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RTDMI Evolving with Machine Learning to Stop ‘Never-Before-Seen’ Cyberattacks

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If I asked you, “How many new forms of malware did SonicWall discover last year?” What would be your response?

When I pose this question to audiences around the world, the most common guess is 8,000. People are often shocked when they hear that SonicWall discovered 45 million new malware variants in 2018, as reported in the 2019 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report.

The SonicWall Capture Labs threat research team was established in the mid-‘90s to catalog and build defenses for the massive volume of malware they would find each year. Because our threat researchers process more than 100,000 malware samples a day, they have to work smart, not hard. This is why SonicWall Capture Labs developed technology using machine learning to discover and identify new malware. And it continues to evolve each day.

How Automation, Machine Learning Stops New Malware

Released to the public in 2016, the SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) sandbox service was designed to mitigate millions of new forms of malware that attempt to circumvent traditional network defenses via evasion tactics. It was built as a multi-engine architecture in order to present the malicious code different environments to detonate within. In 2018, this technology found nearly 400,000 brand new forms of malware, much of which came from customer submissions.

In order to make determinations happen faster with better accuracy, the team developed Real-Time Deep Memory InspectionTM (RTDMI), a patent-pending technology that allows malware to go straight to memory and extract the payload within the 100-nanosecond window it is exposed. The 2019 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report also mapped how the engine discovered nearly 75,000 ‘never-before-seen’ threats in 2018 alone — despite being released (at no additional cost to Capture ATP customers) in February 2018.

‘Never-Before-Seen’ Attacks Discovered by RTDMI in 2018

Image source: 2019 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report

Using proprietary machine learning capabilities, RTDMI has become more and more efficient at identifying and mitigating cyberattacks never seen by anyone in the cybersecurity industry. Since July 2018, the technology’s machine learning capabilities caught more undetectable cyberattacks in every month except one. In January 2019, this figure eclipsed 17,000 and continues to rise in 2019.

Year of the Processor Vulnerability

Much like how Heartbleed and other vulnerabilities in cryptographic libraries introduced researchers and attackers to a new battleground in 2014, so were the numerous announcements of vulnerabilities affecting processors in 2018.

Since these theoretical (currently) attacks operate in memory, RTDMI is well positioned to discover and stop these attacks from happening. By applying the information on how a theoretical attack would work to the machine learning engine, RTDMI was able to identify a Spectre attack within 30 days. Shortly thereafter, it was hardened for Meltdown. With each new processor vulnerability discovered (e.g., Foreshadow, PortSmash), it took RTDMI less and less time to harden against the attack.

Then, in March 2019, while much of the security world was at RSA Conference 2019 in San Francisco, the Spoiler vulnerability was announced. With the maturity found within RTDMI, it took the engine literally no time at all to identify if the vulnerability was being exploited.

Although we have yet to see these side-channel attacks in the wild, RTDMI is primed for the fight and even if there is a new vulnerability announced tomorrow with the ability to weaponize it, this layer of defense is ready to identify and block side-channel attacks against processor vulnerabilities.

Image source: 2019 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report

Scouting for New Technology

Now, if you are not a SonicWall customer yet and are evaluating solutions to stop unknown and ‘never-before-seen’ attacks (i.e., zero-day threats), ask your prospective vendors how they do against these types of attacks. Ask how they did on Day 1 of the WannaCry crisis. As for the volume of attacks their solutions are finding, ask for evidence the solution works in a real-world situation, not just as a proof of concept (POC) in a lab.

If you are a customer, Capture ATP, which includes RTDMI, is available as an add-on purchase within many of our offerings from the firewall, to email, to the wireless access point. You read that correctly: right on the access point.

We believe in the technology so much that we place it in everything to protect your networks and endpoints, such as laptops and IoT devices. This is why large enterprises, school districts, SMBs, retail giants, carrier networks and service providers, and government offices and agencies trust this technology to safeguard their networks, data and users every day.

How to Protect Retail POS Systems from Ransomware, Advanced Cyberattacks

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Of all the IT resources retailers maintain, it’s hard to claim that any system is more important than their point-of-sale (POS) systems.

POS systems bring in revenue, as well as tie into other IT infrastructures, such as finance, customer analytics or inventory within the supply chain.

Retail, as a whole, is the industry most subject to cyberattacks, according to a recent Computer Weekly article. And as my colleague earlier outlined in “Retail POS Fraud: The Rising Challenge,” the POS systems are key attack targets. The credit card data and, in some cases, electronic protected health information (ePHI) retailers (think about your local pharmacy) hold are gold to attackers.

POS systems have evolved over time. Many retailers are now using mobile and tablet-based POS systems, often with cloud-based, back-end systems. Given their lower price points when compared to more traditional POS options, these newer systems help many small- to medium-sized businesses take advantage of the availability and efficiency of POS without requiring heavy hardware or infrastructure investments.

Ransomware Targeted Retail POS Systems

But this means more protected information than ever is traveling between the POS front- and back-end systems. The attack surface for retailers using these systems is broader than ever. POS malware, which is disguised and silently injected on to target systems, has been the cause of a number of publicized retail data breaches over the past year.

Retailers are increasingly targeted by ransomware, which has the effect of stopping retail operations — and revenue generation — in its tracks. In addition to the immediate impact on revenue and profit (payouts to ransomware authors are not cheap and often unsuccessful), a ransomware attack can have a long-term impact on customers’ perception of retailers as safe businesses to shop. That alone can be fatal to small- and medium-sized retailers. A breach can also have PCI compliance implications.

Cerber ransomware delivers this message demanding payment for data.

Like other forms of cyberattacks, ransomware code can be heavily disguised and not detected by many anti-malware products and services.

Using RTDMI to Protect Retail POS Systems

For retailers that have stepped up their game with newer POS systems, more advanced security controls, such as technology that integrates sandbox security and real-time memory inspection, are required.

For example, the SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) sandbox service is particularly adept at rooting out malware that might otherwise escape detection. Our patent-pending Real-Time Deep Memory InspectionTM (RTDMI) engine forces malware to reveal itself in in a secure, multi-sandbox environment. Using machine learning, RTDMI can identify malicious code in under 100 nanoseconds.

Through static inspection and dynamic analysis, RTDMI also can uncover malware hidden inside Microsoft Office files and PDFs. SonicWall Capture Labs has verified that the RTDMI engine can stop new forms of malware that attempt to exploit Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities.

Our new white paper, “Why Retail Networks Need Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection,” explains how RTDMI works and what it detects. The paper walks through two examples of how RTDMI was able to discover malware before it was able to infect target systems, including the case of Cerber ransomware shown above.

RTDMI is available as part of Capture ATP at no additional cost to SonicWall customers. Retail IT and security professionals, take the time to review the white paper and learn more about how Capture ATP and RTDMI can improve the security of the POS systems and infrastructure you count on.

Get the White Paper: Why Retail Networks Need RTDMITM

Retail is a prime target for new multi-vector malware that is increasingly difficult to detect. SonicWall Real-Time Deep Memory InspectionTM (RTDMI) adds depth of protection against emerging malware, at no additional cost to Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) users. Get this exclusive white paper to explore This white paper examines how RTDMI works and what it detects.

Read the White Paper