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Cyber Security News & Trends – 06-22-18

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Each week, SonicWall collects the cyber security industry’s most compelling, trending and important interviews, media and news stories — just for you.

SonicWall Spotlight

Cloud Encryption Market: Security to Remain Primary Factor for Adoption of Cloud Encryption — Tech You n Me

  • This article reviews the cloud encryption market and how key players like SonicWall are releasing innovative new products, like the company’s range of cloud security products that includes the SonicWall Cloud Analytics application for deep security data analysis and automated breach detection.

Sophos XG vs SonicWall NS: Top NGFWs Compared — eSecurity Planet

  • In an article detailing the strengths and weaknesses of top vendor next-generation firewalls (NGFWs), the SonicWall NSA is featured in comparison to the Sophos XG.

Cyber Security News

How a Few People Took Equifax to Small Claims Court Over Its Data Breach and Won — The New York Times

  • After 145 million Americans’ financial information was exposed last year, some of them won cases against the credit reporting agency in local courts.

Script Kiddie Goes From ‘Bitcoin Baron’ to ‘Lockup Lodger’ After DDoSing 911 Systems — The Register

  • Randall Charles Tucker was given a 20-month sentence Tuesday after pleading guilty earlier this year to one count of felony intentional damage to a protected computer. He had faced as many as 41 months.

New Phishing Scam Reels In Netflix Users To TLS-Certified Sites — Threat Post

  • Researchers are warning of a new Netflix phishing scam that leads victims to sites with valid Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates.

Korean Cryptocurrency Exchange Bithumb Loses More Than $30 Million in Hack — The Wall Street Journal

  • Seoul-based bitcoin exchange Bithumb said Wednesday it had lost over $30 million as the result of being hacked, the second cyberattack in two weeks to hit a major South Korean cryptocurrency exchange as safety concerns hamper the industry and weigh on prices.

This New Windows Malware Wants to Add Your PC to a Botnet – or Worse — ZDNet

  • Dubbed Mylobot after a researcher’s pet dog, the origins of the malware and its delivery method are currently unknown, but it appears to have a connection to Locky ransomware – one of last year’s most prolific forms of malware.

China-Based Hackers Breached Satellite, Defense Firms: Study — The Hill

  • China-based hackers infiltrated satellite operators, defense contractors and telecommunications companies in the U.S. and southeast Asia, according to researchers at Symantec Corp.

In Case You Missed It

Cybersecurity News & Trends – 06-15-18

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Each week, SonicWall collects the cyber security industry’s most compelling, trending and important interviews, media and news stories — just for you.

SonicWall Spotlight

CEO Spotlight- Bill Conner, SonicWall — 1080 KRLD Radio

  • Bill Conner and David Johnson sit down and discuss SonicWall’s momentum, attack vectors threatening business and what’s happening in cybersecurity today on David’s CEO Spotlight radio segment.

Brightstar is the first SonicWall MSSP in India — CRN.in

  • The recent SonicWall and Brightstar India partnership news continues to garner coverage featuring the launch of Security as a Service (SeCaaS) in the region.

“Digital Infrastructure Is Critical In Transforming a City and Creating a Sustainable Smart Ecosystem” — BWSmart Cities

  • SonicWall’s Debasish Mukherjee, Country Manager India & SAARC, explains how crucial digital infrastructure is in transforming the cities of the future and how the role of new-age trends — like IoT, cloud and machine learning — drive the growth of the network security market.

Cyber Security News

Intel Chip Flaw: Math Unit May Spill Crypto Secrets to Apps–Modern Linux, Windows, BSDs Immune — The Register

  • A security flaw within Intel Core and Xeon processors can be potentially exploited to swipe sensitive data from the chips’ math processing units.

U.S. warns World Cup attendees of Russian hacking risks — The Washington Times

  • World Cup attendees risk having their personal data compromised by hackers, state-sponsored or otherwise, the head of the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center warned ahead of the annual soccer tournament starting in Russia this week.

Luckymouse Threat Group Strikes National Data Center to Exploit Government Website — ZDNet

  • Researchers say the Chinese threat actors behind the campaign aimed to compromise government resources.

UK Watchdog Issues $330K Fine for Yahoo’s 2014 Data Breach — Tech Crunch

  • Another fallout from the massive Yahoo data breach that dates back to 2014: The UK’s data watchdog issued a £250,000 (about $334,000 USD) penalty for violations of the Data Protection Act 1998.

FBI Announces Arrrest of 74 Email Fraudsters — ZDNet

  • Police have carried out a worldwide wave of arrests that have seen 74 people detained and over $16 million in purloined funds seized by suspected whalers or business email compromise (BEC) fraudsters.

Hackers Target Payment Transfer System at Chile’s Biggest Bank, ‘Take $10M’  — The Register

  • Banco de Chile has become the latest victim in a string of cyberattacks targeting the payment transfer systems of banks. Hackers reportedly used a variant of the complex KillDisk wiper malware to distract attention before targeting systems linked to the SWIFT inter-bank transfer network.

In Case You Missed It

Ransomware, Variants, Snipers & Kung Fu

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The 2018 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report reported a 71.2 percent decline in the number of ransomware attacks, but a 101.2 percent increase the number of ransomware variants. Let me ask you, is this good news or bad?

If this was a military battle, would you celebrate the news the enemy reduced the number of machine guns by nearly three quarters but doubled the number of snipers? Perhaps, but now you’d have to keep your head lower and stay out of sight.

2016 saw a flood of “spray-and-pray” ransomware attacks as hackers were taking advantage of soft defenses and low levels of employee awareness. In fact, in 2016 SonicWall blocked nearly 640 million ransomware attacks; that was over 1,200 ransoms not seen (or paid) each minute.

Because of this intense pressure, organizations around the globe bolstered their defenses and education efforts. Simply put, we got tired of getting beat up for our lunch money and took Kung-Fu lessons.

Attackers retool ransomware strategies

In 2017, attackers retooled with new exploits. From that, WannaCry, NotPetya and Bad Rabbit were born. Each were designed to be malware cocktails that infected a system and then move on to the rest of the network through shared drives. But these are just three of the 2,855 variants SonicWall created defenses for in 2017 alone.

With these new malware cocktails in the wild, threat actors targeted specific roles within companies through social engineering. Instead of annoying thousands of people with a small ransom with a shrinking chance they will pay, many switched to hard-hitting attacks with larger demands.

Unique Ransomware Signatures

One such instance was the city of Atlanta, where the SamSam ransomware variant affected five out of 13 city departments and shut down systems for 10 days. Fortunately, the $51,000 ransom went unpaid but the damages to systems, lost files and productivity far outweigh the demand.

How to stop ransomware attacks, avoid ransom payouts

So, what can we do in this period of the threat landscape? Employee awareness for social engineering attacks (e.g., phishing attempts) still needs to drastically improve. Strong password hygiene also needs to be in place to block attacks like SamSam that work off of guessed passwords.

From there, we need ransomware protection technology in place that stops attacks. Here are two core technologies have may not have thought of recently:

  1. Implement a network sandbox that can identify and stop unknown attacks.

    A network sandbox is an isolated environment on the firewall that runs files to monitor their behavior. SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) is a multi-engine sandbox service that holds suspicious files at the gateway until a verdict can be achieved.

    Capture ATP also features Real-Time Deep Memory InspectionTM (RTDMI). RTDMI is a memory-based malware analysis engine that catches more malware, and faster, than behavior-based sandboxing methods. It also delivers a lower false-positive rate to improve security and the end-user experience. Learn about its ability to find and block malicious PDFs and Office documents.

  2. Use advanced endpoint client security

    For years, companies deployed traditional anti-virus (AV) on their computers, which was fine when the total number of signatures they had to write and update numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Last year, SonicWall discovered 58 million new forms of malware that take time to signature and push to defense points like firewalls.

    Even if these are pushed within 24 hours, it leaves a gap that new and advanced malware can walk right through. I recommend using a next-generation anti-virus (NGAV) solution that can monitor the behavior of a system to look for malicious activities, such as the unauthorized encryption of your files. For example, SonicWall Capture Client delivers advanced malware protection and additional security synergies for SonicWall firewall users.

On top of these two new forms of technology, please follow best practices when securing and managing your networks, such as network segmentation.

Download the 2018 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report

The cyber arms race is a challenge we face together. And it’s the core reason we’re committed to passing our findings, intelligence, analysis and research to the global public via the SonicWall 2018 Cyber Threat Report.

READ THE FULL REPORT

8 Cyber Security Predictions for 2018

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In preparation for the upcoming publication of the 2018 Annual SonicWall Threat Report, we’re busy reviewing and analyzing data trends identified by SonicWall Capture Labs over the course of 2017.

The SonicWall Capture Labs Threat Research Team gathers, analyzes and vets cross-vector threat information from more than 1 million sensors around the world, performs rigorous testing and evaluation, establishes reputation scores for email senders and content, and identifies new threats in real-time.

With the New Year, it’s appropriate to recap last year’s trends, and offer a few preliminary insights into noteworthy trends we expect to see in 2018.

Ransomware will persist, evolve

Ransomware will continue to be the malware of choice. It has never been easier to make your own ransomware. With the rise of ransomware-as-a-service, even the most novice developer can create their own ransomware. As long as cybercriminals see the potential to make enough in ransom to cover the costs of development, we will continue to see an increase in variants.

However, an increase in variants does not mean an increase in successful attacks, which we will explore in detail in the 2018 Annual Cyber Threat Report.

SSL, TLS encryption will hide more attacks

For the first time, Capture Labs will publish real metrics on the volume of attacks uncovered inside encrypted web traffic. At the same time, the percentage of organizations that have deployed deep-packet inspection of encrypted threats (DPI-SSL/TLS) remains alarmingly low.

In the year ahead, we expect there will be more encrypted traffic being served online, but unencrypted traffic will remain for most public services. More sophisticated malware using encrypted traffic will be seen in cyberattacks.

In response, we expect more organizations will enable traffic decryption and inspection methods into their network security infrastructure. This expanded deployment of DPI-SSL/TLS will rely in part on the success of solution providers reducing deployment complexity and cost to lower operating expense.

Cryptocurrency cybercrime expected to be on the rise

Due to rapid rise in cryptocurrency valuations, more cryptocurrency mining and related cybercrime is expected in the near future. Attackers will be exploring more avenues to utilize victim’s CPUs for cryptocurrency mining and cryptocurrency exchanges and mining operations will remain the targets for cyber theft.

UPDATE: On Jan. 8, SonicWall Capture Labs discovered a new malware that leverages Android devices to maliciously mine for cryptocurrency.

IoT will grow as a threat vector

As more devices connect to the internet, we expect to see more compromises of IoT devices. DDoS attacks via compromised IoT devices will continue to be a main threat for IoT attacks. We also expect to see an increase in information and intellectual property theft leveraging IoT, as capability of IoT devices have been largely improved, making IoT a richer target (e.g., video data, financial data, health data, etc.). The threat of botnets will also loom high with so many devices being publically exposed and connected to one another, including infrastructure systems, home devices and vehicles.

Android is still a primary target on mobile devices

Android attacks are both increasing and evolving, such as with recently discovered malware. Earlier ransomware threats used to simply cover the entire screen with a custom message, but now more are completely encrypting the device — some even resetting the lock screen security PIN. Overlay malware is very stealthy. It shows an overlay on top of the screen with contents designed to steal victim’s data like user credentials or credit card data. We expect more of these attacks in 2018.

Apple is on the cybercrime radar

While rarely making headlines, Apple operating systems are not immune to attack. While the platform may see a fewer number of attacks relative to other operating systems, it is still being targeted. We have seen increases in attacks on Apple platforms, including Apple TV. In the year ahead, macOS and iOS users may increasingly become victims of their own unwarranted complacency.

Adobe isn’t out of the woods

Adobe Flash vulnerability attacks will continue to decrease with wider implementation of HTML5. However, trends indicate an increase in attacks targeting other Adobe applications, such as Acrobat. There are signs that hackers will more widely leverage Adobe PDF files (as well as Microsoft Office file formats) in their attacks.

Defense-in-depth will continue to matter

Make no mistake: Layered defenses will continue to be important. While malware evolves, much of it often leverages traditional attack methods.

For example, WannaCry may be relatively new, but it leverages traditional exploit technology, making patching as important as ever. Traditional email-based threats, such as spear-phishing, will continue to become more sophisticated to evade human and security system detection. Cloud security will continue to grow in relevance, as more business data becomes stored in the data centers and both profit-driven cybercriminals and nation-states increasingly focus on theft of sensitive intellectual property.

Conclusion

When gazing into our crystal ball, we’re reminded that the only thing certain is change. Look for more detailed data in our soon-to-be-published 2018 SonicWall Annual Threat Report.

View Tech Brief

Cryptocurrency, Ransomware and the Future of Our Economy

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History is full of people who’ve labored over missed opportunities. Like all other non-bitcoin-owning people, I am one of them.

I first heard of cryptocurrency in early 2013 and scoffed at the idea that something with no intrinsic or collectable value would trade for $20. The concept of owning a portion of a cryptographic code — and it having actual value — is still hard for many to swallow.

Now that an available bitcoin (BTC) is valued at over $19,000 (USD), I languish the fact that an investment of $1,000 in 2013 would have net me half of a million dollars today. Furthermore, had I been tuned into the movement in 2010, I would be a billionaire today. You too. Stings a little, doesn’t it?

At no point in history has it been so easy to become extremely wealthy out of thin air. And it is not just people like you and me who think about this, but criminals as well. This is not only causing major shifts in financial markets, but also in malware development.

What is Cryptocurrency?

With all of the noise about cryptocurrency, here is what we know as we near 2018:

  • There are, or have been, over 1,300 other cryptocurrencies on the market. These are called altcoins.
  • Most people have never owned a single “coin” from any blockchain.
  • Most have no basis for value, which means it’s subjective and speculative (e.g., like a baseball card or an artistic sketch). The community dictates the value.
  • Some are tied to a real currency (e.g., 1 Tether coin = $1 USD).
  • Governments struggle with regulation and don’t want to encourage the use of decentralized currencies.
  • They often function like startups. Founders get an early crack at the supply chain and hold an equitable stake in the algorithm. Instead of a stock IPO they release them as part of an Initial Coin Offering (ICO).
  • Most of the popular coins cannot be mined by your computer anymore. Today, it’s only achieved through professional-grade mining operations.
  • No one knows how high or low bitcoins and cryptocurrency will go; either they will die or become the basis for our future economy.
  • The popular coins today are desired by cybercriminals and are the main form of payment within ransomware.
  • Like a TLS digital certificate, cracking the actual encryption is nearly impossible. Bitcoins are, however, fairly easy to steal and even easier to lose or destroy.
  • Malware is used to steal coins and to also turn infected endpoints into mining bots.

Bitcoin Is the Great Ransomware Enabler

Because cryptocurrency is virtually un-trackable, holds great value and is easily traded online, they are the preferred way to get paid on the black market. Without the value of bitcoin, you wouldn’t have heard about ransomware.

Ransomware is responsible for causing billions of dollars (USD) in damage across the world. Furthermore, the actual cost of the problem isn’t the cost of bitcoin to return your files (if you ever get them back), but the fallout from an attack.

Ransomware is fun for the media because you can easily quantify the ransoms and take photos of the demand screens, but not so fun for hackers. Through the development, updates and propagation of the malware, only between five and 10 percent of people pay the demands. But there is another way.

Bitcoin Mining

Instead of having your victims pay you once, what about having your victims unknowingly work for you? Well, that is what a lot of malware is doing today. By leveraging a portion of your compute power to form a bitcoin mining pool, hackers don’t have to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.

The result? The home computer has less power to run normal processing and incurs higher energy costs. When this approach works its way into a corporate network, it could cause major productivity and service issues.

For some hackers, these two attack vectors are small-time thinking. Instead of counting on a distributed attack vector across a global landscape of endpoints with mixed vulnerabilities, what about a single targeted attack?

Hackers don’t attack the algorithm behind the coins, they attack where they are stored. Cryptocurrency banks and exchanges are ripe targets for attacks. If you factor in the price of a bitcoin (at the time of I started writing it was $8,160 and after editing its $16,000) — the second Mt. Gox attack emptied bitcoin wallets to the tune of over $11 billion USD. Wow! At the time, the bitcoin haul was nearly 744,000 coins worth $436 million USD and caused the value of bitcoin to fall to a three-month low.

Cryptocurrency: Is it the Future?

Like most dual-sided arguments, those inside a social ecosystem are bullishly optimistic. Those outside remain pessimistic. I’m in between. I see the opportunity to capitalize on the attention, but recognize the many limitations behind cryptocurrencies that cap their viability into the future.

I’ve never owned a bitcoin coin but have entered into a few key platforms for the short-term. As mentioned, the value is purely subjective, much like an arbitrary piece of art, which can be a good investment as long as there is a large pool of people with the financial ability to support and bloat its value.

What is the difference in value between this rare Honus Wagner T206 card ($3.12 million USD) and the common Dusty Baker’s 1987 Topps card ($0.70 USD)? The answer lies in the availability of the item and the demand from the consumer.

Bitcoin, Ethereum and Monero all have value because a community of people feels it does. The more people who enter this pool, the greater the potential value. Some are investors and others are victims buying a ransom. But what truly drives the cost of bitcoin is attention — just like a piece of sports memorabilia. When you mirror Google’s search trend data to the historical price of BTC, you see a direct correlation.

What does this tell me? Once the attention fades, people will lose interest. At that point, the price will come down, similar to a Derek Jeter autographed baseball. Additionally, as ransomware becomes less effective, fewer people will buy bitcoin for the sake of digital freedom. And that freedom is the primary thing cryptocurrency can buy.

In the past year, every time the price of bitcoin dropped the Chicken Littles of the world wanted to be the first to cry out, “The sky is falling!” I do believe there will come a time when bitcoins will have the value the 1986 Topps Traded Pete Ladd sitting in the back of your closet (less than $1), but its value won’t crumble in a day.
With the remaining 1,000-odd altcoin cryptocurrencies (that currently hold value) out there with a collective market cap of over $400 billion (at the time of writing), it would take a lot for crypto-investors to create the needed fire sale that would cause the market’s topple. Instead, I see it like the Ice Age; built in stages and then a slow recession.

The altcoins wouldn’t exist today if bitcoin wasn’t popular and a goldmine for the early investors. The creators of these algorithms are like the leaders of pyramid scams. They created the rules and the ecosystem to make money and only exist if their supporters exist, much like an Amway Double-Dutch Triple-Black Platinum Diamond Founder’s Crown Elite Wizard. These will be the first to die. The beginning of their end is when bitcoin hits a plateau lasting more than two months.

In the Ice Age analogy, bitcoin is much like a large glacier that icicles attach to. As the sun shines, they will melt, leaving only the strongest cryptocurrencies to linger. I see bitcoin and Ethereum lasting for years, but only at a small price point. The coins in active circulation will be mostly in the possession of cyber criminals (if they aren’t already) and will be sold to the victims of cybercrimes to pay ransoms until the practice to buy cryptocurrency is outlawed country by country.

And, with that, the official death of ransomware.

Death in a Cathedral

Thirty years from now when we look back at cryptocurrency, we will reminisce about the second coming of the roaring ‘20s. Without the presence of Babe Ruth and the Charleston, we’ll have great unregulated wealth that comes to a crash.

In my conservative outsider-ish advice, I recommend minor, short-term cryptocurrency investments that you are not afraid to lose. Watch the price of bitcoin. When you see a plateau lasting a month, sell. (However, I’m not a financial advisor and I have no fiduciary duties to you. Please do your own research.)

Remember the old adage: movements are built in caves and die in cathedrals. Bitcoin is in the cathedral phase of its life. And if you understand the politics and history of cathedrals, you would be wary of entry. If not, read The Gothic Enterprise: A Guide to Understanding the Medieval Cathedral. Pay attention to fallout surrounding the bankrupt Bishop Milo de Nanteuil.

The Marriage Between Malware & Cryptocurrency

Another adage I was raised with, “make hay when the sun shines,” is what hackers are doing today. As the flames of bitcoin flare, more moths will be drawn to its light. The illicit creation, extortion and theft of digital coins will drive the price to an all-time high.

Because of the outrageous volume of ransomware infections of 2016, and the infamous attacks in 2017, malware defense is at an all-time high too, but it is not enough. Network and end-point security needs to be a serious topic of discussion.

At SonicWall, we’ve made great strides to get ahead of the cryptocurrency attacks; far before a hunk of digital code was valued at dollar volumes higher than what your grandfather paid for his first home.

Before the public release of Zcash, we released the SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection service, which is a cloud-based network sandbox that works in line with SonicWall next-gen firewalls to run and test suspicious code in an isolated environment to prevent newly developed ransomware attacks (and other forms of malware too).

To bolster endpoint protection, we created an alliance with SentinelOne to provide an enhanced endpoint security client framework to provide next-generation anti-virus capabilities to our current endpoint offerings.

To learn more on how SonicWall can prevent malicious attacks, please read our solution brief, Five Best Practices for Advanced Threat Protection. If you’d like to discuss this blog, the marriage between malware and cryptocurrency, and to send your potentially future-worthless digital collectibles, reach out to me on Twitter.

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Catch the Latest Malware with Capture Advanced Threat Protection

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Now that Halloween is over and your coworkers are bringing in the extra candy they don’t want, let’s look back at the last quarter’s results from SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) network sandbox service. Grab the candy corn and let’s crunch some data. Note: terms in italics below are defined in the glossary at the bottom to help newbies.

63,432 new threats discovered using the network sandbox over the course of three months on customer networks.

30.6% of threats that were found through static filtering. Translation- less than a third of these threats were new to us, but not to someone among the 50+ scanners we compare against.

69.4% of threats that were found through dynamic filtering. Translation- there is nearly a 70% chance SonicWall will find new malware and develop protections against it faster than anyone else.

.16% of all  files sent to the sandbox were malicious. Translation- SonicWall can find the needle in the haystack.

72% of files were processed in under 5 seconds. Translation- Capture ATP is fast!

60% increase in the number of Capture ATP customers that sent files for analysis over the past quarter. Translation – more people supplying potential threat data gives us a wider net to catch the latest threats, making it easier to protect you. Double translation – the community helps to protect the community.

20% of all new malware were found in documents (.docx & .pdf specifically) on many days throughout the quarter. Translation – Attackers put more attention to getting you to open malicious documents. Double Translation – educate your employees to not open suspicious attachments in email or found online.

I hope this helps you understand the importance of using a network sandbox, namely Capture ATP, the winner of CRN’s Network Security Product of the Year 2016 by customer demand. To learn more please review our Tech Brief: SonicWall Capture Threat Assessment or contact us with more information.

PS – I wrote a simple glossary of sandboxing terms for you to reference in case you are new to this. If you want more terms added to this, find me on Twitter and send me a note.

Glossary of terms:

Network Sandbox: An isolated environment where suspicious code can be run to completion to see what it wants to do. If your firewall doesn’t know the file, it will be sent to the sandbox for analysis.

Block until Verdict: A feature of the Capture ATP sandboxing service that blocks a file until a determination of the file can produce a verdict. If it’s malware, the file is dropped and can’t enter the network. If it’s good, a verdict for the hash of the file is stored and, if anyone tries to upload the file to our service, that verdict will be supplied within milliseconds to the user.

Hash (AKA: cryptographic hash): A cryptographic code to identify code (e.g., malware) across the community of researchers. Instead of storing malware and comparing new files against samples, the file is converted to a hash and compared against a database of known good and bad hashes. For example, the phrase “SonicWall Capture ATP stops ransomware” translates into “13d55c187dbd760e8aef8d25754d8aacadc60d8b”.

Once a new file is encountered, hashed, and doesn’t match a known hash, it is sent to the sandbox for analysis.

Static Filtering: A way of filtering out results of a file before taking it to time-consuming dynamic analysis. SonicWall static filtering compares new files against a database of shared malware hashes from over 50 anti-virus scanners.

Dynamic Filtering: The method of processing a file to see what it wants to do. SonicWall’s dynamic processing features three engines in parallel to find the most evasive malware. We use virtualized sandboxing, hypervisor-level analysis, and full-system analysis to uncover the most difficult forms of malware, including Cerber.

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SonicWall First to Identify 73 Percent of New Malware with Capture ATP Sandbox

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Last month, I wrote how we found nearly 26,500 new forms of malware and shared some general stats.  Let’s take a look at the new threats found by SonicWall’s network sandbox, Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP).

While the general number of new threats dropped, there were some interesting figures and trends to point out.

Of the 16,115 new forms of malware and zero-day attacks:

  • Only 4,321 were known by one other security firm (that we partner with), just moments before us
  • This means over 73 percent (11,794) were never seen until SonicWall identified them

This is very encouraging because it demonstrates three important points:

  1. The SonicWall customer base of Capture ATP subscribers are protecting each other by serving up samples before researchers can find them
  2. The technology is working wonderfully
  3. The month-over-month data proves that SonicWall is your best defense against new threats

Interestingly, last year at this time, I was finding a lot of ransomware versions by the big boys, such as Locky & Cerber. Now we are seeing attacks from copycat malware authors who conduct smaller attacks. The overall numbers are down, but the number of cybercriminals involved are up. As a result, a lot of ransomware attacks may fly under the radar.

Plus, this is what is now hitting the radar: credware.

What is Credware?

Credware is a term for a type of malware that is designed to steal credentials — and I’m finding a lot of credware every day, in many formats. I see new forms of spyware and a lot of Trojans that are going after all of those saved passwords in browsers. Since Chrome is harder to attack, hackers are targeting saved passwords in Firefox, Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer, and Edge. (See below).

Infected Documents

Hackers are adding their new versions of malware inside of document, such as Microsoft Word and PDFs. On a typical day, I saw that roughly 3-6 percent of new malware samples are found in these file types, but I have noticed a large increase as the days progressed.

Some days, as much as 39.3 percent of malware is found in digital documents, mostly Office files. Even if I set a high baseline of 5 percent, you can see how some days have an alarming rate of malicious documents (See below).

What is also surprising about this data is that you would expect a lot of this to be found in email traffic. Although most of it was, a lot of it was not, especially PDFs. In fact, on Sept. 26, 82 percent of malicious PDFs were found online by protected customers.

This data comes on the heels of SonicWall improving its backend performance for how quickly we can examine and return a verdict for PDFs. As we look back at the data, I’m happy to announce that the median time to process a file is around one second, and 71.3 percent of all files in September were processed with a verdict in under five seconds.

If you’d like more information on how you can add Capture ATP to protect your network and network based endpoints read: Executive Brief: Why network sandboxing is required to stop ransomware.

View Executive Brief

Bad Rabbit Ransomware: The Latest Attack

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What Is Bad Rabbit Ransomware?

On Tuesday, Oct. 24, a new strand of ransomware named Bad Rabbit appeared in Russia and the Ukraine and spread throughout the day. It first was found after attacking Russian media outlets and large organizations in the Ukraine, and has found its way into Western Europe and the United States. The initial installer masquerades as a Flash update but is believed to be an updated version of NotPetya, since the infection chain and component usage is identical.  Interestingly, this malware contains a list of hardcoded Windows credentials, most likely to brute force entry into devices on the network.  According to SonicWall Capture Labs Threat researchers, Bad Rabbit spreads using the SMB protocol within Windows. We should think of it as a bug fix maintenance release of NotPetya (within EternalBlue method of propagation removed). The purpose of using the SMB protocol is to spread laterally across an organization. 

Are SonicWall Customers Protected from Bad Rabbit?

Yes. SonicWall Capture Labs released signatures to protect against Bad Rabbit malware, which are available for anyone with an active Gateway Security subscription (GAV/IPS).  In addition, SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) sandboxing service is designed to provide real-time protection against new strains of malware, even before signatures are available on the firewall. SonicWall Capture ATP customers will be protected against new forms and copycat versions of this malware. Multiple variations of this ransomware strain have been processed in Capture ATP, with a 100 percent success rate of catching it.

How Can I Stop Ransomware Like Bad Rabbit?

SonicWall customers should immediately ensure they have the Capture Advanced Threat Protection sandbox service turned on with their next-generation firewalls, and have the Block Until Verdict feature activated.  For Bad Rabbit, there is no need to manually update the signatures on SonicWall firewalls, as they are automatically propagated to the worldwide installed base upon deployment.

General recommendations for everybody, regardless of their security vendor, include:

  • Apply all patches to operating systems
  • Protect endpoints with an up-to-date anti-virus solution
  • Promote good password hygiene policies
  • Ensure firewall and end point firmware is current
  • Implement a network sandbox to discover and mitigate new threats
  • Deploy a next-generation firewall with a gateway security subscription to stop known threats

I will update this post as analysis of Bad Rabbit ransomware develops.  For more information, read the SonicAlert posting from SonicWall Capture Labs Threat Research Team. To learn more about ransomware defense, please read our Solution Brief: Eight Ways to Protect Your Network Against Ransomware.

View SonicAlert

Ransomware Negotiation: How Hackers Target SMBs

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It was a Tuesday afternoon. Liz, a local attorney with 26 years of experience, had given up.

She was easily over 20 hours in to trying to free her computer, with all of her files, from a ransomware attack. She just spent a few thousand dollars on a local IT team to break the encryption and remove the malware. They ultimately couldn’t succeed, but charged $2,000 for their time anyway.

Law enforcement and a local FBI contact both shrugged their shoulders. They only offered sympathy instead of a commitment to investigate. With all of her client files locked, she did what roughly 5 percent of small businesses did this year: contact the hacker via the email address in the ransom note.

Shortly later, a message came through: “Hi, the price to decrypt your files is 1.5 bitcoin.”

With icy fingers, she proceeded to converse with the hacker, via a Russian-based email address, who was going by the name Alkash; possibly an Armenian slang term for “alcoholic.” She began to negotiate with him by acting as an elderly person with little money. She told him she had about $350. His reply was simply, “No.”

She didn’t give up. She replied, “I am supporting my kids and I have to use my computer to earn money. Why are you doing this? Don’t you have family?”

He didn’t bite. He replied, “You live in a rich country. I give you 3 days after which I delete the keys to your files.”

She didn’t flinch. She came back and told him to look at the news on how the government treats the poor and how rich people keep their money to themselves. She said her healthcare was being taken away and she was very sick.

“You own a server with open access,” he said. “Why would a poor sick woman own a server?”

This reveals how she was infected. A lot of us think we are too small to be a target, but in the end, all of us our IP and email addresses that will eventually be found. She had little in the way of security, only endpoint antivirus; an easy target.

She convinced the hacker that she could borrow money from a relative to make it $500. The attacker agreed and instructed her to send a few files that he would unlock as a guarantee he will unlock them all when she pays.

Two days after the initial exchange, Liz was able to buy the right amount of bitcoin from a problematic dealer in South America. She finally unlocked her files.

It was done. Her files were back. She sobbed.

It took around 50 hours to get to this point. Fifty hours of living in fear her client files were gone forever. Fifty hours of lost productivity. Fifty hours of being at the mercy of a thief.

Liz was able to return to work and eventually took time off to recuperate from the attack. Later, while on vacation, she received a call from someone who shared an office with her.

“Are you remotely accessing your computer from your vacation spot?” they said.

The answer was solid: “No!”

Someone, possibly Alkash, was accessing her computer and eventually stole her personal credit card information saved in her browser. She returned from her trip and went right back to work to remediate another breach of her system.

A call to the IT team, a security vendor and the FBI gave her another 20-hour headache, a stack of bills and quotes. Between both attacks, Liz estimated she lost around $50,000 in consultant fees and lost productivity alone.

Feeling like she was getting the run around, Liz called someone she knew at SonicWall. The team went to work to segment her office network and set her up with a firewall. It included the Advanced Gateway Security Suite, which comes with the SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection cloud sandbox service,  to stop known and unknown malware attacks, as well as intrusion attacks, against her server.

So, how are things today?

“Great!” says Liz.

She doesn’t have to worry about follow-on attacks, ransomware attempts and deflating calls to the FBI.

Studies have shown that when a small business is hit with a critical cyber-attack, one in six have to stop business for more than 25 hours. Liz knows the truth to that.

Moreover, roughly 60 percent of small companies that experience a crippling cyber attack are run out of business. A fear that Liz mulled over for 50 hours in June 2017.

To better arm yourself against these forms of cyber attacks, please read our eBook, “How ransomware can hold your business hostage.”

Capturing the World’s Latest Malware so You Can Fear Less

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If anyone ever needs proof on how effective SonicWall Capture Labs is, look back to the WannaCry ransomware attack in May 2017, and just last week the NotPetya malware. In contrast to over 250,000 endpoints compromised in over 150 countries, SonicWall customers with active security subscriptions were largely unaffected.

Why were they unaffected?

Our customers were protected because SonicWall had identified and created signatures for all exploits of the SMB vulnerability, as well as early versions of WannaCry, weeks in advance. Any of our customers with active Gateway Anti-virus and Intrusion Prevention System (GAV/IPS) services received those signatures automatically, and thereby blocked this ransomware variant and the worm that spread it across the globe. This was possible because SonicWall Capture Labs gathers millions of samples of malware in order to protect our customers from the latest threats.

In 2016, SonicWall’s Capture Labs Threat Research processed over 60 million unique pieces of malware that were previously unknown to us.  This included versions of polymorphic malware, newly developed malicious code and zero-day attacks. The result of this work created countless signatures and other countermeasures that protected our customers from the latest attacks across our product portfolio.

So where does SonicWall get all of these malware samples?

With over 1 million sensors placed around the world, our Capture Labs Research Team receives the largest amount of data from real customer traffic. Our SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Service is a network sandbox that runs suspicious code to find unknown malicious code. Business networks will encounter an average of 28 new, zero-day versions of malware over a calendar year, Capture ATP is designed specifically to prevent this.

In addition, SonicWall participate in numerous industry collaboration efforts such as the Microsoft MAPP program so our researchers receive new verified threats before the public. We also actively engage in numerous international threat research communities and freelance researchers so our in-house team possesses samples of uncommon attacks and vulnerabilities.

Read this eBook to learn how to protect against ransomware with a multi-layer threat elimination chain to stop known and discover unknown malicious code targeting your organization.

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