed by SonicWall Capture Labs, highlighting cyberattack trends and tying it back to the overall cyber threat landscape.

Now, cyber threat intelligence from the SonicWall Capture Security Center is even deeper. The tool now provides empirical data on cyberattacks against web applications. In an increasingly virtual and cloud-connected world, protecting web apps is just as critical as defending more traditional networks.

In October, the overall number of web application attacks continued to rise sharply. We tracked over 1.8 million web app attacks, more than double the volume of attacks for the same time period in 2017.

One factor influencing this is the continued growth explosion of the Internet of Things (IoT), which has added billions of connected devices online, each bringing new and unique potential for vulnerabilities and weaknesses.

While the headline-grabbing news often focuses on processor attacks like Spectre or Meltdown, companies that aren’t using security measures, like SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection with Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection (RTDMI), can leave their standard applications exposed and vulnerable to cybercriminals who are always looking for a weakness.

The volume of ransomware attacks also continued its global upward trend in October. So far in 2018 we’ve seen over 286 million worldwide attacks, up 117 percent from 132 million this time last year. On an individual customer level, that’s 57 attacks per day per customer, an increase from only 14 in October last year.

The growing frequency and complexities of cyberattacks paint a dire picture for global businesses of all sizes. The good news is that by assessing your business’s cybersecurity risk, improving overall security behavior, and ensuring that you are utilizing the right cybersecurity solutions for your business, it’s possible to protect your business from most data breaches.

October Attack Data

Globally, the SonicWall Capture Threat Network, which includes more than 1 million sensors across the world, recorded the following 2018 year-to-date attack data through October 2018:

  • 9.2 billion malware attacks (44 percent increase from 2017)
  • 3.2 trillion intrusion attempts (45 percent increase)
  • 286.2 million ransomware attacks (117 percent increase)
  • 23.9 million web app attacks (113 percent increase)
  • 2.3 million encrypted threats (62 percent increase)

In October 2018 alone, the average SonicWall customer faced:

  • 1,756 malware attacks (19 percent decrease from October 2017)
  • 819,947 intrusion attempts (17 percent increase)
  • 57 ransomware attacks (311 percent increase)
  • 8,742 web app attacks (185 percent increase)
  • 152 encrypted threats (12 percent increase)
  • 12 phishing attacks each day (19 percent decrease)

SonicWall Capture Security Center

SonicWall cyber threat intelligence is available in the SonicWall Security Center, which provides a graphical view of the worldwide attacks over the last 24 hours, countries being attacked and geographic attack origins. This view illustrates the pace and speed of the cyber arms race.

The resource provides actionable cyber threat intelligence to help organizations identify the types of attacks they need to be concerned about so they can design and test their security posture ensure their networks, data, applications and customers are properly protected.

Report: Business Email Compromise (BEC) Now A $12.5 Billion Scam

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Email continues to be the top vector used by cybercriminals, and business email compromise (BEC) is gaining traction as one of the preferred types of email attacks.

BEC attacks do not contain any malware and can easily bypass traditional email security solutions. For cybercriminals, there is no need to invest in highly sophisticated and evasive malware. Instead, they engage in extensive social engineering activities to gain information on their potential targets and craft personalized messages.

What makes these attacks dangerous is that the email usernames and passwords of corporate executives are easily available to cybercriminals on the dark web, presumably due to data breaches of third-party websites or applications.

“Through 2023, business compromise attacks will be persistent and evasive, leading to large financial fraud losses for enterprises and data breaches for healthcare and government organizations,” says Gartner in their recent report, Fighting Phishing – 2020 Foresight 2020.

What is Business Email Compromise?

BEC attacks spoof trusted domains, imitate brands and/or mimic corporate identities. In many cases, the emails appear from a legitimate or trusted sender, or from the company CEO typically asking for wire transfers.

According to the FBI, BEC is defined as a sophisticated scam targeting businesses working with foreign suppliers and/or businesses that regularly perform wire transfer payments. This is a very real and growing issue. The FBI has put up a public service announcement saying that BEC is a $12.5 billion scam.

Types of BEC or Email Fraud

Email has been around since the 1960s and the current internet standard for email communication —  Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) — was not designed to authenticate senders and verify the integrity of received messages. Therefore, it’s easy to fake or “spoof” the source of an email. This weak sender identification will continue to present opportunities for creative attacks.

For example, here is a screenshot of a recent spoofing email that I encountered. The messaging seemingly originated from my colleague. The displayed sender’s name invokes an immediate recognition for the recipient. But a closer examination of the sender’s domain reveals the suspicious nature of the email.

Now, let’s look at the different types of spoofing techniques a threat actor might use to initiate an attack:

Display Name Spoofing
This is the most common form of BEC attack. In this case, a cybercriminal tries to impersonate a legitimate employee, typically an executive, in order to trick the recipient into taking an action. The domain used could be from a free email service such as Gmail.

Domain Name Spoofing
This includes either spoofing the sender’s “Mail From” to match that of the recipient’s domain in the message envelope, or using a legitimate domain in the “Mail From” value but using a fraudulent “Reply-To” domain in the message header.

Cousin Domain or Lookalike Domain Spoofing
This type of attack relies on creating visual confusion for the recipient. This typically involves using sister domains such as “.ORG” or “.NET” instead of “.COM,” or swapping out characters, such as the numeral “0” for the letter “O,” an uppercase “I” for a lowercase “L.” This is also sometimes referred to as typosquatting.

Compromised Email Account or Account Take Over (ATO)
This is carried out by compromising legitimate business email accounts through social engineering or computer intrusion techniques to conduct unauthorized transfers of funds or data theft.

Best Practices for Stopping BEC Attacks

Concerned your organization could fall prey to business email compromise? Here are some email security best practices that you can implement to protect against sophisticated BEC attacks.

  1. Block fraudulent emails by deploying Sender Policy Framework (SPF), Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) and Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) capabilities.
  2. Enable multi-factor authentication and require regular password changes to stop attacks from compromised accounts.
  3. Establish approval processes for wire transfers.
  4. Deliver periodic user-awareness training for a people-centric approach to combat email attacks.

How to Stop Email Spoofing

Whether it’s CEO fraud, forged emails, business email compromise (BEC), impostor emails or impersonation attacks, all email spoofing attacks present a dangerous risk to organizations. Review the solution brief to gain four key best practices to help mitigate the email spoofing attacks that impact your business.

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May 2018: Cyberattack Volume Continues to Rise, Ransomware Attempts Jump 299 Percent

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The very latest cyber threat intelligence for May 2018 depicts increases in a number of attack areas, particularly when comparing against 2017 cyber threat data. Through May 2018, the SonicWall Capture Labs threat researches have recorded:

Global Cyberattacks — May 2018

  • 2 million malware attacks (64 percent year-over-year increase)
  • 9 million ransomware attacks (78 percent year-over-year increase)
  • 238,828 encrypted threats (142 percent year-over-year increase)

Global Cyberattacks — Year to Date

  • 5 billion malware attacks (128 percent increase )
  • 2 million ransomware attacks (299 percent increase)
  • 2 million encrypted threats (283 percent increase)

To put these numbers in a more practical light, it’s helpful to break them down by customer. In May 2018 alone, the average SonicWall customer faced:

  • 2,302 malware attacks (56 percent year-over-year increase)
  • 62 ransomware attacks (69 percent year-over-year increase)
  • Almost 94 encrypted threats
  • Over 14 phishing attacks per day

With each passing month, cybercriminals continue to perpetrate cyberattacks at an ever-accelerating rate. It is interesting to note that although encrypted traffic is actually down slightly when compared with last year, encrypted threats have more than doubled. This points to cybercriminals who are more aware of the efficacy of encrypting their attacks.

In addition, phishing attacks have increased by almost 40 percent since last month. To better educate your end users and follow secure email best practices, use the phishing IQ test to increase their suspicions when opening emails, particularly from unknown senders.

As the cyber war continues between threat actors and security professionals, arming your organization with the latest cyber threat intelligence is critical to implementing or improving a sound security posture. As long as vulnerabilities exist, there are threat actors working to exploit them.

Find Threat Metrics When You Need Them

Would you like to keep up-to-date on threat metrics, security news and worldwide cyberattacks? The SonicWall Security Center has all of this and more.

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