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A nation-state hacking group recently found attacking IT provider networks in Saudi Arabia as a stepping stone to its ultimate targets has been spotted hosting a fake website, called “Hire Military Heroes,” that drops spying tools and other malicious code onto victims’ systems.

The so-called Tortoiseshell hacking team, which was called out last week by Symantec for a coordinated and targeted cyber espionage campaign that hops from the networks of several major IT providers in Saudi Arabia to specific customers of the providers, is also known by CrowdStrike as Iranian hacking team Imperial Kitten.

Cisco Talos researchers recently found the group hosting the “Hire Military Heroes” website, with an image from the “Flags of our Fathers” film. The malicious site prompts visitors to download an app, which is actually a downloader that drops the malware and other tools that gather system information, such as drivers, patch level, network configuration, hardware, firmware, domain controller, admin name, and other user account information. It also pulls screen size to determine whether the machine is a sandbox, according to Cisco’s findings.

Tortoiseshell deploys a remote access Trojan named “IvizTech,” which matches the code and features Symantec detailed in its report on the backdoor. Neither Symantec nor Cisco would tie Tortoiseshell to a specific nation-state.

It’s unclear exactly how the attackers lure potential victims and whether the site is actively infecting victims at this point. Cisco Talos researchers say the creators thus far have employed weak operations security of their own, leaving behind hard-coded credentials, for instance.

“There is a possibility that multiple teams from an APT worked on multiple elements of this malware, as we can see certain levels of sophistication existing and various levels of victimology,” the researchers wrote in their blog post about the threat today.

Paul Rascagneres, a researcher at Cisco Talos, says he and his team don’t believe the attack is widespread, and the group is still relatively new to the APT scene.

“Tortoiseshell is not well-documented. [The research] shows that this actor is offensive for months, they create fake websites, and they probably use social engineering to send targets on these websites,” he says. “We identified at least two installers, a couple of variants of the same RAT, a keylogger, and few reconnaissance tools. The toolkit of this actor is growing.”

The researchers haven’t pinpointed the initial infection vector, however. “[I]t could be spear-phishing or social media usage such as LinkedIn, as we saw during DNSpionage campaign,” he says, referring to an attack campaign last year that used fake job websites. 

CrowdStrike, meanwhile, had tagged the group as Imperial Kitten, an Iranian nation-state operation that has been operating since 2017. The group has been known to target Saudi Arabian, United Arab Emirates, and Western maritime, IT services, defense, and military veterans, notes Adam Meyers, vice president of intelligence at CrowdStrike. Imperial Kitten supports Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps operations using tactics such as phony job recruitment, social media, and IT service provider attacks, he says.

“We have observed them active as recent as this month,” Meyers says.

The malicious website is a “massive shift” for the hacking group, according to Cisco, as it’s targeting a wider net of victims this way. “Americans are quick to give back and support the veteran population. Therefore, this website has a high chance of gaining traction on social media where users could share the link in the hopes of supporting veterans,” the Talos team wrote in its blog post about the threat. 

Jon DiMaggio, a researcher at Symantec who follows Tortoiseshell, says Tortoiseshell may be employing spear-phishing emails to lure victims.

“Assuming [Cisco Talos’] attribution is correct, it would show that another possible infection vector used by Tortoiseshell may have been spear-phishing emails,” he says. “We identified a Web shell being used by the attacker indicating they may have compromised a Web server to deploy malware onto the victims’ environment in the supply chain attacks, but spear-phishing is very common, and it would not be surprising to see them use more than one infection vector in various campaigns.”

 Related Content:

• Iran Ups its Traditional Cyber Espionage Tradecraft
• Iranian Hacker Group Waging Widespread Espionage Campaign in Middle East
• ‘Chafer’ Uses Open Source Tools to Target Iran’s Enemies
• 6 Questions to Ask Once You’ve Learned of a Breach

Check out The Edge, Dark Reading’s new section for features, threat data, and in-depth perspectives. Today’s top story: “‘Playing Around’ with Code Keeps Security, DevOps Skills Sharp“

Kelly Jackson Higgins is Executive Editor at DarkReading.com. She is an award-winning veteran technology and business journalist with more than two decades of experience in reporting and editing for various publications, including Network Computing, Secure Enterprise … View Full Bio

Article source: https://www.darkreading.com/threat-intelligence/iranian-government-hackers-target-us-veterans/d/d-id/1335897?_mc=rss_x_drr_edt_aud_dr_x_x-rss-simple

Startup Cowbell Cyber wants to give small and midsize businesses (SMBs) a better way to get insurance coverage against cybersecurity threats.

The company formally launched on Tuesday with a continuous underwriting platform that it says will enable SMBs to get cyber insurance tailored to their specific cyber-risks and exposures.

Cowbell’s announcement is one of two cyber insurance-related developments this week targeted at small and midsize organizations. The other is a partnership between security-as-a-service provider Coronet and Slice Labs that offers Coronet’s SMB customers a potential discount for Slice’s on-demand cyber insurance offerings.

The two new offerings are among a growing number of cyber insurance policies targeting organizations of different sizes. A report from A.M. Best this year described premiums for stand-alone and packaged cyber policies as growing 12% from $1.8 billion to just over $2 billion in 2018. Organizations looking to minimize cyber and reputation risk are driving much of the growth. The fact that many insurers have removed cyber coverage from traditional insurance coverage is another factor driving growth of stand-alone cyber insurance, A.M. Best said.

Cowbell’s approach combines data from external sources — such as that pertaining to loss costs, business interruption, regulatory compliance, and the Dark Web — with internal data about an organization’s current and ongoing security posture. It uses artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to derive a risk score — or Cowbell Factor — for various insurable threats that organizations can then use to select appropriate insurance coverage.

The company says its approach allows organizations to get customized coverage against data breach expenses, extortion threats, loss of business, data replacement losses, fraudulent wire transfers, public relations costs, and other specific insurable risk exposures.

Unlike insurance policies that are based on a static assessment of an organization’s risk exposures, Cowbell’s continuous underwriting platform allows for policies that are based on an understanding of an organization’s specific and ongoing security posture.

Jack Kudale, the CEO and founder of Cowbell Cyber, says insurers typically have a hard time understanding an organization’s real-time exposure to cyber-risk because of a lack of data. “The biggest challenge for insurers is to gain [visibility] into [the] self-protection of an insured’s operation,” he says.

Typically, a set of 50 to 200 questions is currently used to determine an organization’s cyber-risk and to underwrite insurance for it. The data is often subjective and static and does not represent the insured’s current and ongoing internal risk posture, Kudale says. “The real chaos is on the inside he says.”

“[Cowbell’s] inside-out approach connects policyholders to top security aggregators such as AWS Security Hub, Microsoft Azure, or other SIEM platforms to obtain high level summarized information” about their security status, Kudale says.

Ongoing Risk Assessment
Organizations that sign up through Cowbell connect via API to AWS Security Hub or to Azure Security Center so metadata on their security posture can be collected and used in combination with external data to calculate risk scores on an ongoing basis.

“Policyholders do not need to have cloud participation neither will they require SIEM,” Kudale says. But those that do can benefit from more accurate risk ratings and potential pricing benefits as well. “Although it is not necessary for the platform to function, it provides higher efficacy for the risk-ratings factor making the process of risk transfer more actionable,” he says.

Kudale sees organizations with less than $100 million in revenues as, at least initially, the most likely to benefit from Cowbell’s continuous underwriting approach. Companies of this size that purchase cyber insurance often have little idea about their cyber exposure or how much coverage to purchase, he says. Often, they buy such insurance only because the companies they do business with require it. “The broker on the other side has 30 different policies and has a hard time figuring out which product to propose” because of a lack of information, Kudale says.

Meanwhile, Coronet said its new partnership will give SMB customers the potential to sign up for Slice’s cyber insurance at discounted rates. Slice will offer on-demand cyber insurance underwritten by an AXA XL company to Coronet’s small business customers, the vendor said.

“One of the many benefits for SMBs is that this on-demand policy is subscription based,” says Dror Liwer, Coronet’s co-founder CISO. “Many SMBs are seasonal, giving them the flexibility to have a policy in place when they’re in business rather than a conventional, annual policy.”

On-demand cyber insurance is insurance that SMBs can purchase online in minutes. All underwriting and risk assessment is done in real time at time of quote, Liwer notes. SMBs can get coverage for a variety of exposures including cyber extortion threats, credit monitoring, damaged data, reputation, liability coverage, and regulatory penalties, including GDPR, Liwer says.

“Coronet is not the insurance provider — AXA XL through Slice is,” he notes. “The discount is offered because the insurer believes that customers using Coronet are in a better position to deal with a cyberattack.”

Related Content:

• 5 Things to Know About Cyber Insurance
• Persistent Threats Can Last Inside SMB Networks for Years
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• 10 Costs Your Cyber Insurance Policy May Not Cover

Check out The Edge, Dark Reading’s new section for features, threat data, and in-depth perspectives. Today’s top story: “‘Playing Around’ with Code Keeps Security, DevOps Skills Sharp.”

Jai Vijayan is a seasoned technology reporter with over 20 years of experience in IT trade journalism. He was most recently a Senior Editor at Computerworld, where he covered information security and data privacy issues for the publication. Over the course of his 20-year … View Full Bio

Article source: https://www.darkreading.com/operations/startup-cowbell-cyber-launches-continuous-underwriting-platform-/d/d-id/1335907?_mc=rss_x_drr_edt_aud_dr_x_x-rss-simple

Microsoft this week released two emergency security patches: one to fix a zero-day remote code execution flaw in Internet Explorer (CVE-2019-1367), and another to address a denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerability in Microsoft Defender, which was not previously known or exploited.

The latter, CVE-2019-1255, was discovered by Charalampos Billinis of F-Secure Countercept and Wenxu Wu of Tencent Security Xuanwu Lab. A vulnerability exists when Microsoft Defender, an anti-malware feature built into Windows, improperly handles files. An attacker could exploit this to prevent legitimate accounts from executing legitimate system binaries, Microsoft says. To exploit the DoS vulnerability, an attacker would first require execution on the target system.

This week’s patch alters the way Microsoft Defender handles files. The last affected version of the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine is Version 1.1.16300.1, and the first version with the vulnerability addressed is Version 1.1.16400.2. Since the Malware Protection Engine is automatically updated, Microsoft says no action is required to install the latest update. Users who don’t want to wait for the update can manually update their anti-malware software.

Read more details here.

Check out The Edge, Dark Reading’s new section for features, threat data, and in-depth perspectives. Today’s top story: “‘Playing Around’ with Code Keeps Security, DevOps Skills Sharp.”

Dark Reading’s Quick Hits delivers a brief synopsis and summary of the significance of breaking news events. For more information from the original source of the news item, please follow the link provided in this article. View Full Bio

Article source: https://www.darkreading.com/threat-intelligence/microsoft-defender-bug-fixed-with-emergency-patch/d/d-id/1335894?_mc=rss_x_drr_edt_aud_dr_x_x-rss-simple

Threat actors have increased their focus on supply chain attacks since 2017, with 73% of engineering firms reporting a supply chain attack in 2018. In the first quarter of 2019, Operation Shadowhammer was revealed to have compromised the software update mechanism of a major PC manufacturer. According to eSentire, 44% of firms have suffered a significant supply chain breach through a vendor.

These high-profile breaches have either been used to deploy ransomware or steal the intellectual property produced by engineers. As engineers create and access intellectual property such as CAD designs or manufacturing data, achieving persistence in an engineering firm gives a threat actor unparalleled insight into upcoming product designs and manufacturing processes.

Much of the media focus has been on the financial damage from supply chain breaches, the nation-state actors behind the breaches, and the ill-defined “supply chain” itself. But surprisingly, despite the overheated media coverage, most electrical engineering (EE) firms are not the targets of a bear, kitten, or panda, which are frequently cited as advanced persistent threat groups behind the attacks. Most EE firms are targeted by threat actors of opportunity because they have two necessary ingredients: people and computers. This article lays out four best practices for individual EEs to help protect their firms.

1. Don’t Click That Link NOW NOW NOW
Threat actors base phishing emails on two primary motivations: fear or wanting to be helpful. A staggering majority of breaches are traced back to someone who has clicked a link that arrived by email. Whether it was from the “IT Depirtment” about a password reset or an unexpected invoice that’s suddenly due tomorrow, threat actors want you to panic and act irrationally. The best practice before replying to or clicking a link in an email is to take a minute. Get a coffee. That intentional pause will give you the ability to think clearly and unemotionally before responding or clicking. Because mobile screens make it difficult to determine where a link goes without clicking it, you might have to wait to take action until you get to a bigger screen. And if it is a suspicious email, send it to your security department so that it can spot larger trends.

2. Stop Using the Same Password
The second way that threat actors compromise EE firms is weak passwords. This goes beyond them guessing your Windows password; the password you’re using to access your printed circuit board design software can be more of a risk because threat actors can then access your work. If you’re not using a password manager, pick one and start using it. Then ask your management team to consider getting everyone in the firm a password manager. It’s a minimal cost to reduce a massive threat.

3. Let Your IT Team Install Updates
The third way that threat actors break into companies is by attacking old and out-of-date software. This can be both run-of-the-mill software but also discipline-specific software. This is a particularly thorny issue because often the supply chain depends on everyone using the same version of a software package. However, the longer a piece of software has been around, the longer threat actors have had time to break it. So, if your IT team asks you to reboot your computer and you aren’t working on a critical deadline, schedule the time to reboot. If you are working on a critical deadline, let them know and ask for a short exception.

4. Check in Your Work Regularly
Successful cyberattacks frequently depend on destroying or encrypting files on a user’s workstation, hoping there are no backup systems in place. By checking in your work regularly, you’ll make it easier for your project team to stay up to date, upgrades will be easier, and you’ll be helping to defend your company against dangerous cyber weapons.

Following these best practices individually will help manage the risk of a cyberattack, and following these as a team will further reduce the risks. If you have an opportunity to talk to your security team or chief information security officer, ask them what else you can do to help. They’ll appreciate your having asked as security is a team sport.

Related Content:

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• How Ransomware Criminals Turn Friends into Enemies
• How Intel Unlocks the Powerful Potential of Diversity in Cybersecurity
• Preventing PTSD and Burnout for Cybersecurity Professionals

Check out The Edge, Dark Reading’s new section for features, threat data, and in-depth perspectives. Today’s top story: “‘Playing Around’ with Code Keeps Security, DevOps Skills Sharp.”

Kayne McGladrey is a national cybersecurity expert, IEEE member, and the Director of Security IT at Pensar Development. He has 20-plus years of experience blending information technology and management acumen to cultivate and build cybersecurity best practices. View Full Bio

Article source: https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities---threats/4-cybersecurity-best-practices-for-electrical-engineers/a/d-id/1335844?_mc=rss_x_drr_edt_aud_dr_x_x-rss-simple

A hospital in Wyoming has become one of the latest ransomware victims, courtesy of an attack that began last Friday and continues to disrupt operations. 

Details of the attack against Campbell County Memorial Hospital, including ransomware type and ransom demands, have not been made public. Meanwhile, residents of Gillette, Wyoming, have been able to check on the hospital’s IT status via the organization’s Facebook page. Regular updates since the attack began have shown departments and services coming back online while IT staff works to fully restore data and functionality.

Campbell County Memorial Hospital joins more than 30 governments, healthcare organizations, and schools to be targeted by ransomware in the past 12 months. 

Read more here and here.

Check out The Edge, Dark Reading’s new section for features, threat data, and in-depth perspectives. Today’s top story: “‘Playing Around’ with Code Keeps Security, DevOps Skills Sharp.”

Dark Reading’s Quick Hits delivers a brief synopsis and summary of the significance of breaking news events. For more information from the original source of the news item, please follow the link provided in this article. View Full Bio

Article source: https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/wyoming-hospital-the-latest-to-be-hit-with-ransomware-attack/d/d-id/1335895?_mc=rss_x_drr_edt_aud_dr_x_x-rss-simple