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Network Sandboxing Takes On Malware, More than 26,000 New Strands Identified in August

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Malware never sleeps. Threat actors and criminal organizations are relentless in testing, optimizing and deploying exploit kits that target businesses and organizations across the globe. August 2017 was no different.

In fact, the month presented SonicWall’s network sandbox, Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP), with a few milestones.

First, the Capture ATP service celebrated its first anniversary protecting customer systems across the globe. Second, according to some sources, it surpassed install base figures of some of our competitors. Finally, the service also broke its own record for the number of new forms of malware it discovered and stopped on our customer networks.

How many? 26,438 to be exact!

This means that nearly 26,500 forms of malware — ranging from ransomware, to other Trojans, to Malvertising — were never seen by SonicWall before this month. Out of this, a little more than 7,100 were identified by one of the numerous anti-virus sources we work with. But over 19,300 were never seen by anyone and this includes a strong list of over 50 vendors including some very large names.

On top of this, last year we cataloged 60 million new forms of malware in order to prevent a patient-zero situation among the customer base. But despite our round-the-clock vigilance, there will always be a customer out there who will find something before we do.

To better eliminate this type of rare event, we created the industry’s first multi-engine network sandbox that can block until verdict, which means a customer can elect to have all unknown files blocked at the gateway until SonicWall can vet the code.

By combining the power of hypervisor-level analysis, full-system emulation and virtualized sandboxing, we have been very successful at finding some of the most evasive forms of ransomware in history, such as Cerber.

By combining the research from SonicWall’s Capture Labs, which place their signatures in SonicWall’s Gateway Security (and other places like Email Security for example) and Capture ATP, customers can stop known and unknown forms of malware. It is the latter group that causes the most fits for security professionals and gives end users with good technology something to brag about.

Since February we’ve seen a large increase in the new malware Capture ATP catches. This momentum stems from an ever-expanding customer base, but also a large rise in the percentage of malicious files that are out there. Here are some key facts:

  • Since February 2017, we’ve seen an increase of 524 percent in the new forms of malware discovered
  • In August 2017, the percentage of malicious files found was .22 percent, which is up from .14 percent
  • We made improvements in our performance and saw that 71.5 percent of all files were processed with a verdict in under 5 seconds

Is network sandboxing right for you? Based on our data, the average Capture ATP customer is on pace to detect and stop 30 new forms of malware within a year.

To learn more about the power of network sandboxing, I encourage you to read this executive brief: Why Network Sandboxing is Required to Stop Ransomware.

READ EXECUTIVE BRIEF

Locky, Then WannaCry, Now Petya. Is This The New Normal in Cyber Security?

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Updated June 28, 2017

As I type this, news reports continue to roll in about yet the latest massive global ransomware attack. This time, the payload appears to be a ransomware called Petya. SonicWall Capture Labs identified the original Petya variants in 2016. However, this time it appears to be delivered by Eternal Blue, one of the exploits that was leaked from the NSA back in April. This is the same exploit that was used in the WannaCry attack.

Infected systems will initially display a flashing skull, followed by a lock screen:

Once again, the cyber arms race continues to evolve. If I were to boil this down to its essence, what we are now seeing is that cyber criminals are combining exploits and attacks in creative ways that are not necessarily new, but still quite effective. Like mixing cocktails, the ingredients are all well known, but the exact mix can be completely new.

Attack details: SonicWall customers are protected

Today, June 27, SonicWall Capture Labs began tracking a high number of Petya ransomware attacks against SonicWall customers. Petya as a malware payload is not new. In fact, we reported in the 2017 Annual SonicWall Threat Report that it was second only to Locky in the number of infections we noted last year. The good news for SonicWall customers that are using our security services is that we have had signatures for certain variants of Petya since March 2016. Then, in April 2017 Capture Labs analyzed and released protection for the Eternal Blue exploit that Shadow Brokers leaked from the NSA. Also, on June 27, the Capture Labs Threat Research Team issued a new alert with multiple signatures protecting customers from the new Petya Ransomware Family.

Recommendations for SonicWall customers

As a SonicWall customer, ensure that your next-generation firewall has a current active Gateway Security subscription, in order to receive automatic real-time protection from known ransomware attacks such as Petya. Gateway Security includes Gateway Anti-virus (GAV), Intrusion Prevention (IPS), Botnet Filtering, and Application Control. This set of technology:

  • Includes signatures against Petya (part of GAV)
  • Protects against vulnerabilities outlined in Microsoft’s security bulletin MS17-010 (part of IPS)

Since SonicWall Email Security uses the same signatures and definitions as Gateway Security, we can block the emails that deliver the initial route to infection. To block malicious emails, ensure all Email Security services are up to date. Since 65% of all ransomware attacks happen through phishing emails, this also needs to be a major focus when giving security awareness training. Additionally, customers with SonicWall Content Filtering Service should activate it to block communication with malicious URLs and domains, which work similar to the way botnet filtering disrupts C&C communication.

Because more than 50% of malware is encrypted, as a best practice, always deploy SonicWall Deep Packet Inspection of all SSL/TLS (DPI SSL) traffic. This will enable your SonicWall security services to identify and block all known ransomware attacks. Enabling DPI SSL also allows the firewall to examine and send unknown files to the SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) service for multi-engine sandbox analysis. We recommend that you deploy Capture ATP in order to discover and stop unknown ransomware variants. Because of the rapid proliferation of malware variants, SonicWall leverages deep learning algorithms to provide automated protection against both known and zero-day threats. The combination of the SonicWall Capture Threat Network and SonicWall Capture ATP sandboxing provides the best defense against newly emerging hybrid attacks such as Petya. As always, we strongly recommend that you also apply the Windows patch provided by Microsoft to protect against the Shadow Brokers leaked exploits as well.  And it is always a good idea to maintain current backups of all critical data to allow recovery in the event of a ransomware event.

DOWNLOAD TECHBRIEF