A law firm ransomware attack has resulted in business files being left encrypted and inaccessible for three months, causing considerable billing losses for the firm.
Why did the law firm not simply pay the ransom demand to regain access to their files? Well, they did. Unfortunately, the attackers took the money and did not supply viable keys to unlock the encrypted files. Instead, they had a much better idea. To issue another ransom demand to try to extort even more money from the law firm.
The law firm, Providence, RI- based Moses Afonso Ryan Ltd, was forced to negotiate with the attackers to gain access to its data. It took more than three months and ransomware payments of $25,000 to finally regain access to its files. However, the ransomware payment represented only a tiny proportion of the cost of the attack. During the three months that data were locked, the firm’s lawyers struggled to work.
Moses Afonso Ryan made a claim against its insurance policy for lost billings as a result of the attack; however, the insurer, Sentinel Insurance Co., has refused to pay the bill. The law firm claims to have lost $700,000 as a result of the attack in lost billings alone. The firm has recently filed a U.S. District Court lawsuit against its insurer claiming breach of contract and bad faith for denying the claim.
The law firm ransomware attack involved a single phishing email being opened by one of the firms’ lawyers. That email has so far cost the firm more than $725,000 and the losses will continue to rise.
Important lessons can be learned from this law firm ransomware attack. First, the importance of training all staff members on the risk of ransomware attacks and teaching security best practices to reduce the risk of attacks being successful.
Since phishing emails are now highly sophisticated and difficult to identify, technical solutions should be implemented to prevent emails from reaching employees’ inboxes. Endpoint protection systems can reduce the risk of ransomware being installed and can detect infections rapidly, limiting the damage caused.
All businesses should take care to segment their networks to ensure that a ransomware infection on a single computer does not result in an entire network being impacted.
It is also essential for backups to be performed regularly and for those backups to be tested to ensure data can be recovered. This law firm cyberattack clearly demonstrated that organizations cannot rely on attackers making good on their promise to unlock data if the ransom is paid.
There have been cases where the attackers have not been able to supply a functional key to unlock data, and numerous examples of attackers issuing further ransom demands in an attempt to extort even more money out of companies.
Hackers are continuing to attack healthcare organizations, but healthcare ransomware attacks are the biggest cause of security incidents, according to the NTT Security 2017 Global Threat Intelligence Report.
Healthcare ransomware attacks accounted for 50% of all security breaches reported by healthcare organizations between October 2015 and September 2016 and are the largest single cause of security breaches.
However, healthcare is far from the only sector to be targeted. Retail, government, and the business & professional services sector have also suffered many ransomware attacks during the same period. Those four sectors accounted for 77% of global ransomware attacks. The worst affected sector was business & professional services, with 28% of reported ransomware attacks, followed by the government (19%), healthcare (15%) and retail (15%).
NTT Security reports that phishing emails are the most common mechanism for ransomware delivery, being used in 73% of ransomware and malware attacks. Poor choices of password are also commonly exploited to gain access to networks and email accounts. NTT says just 25 passwords were used in 33% of all authentication attempts on its honeypots, while 76% of authentication attempts used a password known to have been implemented in the Mirai botnet.
Zero-day exploits tend to attract considerable media attention, but they are used in relatively few attacks. Web-based attacks have fallen but they still pose a significant threat. The most commonly attacked products were Microsoft Internet Explorer, Adobe Flash Player, and Microsoft Silverlight. Exploit kit activity has fallen throughout the year as cybercriminals have turned to phishing emails to spread malware and ransomware. There was a steady decline in exploit kit attacks throughout the year.
With phishing posing the highest risk, it is essential that organizations ensure they have adequate defenses in place. Phishing attacks are sophisticated and hard to distinguish from genuine emails. Security awareness training is important, but training alone will not prevent some attacks from being successful. It is also important to ensure that training is not just a one time exercise. Regular training sessions should be conducted, highlighting the latest tactics used by cybercriminals and recent threats.
The best form of defense against phishing attacks is to use anti-phishing technologies such as spam filters to prevent phishing emails from reaching end users. The more phishing emails that are blocked, the less reliance organizations place on end users being able to identify phishing emails. Solutions should also be implemented to block users from visiting phishing websites via hyperlinks sent via email.
Cyberattacks on educational institutions are occurring at an alarming rate. While the education sector has not been as heavily targeted as the financial services and healthcare in recent years, that is no longer the case. Cybercriminals and state-actors now have the education sector in their crosshairs.
Cybercriminals have realized that cyberattacks on educational institutions can be highly profitable, with this year seeing a sharp rise in attacks.
Schools, colleges and higher education institutions hold vast quantities of data that can be used for fraud and identity theft. As we have already seen this year, cyberattacks on educational institutions are now much more common. The first quarter of the year saw a rise in W-2 phishing attacks, with criminals managing to obtain the tax information of many thousands of staff members. Those data were used to file fraudulent tax returns. Student records can be used for identity theft and can be sold for big bucks on darknet marketplaces. Attacks aimed at obtaining the personal data of students have similarly increased.
Educational institutions also conduct extensive research. The past year has seen a sharp rise in espionage related cyberattacks on educational institutions. Criminals are also conducting attacks to gain access to bank accounts. This year, two major cyberattacks on educational organizations have resulted in bank transfers being made to criminals’ accounts. At the start of the year, a phishing attack on the Cleveland Metropolitan School District resulted in more than $100,000 being obtained by the attackers. Denver Public Schools was also attacked, with the attackers redirecting $40,000 in payroll funds to their own accounts.
The recently published Data Breach Investigation Report from Verizon clearly shows the new attack trend. Over the past year, there have been 455 incidents reported by educational institutions, 73 of which have resulted in the theft of data.
While many industries see cyberattacks conducted for financial reasons, in education, financial gain was only the motive behind 45% of cyberattacks. 43% of attacks involved espionage and 9% of attacks were conducted for fun. Out of all reported data breaches, 26% involved espionage. Last year the percentage was just 5%.
Attacks are coming from all angles – Internal attacks by students; attacks by cybercriminals looking to steal data, and state-sponsored actors looking to steal research. The latter accounted for more than half of data breaches in the past year.
The Verizon report indicates hacking is the biggest threat. 43% of breaches were due to hacks, although social attacks and malware were also common. Verizon reports that almost 44% of breaches involved social and around a third involved malware. Social attacks and malware have increased considerably over the course of the past year. The most common social attack was phishing via email.
As long cyberattacks on educational institutions remain beneficial or profitable, cyberattacks will continue. Educational institutions therefore need to take steps to improve their security posture. Since social attacks such as phishing are commonplace, and malware infections commonly occur via email, educational institutions need review their email defenses.
Password policies should be introduced to ensure strong passwords are set on email accounts and policies introduced to ensure passwords are regularly changed. Spam filtering solutions should be implemented and all staff and students should receive training on security awareness. Verizon suggests staff and students should be encouraged or rewarded for reporting phishing and pretexting attacks.
There was some good news in the latest installment of the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report. Web-based attacks have fallen year on year, but ransomware attacks on businesses have sky rocketed. Sabotage and subversion attacks have also risen sharply in the past 12 months.
The Internet Security Threat Report shows that exploit kit and other web-based attacks fell by 30% in 2016, but over the same period, ransomware attacks on businesses increased by 36%.
Ransomware has proved popular with cybercriminals as attacks are easy to perform and money can be made quickly. If an attacker succeeds in encrypting business data, a ransom must be paid within a few days. In the United States, where the majority of ransomware attacks occur, 64% of businesses pay the ransom.
Web-based attacks on the other hand typically take longer and require considerably more technical skill. Cybercriminals must create and host a malicious site and direct end users to the site. Once malware has been downloaded, the attackers must move laterally within the network and find and exfiltrate sensitive data. The data must then be sold.
Ransomware attacks on businesses are far easier to conduct, especially using ransomware-as-a-service. All that is required is for criminals to pay to rent the ransomware, set their own terms, and distribute the malware via spam email. Many ransomware authors even provide kits with instructions on how to customize the ransomware and conduct campaigns. The appeal of ransomware is clear. It is quick, easy and profitable to conduct attacks.
The Symantec Internet Security Threat Report charts the rise in popularity of ransomware. Symantec detected 101 separate ransomware families in 2016. In 2014 and 2015 the count was just 30. Symantec’s ransomware detections increased from 340,665 in 2015 to 463,841 in 2016. Ransomware as a service has played a major role in the increase in attacks.
Ransom demands have also increased in the past year. In 2015, the average ransom demand was $294 per infected device. In 2016, the average ransomware demand had increased to $1,077.
Fortunately, good data backup policies will ensure businesses do not have to pay to unlock their data. Unfortunately, even if data can be recovered from backups, ransomware attacks on businesses are costly to resolve. Cybersecurity firms need to be hired to conduct analyses of networks to ensure all traces of ransomware (and other malware) have been removed. Those firms must also check to make sure no backdoors have been installed.
Ransomware attacks on businesses typically see computers locked for several days, causing considerable loss of revenue for companies. Customer breach notifications may also need to be issued. Ransomware attacks can cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to resolve, even if no ransom is paid.
Since ransomware is primarily distributed via spam email, businesses need to ensure they have appropriate email defenses in place. An advanced spam filter with an anti-phishing component is essential, along with other endpoint protection systems.
Symantec’s figures show that spam email volume has remained constant year on year, with spam accounting for 53% of email volume in 2016.
In 2016, one in 2,596 emails involved a phishing component, down from one in 965 in 2014. Phishing attacks may be down, but malware attacks increased over the same period.
Malware-infected email attachments and malicious links to malware-infected websites accounted for one in every 131 emails in 2016, up from 1 in 220 in 2015 and 1 in 244 in 2014. In 2016, 357 million new malware variants were detected, up from 275 million in 2014.
The decline in web-based attacks is certainly good news, but it doesn’t mean the threat can be ignored. Last year there were 229,000 web-based attacks tracked by Symantec. While that is a considerable decrease from the previous year, web-based attacks still pose a significant threat to businesses.
Web-based attacks could also increase this year. The Symantec Internet Security Threat Report indicates 9% of websites have critical bugs that could be easily exploited by cybercriminals allowing them to hijack the websites. Worryingly, Symantec reports that 76% of websites contain bugs that could potentially be exploited.
The Symantec Internet Security Threat Report shows data breaches have remained fairly constant over the past two years. In 2014, widely reported to be ‘the year of the data breach’, Symantec recorded 1,523 data breaches. The following year that fell to 1,211 breaches. Last year, there was little change, with 1,209 breaches reported.
The halt in the rise in data breaches suggests organizations are getting better at protecting their networks and data. However, large data breaches are increasing. Last year there were 15 data breaches that involved the theft of more than 10 million records, up from 11 in 2014.
Protecting against data breaches and cyberattacks requires comprehensive, multi-layered security defenses. TitanHQ offers a range of cybersecurity solutions for SMEs to help them improve their security posture and protect against web-based and email-based security threats.
For more information on how you can improve your security posture, and information on the best spam filter for business use, contact the TitanHQ team today.
A Shoney’s Restaurants malware infection has resulted in the theft of customers’ payment card details. Hackers managed to install malware on the POS system used by dozens of Shoney’s restaurants
Shoney’s is a 70-year-old Nashville, Tennessee-based restaurant chain that operates approximately 150 restaurants across the Southern United States, Midwest and lower Atlantic region. The chain serves customers in 17 states, although only selected restaurants in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia were affected. At least 37 restaurants were affected.
Financial institutions identified a trend in credit card fraud and were able to determine that all of the affected cardholders had visited a Shoney’s Restaurant. Best American Hospitality Corp., which manages and operates a number of Shoney’s establishments, was notified of a potential cyberattack and started an investigation. Kroll Cyber Security LLC was hired to conduct an investigation into the attack.
Kroll’s investigation revealed the malware enabled the attackers to steal cardholder names, credit card numbers, CVV codes, and expiry dates, although in some cases, cardholder names were not obtained. It is unclear how many individuals have been impacted, although any individual who visited one of the affected restaurants and paid by credit card has potentially had their information stolen. The malware was capable of reading data from the magnetic strips of payment cards as the information was routed through its computer system.
Access to the POS system is understood to have first been gained on December 27, 2016, although some restaurants were not infected until January 11. The Shoney’s Restaurants malware infection was contained on March 6, 2017, according to a press release issued by Best American Hospitality Corp.
The Shoney’s Restaurants malware attack is the latest is a slew of POS system breaches that have hit the hospitality sector hard. Earlier this year, the Arby’s restaurant chain was attacked and had credit card data stolen, while Wendy’s suffered a major credit card breach last year. Hotels have also been attacked, with more than 1,100 Intercontinental Hotel Group hotels discovered to have had malware installed that accessed its POS system.
Cyberattacks on the hospitality sector are to be expected. Hotels and restaurants are visited by tens of thousands of customers, and payment by credit card is common. Card details can be stolen and encoded onto magnetic strips on blank cards and used for fraudulent purchases. Each card number can allow criminals to steal hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.
All too often, data breaches occur due to poor security practices such as the failure to use strong passwords or failing to change default passwords. Other basic security failures that can open the door to attackers include failing to use web and email security products, not using two-factor authentication and not implementing security patches promptly. Businesses should also conduct regular vulnerability scans and penetration tests to ensure all of their systems are secure.
If you would like advice on web and email security protections that can prevent hackers from gaining access to your POS system and installing malware, contact the TitanHQ team today and find out how you can improve your resilience against malware and cyberattacks.
2017 was the year when Locky Ransomware first arrived on the scene, with the ransomware variant fast becoming the biggest ransomware threat. Locky infections rose rapidly following its release in February and continued to rise in the first half of the year. The ransomware variant was initially installed via exploit kits, although as exploit kit activity fell, the developers switched to spam email as the primary attack vector.
As 2016 progressed, Locky activity declined. While Locky infections continue, it is no longer the biggest ransomware threat. Locky now accounts for just 2% of infections. A new report from Malwarebytes has revealed that the biggest ransomware threat – by some distance – is Cerber ransomware.
Cerber ransomware is now behind 90% of all global ransomware infections, with those attacks performed using many different variants of the ransomware. Cerber has even surpassed TeslaCrypt; a previously highly prevalent ransomware variant that dominated attacks in 2015 and early 2016. At the start of 2017, Cerber’s ‘market share’ stood at 70%, although that increased to 90% by the end of Q3.
The secret of the success of Cerber lies not only in the sophistication of the ransomware, but how it is being used and distributed. Cerber ransomware has become the biggest ransomware threat because it is not only the authors that are using it to attack organizations. There is now an army of affiliates using the ransomware. Those affiliates do not need programming experience and neither much in the way of technical skill. Their role is simple. They are simply distributors who get a cut of the profits for any ransoms they manage to generate.
Ransom payments are likely with Cerber infections. There is no decryptor for the ransomware as no flaws have been discovered. Files locked by Cerber cannot be unlocked without the decryption keys, and only the attackers have access to those. The encryption used is of military-grade, says Malwarebytes. Further, a computer does not even need to be connected to the Internet in order for files to be encrypted. The latest variants also include a host of new defenses to prevent detection and analysis.
The primary attack vector used is email. Cerber is distributed in spam email, with infection occurring when a user opens an infected email attachment. That triggers the downloading of Cerber from the attacker’s Dropbox account.
With the new defenses put in place by its authors and no shortage of affiliates signing up to use the ransomware-as-a-service, Cerber looks set to remain the main ransomware threat throughout Q2. Attacks will continue and likely increase, and new variants will almost certainly be released.
All organizations can do is to improve their defenses against attack. Cybersecurity solutions should be employed to prevent spam emails from being delivered to end users. Staff should be trained how to identify malicious emails and not to open email attachments sent from unknown senders. Organizations should also use security tools to detect endpoint infections.
Since even with advanced security defenses infections are still possible, it is essential that all data are backed up and those backups tested to ensure they will allow encrypted data to be recovered.
In the United States, phishing attacks on schools and higher education institutions have soared in recent months, highlighting the need for improvements to be made to staff education programs and cybersecurity defenses.
Phishing refers to the practice of sending emails in an attempt to get the recipients to reveal sensitive information such as logins to email accounts, bank accounts, or other computer systems. Typically, a link is included in the email which will direct the user to a website where information must be entered. The sites, as well as the emails, contain information to make the request look genuine.
Phishing is nothing new. It has been around since the 1980’s, but the extent to which sensitive information is stored electronically and the number of transactions that are now conducted online has made attacks much more profitable for cybercriminals. Consequently, attacks have increased. The quality of phishing emails has also improved immeasurably. Phishing emails are now becoming much harder to identify, especially by non-technical members of staff.
No organization is immune to attack, but attackers are no longer concentrating on financial institutions and healthcare organizations. The education sector is now being extensively targeted. Phishing attacks on schools are being conducted far more frequently, and all too often those attacks are succeeding.
Such is the scale of the problem that the IRS recently issued a warning following a massive rise in phishing attacks on schools. Campaigns were being conducted by attackers looking for W-2 Form data of school employees. That information was then used to submit fraudulent tax returns in school employees’ names.
Recent Phishing Attacks on Schools, Colleges, and Universities
Westminster College is one of the latest educational institutions to report that an employee has fallen for the W-2 Form phishing scam, although it numbers in dozens of schools, colleges and universities that have been attacked this year.
Phishing emails are not only concerned with obtaining tax information. Recently, a phishing attack on Denver Public Schools gave the attackers the information they needed to make a fraudulent bank transfer. More than $40,000 intended to pay staff wages was transferred to the criminal’s account.
This week, news emerged of a listing on a darknet noticeboard from a hacker who had gained access to school email accounts, teacher’s gradebooks, and the personal information of thousands of students. That individual was looking for advice on what to do with the data and access in order to make money.
Washington University School of Medicine was targeted in a phishing attack that saw the attackers gain access to patient health information. More than 80,000 patients potentially had their health information stolen as a result of that attack.
Last week, news emerged of an attempted phishing attack on Minnesota schools, with 335 state school districts and around 170 charter schools potentially attacked. In that case, the phishing attack was identified before any information was released. The attack involved an email that appeared to have been sent from the Education Commissioner. The attackers were trying to gain access to financial information.
How to Improve Defenses Against Phishing Attacks
Fortunately, there are a number of technological controls that can be implemented cheaply to reduce the risk of phishing attacks on schools being successful.
An advanced spam filtering solution with a powerful anti-phishing component is now essential. A spam filter looks for the common spam and phishing signatures and ensures suspect messages are quarantined and not delivered to end users.
It must be assumed that occasionally, even with a spam filter, phishing emails may occasionally be delivered. To prevent employees and students from visiting phishing websites and revealing their information, a web filtering solution can be used. Web filters block end users from visiting websites that are known to be used for phishing. As an additional benefit, web filters can stop individuals from accessing websites known to contain malware or host illegal or undesirable material – pornography for instance.
Those solutions should be accompanied by training for all staff members on the risk from phishing and the common identifiers that can help staff spot a phishing email. Schools should also implement policies for reporting threats to the organization’s IT department. Fast reporting can limit the harm caused and prevent other staff members from responding.
IT departments should also have policies in place to ensure thwarted attacks are reported to law enforcement. Warnings should also be sent to other school districts following an attack to allow them to take action to protect themselves against similar attacks.
Any school or higher educational institution that fails to implement appropriate defenses against phishing attacks will be at a high risk of a phishing attack being successful. Not only do phishing attacks place employees at risk of fraud, they can prove incredibly costly for schools to mitigate. With budgets already tight, most schools can simply not afford to cover those costs.
Improve Your Phishing Defenses with TitanHQ
The TitanHQ team have worked on email anti-spam solutions for schools, web filtering for the education sector, and email archiving for schools for over 20 years. We have a deep understanding of the security issues that all schools and colleges face when trying to protect students, school staff and visitors. TitanHQ has developed products to address the needs of schools and block threats such as phishing, malware, and ransomware, while ensuring compliance with federal and state laws.
TitanHQ offers schools a powerful and highly effective email security solution – SpamTitan – which blocks in excess of 99.9% of spam and 100% of known malware threats. The award-winning solution is the single-most important measure to block phishing and malware threats, the majority of which are delivered via email.
WebTitan offers safe internet browsing for children, providing protection from harmful and obscene web content whether students are studying at school or at home. Web security is available for all devices, and in addition to blocking age-inappropriate web content, will prevent access to known phishing websites and will block malware and ransomware downloads.
If you want to improve your defenses against phishing and malware in the most cost effective way possible, give the TitanHQ team a call today. Both solutions are available to schools and other educational institutions on a 30-day 10% free trial, which will allow you to see for yourself the difference each makes and why so many schools have already implemented these solutions.
A phishing attack on a HIPAA-covered entity has resulted in a $400,000 penalty for non-compliance with HIPAA Rules. This is not the first time a phishing attack has attracted a penalty from OCR for non-compliance.
The failure to prevent phishing attacks does not necessarily warrant a HIPAA penalty, but failing to implement sufficient protections to prevent attacks could land HIPAA-covered entities in hot water.
HIPAA Compliance and Phishing
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights is tasked with enforcing Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Rules. While OCR conducts audits of covered entities to identify aspects of HIPAA Rules that are proving problematic for covered entities, to date, no financial penalties have been issued as a result of HIPAA violations discovered during compliance audits. The same is certainly not the case when it comes to investigations of data breaches.
OCR investigates each and every data breach that impacts more than 500 individuals. Those investigations often result in the discovery of violations of HIPAA Rules. Any HIPAA-covered entity that experiences a phishing attack that results in the exposure of patients’ or health plan members’ protected health information could have historic HIPAA violations uncovered. A single phishing attack that is not thwarted could therefore end up in a considerable fine for non-compliance.
What HIPAA Rules cover phishing? While there is no specific mention of phishing in HIPAA, phishing is a threat to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of ePHI and is covered under the administrative requirements of the HIPAA Security Rule. HIPAA-covered entities are required to provide ongoing, appropriate training to staff members. §164.308.(a).(5).(i) requires security awareness training to be provided, and while these are addressable requirements, they cannot be ignored.
These administrative requirements include the issuing of security reminders, protection from malicious software, password management and login monitoring. Employees should also be taught how to identify potential phishing emails and told about the correct response when such an email is received.
The HIPAA Security Rule also requires technical safeguards to be implemented to protect against threats to ePHI. Reasonable and appropriate security measures, such as encryption, should be employed to protect ePHI. Since ePHI is often available through email accounts, a reasonable and appropriate security measure would be to employ a spam filtering solution with an anti-phishing component.
Given the frequency of attacks on healthcare providers, and the extent to which phishing is involved in cytberattacks – PhishMe reports 91% of cyberattacks start with a phishing email – a spam filtering solution can be classed as an essential security control.
The risk from phishing should be highlighted during a risk analysis: A required element of the HIPAA Security Rule. A risk analysis should identify risks and vulnerabilities that could potentially result in ePHI being exposed or stolen. Those risks must then be addressed as part of a covered entity’s security management process.
HIPAA Penalties for Phishing Attacks
OCR has recently agreed to a settlement with Metro Community Provider Network (MCPN), a federally-qualified health center (FQHC) based in Denver, Colorado following a phishing attack that occurred in December 2011. The attack allowed the attacker to gain access to the organization’s email accounts after employees responded by providing their credentials. The ePHI of 3,200 individuals was contained in those email accounts.
The fine was not exactly for failing to prevent the attack, but for not doing enough to manage security risks. MCPN had failed to conduct a risk analysis prior to the attack taking place and had not implemented security measures sufficient to reduce risks and vulnerabilities to a reasonable and appropriate level. OCR settled with MCPN for $400,000.
In 2015, another covered entity ended up settling with OCR to resolve violations of HIPAA Rules following a phishing attack. University of Washington Medicine paid OCR $750,000 following the exposure of 90,000 individual’s ePHI. In that case, the phishing attack allowed attackers to install malware. OCR Director at the time, Jocelyn Samuels, pointed out “An effective risk analysis is one that is comprehensive in scope and is conducted across the organization to sufficiently address the risks and vulnerabilities to patient data.” She also said, “All too often we see covered entities with a limited risk analysis that focuses on a specific system such as the electronic medical records or that fails to provide appropriate oversight and accountability for all parts of the enterprise.”
Covered entities are not expected to prevent all phishing attacks, but they must ensure the risk of phishing has been identified and measures put in place to prevent phishing attacks from resulting in the exposure of theft of ePHI. If not, a HIPAA fine may be issued.
Microsoft has finally patched a zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft Word that has been exploited by cybercriminals for months. Recently, the vulnerability has been exploited by the gang behind the Dridex banking Trojan.
The remote code execution vulnerability (CVE-2017-0199) affects the Windows Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) application programming interface. The vulnerability is a logic flaw rather than a programming error, which makes defending against attacks difficult.
The bug affects RTF files. The spam email campaigns use RTF files containing an embedded OLE2Link object, which downloads an HTA (HTML Application) file containing malicious code when the document is opened. No user interaction other than opening the file is required to infect the end user’s device.
There is some debate as to how long the vulnerability has been actively exploited in the wild. Attacks may have been occurring as early as November 2016 according to SophosLabs, although certainly since the start of 2017. Over the past two months, the vulnerability has been extensively exploited to deliver the Dridex banking Trojan.
The zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft Word has been exploited for espionage purposes in Russian speaking countries, while FireEye observed the exploit being used to distribute Latentbot malware. Latentbot is an information stealer with the ability to corrupt hard drives.
Many security companies have been tracking the vulnerability, although it was McAfee that announced the existence of the actively exploited flaw on Friday last week. The flaw exists in virtually all Microsoft Word versions and does not require macros to be enabled in order for malicious code to run.
Employees are advised never to enable macros on documents unless they are 100% certain that a document is legitimate; however, this zero-day exploit does not rely on macros. Simply opening the Word document on an unpatched Office installation is likely to result in infection.
This makes the vulnerability particularly dangerous. Any end user that opens a specially crafted Word document would automatically run the code which would see the Dridex Trojan (or another malware) downloaded. One protection that can prevent the malicious code from running is to enable Protected View mode. However, the code will run when Protected View is turned off.
The malicious emails sent out in at least one campaign have the subject line “scanned data” with the RFT file attachments containing the word ‘scan’ followed by a random string of numbers, according to Proofpoint.
To protect against this exploit, the patches for both Office and Windows that were released by Microsoft on Tuesday April 11, 2017 should be applied. However, in order to apply the security update, Service Pack 2 for Office 2010 must be installed.
If it is not possible to apply the Microsoft updates immediately, you can configure your spam filter to block RTF files or add RTF files to the list of documents to block in the Microsoft Office Trust Center.
Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that one of the leading email spammers has been arrested as part of an operation to disrupt and dismantle the infamous Kelihos botnet.
The Kelihos botnet is a network of tens of thousands of computers that are used to launch massive spamming campaigns comprising millions of emails. Those spam emails are used for a variety of nefarious purposes including the distribution of ransomware and malware. The botnet has been extensively used to spread fake antivirus software and spread credential-stealing malware.
Computers are added to the Kelihos botnet using malware. Once installed, Kelihos malware runs silently and users are unaware that their computers have been hijacked. The Kelihos botnet can be quickly weaponized and used for a variety of malicious purposes. The botnet has previously been used for spamming campaigns that artificially inflate stock prices, promote counterfeit drugs and recruit people to fraudulent work-at-home schemes.
Pyotr Levashov is believed to operate the botnet in addition to conducting a wide range of cybercriminal activities out of Russia. In what turned out to be an unwise move, Levashov left the relative safety of his home country and travelled to Barcelona, Spain on holiday. Levashov was arrested on Sunday, April 9 by Spanish authorities acting on a U.S. issued international arrest warrant.
Levashov is suspected of playing a role in the alleged Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election in 2016, although Levashov is best known for his spamming activities, click fraud and DDoS attacks.
Levashov, or Peter Severa as he is otherwise known, is heavily involved in distributing virus spamming software and is believed to have written numerous viruses and Trojans. Spamhaus lists Levashov in seventh place on the list of the 10 worst spammers.
Levashov is believed to have run multiple operations that connected virus developers with spamming networks, and is suspected of running the Kelihos botnet, the Waledac botnet – which was taken down in 2010 – and the Storm botnet. Levashov was indicted for his role in the latter in 2009, although he managed to avoid extradition to the United States. At the time, Storm was the biggest spamming botnet in operation and was used to send millions of emails every day. Levashov also moderates many spamming forums and is well known in underground circles. Levashov is believed to have been extensively involved in spamming and other cybercriminal activities for the past 20 years; although to date he has avoided prosecution.
A statement released by the U.S. Department of Justice reads, “The operation announced today targeted an ongoing international scheme that was distributing hundreds of millions of fraudulent e-mails per year, intercepting the credentials to online and financial accounts belonging to thousands of Americans, and spreading ransomware throughout our networks.”
The DOJ operation also involved the takedown of domains associated with the Kelihos botnet starting on April 8, 2017. The DOJ says shutting down those domains was “an extraordinary task.”
While it is certainly good news that such a high profile and prolific spammer has been arrested and the Kelihos botnet has been severely disrupted, other spammers are likely to soon take Levashov’s place. Vitali Kremez, director of research at Flashpoint said his firm had seen chatter on underground forums indicating other major spammers are responding to the news of the arrest by taking acting to secure their own operations. There may be a blip in email spam volume, but that blip is only likely to be temporary.
The importance of anti-phishing training for staff members has been highlighted this week following a major incident in Denver. A targeted Denver Public Schools phishing scam saw at least 30 members of staff divulge their usernames and passwords to scammers.
The Denver Public Schools phishing scam enabled attackers to gain access to accounts, which allowed information to be gained to access to the school district’s payroll system. The attackers changed the routing numbers for payments to employees and directed the payments to their own accounts. More than $40,000 that had been set aside to pay staff wages was stolen.
Staff members have now been paid and efforts are continuing to recover the stolen funds. At least 14 direct deposits were made and have not been recovered. The school district is hoping that the payments will be covered by an insurance policy. The incident has been reported to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the incident is being investigated to try to identify the individuals behind the scam.
The Denver Public Schools phishing scam was highly convincing; however, questions will be asked about how so many employees fell for the scam and disclosed their login credentials. The school district has confirmed that efforts were made to educate its employees on the risk of phishing prior to the attack taking place.
Denver Public Schools employs 13,991 members of staff. The response percentage was therefore very low, but it can only take one individual to respond to such a scam for serious financial harm to be caused.
A Bad Year for Phishing Attacks on Schools
Phishing attacks on schools are commonplace, but this year has seen attacks soar. For instance, in 2017, there have been 141 reported W-2 phishing scams, 33 of which affected schools, colleges and universities.
While phishing scams used to be fairly easy to detect, now they are becoming much more sophisticated. It is now not easy to tell a phishing email from a real email request. The attackers use spoofing techniques to make the emails appear as if they have been sent from within the organization. Genuine email accounts may even be compromised and used for phishing attacks. Last month, the Digital Citizens Alliance reported finding millions of .edu email addresses listed for sale on the dark web. Those email addresses are often used for phishing scams as they are trusted.
Phishing emails are often free from the spelling and grammatical errors that were commonly seen in spam emails in years gone by. The emails often contain lifted branding, images and formatting, which makes them highly convincing. The requests for information may also seem reasonable.
How to Prevent Phishing Attacks
Providing anti-phishing training for staff is now an essential cybersecurity defense; however, it is also important to ensure that training has had the desired effect and has been taken onboard. Schools should therefore conduct dummy phishing exercises to identify the effectiveness of their training programs. Research has shown that with practice, employees get much better at identifying phishing scams.
Technological solutions should also be implemented to prevent spam emails from reaching end users’ inboxes. Advanced anti-spam solutions such as SpamTitan do not rely on blacklists to identify emails as spam. Blacklists are used along with a host of front end controls and emails are subjected to Bayesian analyses to identify common spam signatures. Rules can be set to reduce the risk of email spoofing.
If you are interested in finding out more about the range of technological solutions that can be employed to reduce the risk of phishing attacks, contact the TitanHQ team today.
A recent report from IBM X-Force has highlighted the massive growth in tax-related email spam this year. Between December 2016 and February 2017, tax-related email spam increased by an incredible 6,000%.
A rise in tax-related email spam is to be expected during tax season. It is the time of year when tax returns are submitted and criminals can make substantial profits. If tax information is stolen and a fraudulent tax return is submitted prior to the individual submitting their own return, thousands of dollars in refunds can be obtained. With such high returns from each set of tax information, it is no surprise that tax-related scams are so prevalent.
This year, has seen many different scams detected, although one of the most successful is the W-2 phishing scam. The scam involves a tax fraudster impersonating the CEO, CFO or another executive, and emailing a request for W-2 Forms to members of the payroll department.
As we have seen on numerous occasions this year, the emailed lists can contain thousands of employees’ sensitive information. Usually, every employee that has taxable earnings for the previous fiscal year. To date, there have been 141 reports of successful scams. The largest breach was reported by American Senior Communities. The tax information of more than 17,000 members of staff were emailed to scammers.
The IRS said it was one of the most dangerous email phishing scams seen in recent years. It’s too early to tell how much in fraudulent refunds have been paid out by the IRS, although last year the total was around $5.8 billion. This year that total is expected to rise.
W-2 form phishing scams may be the most common type of tax-related email scams seen this year, but there are many. Most are delivered by email, although website phishing attacks have also been highly prevalent.
Cybercriminals have been impersonating tax software companies and have been sending out fake marketing emails encouraging consumers to visit spoofed websites. They are then relieved of their personal information. Information gathered via the online forms enable fraudsters to steal identities and file fraudulent tax returns in the victims’ names.
Tax season is also a time when malware infections spike. Tax-related email spam is sent with malicious email attachments. Opening those attachments results in malware or ransomware being downloaded to the victims’ computers.
Cybercriminals use a wide variety of techniques to steal credentials. Social engineering techniques are used to fool email recipients into believing requests for information are genuine. Attackers use typosquating and URL hijacking to make their malicious websites appear legitimate. The phishing templates used by some cybercriminals are so convincing it is almost impossible to distinguish them from genuine emails. The correct branding is used, links are masked, and support is even offered for uploading tax-related documentation. In many cases, the emails contain the IRS logo and victims are fooled into supplying their credentials. The scams are often successful, even though the IRS does not initiate contact with taxpayers via email.
To protect against attacks and fraud, consumers can set an IRS IP PIN on their accounts. That pin number must be used to file a tax return. Provided the PIN is not disclosed, individuals will be protected from fraudulent tax filings.
Many Americans leave filing their tax returns to the last minute; however, this year the scammers started sending tax-related email spam early. The late filing of tax returns gives cybercriminals plenty of time to submit fake returns. Tax returns should be filed as soon as a W-2 Form is received to reduce the risk of becoming a victim of fraud.
Businesses can protect themselves against W-2 phishing scams by implementing an advanced spam filtering solution to block spam emails. However, staff should also receive anti-phishing training and policies should be implemented that require any request for W-2 Forms to be verified with the sender of the email by telephone.
Businesses are still being targeted by scammers so they should be on their guard. They should also ensure that they are prepared well in advance for the tsunami of tax-related email spam that will start to arrive from December 2017.
The Inland Revenue Service has issued a new warning to tax professionals about a new IRS e-Services phishing scam.
With the tax return deadline fast approaching it is the last chance for the fraudsters to steal identities and file fraudulent tax returns. The past few days has seen a surge in phishing attacks on tax professionals.
The purpose of the IRS e-Services phishing scam is to obtain tax professionals’ e-Services usernames and passwords. The emails use a variety of subject lines that have been crafted to attract attention and ensure the emails are opened.
The emails claim to have been sent by the IRS about issues with the user’s e-Services account. The emails warn that the user’s e-Services account has been closed, suspended or blocked. In order to reactivate the account or prevent its closure, the email recipient is required to login to their account.
A link is supplied in the email that enables the recipient to take the required action. Clicking on the link will direct the user to a login page that closely resembles the IRS e-Services portal. Entering in a username and password into the login page will see the details captured by the attackers.
In response to the high volume of phishing attacks on tax professionals, the IRS has been improving account security in recent weeks. The IRS has been asking tax professionals to revalidate their accounts to prevent delays when accessing their e-Services accounts. The attackers appear to be taking advantage and piggybacking on those recent communications.
The IRS warns all tax professionals that if for any reason their e-Services account has been closed, they should contact the e-Services Help Desk to reactivate their account, but never to click on any links contained in emails. While links to malicious websites are used for this scam, users should also be wary about any attachments sent in e-Services emails.
This tax season has seen a major increase in tax-related email scams, most notably a massive rise in W-2 Form phishing scams. At least 140 successful W-2 Form phishing attacks have already been announced, although with two weeks left of tax season that figure is certain to rise. K12 schools, colleges and other higher education institutions have been extensively targeted this year, as has the healthcare industry. Some of the phishing scams have resulted in thousands of employees’ tax details being obtained by fraudsters.
The last few days before the April 18 deadline for submitting tax returns is likely to see many more phishing attacks performed. All businesses should therefore be on their guard and should exercise extreme caution.
Today is World Backup Day: An annual event that started in 2010 to raise awareness of the importance of backing up data.
Backups are used to recover data in the event of disaster; however, having a backup of data does not necessarily mean data can be recovered. Restoring files from backups is not always effective. Backups can be corrupted and the restoration of files can fail.
While World Backup Day raises awareness of the importance of backing up data, we would like to emphasize the importance of testing backups and reviewing backup strategies to ensure they are effective. Don’t wait until disaster strikes to ensure your strategies are effective and files can be recovered. By then it will be too late.
How Common is Data Loss?
Recent research conducted by Kroll OnTrack has revealed an alarming number of companies have experienced data loss, even when backups of data were performed. Kroll polled 1,000 companies in the United States, Europe, and Australia and discovered that a third of companies had experienced a data loss incident.
Out of those companies, 35% did not have a current backup and experienced data loss as a direct result. Two thirds (67%) of organizations were able to recover the majority of their data from backup files, while 13% said they could recover up to three quarters of their data. Corrupted backup files were cited as the reason for data loss by 12% of companies, but a quarter of companies that lost data said their backup system did not work as it should.
A quarter of companies that backed up their data said they did not test those backups to make sure files could be recovered. A quarter said they tested backups once a week to ensure data were recoverable, and 30% tested their backups on a monthly basis.
Backups are an organization’s insurance against data loss. Just as an insurance policy should not be taken out until the fine print has been read, backups should not be trusted until they have been tested.
The World Backup Day pledge is “I solemnly swear to backup my important documents and precious memories on March 31st.” However, to that we add, “I also swear to test my backups to make sure my important documents can be recovered.”
Ransomware – A Major Data Loss Risk for All Businesses
The past 12 months have clearly highlighted the importance of backing up data. Ransomware attacks soared in 2016. Ransomware is a form of malware that locks files with powerful encryption. A ransom demand is then issued to supply the key to unlock the data. Without access to that key, data will remain locked forever if a backup of data does not exisit.
The only way to unlock files is to pay a sizable ransom payment. That payment could be tens of thousands of dollars. In February, last year, Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center was forced to pay a ransom of $17,000 to obtain the key to unlock ransomware-encrypted data after it was discovered files could not be recovered from backups.
Ransomware has fast become one of the biggest cybersecurity threats. Research conducted by Kaspersky Lab revealed the number of ransomware variants increased 11-fold between Q1 and Q3, 2016, by which time 32,091 different ransomware variants had been detected. By Q3 2016, a business was being attacked with ransomware every 40 seconds and 42% of small to medium sized businesses had been attacked with ransomware. 32% of businesses were forced to pay the ransom in order to recover their data.
While ransomware attacks have soared, the malicious software is only the third main cause of data loss. Hardware failure poses the biggest risk followed by the loss or theft of devices. Software errors and data loss due to system upgrades round off the top five list.
A Good Data Backup Strategy
Backup systems can be used to continuously backup data, but at the very least a daily backup should be made. Those backups should be tested at least once a week to ensure data can be successfully recovered.
To prevent data loss and maximize the probability of data recovery, organizations should use the 3-2-1 approach. Each organization should ensure they have three copies of data. The original and two backups. Those backups should be stored on two different media and one of those copies should be stored off site. The easiest option to satisfy those requirements is to have a physical copy on a storage device and a backup in the cloud. Since ransomware can encrypt data on network drives and connected storage devices, a local drive should be disconnected after the backup has been made.
Take out some time this World Backup Day to test your backups and review your backup strategies and ensure that you will be able to recover your data if disaster strikes.
The 2017 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index has been released this week. The report provides an insight into the main cybersecurity threats faced by all industries and major cyberattack trends, data breaches and security incidents experienced by U.S. organizations in 2016.
Last year’s IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index showed healthcare was the industry most heavily targeted by cybercriminals. However, the 2017 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index shows cybercriminals changed their focus in 2016. Last year, the financial services was hit the hardest. The healthcare dropped down to fifth place.
The healthcare industry did not suffer mega data breaches of the same scale as 2015 – which saw a 78.8 million-record cyberattack on Anthem Inc., and 10 million record+ data breaches at Premera Blue Cross and Excellus BlueCross BlueShield. However, there were security breaches aplenty. 2016 was the worst ever year for healthcare industry breaches, with more incidents reported than any other year in history.
Those breaches resulted in far fewer records being exposed or stolen. The 2017 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index indicates there was an 88% drop in exposed or stolen healthcare records in 2016 compared to the previous year. Around 12 million healthcare records were exposed or stolen in 2016.
The 2017 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index also shows that there was a shift in the nature of attacks, with cybercriminals targeting unstructured data rather than structured data. Data breaches involving email archives, intellectual property, and business documents all rose in 2016.
The healthcare industry may not have seen so many records exposed, but that was certainly not the case across all industry sectors. 2016 was a very bad year for cyberattacks. In 2015, around 600 million records were exposed or stolen. In 2016 the total jumped to an incredible 4 million records, helped in no small part by the 1.5 billion record breach at Yahoo and the discovery of massive data breaches at LinkedIn, MySpace, and Dropbox. It is therefore no surprise that IBM called 2016 The Year of the Mega Data Breach.
Top of the list of attacked industries in 2016 was financial services. Both the financial services and healthcare sectors saw a fall in attacks by outsiders, but attacks by malicious insiders and inadvertent actors increased in both industry sectors.
In the financial services, 5% of attacks involved malicious insiders and 53% involved inadvertent actors. In healthcare, 25% of attacks involved malicious insiders and 46% involved inadvertent actors. The financial services saw 42% of attacks conducted by outsiders. Healthcare cyberattacks by outsiders accounted for 29% of the annual total.
According to the 2017 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, the second most targeted industry was information and communications, followed by manufacturing and retail. All three industries saw increases in attacks by outsiders, which accounted for the vast majority of attacks. 96% of attacks on information and communications were by outsiders, with 91% apiece for manufacturing and retail.
The financial services sector saw a substantial rise in SQLi and OS CMDi attacks in 2016 – The most common attack method for the industry. The main attack method on the information and communications sector involved exploitation of vulnerabilities allowing attackers to trigger buffer overflow conditions. The main attack method on the manufacturing, retail and healthcare industries was also SQLi and OS CMDi attacks, which accounted for 71% of manufacturing industry cyberattacks, 50% of retail cyberattacks, and 48% of healthcare cyberattacks.
The 2017 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index indicates cybercriminals favored older attack methods in 2016 such as ransomware, malware toolkits, and command injection to gain access to valuable data and resources.
Ransomware was big news in 2016. Many cybercriminals turned to ransomware as a quick and easy source of income. Figures from the FBI indicate $209 million in ransom payments were made in the first three months of 2016 alone.
Malware was also extensively used in attacks, with Android malware and banking Trojans big in 2016. Not all attacks targeted organizations for their data. DDoS attacks increased, both in frequency and severity. While attacks of 300+ Mbps were unusual in 2015, they became the norm in 2016. One attack in excess of 1 Tbps was reported.
While 2015 saw exploit kits extensively used to infect endpoints with malware, in 2016 spam email was favored. Spam was a primary attack tool of cybercriminals, especially in the second half of the year. While the first half of the year saw spam email volume remain steady, the 2017 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index indicates there was a significant increase in spam volume in the second half of the year and a massive rise in the number of malicious email attachments.
The 2017 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index shows the vast majority of malicious attachments were ransomware or ransomware downloaders, which accounted for 85% of malicious email attachments.
The increase in the use of spam email as an attack vector shows how important it is for organizations to improve their defenses against email attacks. An advanced spam filter is essential as is training of employees on security best practices and phishing attack prevention.
The Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA) has published new research showing there has been a massive rise in the theft of university email credentials and a massive rise in the sale of email credentials on darknet marketplaces.
This year’s study revealed the theft of university email credentials has grown significantly in the past 12 months. The report shows 13,930,176 stolen email credentials have been discovered to have been listed for sale. This time last year when the darknet was last scraped for stolen credentials there were around 2.8 million stolen credentials listed for sale. The year before that the figure stood at 2.2 million.
While the 13.9 million figure includes email credentials that were stolen over the past 8 years, 76% of those stolen credentials were discovered in the past 12 months.
When the researchers combined all types of credentials from multiple sectors they discovered there had been a 547% increase in credentials finding their way onto darknet marketplaces over the past three years.
The fivefold increase in the theft of university email credentials in a single year is a massive spike, which has been attributed to major data breaches at third party websites rather than cyberattacks on universities. The researchers say the massive 1-billion record data breach at Yahoo, the huge breach at LinkedIn and other large-scale cyberattacks on Dropbox, Weebly, MySpace and others are to blame.
The email credentials of university staff and students are being sold on underground marketplaces for between $3.50 to $10 each. While many actors had listed the email credentials for sale, some individuals were trading credentials and others were offering the stolen credentials for free.
The study only looked at theft of university email credentials at the top 300 higher education institutions. Smaller universities were excluded from the study. The stolen credentials were sorted into different higher education institutions to determine which were the worst affected. The universities with the highest numbers of stolen credentials were found to be:
University of Michigan – 122,556
Pennsylvania State University – 119,350
University of Minnesota – 117,604
Michigan State – 115,973
Ohio State – 114,032
University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) – 99,375
New York University – 91,372
University of Florida – 87,310
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University – 82,359
Harvard University – 80,100
The researchers were unable to determine why mid-west universities were the worst affected, although they hypothesized that it may be simply due to the size of the universities and the number of students, staff members, and alumni for those universities.
The researchers also looked at the size of the university and compared this to the number of stolen email credentials to gain a better understanding of demand for email addresses from specific universities and to ‘level the playing field’. Some universities appeared in the top ten of both lists, while smaller but more prestigious universities shot up the rankings. When ordered by the ratio of stolen email accounts to the total number of enrolled students and staff the top ten list changed to:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Carnegie-Mellon University
Cornell University
Baylor University
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Pennsylvania State University
University of Michigan
Kent State University
Bowling Green State University
It is easy to see why the theft of university email credentials is such a problem. Edu email addresses are valuable to cybercriminals. They can be used in spear phishing and phishing campaigns but they also allow the users to obtain student discounts with retailers or when purchasing items such as software. Microsoft for instance offers a discount for students purchasing its Office products. The discounts can be considerable.
University email addresses are also highly valuable due to the data contained in those accounts. Information in the accounts can be mined and a huge amount of information can be gathered, from medical records to ID numbers and passwords to the weekends when students are likely to be away.
While email addresses and passwords were discovered, the researchers were unable to tell if the passwords were real and current and could be used to gain access to the accounts. The researchers also found that some of the email addresses appeared to have been spoofed or were incorrect accounts. While these posed less of a threat, the credentials were still of value to cybercriminals.
Phishing attacks do not need correct email addresses to be successfully used. Providing the correct format for emails is used, the email addresses can add credibility to phishing campaigns.
Adam Benson, Executive Director of the DCA said “Higher Education Institutions have deployed resources and talent to make university communities safer, but highly-skilled and opportunistic cyber criminals make it a challenge to protect large groups of highly-desirable digital targets.”
“We shared this information from cybersecurity researchers to create more awareness of just what kinds of things threat actors are capable of doing with an .edu account.” Said Benton.
While large scale third party data breaches were partly to blame, cyberattacks on universities still occur. To prevent theft of university email credentials the researchers suggest cybersecurity programs need to be conducted and awareness needs to be raised on the importance of using strong passwords.
Training should be provided to make sure staff and students are aware of the techniques used by criminals such as phishing. They should also be warned of the risk of clicking on links sent in emails. The researchers suggest tests should be conducted to see who clicks on malicious links. Conducting those tests is not a witch hunt, rather, it can give universities a better idea about how easy staff and students are being duped. Universities should also consider the use of multi-factor authentication to make accounts more secure.
Figures from Trustwave show there has been a steady decline in exploit kit activity over the past year. Exploit kits were once one of the biggest cybersecurity threats. In late 2015 and early 2016 exploit kits were being extensively used to spread ransomware and malware. Now exploit kit activity has virtually dropped to nothing.
Exploit kits are toolkits that are loaded onto malicious or hijacked websites that probe for vulnerabilities in browsers and plugins such as Adobe Flash Player and Java. When a new zero-day vulnerability was discovered, it would rapidly be added to exploit kits and used to silently download ransomware and malware onto web visitors’ computers. Any individuals that had failed to keep their browsers and plugins up to date would be at risk of being infected. All that would be required was make them – or fool them- into visiting a malicious website.
Links were sent via spam email, malvertising was used to redirect web visitors and websites were hacked and hijacked. However, the effort required to develop exploits for vulnerabilities and host exploit kits was considerable. The potential rewards made the effort more than worthwhile.
Exploit kits such as Angler, Magnitude and Neutrino no longer pose such a big threat. The actors behind the Angler exploit kit, which was used to spread Locky ransomware in early 2016, were arrested. Law enforcement agencies across the world have also targeted gangs running these exploit kits. Today, exploit kit activity has not stopped entirely, but it is nowhere near the level seen in the first half of 2016.
While this is certainly good news, it does not mean that the threat level has reduced. Ransomware and malware are still major threats, all that has happened is cybercriminals have changed tactics for distributing the malicious programs. Exploit kits are not dead and buried. There has just been a lull in activity. New exploit kits are undoubtedly being developed. For the time being, exploit kit activity remains at a low level.
Now, the biggest threat comes from malicious spam email messages. Locky and other ransomware variants are now almost exclusively spread via spam email messages. Cybercriminals are also developing more sophisticated methods to bypass security controls, trick end users into opening infected email attachments, and improve infection rates.
Much greater effort is now being put into developing convincing phishing and spear phishing emails, while spam emails are combined with a wide range of social engineering tricks to get end users to open infected email attachments. End users are more knowledgeable and know not to click on suspicious email attachments such as executable files; however, malicious Word documents are another matter. Office documents are now extensively used to fool end users into installing malware.
With cybercriminals now favoring spam and phishing emails to spread malware and ransomware, businesses need to ensure their spam defenses are up to scratch. Employees should continue to be trained on cybersecurity, the latest email threats should be communicated to staff and advanced spam filters should be deployed to prevent messages from being delivered to end users.
Security researchers in Israel have developed a proof-of-concept exploit called DoubleAgent that takes advantage of vulnerabilities in antivirus products to turn them against users. The exploit could potentially be incorporated into DoubleAgent malware, although there have been no known attacks that take advantage of the flaws in AV products to the researchers’ knowledge.
The proof-of-concept was developed by Cybellum researchers, who say that most third-party Windows antivirus products are susceptible and could potentially be hijacked. To date only three AV companies have confirmed that they are developing patches to block potential DoubleAgent malware attacks – AVG, Trend Micro and Malwarebytes.
The attack involves the Microsoft Application Verifier, which is used to check for bugs in programs that run on Windows. The researchers use DLL hijack techniques to fool the verifier using a malicious DLL. They claim the technique could be used to insert a custom verifier into any application.
DoubleAgent malware may not yet have been developed to exploit the zero-day vulnerability, although the researchers say they have used their proof-of-concept to take full control of the Norton Security AV program – many other AV products are also susceptible to this type of attack.
The Cybellum-developed DoubleAgent malware could be used in a number of different attack scenarios, all of which are particularly chilling.
Since the antivirus program can be pwned by an attacker, it could be turned on the user and used as malware. Antivirus software is trusted, so any actions taken by the AV program would be treated as legitimate. The researchers warn that the AV program could be turned into a double agent and do anything the attackers wanted.
The AV solution could be instructed to whitelist certain other programs allowing an attacker to install any malware undetected. Once installed, the malware would run totally undetected and the user would be unaware that their AV software had been rendered virtually useless. The AV software would also be prevented from flagging data exfiltration or communications with the attacker’s C&C.
An attacker could cripple a company’s applications using the DoubleAgent malware. If a legitimate program used by the company is marked as malicious by its antivirus software program, it would be prevented from running. It would therefore be possible to perform Denial of Service attacks. Also, since AV software has the highest level of privileges, it could be used to perform any number of malicious actions, such as deleting data or formatting a hard drive. That means a ransomware-style attack could be performed or the company’s computer systems could be sabotaged.
Fortunately, only Cybellum has the code and AV companies that have been found to be susceptible to such an attack have been notified. Patches are therefore likely to be developed to prevent such an attack.
The SANS Internet Storm Center reports that the Blank Slate spam campaign which was first detected in July last year is now being used to spread Cerber ransomware, rather than previous favorites Locky and Sage 2.0.
In the majority of cases, emails used to spread ransomware and other nasties use a variety of social engineering techniques to trick end users into opening the email attachments and infecting their computers. However, the Blank Slate spam campaign opts for simplicity. The spam email messages contain no text, hence the name ‘blank slate’.
The email messages contain a double zip file attachment. A zip file is attached to the email, and within it is a second zip file containing JavaScript or a Word document with a malicious macro. The JavaScript or macro then downloads the malicious payload – Cerber ransomware – if it is run.
Without any social engineering tactics, infection rates are likely to be much lower. However, researchers suggest that more email messages are likely to get past security defenses using this technique. Since more emails are delivered to end users’ inboxes, this is likely to make up for the fact that fewer attachments will be opened. The blank slate spam campaign is believed to be spread via botnets.
Cerber ransomware has been a major threat over the past 12 months. The ransomware is frequently updated to ensure it avoids detection. The latest blank slate spam campaign is being used to spread the latest form of the ransomware, which hides malicious code inside Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS) installers.
Security researchers at Palo Alto Network’s Unit 42 team report that Cerber ransomware is being hosted on around 500 separate domains. When domains are detected by hosting companies they are rapidly shut down; however, new domains are then registered by the criminals to take their place.
Since new domains can easily be registered using stolen credentials, the costs to cybercriminals are low. The cost of signing up for a new domain are negligible. Burner phones can be purchased cheaply and the numbers provided when registering domains, email addresses can be registered free of charge, and stolen credit card details can be used to make payment. There is no shortage of stolen credit card numbers to use. However, the rewards from Cerber ransomware infections are high. Now, the keys to decrypt data locked by Cerber ransomware costs victims 1 Bitcoin – around $1,000.
Organizations can protect against the threat by ensuring their spam filtering solutions are carefully configured and making sure all employees are instructed never to open JavaScript files or enable Word macros sent from unknown senders.
A recent survey conducted by CBT Nuggets has revealed that even tech savvy people are prone to commit cybersecurity howlers and place themselves, and their organization, at risk. In fact, far from intelligence preventing individuals from suffering online identity theft and fraud, it appears to make it far more likely.
The survey, which was conducted on 2,000 respondents, showed that people who believed they were tech savvy were actually 18 times more likely to become victims of online identity theft.
The more educated individuals were, the more likely they were to become victims of cybercrime. The survey revealed that high school graduates were less likely to be victims of cybercrime than individuals who had obtained a Ph.D.
24% of respondents with a Ph. D said they were a victim of identity theft compared to 14% who had a Bachelor’s degree, 13% who were educated to college level and 11% who had been educated only to high school level.
Women were found to be 14% more likely to have their identities stolen than men, and millennials were less likely to suffer identity theft than Baby Boomers and Generation X.
Interestingly, while the vast majority of malware targets Windows users, the survey revealed that users of Apple devices were 22% more likely to be victims of identity theft than Windows users, although Android phone users were 4.3% more likely than iPhone users to suffer identity theft.
There were some interesting results about the level of care used when venturing online. Even though the risk of cyberattacks on law firms has increased in recent years and law firms are a major target for cybercriminals, lawyers were less likely than other professionals to follow online security best practices.
69% of respondents from the legal profession did not follow online security best practices because they were too lazy to do so. Only people in ‘religious industries’ fared worse on the laziness scale (70%).
46% of healthcare industry professionals said they were too lazy when it came to cybersecurity, a particular worry considering the value of healthcare data and the extent to which cybercriminals are conducting attacks on the healthcare industry. The most common reason given for lax security and taking risks online was laziness, being too busy and it being inconvenient to follow security best practices.
65.9% of respondents believed they faced a medium or high risk of being hacked, yet only 3.7% of respondents said they followed all of the basic security recommendations. Perhaps that’s why so many people felt they faced a medium or high risk of being hacked!
One of the biggest risks taken by respondents was avoiding using public Wi-Fi networks. Only 11.8% of respondents said they avoided connecting to the Internet on public Wi-Fi networks. However, when it comes to divulging sensitive information while connected to a public Wi-Fi network, people were more savvy. 83.3% said they avoided transmitting sensitive information when connected to public Wi-Fi networks. Only 40.6% of respondents said they updated their devices every time they were prompted to do so.
The survey also showed which states were the worst for identity theft. While Florida often makes the headlines, the state ranked in the bottom ten for identity theft, with just 11% of respondents from the state saying they had suffered identity theft. The worst states were Maryland with 28% of respondents saying they were victims of identity theft, followed by Alabama with 26% and Kentucky with 22%. The safest states were Alabama (6%) and Louisiana (5%).
An investigation into a November Metropolitan Urology ransomware attack has revealed that the attackers may have gained access to the protected health information (PHI) of almost 18,000 former patients.
The Metropolitan Urology ransomware attack occurred on November 28, 2016 and impacted two servers used by the medical group. While the ransomware successfully encrypted a wide range of files, it was not initially known whether any data covered by Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Rules had been accessed.
An external computer security firm was contracted to conduct an investigation, which revealed on January 10, 2017 that PHI was potentially accessed by the attackers. Names, procedural codes, dates of service, account numbers, control numbers, and other ID numbers were all potentially viewed. In total, 17,364 patients who had visited Metropolitan Urology centers for treatment between 2003 and 2010 were impacted by the Metropolitan Urology ransomware attack.
The Metropolitan Urology ransomware attack is the latest in a long list of ransomware attacks on U.S. healthcare providers in recent months. The healthcare industry is being extensively targeted by cybercriminals who know that healthcare providers are heavily reliant on data and need access in order to continue to provide medical services to patients. If patient data are encrypted and systems taken out of action, there is a high probability that a ransom demand will be paid.
However, in the case of the Metropolitan Urology ransomware attack, computers were recovered by the IT security firm and it would appear that a ransom was not paid. The same cannot be said of Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center. In January, a ransom payment of $17,000 was made to recover files that had been encrypted by ransomware. Many other healthcare providers have similarly paid to have their data decrypted.
HIPAA and Ransomware Attacks
In July last year, following a spate of healthcare ransomware attacks, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights – which enforces HIPAA Rules – confirmed ransomware attacks are reportable security breaches. All HIPAA breaches must be reported to OCR within 60 days of the discovery of the breach and patients must similarly be notified of any incidents in which their PHI has been compromised.
A HIPAA breach is classed as “the acquisition, access, use, or disclosure of PHI in a manner not permitted under the HIPAA Privacy Rule which compromises the security or privacy of the PHI.”
Not all forms of ransomware involve the exfiltration of data, but a ransomware infection still counts as a HIPAA Privacy Rule breach. OCR confirmed that the encryption of PHI does count at a HIPAA breach because the information has been disclosed to a third party.
Ransomware incidents are therefore reportable and warrant notifications to be issued to patients unless the covered entity can demonstrate there is a “low probability that PHI has been compromised.”
OCR suggests that the way to do this is to conduct a risk assessment and investigate the nature and extent of PHI that has been viewed, the individuals that may have accessed the PHI, whether the PHI was stolen or viewed, and the extent to which the risk to PHI has been mitigated.
The covered entity should also determine which malware variant was used and the algorithmic processes used by that malware to encrypt data. Demonstrating a low probability of a PHI compromise may therefore prove problematic for healthcare organizations, especially smaller healthcare organizations with limited resources.
Protecting Healthcare Computers from Ransomware Attacks
Protecting against ransomware attacks requires investment in a wide range of different solutions. Organizations can focus on preventing ransomware from being installed by blocking the main vectors used to spread infections. Spam filtering solutions can be highly effective at blocking email-borne threats. Preventing suspicious emails from being delivered reduces reliance on end users being able to identify emails as malicious and stops them from opening infected attachments and clicking on malicious links.
To block web-borne attacks, healthcare organizations can implement a web filtering solution to control the file types that can be downloaded. The solution can also be used to block websites known to contain malware or exploit kits. A web filter can be configured to prevent end users from accessing certain types of websites that carry a high risk of infection.
Endpoint security solutions can help to detect ransomware infections, allowing rapid action to be taken to reduce the extent of an infection. Computers and/or servers can then be isolated to prevent the spread of the ransomware to other connected devices.
However, since it is not possible to reduce risk of infection with ransomware to zero, organizations must ensure that data is backed up and can be recovered in the event that computers are encrypted. Multiple backups should be performed, and backup files should be stored on air-gapped devices and in the cloud.
For further information on protecting your organization from the threat of ransomware, contact the TitanHQ team today.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority in the United Kingdom has recently issued a warning about law firm email scams following a sharp rise in law firm cyberattacks.
According to SRA figures, almost 500 UK law firms have been targeted by cybercriminals. One of the most common law firm email scams seen in recent weeks involves an attacker sending an email to a solicitor pretending to be a new client. While the attacker could claim to have any number of legal problems in the initial email, one of the favored themes is a property or business that is about to be purchased or sold.
Legal services are requested and, when the solicitor replies, the attacker sends an email containing a malicious email attachment. The email attachment does not contain the malware, instead a malicious macro is embedded in the document. A believable explanation for the inclusion of the macro is provided in the document to allay suspicion. If the macro is enabled, a script is run that downloads the malicious payload. The download occurs silently so the solicitor is unlikely to be aware that their computer has been infected.
The malware then collects and exfiltrates sensitive data, or provides access to the solicitor’s computer allowing the attacker to search for any useful data. Keyloggers can also be installed to log keystrokes on the infected computer and collect login information for email and bank accounts.
The SRA has emphasized there is a high risk of attack, suggesting UK solicitors should treat cybercrime as a priority risk. Action should be taken promptly to mitigate the risk and ensure that the firm’s data are secured. The SRA warns that a cyberattack can cause considerable damage to a firm’s reputation and could result in significant harm to clients. Clients and the law firm can suffer considerable financial losses as a result of these scams.
Not all cyberattacks on law firms involve malware. Phishing is also a major risk. Many law firm email scams attempt to get solicitors to reveal sensitive information such as login credentials, passwords, or other confidential information. These law firm email scams are not easy to identify. Cybercriminals invest considerable time and effort into building up relationships with solicitors via email or over the telephone to build trust. Once a personal relationship has been established it is far easier for the scammers to fool solicitors into revealing sensitive information.
The seriousness of the threat is clear from the reports of cybercrime received by the SRA from solicitors over the past year. The SRA says more than £7 million of clients’ money has been stolen from solicitors in 2016.
The advice to law firms on reducing cybersecurity risk is:
Make sure all data are backed up and stored securely on a drive that is not connected to a computer
Make use of secure cloud services for storing sensitive data and accessing and processing information
Keep software up to date. Patches and software/system updates should be applied promptly
Solicitors should consider using encryption services for all stored data, especially on mobile devices
Antivirus and antimalware systems should be installed and set to update definitions automatically. Regular scans of systems should also be scheduled.
As an additional protection against law firm email scams, solicitors should implement an advanced antispam solution to prevent phishing and other malicious emails from being delivered.
To protect against malicious links and redirects from malvertising, solicitors should consider implementing a web filtering solution. A web filter can be used to block visits to webpages known to contain malware.
The world’s largest spam operation has been exposed, and along with it, a massive database of email addresses. More than 1.37 billion email addresses, names, addresses, and IP addresses were in the database, which was exposed as a result of an error made during a backup. The company behind the operation is the email marketing firm River City Media – A legitimate email marketing company that uses some decidedly shady email marketing practices.
So how large is the world’s largest spam operation? According to MacKeeper researchers, the company behind the massive spamming campaigns were sending up to one billion spam email messages every day. However, due to the leak, life is likely to get a lot tougher for the email marketing firm. Its entire infrastructure has now been added to the spamming blacklist maintained by Spamhaus: The world leader in providing up to date threat intelligence on email spam and related spamming activity.
So how does a database from the world’s largest spam operation get released on the Internet? Faulty backups! The company failed to configure their Rsync backups correctly, resulting in those backups being available online without any need for a password. The database was discovered by MacKeeper security researcher Chris Vickery.
The revelation that such a large database had been obtained was huge news. In fact, it even drew a response from the Indian government, which felt it necessary to explain that it was not the source of the leak. The Indian government’s federal ID system is one of a very small number of databases that contain that number of records.
The number of records in the database is so large that almost everyone that uses email would either be on the list or would know someone that is.
How does a company amass so many email addresses? According to Vickery, there are various methods used, although he said “credit checks, education opportunities, and sweepstakes,” are typically used to obtain the email addresses, as are legitimate marketing campaigns from major brands. Users divulge their email addresses during these campaigns in order to receive a free gift, special offer, or an online service. Hidden away in the terms and conditions, which few people read, is confirmation that the information collected will be shared with marketing partners. Those marketing partners then share addresses with their partners, and their partners’ partners, and so on. Before long, the email addresses will be made available to a great deal of spammers.
When spammers use those addresses, there is a high probability that the domains used for sending the marketing messages will be blocked. To get around this, companies such as RCM use warm up accounts to send out their campaigns.
New campaigns will be sent to the warm up accounts, and provided they do not generate complaints, the sender of the emails will be marked as a good sender. With a good reputation, the spammers will be able to scale up their operation and send out billions of messages. If at any point messages start to be rejected or complaints start to be received, the domain is dropped and the process starts again. That way, RCM is able to bypass spam filtering controls and continue to send messages.
A detailed insight into the world’s largest spam operation and the techniqus used to send spam messages has been published by CSO Online, which worked with Vickery, MacKeeper, and Spamhaus following the discovery of the huge database.
Free Dharma ransomware decryption is now possible following the publication of the decryption keys used by the cybercriminal gang behind the ransomware.
The Dharma ransomware decryption keys have now been used to develop a decryptor to unlock Dharma-encrypted files. If your organization has been attacked with Dharma ransomware, you can unlock your files by using the Dharma ransomware decryptor developed by Kaspersky Lab or ESET. A ransom no longer needs to be paid.
The decryptor available from ESET will unlock files encrypted by Dharma and its predecessor, Crysis. Kaspersky Lab has added the keys to its Rakhni ransomware decryptor.
It is easy to determine which ransomware variant has been used by checking the file extension on ransomware-encrypted files. Dharma ransomware adds the ‘.dharma’ extension to files after they have been encrypted.
The keys to unlock the encryption were posted on a BleepingComputer tech support forum last week by an individual with the username ‘gektar’. Where that individual obtained the decryption keys is unknown, although both Kaspersky Lab and ESET have confirmed that the decryption keys are genuine. The decryption keys will work for all variants of Dharma ransomware.
The name gektar is not known to security researchers. No other online posts are believed to have been made with that username. The username seems to have been created solely to post the decryption keys. It would appear the individual responsible wants to keep a low profile.
Unfortunately, there are now more than 200 ransomware families, with many different ransomware variants within each of those families. Dharma may be no more, but the ransomware threat is still severe. There are still no decryptors available for the biggest ransomware threats: Locky, Samsa (Samsam) and CryptXXX, which are still being extensively used by cybercriminal gangs to extort money out of businesses.
The best defense that businesses can adopt to ensure ransomware-encrypted files can be recovered for free is to ensure that backups of critical files are made on a daily basis. Those backups should be stored on an air-gapped device and also in the cloud.
Recovery from backups and removing ransomware infections can be a labor-intensive and time-consuming process, so anti-ransomware defenses should also be employed to prevent infection. We recommend using SpamTitan to block ransomware emails from being delivered to end users’ inboxes and WebTitan to prevent drive-by ransomware downloads.
A recently published study from the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Office of Technology Research and Investigation has revealed that anti-phishing technologies are not being widely adopted by U.S. businesses.
While there are several anti-phishing technologies that could be adopted by businesses to reduce susceptibility to phishing attacks, relatively few businesses are taking full advantage of the latest anti-phishing solutions.
Phishing is a type of online scam primarily conducted via email, although the same type of scam can occur online on malicious websites. The email version of the scam involves sending an email request to an employee in which the attacker claims to be a well-known source. That could be an Internet service provider, a well-known company such as Amazon or Netflix, or the CEO or CFO of the employee’s company. The target is asked to send sensitive personal or business information.
Typically, the attackers request financial information, logins, or as we have seen on numerous occasions this year, employees’ W-2 Form data. The information is then used for identity theft and fraud. In the case of the W-2 Form phishing scams, the information is used to file fraudulent tax returns in employees’ names.
Phishing is one of the biggest cybersecurity threats that businesses must mitigate. A separate study conducted by PhishMe showed that the vast majority of cyberattacks start with a phishing email. The largest ever healthcare data breach – which resulted in the theft of 78.8 million health insurance members’ credentials from Anthem Inc. – occurred as a result of an employee responding to a phishing message.
The FTC’s research revealed that most businesses have now implemented authentication controls, but little else. The FTC study (performed by OTech) found that 86% of businesses were using the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) to determine whether emails that claim to have been sent from a business were actually sent from the domain used by that business.
While this is an important anti-phishing control, SPF alone is insufficient to protect businesses from phishing attacks. SPF controls can be bypassed.
The FTC study found that fewer than 10% of businesses were using Domain Message Authentication Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) to receive intelligence on the latest spoofing attempts used to bypass SPF controls. DMARC allows businesses to automatically reject unauthenticated messages, yet few use the technology.
While not covered by the FTC study, one of the best additional anti-phishing technologies is a spam filtering solution such as SpamTitan.
SpamTitan blocks 99.97% of spam email messages, 100% of known malware via its dual anti-virus engines, while a powerful anti-phishing component looks for common signatures of phishing emails and prevents them from being delivered.
The threat from phishing is growing. A study from the Anti-Phishing Working Group revealed there was a 65% increase in phishing attacks in 2016 compared to 2015. Last year, 1,220,523 phishing attacks were reported. With attacks increasing at such a rate, and given the number of phishing attacks on businesses so far in 2017, more must be done to prevent attacks.
Is your business doing enough to prevent phishing attacks? What anti-phishing technologies has your business adopted to prevent employees being scammed?
Law firms are prime targets for cybercriminals, so it is perhaps unsurprising that there has been an increase in law firm cyberattacks in recent months. With the threat level now at unprecedented levels, protections must be increased to keep data secure.
Many law firm cyberattacks are targeted, with hackers seeking access to highly sensitive data, although law firms can just as easily fall victim to random attacks. Those attacks still have potential to cause considerable harm.
A recent security incident has showed just how easy it is for cybercriminals to conduct attacks and take advantage of unpatched vulnerabilities.
Zero-Day WordPress Vulnerability Discovered
WordPress is a flexible website content management system. It requires relatively little skill to update and WordPress sites can be easily managed. It is therefore no surprise that it has become one of the most popular website content management systems. There are more than 60 million websites running WordPress, with the platform popular with many SMBs, including law firms.
However, the popularity of the platform makes it a target for cybercriminals. Zero-day WordPress vulnerabilities provide cybercriminals with access to the sites and their associated databases.
When a new zero-day vulnerability is discovered, WordPress rapidly issues a patch. One zero-day WordPress vulnerability was recently discovered and the platform was updated rapidly as usual. Users of the site were urged to update to version 4.7.2 as a matter of urgency.
The reason for urgency was not announced until a week later after a significant proportion of WordPress sites had been updated. However, once the vulnerability was disclosed, hackers were quick to take advantage. Within 48 hours of the REST API vulnerability being disclosed, hackers started exploiting it on a grand scale. Sucuri was tracking the attacks and monitoring its WAF network and honeypots closely to see if hackers were actively exploiting the flaw.
The cybersecurity firm reports that it identified four different hacking groups that were exploiting the WordPress vulnerability. They were performing scans to find sites still running outdated WordPress versions and once vulnerable sites were identified they were attacked.
Law Firm Cyberattacks See Websites Defaced
The failure to update WordPress promptly resulted in more than 100,000 websites being attacked, according to figures from Google. Websites were defaced, additional pages added and the sites used for SEO spam. In this case, the aim was not to gain access to data nor to load malware onto the sites, although that is not always the case.
The speed at which the WordPress flaw was exploited shows how important it is to keep WordPress sites updated. Due to the popularity of the platform, had the hacking groups loaded malware onto sites, the number of individuals who could have been infected with malware would have been considerable.
The potential fallout from a website being hacked and defaced, or worse, from malware being loaded, can be considerable. Many small law firms were attacked as a result of failing to update their WordPress site within a week of the update being issued.
A defaced website, in the grand scheme of things, is a relatively quick fix, although such an attack does not inspire confidence in a company’s ability to keep sensitive data protected. For a law firm, that could mean the difference between getting a new client and that individual seeking another law firm.
In this case, the law firm cyberattacks could have been prevented with a quick and simple update. In fact, WordPress updates can be scheduled to occur automatically to keep them secure.
The take home message is not to ignore security warnings, to ensure that someone reads the messages sent from WordPress, and better still, to set updates to occur automatically.
BugDrop malware is a new and highly advanced email-borne threat detected in the past few days. While attacks are currently concentrated on companies in Ukraine, BugDrop malware attacks have already started in other countries. Companies in Austria, Russia and Saudi Arabia have also been attacked.
Due to the nature of the attacks, it is clear that the actors behind the new malware have access to significant resources. So far, BugDrop malware is known to have stolen an incredible 600 GB of data from around 70 confirmed targets. At the rate that the malware is stealing data, the storage required will be considerable. This is therefore unlikely to the work of an isolated hacker. A significant cybercriminal group or most likely, a foreign-government backed hacking group, is likely to be responsible for the attacks.
Companies involved in scientific research, critical infrastructure, news media, engineering, and even human rights organizations have been targeted.
The malware will steal documents stored on infected computers and networks to which the computer connects. Passwords are stolen and screenshots are taken. However, rather than simply gain access to intellectual property and other sensitive data, the malware has another method of obtaining information. BugDrop malware, as the name suggests, bugs organizations and records audio data.
The malware turns on the microphone on an infected computer and records conversations, which accounts for the huge volume of data stolen. The stolen files are then encrypted and uploaded to the attackers’ Dropbox account. Files are retrieved from the Dropbox account and are decrypted. The resources required for analyzing such huge volumes of data – including audio data – are considerable, as are the storage requirements.
The CyberX researchers who discovered the malware suggest that Big Data analytics are likely used rather than manually checking the stolen data. Either way, such an operation must be heavily staffed, which points to a state-sponsored group. CyberX says “Given the sophistication of the code and how well the operation was executed, we have concluded that those carrying it out have previous field experience.”
Since data exfiltration occurs via Dropbox, data exfiltration may not be detected. Many companies allow their employees to access Dropbox and connections to the storage service are often not monitored. Encryption is used, preventing many anti-virus solutions from detecting attacks or sandboxing the malware. The attacks also involve reflective DLL injection – since code is run in the context of other processes, detection is made more difficult.
BugDrop malware is being distributed via spam email using malicious macros in Word documents. If macros are enabled, the malware will be installed when the document is opened. Since many companies now automatically block macros and require them to be enabled on each document, the attackers prompt the user to enable macros by saying the document was created in a newer version of Microsoft Office. To view the contents of the document, macros must be enabled. The Word documents contains a professional image from Microsoft, including branding and Office logos, to make the warning appear genuine.
Google has released its latest statistics on the main corporate email security threats, with the search engine giant’s report also delving into the latest email-borne attacks on corporate Gmail account users. The report follows on from a presentation at the RSA Conference, which provided more detail on the biggest corporate email security threats that now have to be blocked.
According to Google’s data, spam is still a major problem for businesses. While the barrage of unsolicited emails is a nuisance that results in many hours of lost productivity, corporate users face a much bigger threat from spam. Malicious messages are a major menace.
Cybercriminals are targeting corporate users to a much higher extent than personal email account holders. The reason is clear. There is more to be gained from infecting corporate computers with malware than personal computers. Businesses are much more likely to pay ransoms if data are encrypted by ransomware. The data stored by businesses has much higher value on the darknet, and plundering business bank accounts nets far higher rewards.
It is therefore no surprise to hear that Google’s stats show that businesses are 6.2 times as likely to receive phishing emails and 4.3 times as likely to be targeted with malware-infected emails. Spam on the other hand is more universal, with business emails accounts 0.4 times as likely to be spammed than personal accounts.
Main Corporate Email Security Threats by Business Sector
Corporate email security threats are not spread evenly. Cybercriminals are conducting highly targeted attacks on specific industry sectors. Google’s data show that nonprofits are most commonly targeted with malware, receiving 2.3 times as many malware-infected emails as business accounts. The education sector is also being extensively targeted. Schools, colleges and universities are 2.1 times as likely to be sent malware-infected emails, followed by government industries, which are 1.3 times as likely to be targeted than businesses.
However, when it comes to email spam and phishing attacks, it is the business sector which is most commonly targeted. Currently, email spam is the biggest problem for businesses in the IT, housing, and entertainment industries, while phishing attacks are much more commonly conducted on IT companies, arts organizations and the financial sector.
Malicious Spam Poses a Major Risk to Corporations
As we have seen on so many occasions in the past two years, email is a major attack vector for businesses. Cybercriminals use spam email to infect end users with information-stealing malware, file-encrypting ransomware, and conduct credential-stealing phishing attacks. Email-borne attacks are still highly profitable. The attacks require little effort and criminals are able to bypass security controls by targeting end users.
Given the massive increase in malware and ransomware variants in the past two years, blocking spam and malicious messages is now more important than ever. Additionally, the cost of mitigating data breaches is rising year on year (According to the Ponemon Institute). Malware and ransomware infections can be extremely costly to resolve, while successful phishing attacks can net cybercriminals huge sums from selling stolen corporate data and making fraudulent bank transfers. Those costs must be absorbed by businesses.
Protecting Your Organization from Email-Borne Threats
Fortunately, it is possible to mitigate corporate email security threats by using an advanced spam filtering solution such as SpamTitan. SpamTitan blocks 99.97% of spam messages and boasts a low false positive rate of just 0.03%. A powerful anti-phishing component prevents phishing emails from being delivered to end users, while dual anti-virus engines (Bitdefender/ClamAV) are used to scan all incoming (and outgoing) messages for malicious links and attachments.
If you want to improve your defenses against the latest corporate email security threats, contact the TitanHQ team today. Since SpamTitan is available on a 30-day free trial, you can also see for yourself how effective our product is at protecting your organization from email-borne threats before committing to a purchase.
A fresh round of email warnings for Yahoo account holders has been sent; however, cybercriminals are taking advantage: A new Yahoo breach phishing campaign has been detected that piggybacks on the latest news.
New Warnings for Yahoo Email Account Holders
Yahoo has been sending fresh warnings to account holders explaining that their accounts may have been compromised as a result of the Yahoo cyberattacks in 2013 and 2014. The Yahoo cyberattacks were the largest ever seen, resulting in the theft of 1 billion and 500 million users’ credentials. Yahoo has now confirmed that the attacks involved the use of forged cookies to bypass its security controls.
Yahoo’s CISO Bob Lord has told account holders in the email that “We have connected some of the cookie forging activity to the same state-sponsored actor believed to be responsible for the data theft we disclosed on Sept. 22, 2016.” As was the case in previous Yahoo warnings, accounts should be reviewed for any suspicious activity and users should not click on links or open attachments from unknown senders.
Yahoo Breach Phishing Campaign Detected
Many active Yahoo account holders are concerned about email security following news of the cyberattacks in 2013/2014 and cybercriminals have been quick to take advantage. The fresh round of email warnings has only heightened fears, as well as the risk for account holders. Cybercriminals have been piggybacking on the latest news of account breaches and have been sending their own messages to Yahoo email users. The latest Yahoo breach phishing email campaign play on users’ fears over the security of their accounts. The Yahoo breach phishing emails attempt to fool security conscious account holders into clicking on malicious phishing links and revealing sensitive information.
In the latest round of warnings, Yahoo urged users to take advantage of Yahoo’s password-free security service – the Yahoo Account Key authentication service. The latest round of Yahoo breach phishing emails offer account holders the option of upgrading the security on their accounts as well. To improve take up, the attackers add urgency by saying the target’s account has been temporarily limited for failing an automatic security update. A link is supplied for users to click to re-verify account ownership. If they fail to click on the link and update their details, they will be permanently locked out of their account.
The Yahoo breach phishing campaign is likely to claim many victims, although the phishing emails are fairly easy to identify as fake. The emails appear to have come from an account called ‘Mail’, although checking the actual email address will reveal that the email was not sent from a domain used by Yahoo. There are also some errors with the structure of the email. Slight grammatical errors are a tell-tale sign that the emails are not genuine.
However, not all Yahoo breach phishing emails contain errors. Some have been highly convincing. Users are therefore advised to exercise extreme caution when using their Yahoo accounts and to be on high alert for Yahoo breach phishing emails.
Cost of the Yahoo Cyberattacks
The Yahoo cyberattacks of 2013 and 2014 have cost the company dearly. While it is unclear what the final cost of the Yahoo cyberattacks will be, it will certainly be well in excess of $250 million – That is the price reduction Verizon Communications is seeking following the revelation that Yahoo account holders’ credentials were stolen in the two massive cyberattacks reported last year. The purchase price of $4.8 billion, which was agreed in the summer of 2016, is to be reduced. There was talk that the deal may even not go ahead as a result of the Yahoo cyberattack revelations. While Yahoo will not want a price reduction, there are likely to be a few sighs of relief. Verizon were rumored to be looking for a $1 billing reduction in the price just a few weeks back.
In the United Kingdom and Eire, homebuyers and sellers are being targeted by cybercriminals using a new solicitor email scam. The scam, which involves mimicking a solicitor, is costing victims thousands. There have also been some reported cases of cybercriminals sending solicitors emails claiming to be their clients and requesting changes of bank details. Any pending transfers are then made to the criminals’ accounts.
Since funds for home purchases are transferred to solicitors’ accounts before being passed on to the sellers, if cybercriminals are able to change the bank details for the transfers, the funds for the purchase will be paid directly into their accounts.
While email spoofing is commonplace, this solicitor email scam often involves the hacking of solicitors’ email accounts. Once access has been gained, cybercriminals search for emails sent to and from buyers and sellers of homes to identify potential targets. While the hacking of email accounts is occurring, there have also been instances where emails between buyers, sellers, and their solicitors have been intercepted. When bank details for a transfer are emailed, the hackers change the bank information in the email to their own and then forward the email on.
The solicitor email scam is highly targeted and communications are monitored until the crucial point in the purchasing process when a bank transfer is about to be made. Since the potential rewards are considerable, cybercriminals are willing to put the time and effort into the scam and be patient. Buyers, sellers, and solicitors are well researched and the emails are highly convincing.
Instances of this conveyancing scam have been increasing in recent months and it has now become the most common cybercrime affecting the legal sector. The Law Society, a representative body for solicitors in the UK, has issued a warning about the conveyancing scam due to an increased number of complaints, although it is currently unclear how many fraudulent transfers have been made.
There is of course an easy way for solicitors to prevent such a scam from being successful, and that is to contact the homebuyer or seller before any transfer is made and to verbally confirm the bank details by telephone. Alternatively, policies can be developed requiring bank account information to only be sent via regular mail.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority advises against the use of email for property transactions due to the potential for cybercriminals to intercept and spoof messages. Email may be convenient, but with such large sums being transferred it pays to exercise caution.
While this solicitor email scam is common in the UK and Eire, legal firms in the United States should also exercise caution. Since the conveyancing scam is proving to be lucrative, it will only be a matter of time before U.S. lawyers are targeted.
Cyberattacks on law firms have been steadily increasing over the past three years. According to data from PwC’s annual Law Firms Survey last year, 73% of the UK’s top 100 law firms have been attacked by cybercriminals in the past year. In 2014/2015, 62% of the top 100 law firms were attacked. The previous year the figure stood at 45%. In the past two years, cyberattacks on law firms have increased by a staggering 60%.
According to PwC’s figures, large law firms are the most frequently targeted. 90% of the top 25 legal firms had experienced a cyberattack in the past 12 months. The types of attacks are highly varied, although the most common way attacks occur is via the firm’s email system.
Spear phishing emails are sent to solicitors in an attempt to obtain banking credentials and access to email accounts. When solicitors respond to these phishing emails and divulge their banking credentials, client funds are transferred to the criminals’ accounts. According to the survey, 84% of legal firms said they had experienced a phishing attack in the past year.
Solicitors in the UK and Ireland and attorneys in the United States are also being sent bogus emails that claim to be from home buyers or sellers. Instructions are provided asking for funds to be transferred to alternate accounts. Hackers eavesdrop on email conversations and are aware when funds are about to be transferred. They then sent an email to an attorney/solicitor posing as the buyer/seller of a property and provide alternate bank accounts asking for the funds to be transferred to the new account.
Buyers and sellers of properties are also targeted in a similar fashion. They are sent emails with the hacker claiming to be their solicitor. Alternate bank account details are provided for transfers. This is now one of the main types of cyberattacks on law firms and their clients.
Direct attacks on networks still occur, with hackers taking advantage of vulnerabilities in security defenses. However, law firm hacking only accounts for around 16% of incidents. Malware is a much bigger threat. Malware is delivered via spam email or drive-by downloads from the Web. 55% of legal firms say they have experienced a malware attack in the past 12 months. Malware can be ransomware – which locks computers with powerful encryption until a ransom payment is made or keyloggers that record sensitive data such as usernames and passwords. Malware can also enable criminals to gain access to systems to steal sensitive data and extort money out of law firms.
Law firm cyberattacks can be costly to resolve; however, the biggest cost can be loss of reputation. If law firms suffer cyberattacks and client data is stolen or exposed, reputations can be permanently damaged. Legal firms that are unable to ensure that their clients’ information remains confidential may find the cost of removing malware the least of their problems.
To prevent phishing emails and malware from being delivered to inboxes, an advanced spam filter is required. SpamTitan includes a powerful anti-phishing component that recognizes the common signatures of phishing emails and ensures they are not delivered. SpamTitan also blocks 100% of known malware and ransomware, ensuring end users do not receive malicious email attachments and links to malware-ridden websites.
To find out how SpamTitan can improve your security posture, contact the TitanHQ team today and take the first step toward preventing your law firm from being added to next year’s PwC’s law firm cyberattack statistics.
Anti-phishing training can help an organization improve its security posture. However, even with training on phishing email identification, employees still fail to spot many email scams. Anti-phishing training alone is insufficient to prevent successful phishing attacks.
The Threat from Phishing is Growing
Your business is likely to be bombarded with phishing emails, especially at this time of year. Tax season sees millions of emails sent to businesses by cybercriminals who want access to employees’ W-2 Forms. However, phishing is a year-round problem. It has been estimated that an astonishing 156 million phishing emails are now being sent every single day.
As we have already seen this year, phishing scams can be highly convincing. Many businesses have discovered employees have responded to these scams in the belief that the email requests are genuine. The cost of those phishing attacks can be considerable for businesses, their customers and their employees.
Anti-Phishing Training Alone will Not Prevent Successful Phishing Attacks
To ensure employees are prepared, many businesses provide employees with anti-phishing training. They teach staff members how to identify phishing scams and the tell-tale signs that email requests are not genuine.
How effective is anti-phishing training? A recent analysis by Diligent showed that the average score on its phishing test was 76%. That means employees are failing to identify phishing scams 24% of the time and all it takes is one response to a phishing email for an employee’s email account to be compromised, a network login to be handed to cybercriminals, or the W-2 Forms of an entire workforce to be emailed to tax fraudsters.
Fortunately, as PhishMe’s data shows, with practice, employees get much better at identifying phishing emails. Providing training and conducting follow up tests using dummy phishing emails helps to show where training has failed. This allows organizations to provide further training to employees whose phishing email identification skills are poor. However, even with training and testing it will never be possible to ensure that 100% of employees identify 100% of phishing emails 100% of the time.
The Best Phishing Defense is to Prevent Phishing Emails from Being Delivered
Training should be provided and employees’ anti-phishing skills should be tested with dummy phishing exercises, but organizations should ensure that phishing emails are not delivered to end users’ inboxes. That means an advanced, powerful spam filtering solution is required.
SpamTitan blocks 99.97% of spam emails from being delivered. SpamTitan also includes a powerful anti-phishing component to block phishing attacks. However, blocking potentially malicious emails is only part of the story. It is also important to choose a solution that does not prevent genuine emails from being delivered.
Independent tests by VB Bulletin confirm SpamTitan has a consistently low false positive rate. Only 0.03% of genuine emails trigger SpamTitan’s anti-spam filters. The excellent catch rates and low false positives have seen SpamTitan win 36 consecutive VB Bulletin Anti-Spam Awards.
SpamTitan is available as a gateway appliance or a cloud-based solution, with both requiring minimal IT support. To suit the needs of service providers, the cloud-based version is available in a private cloud and is supplied in white-label format ready for rebranding.
The cost-effective solution is easy to implement, use and maintain and can be used to protect a limitless number of email accounts.
If you want to keep your employees’ inboxes free from phishing emails, malware, and ransomware, call the TitanHQ Sales Team today and say a fond farewell to email spam.
Another school phishing email attack has resulted in the W-2 Form data of school employees being emailed to tax fraudsters. This time, it was employees of Mercer County Schools in West Virginia whose data have been compromised.
The FBI has been called in to investigate the W-2 phishing scam and the IRS has been notified of the incident, while affected employees have been offered services to help them protect their identities.
The school phishing email attack is just one of many such attacks that have occurred this year. While businesses have been extensively targeted in the past, phishing attacks on schools are now commonplace. The problem has become so severe that the IRS recently issued a warning to schools of the risk of phishing email attacks, saying “This is one of the most dangerous email phishing scams we’ve seen in a long time.”
The Mercer County School District phishing attack was almost a carbon copy of many other tax season attacks this year. Already, there have been more than 29,000 victims of these attacks and there is still two months of tax season remaining.
The school phishing email attack involved the sending of an email to an employee in the HR/payroll department requesting a copy of W-2 Forms for all employees that worked in the previous fiscal year. The email was sent from an email account that was very similar to that used by the chief supervisor.
The email contained a slight variation from the genuine email address, which was enough to fool the recipient into thinking the email had been sent from the supervisor’s account. The employee then sent the W-2 forms of 1,800 staff members to the attackers as requested.
Databreaches.net has been tracking this year’s W-2 phishing scams and is maintaining a list of all organizations that have been scammed into revealing W-2 Form data. The list shows that school districts are being extensively targeted. Successful W-2 phishing attacks have been reported by the following schools and school districts in the past 6 weeks:
Argyle School District, TX
Belton Independent School District, TX
Bloomington Public Schools, MN
College of Southern Idaho, ID
Davidson County Schools, NC
Dracut Schools, MA
Lexington School District 2, SC
Manatee County School District, FL
Mohave Community College, AZ
Morton School District, IL
Odessa School District, WA
Tipton County Schools, TN
The Manatee County School District phishing attack resulted in the W-2 Form data of 7,900 employees being emailed to the scammers: The biggest school phishing email attack of the year to date. The Bloomington Public Schools attack also resulted in thousands of employees’ W-2 Forms being disclosed.
There are a number of measures that can be taken to reduce the risk of phishing attacks such as these. Training should be provided to HR and payroll staff and they should be instructed to carefully check senders’ email addresses to ensure the correct account has been used. Policies should also be developed requiring any W-2 Form requests to be verified with the sender via the telephone, using previously confirmed contact details.
It is also essential to implement a spam filtering solution with a powerful anti-phishing component. This will help to ensure that the emails are not delivered to inboxes. A spam filtering solution will also block malware and ransomware emails from being delivered. The latter types of malicious emails have also been a major problem for school districts over the past year.
An often forgotten anti-phishing measure is a web filter. Web filters block the web-based component of phishing attacks. If a link is clicked in a phishing email, the web filter will prevent the website from being accessed where credentials are harvested.
For more information on improving your defenses against phishing, give the TitanHQ team a call. The team will talk you through your options and will be able to help get you started with a free trial of SpamTitan Email Security and the WebTitan Web Filtering solution.
Email archiving is essential for most businesses; however, many businesses are not using a cloud-based email archiving solution. In fact, a large number rely on email backups, even though backups are impractical and data loss is a very real concern. But what are the benefits of secure, cloud-based email archiving over backups?
Loss of Email Simply isn’t an Option
Hillary Clinton could easily explain one of the most important benefits of a cloud-based email archiving solution. If an email archive is stored locally, should the device on which that archive is stored be lost or stolen, the entire archive would never be seen again. That is exactly what happened last year.
Donald Trump was quick to criticize Hillary Clinton. Not only was that archive lost, it could potentially have been accessed by an unauthorized individual. Donald Trump is keen not to make a similar mistake. He has reportedly started using a messaging app that deletes all messages once they have been read. Such an app would certainly prevent accidental disclosure, although it would not be an option for many businesses as regulations require emails to be kept for a number of years.
Loss of email is simply not an option in regulated industries. Big fines await companies who do not archive or backup their emails. Emails must be securely stored and made available to auditors or organizations will be in violation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, FINRA, HIPAA, and the Gramm-Leach-Billey Act to name but a few. If a backup or local email archive is lost, the consequences can be severe.
Take healthcare organizations for example. If a laptop computer is stolen and email backups containing electronic protected health information were on the device, those data could potentially be accessed by an unauthorized individual. That would be a violation of HIPAA Rules. The Office for Civil Rights could easily fine a healthcare organization millions of dollars for such a data breach. If emails are archived and stored in the cloud, such a breach would not occur in the event of device loss or theft.
Emails Must Be Found Quickly for Legal Discovery and GDPR
If a lawsuit is filed against a company, it may be necessary to provide copies of emails as part of legal discovery. While many companies store old emails in backups, searching for emails can be a difficult, expensive and long-winded process. For an average-sized organization searching for emails could take weeks, even though emails need to be found in minutes. With an email archiving solution, archived messages can be searched and retrieved in a matter of seconds or minutes, not weeks.
A similar scenario exists for data access requests under the EU´s General Data Protection Regulation. EU citizens now have the right to request details of any data that could be used to identify them, modify it where necessary, and erase it is there is justifiable cause. Businesses maintaining a database of EU citizens will find compliance with GDPR much easier by implementing cloud-based email archiving, which also has the benefit of complying with the regulations relating to data security.
Considering the volume of emails now being sent, and the requirement for those emails to be kept for years in many cases, the space required for storing email is considerable. A recent report from Radicati Group suggests the average employee sends or receives 121 emails a day. For an organization with 500 employees that is 60,500 emails a day. With 22 working days each month, that amounts to 15,972,000 emails a year. Each of those emails may only be a few KB, but over a year the storage space required is substantial. Cloud-based email archiving not only allows millions of emails to be stored, there is no need for organizations to purchase any hardware for storage. All emails are securely stored in the cloud.
ArcTitan – Secure, Cloud-Based Email Archiving for Enterprises of All Sizes
The benefits of secure, cloud-based email archiving are clear. So what options are available that provide all of the benefits of cloud-based email archiving in an easy to use, cost effective package? To meet businesses’ email archiving needs, TitanHQ is offering ArcTitan – a secure, cloud-based email archiving solution that allows organizations to meet compliance requirements, search email archives quickly, and retrieve messages in minutes. ArcTitan has excellent scalability, and can be used for old email storage by companies with ten to 10,000+ email accounts.
Emails can be archived from anywhere at any time, and messages can be accessed via a mail client or browser. Furthermore, with a pay as you go subscription, cloud-based email archiving is affordable for businesses of all sizes.
Key Features of ArcTitan
Scalable, email archiving that grows with your business
Email data stored securely in the cloud on Replicated Persistent Storage on AWS S3
Lightning fast searches – Search 30 million emails a second
Rapid archiving at up to 200 emails a second
Automatic backups of the archive
Email archiving with no impact on network performance
Ensure an exact, tamperproof copy of all emails is retained
Easy data retrieval for eDiscovery
Protection for email from cyberattacks
Eliminate PSTs and other security risks
Facilitates policy-based access rights and role-based access
Only pay for active users
Slashes the time and cost of eDiscovery other formal searches
Migration tools to ensure the integrity of data during transfer
Seamless integration with Outlook
Supports, single sign-on
Save and combine searches
Perform multiple searches simultaneously
Limits IT department involvement in finding lost email – users can access their own archived email
Compliant with regulations such as HIPAA, SOX, GDPR, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, etc.
To find out more about the benefits of ArcTitan, contact the TitanHQ sales team today!
Spammers and scammers are constantly updating their malware distribution tactics to ensure their malicious payloads are delivered to unsuspecting end users. However, Microsoft has spotted a major change to malware distribution tactics used by cybercriminals. The change has prompted the software giant to issue a new warning.
Malware, including ransomware, is commonly distributed via spam email. Links to malicious websites are used in an attempt to bypass spam filter controls; however, malicious attachments are the delivery mechanism of choice for many cybercriminal gangs. Malicious links are commonly blocked by web filtering solutions – WebTitan for example prevents all users from visiting websites known to be malicious.
To bypass spam filter controls, attachments rarely include the actual malware or ransomware files, instead the files contain scripts that download the malicious payload.
One of the most common methods of downloading malware is JavaScript code. JavaScript files are typically included in ZIP files. If the files are extracted and opened, the malicious code runs. A connection is opened to the attackers’ servers and malicious files are silently downloaded.
However, JavaScript files are not typically used by the majority of end users. These files are therefore not always opened. Furthermore, spam filters can identify JavaScript files even when they are included in compressed files. Later this month, Google will also start blocking emails with JavaScript attachments and will not allow them to be sent via Gmail.
Due to the ease at which these malicious downloaders are being identified, malware distribution tactics have been changed. Rather than use these suspect files, cybercriminals have switched to file types that are less obviously malicious. Microsoft has noticed a trend for using LNK files and SVG files containing malicious PowerShell scripts.
LNK files are Windows shortcut files which usually point to some form of executable file. SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) files are image files, and are much more innocuous. These files are typically opened with image software such as Adobe Creative Suite or Illustrator. Double clicking on these malicious LNK and SVG files will launch PowerShell scripts that download malware or ransomware.
Protecting against these types of attacks may seem fairly straightforward. It is possible, for example, to set restrictions on PowerShell commands to prevent them from running. However, even with restrictions in place, those policies can be easily bypassed. Intel Security has recently explained one such method: “PowerShell’s Get-Content can access the content of a .ps2 malware script and pass it to Invoke-Expression (iex) for execution.”
In the case of SVG files, it is relatively straightforward to include obfuscated JavaScript code in the image files. This JavaScript code may not be detected by software solutions and therefore could be delivered to end users’ inboxes.
There is of course an easy way to block these new malware distribution tactics. SpamTitan can be configured to block specific files attached to emails, preventing them from being delivered to end users. By implementing SpamTitan and blocking JavaScript Files, LNK files, and SVG files, organizations will be better protected against malware infections.
Since SVG, JavaScript, and LNK files are rarely sent in legitimate emails, blocking these attachments will not cause major disruption. Any individual or department that does use these files – IT or marketing for example – can be instructed to send the files via Dropbox or another file sharing platform.
Ransomware attacks on British schools have soared in recent weeks. The problem has become so serious that the British National Fraud and Cyber Crime Reporting Center, also known as Action Fraud, has issued a new ransomware warning to British schools.
Ransomware has grown in popularity with cybercriminals over the past 2 years, with attacks on organizations around the world soaring in 2016. 2017 may only be a few weeks old, but ransomware attacks are continuing at the high levels seen in 2016. Security experts predict that 2017 will see even more cyberattacks on schools and other educational institutions. Ransomware the attack method of choice.
Ransomware is a form of malware that encrypts data on a compromised system. A wide range of file types are locked with powerful encryption and a ransom demand is issued. If payment is made, the attackers claim they will supply the key to unlock the encryption. Without the key – the sole copy is held by the attackers – data will remain locked forever.
Some forms of ransomware have been cracked and free decryptors made available, but they number in the few. The majority of ransomware variants have yet to be cracked. Recovery depends on payment of the ransom or the wiping of the attacked system and restoration of files from backups.
While a standard charge per encrypted device was the norm early last year, ransomware is now more sophisticated. The attackers are able to set their payment demand based on the types of files encrypted, the extent of the infection, and the perceived likelihood of the victim paying up. Ransomware attacks on British schools have seen ransom demands of an average of £8,000 issued.
Ransomware Attacks on British Schools are Targeted, Not Random
Many ransomware attacks are random – Spam emails are sent in the millions in the hope that some of them reach inboxes and are opened by employees. However, ransomware attacks on British schools have seen a different approach used. Recent attacks have been highly targeted.
Rather than send emails out en masse, the spate of recent ransomware attacks on British schools start with a phone call. In order to find their target, the attackers call the school and ask for the email address of the head teacher. The email address is required because sensitive information needs to be sent that should only be read by the head teacher. Information such as mental health assessment forms and teacher guidance forms.
An email is then crafted and sent to the head teacher; addressed to that individual by name. While there are many types of ransomware emails, a number of recent ransomware attacks on British schools involved an email that appears to have been sent by the Department of Education. Other cases have involved the impersonation of the Department of Work and Pensions and telecom providers.
In the text of the email the attacker explains that they have sent some information in an attached file which is important and needs to be read. The attached file, usually in compressed format such as .ZIP or .RAR, contains files that install ransomware if opened.
These ransomware downloaders may be JavaScript files, Word or Excel macros, or a host of other file types. In some cases, links are used instead of attachments. The links are masked so they appear to be official webpages; on the Department for Education website for example. In the case of links, they direct the recipient to a webpage containing an exploit kit or other form of file downloader. Just visiting that link could infect the user’s computer, mapped network drives, and portable storage devices.
How to Prevent Ransomware Attacks
Ransomware attacks on British schools can be highly sophisticated, although risk can be effectively mitigated.
Ensure all staff with computer access are made aware of the risk of ransomware attacks
Provide cybersecurity training to all staff, including how to identify ransomware and phishing emails
Never open attachments or visit links in emails sent from unknown senders
Implement a spam filter to capture and quarantine malicious spam emails
Use a web filtering solution to prevent staff members from visiting malicious links and from downloading ‘risky’ files
Ensure all software is kept up to date and patches are applied promptly
Keep all anti-virus and anti-malware solutions up to date, setting updates to occur automatically
Restrict the use of administrator accounts – Only use accounts with high levels of privileges for specific tasks
It is also essential to ensure that backups of all data are made on a daily basis and backup devices are disconnected after backups have been performed. Data should ideally be backed up to the cloud and on a physical backup device. In the event of an attack, data can then be recovered without paying the ransom.
University phishing scams targeting students have increased in recent months. Targeting some of the most well educated individuals may not appear to be the most rewarding strategy for scammers, but students are falling for these university phishing scams in their droves.
University Phishing Scams are Becoming Difficult to Identify
Awareness of phishing tactics has certainly improved thanks to educational programs, email warnings, and media coverage of phishing attacks, but in response, cybercriminals have got better at scamming. Today, phishing emails can be difficult to identify. In fact, in many cases, it is virtually impossible to tell a genuine email from a scam.
While students may be aware of the risks of clicking links in emails from unknown senders, the same cannot be said when the emails are sent from a contact. Emails from university IT departments, professors and colleagues are likely to be opened. Students’ guard is let down when the sender of the email is known.
When a convincing request is included, students often respond and have no idea that they have been scammed into revealing their login credentials or disclosing other sensitive information. All it takes is for one email account of a student to be compromised to start the process. Emails are then sent to that individual’s email address book. A number of those contacts respond. The same happens with their contacts and so on. Given that there are supposedly six degrees of separation between all individuals on the planet, it is easy to see how fast malware infections can spread and how multiple email accounts can be compromised rapidly.
University phishing scams have been increasing for some time, although the past few months have seen even more scams emails sent. Recently, the University of Connecticut sent warnings out to students following a spate of phishing scams. Some of those scams involved the impersonation of the University president. Students at the University of Georgia have also been targeted.
In the case of the latter, one student’s email account was compromised after she responded to a phishing email sent from UGA associate. The email did not arouse any suspicions because the contact was known. In the email the student was told that it was important for her to change her password. Failure to do so would result in her being locked out of her email account. She responded by clicking the link and changing her password. However, what she had done was disclose her old password and her new one to the attacker.
The attacker then used those credentials to set up a mail forwarder on the email account. The student only found out after querying why she was no longer receiving emails with the IT help desk. After investigating, the mail forwarder was discovered.
Other students were similarly targeted and their emails accounts were used to send out huge volumes of spam emails. It was only when spamming complaints were received about the compromised accounts that the problem was identified.
These university phishing scams are conducted for a wide range of nefarious purposes. Spamming and mail forwarders may cause limited harm, but that may not always be the case. Malware infections can result in serious financial harm to students and universities. Ransomware installations can occur after students respond to phishing campaigns, and those attacks can cost tens of thousands of dollars to resolve.
How to Protect Students and Networks from the Scammers
Since these phishing scams are now so hard to identify, training on email and cybersecurity best practices is no longer as effective as it once was. Technological solutions are therefore required to prevent emails from being delivered and to stop end users from being directed to malicious websites.
SpamTitan is an ideal spam filtering solution for universities. SpamTitan blocks 99.97% of spam emails and 100% of known malware. The solution is cost effective to install, easy to administer, and no additional hardware is required or any software updates necessary.
When used in conjunction with WebTitan – TitanHQ’s powerful web filtering solution –all attempts to visit malicious links and known phishing websites can be blocked.
Both solutions are available on a 30-day no obligation free trial. If you want to ensure your students and university networks are properly protected, contact the TitanHQ sales team today to register for the trials and discover the difference that each solution can make.
Sophisticated phishing emails and elaborate web-based scams are being used to target students at the University of Connecticut. The extent to which students have been targeted with these scams has prompted UConn Chief Information Officer and Provost for Information Technology to send a warning to all students to be on high alert.
A number of students at the university have received sophisticated phishing emails in recent months that appear to have been sent from University President Susan Herbst. Like many universities and other educational establishments, the email system is protected with a spam filter. The majority of spam and scam emails are filtered out, although some do make it through. If these emails are delivered to students, there is a high probability that they will be opened. After all, the messages do appear to have been sent from the University president.
The emails contain malicious attachments or links to websites that attempt to steal login information and the scam is sophisticated and highly convincing. Many students would be unaware that they have been scammed after disclosing their login credentials.
The same can be said of malware infections, which usually occur silently when a malicious website is visited. Criminals are attempting to install key-loggers that record all sensitive data entered on compromised computers.
These scams are intended to get students to disclose their bank account information, credit card data, or Social Security numbers and personal information. The attackers can then use this information for a wide range of nefarious purposes including identity theft.
Sophisticated Phishing Emails are the New Norm
Email scams of old were quite easy to identify. They often included many grammatical and spelling mistakes and included offers that sounded too good to be true. However, today, sophisticated phishing emails are the new norm and they can be very difficult to identify. Emails are sent from authority figures, are grammatically perfect, and the attackers use wide range of social engineering techniques to get victims to disclose sensitive data or take a particular action.
The scammers are also increasingly sending highly targeted emails. These ‘spear phishing’ emails use personal information unique to the recipient to add credibility. Information is often obtained from social media and professional networking sites.
One of the latest UConn email scams includes information about Blackboard Inc., the Mail Service used by UConn. The attachment has the title “Exclusive Important Announcement from President Susan Herbst.”
Warnings have been issued by email to all students alerting them to this scam and advising them to exercise caution when using email and surfing the Internet. Students have been told not to login on any websites that do not have a valid security certificate.
A Spam Filter and Web Filter in Tandem Offer Greater Protection Against Phishing Attacks
Users should always exercise caution when using email. Attachments from unknown senders should not be opened and links contained in emails from unfamiliar sources should not be visited. However, curiosity often gets the better of students and malicious links are often unwittingly visited.
For this reason, in addition to using an advanced spam filtering solution – such as SpamTitan – universities and other educational establishments should also employ a web filtering solution. The spam filter will block the vast majority of malicious messages. The web filter will ensure that malicious websites and infected webpages cannot be visited. In tandem, a spam filter and web filter will offer far greater protection against phishing attacks and malware/ransomware infections.
A W-2 Form phishing scam that has been extensively used to con businesses out of the tax information of their employees is now being used on educational institutions. School districts need to be on high alert as cybercriminals have them fixed in their cross-hairs.
Over the past few weeks, many school districts have fallen victim to the scammers and have disclosed the W-2 Form data of employees. Teachers, teaching assistants, and other members of school staff have had their Social Security numbers and earnings information sent to fraudsters. The data are used to file fraudulent tax returns in victims’ names.
At face value, the W-2 Form phishing scam is one of the simplest con-tricks used by cybercriminals. It involves sending an email to a member of the HR or payroll team asking for the W-2 Forms of all employees to be sent via email. Why would any employee send this highly sensitive data? Because the email appears to have been sent from individuals within the school district who have a genuine need for the information. This is why the W-2 Form phishing scam is so effective. In many cases, suspicions are not aroused for a number of days after the emails have been sent. By that time, fraudulent tax returns may have been filed in the names of all of the victims.
It is unknown how many school districts have been targeted to date with this W-2 Form phishing scam, although 10 school districts in the United States have announced that their employees have fallen for the scam this year and have emailed W-2 Form data to the attackers. In total, 23 organizations have announced that an employee has fallen for a W-2 Form phishing scam in 2017, and at least 145 organizations fell for similar scams last year.
Due to the number of attacks, the IRS issued a warning in early 2016 to alert all organizations to the threat. The increase in attacks in 2017 has prompted the IRS to issue a warning once again. While corporations are at risk, the IRS has issued a warning specifically mentioning school districts, as well as non-profits and tribal organizations.
The IRS warning explains how cybercriminals have started even earlier this year. While the W-2 Form phishing scam emerged last year, many attacks occurred relatively late in the tax season. Cybercriminals are attempting to get the data sooner this year. The sooner a fake tax return is filed, the greater the chance that a refund will be issued.
A variety of spoofing techniques are employed to make the email appear like it has come from the email account of an executive or other individual high up in the organization. In some cases, criminals have first compromised the email account of a board member, making the scam harder to identify.
This year has also seen a new twist to the scam with victims targeted twice. In addition to the W-2 Form scam, the victims are also subjected to a wire transfer scam. After W-2 Forms have been sent, a wire transfer request is made to the payroll department. Some organizations have been hit with both scams and have disclosed employees’ tax information and then made a wire transfer of several thousand dollars to the same attackers.
Protecting against these scams requires a combination of technology, training and policy/procedural updates. The first step for all organizations – including school districts – is to send an email to all HR and payroll staff warning them about these phishing scams. Staff must be made aware of the scam and told to be vigilant.
Policies and procedures should be updated requiring payroll and HR staff to authenticate any email request for W-2 Form data by telephone prior to sending the information.
An advanced spam filter – such as SpamTitan – can also greatly reduce the risk of W-2 Form scam emails being delivered to end users’ inboxes. Blocking suspicious emails will reduce reliance on training and user awareness of these scams. The spam filter will also be effective at blocking further scams and other malicious emails from being delivered.
Osiris ransomware is the latest variant of Locky. As with other versions of the ransomware, there is no free way of unlocking encrypted files if a viable backup of data does not exist.
Cybercriminals use a variety of techniques and attack vectors to spread malicious files such as ransomware and malware. Exploit kits are popular as they can be hidden on websites and used to silently probe visitors’ browsers for vulnerabilities in plugins such as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, and Oracle Java. Those vulnerabilities are leveraged to download malware. Malvertising – malicious web adverts – are often used to direct users to these malicious webpages; however, all too often, links to these websites are sent via spam email.
The rise in malware and ransomware attacks over the past few years has prompted many organizations to start providing security awareness training to staff members. Employees are instructed never to click on a link contained in an email unless they are sure that it is genuine.
However, even with security awareness training, a great many employees inadvertently infect their computers with malware or accidentally download ransomware. One of the biggest problems is not malicious links in spam email but malicious attachments. Cybercriminals have increased the use of malicious file attachments in the last year, especially to infect end users with ransomware.
One of the biggest ransomware threats in the past 12 months has been Locky. Locky has been spread via exploit kits in the past, although spam email is now primarily used to infect users.
Office Macros Used to Infect Computers with Osiris Ransomware
The gang behind Locky frequently updates the ransomware, as well as the methods used to fool end users into installing the malicious file-encryptor. The latest Locky variant – Osiris ransomware – encrypts files and adds the .osiris extension to encrypted files.
Locky is commonly spread via malicious macros in Word documents. Typically, the malicious Word documents claim to be invoices, purchase orders, or notifications of missed parcel deliveries.
However, a recent campaign used to distribute the Osiris ransomware variant switches from .DOC files to Excel spreadsheets (.XLS). Recipients of the emails are told the Excel spreadsheet is an invoice. Opening the attached Excel spreadsheet will not automatically result in an Osiris ransomware infection if macros have not been set to run automatically. The user will be presented with a blank spreadsheet and a prompt to enable macros to view the content of the file.
Clicking on ‘Enable Content’ will launch a VBA script that downloads a Dynamic Link Library (DLL) file, which is automatically executed using the Windows file Rundll32.exe. That DLL file is used to download Osiris ransomware. Osiris ransomware encrypts a wide range of file types and deletes Windows Shadow Volume Copies, preventing the user from restoring the computer to the configuration before the ransomware was installed. The only option for recovery from an Osiris ransomware infection is to pay the ransom demand or to wipe the system and restore files from backups.
Protecting Networks From E-Mail-Based Ransomware and Malware Attacks
An advanced spam filtering solution such as SpamTitan can be used to block the vast majority of email-borne threats. SpamTitan performs a wide range of front line tests to rapidly identify spam email and prevent it from being delivered, including RBL, SPF, Greylisting and SMTP controls.
SpamTitan uses two enterprise-class anti-virus engines to scan for malicious attachments – Bitdefender and ClamAV – to maximize detection rates.
SpamTitan can also be configured to block specific files attachments commonly used by cybercriminals to infect end users: EXE files and JavaScript files for example. The contents of compressed files are also automatically scanned by SpamTitan.
Host-based tests are performed to examine mail headers, while the contents of messages are subjected to a Bayesian analysis to identify common spam signatures and spam-like content. Messages are also scanned for malicious links.
These extensive tests ensure SpamTitan blocks 99.97% of spam emails, preventing malicious messages from being delivered to end users. SpamTitan has also been independently tested and shown to have an exceptionally low false positive rate of just 0.03%.
If you want to keep your network protected from malicious spam emails and reduce reliance on employees’ spam detection abilities, contact the TitanHQ team today. SpamTitan is available on a 30-day free trial, allowing you to fully test the product and discover the difference SpamTitan makes at your organization before committing to a purchase.
