Research Saturday

Guest Nathan Brubaker from Mandiant joins Dave Bittner on this episode to discuss Mandiant Threat Intelligence's research: "1 in 7 Ransomware Extortion Attacks Leak Critical Operational Technology Information." Data leaks have always been a concern for organizations. The exposure of sensitive information can result in damage to reputation, legal penalties, loss of intellectual property, and even impact the privacy of employees and customers. However, there is little research about the challenges posed to industrial organizations when threat actors disclose sensitive details about their OT security, production, operations, or technology.

In 2021, Mandiant Threat Intelligence continued observing ransomware operators attempting to extort thousands of victims by disclosing terabytes of stolen information on shaming sites. This trend, which Mandiant Threat Intelligence refers to as “Multifaceted Extortion,” impacted over 1,300 organizations from critical infrastructure and industrial production sectors in just one year. Nathan walks us through their research and findings.

The research can be found here:

• 1 in 7 Ransomware Extortion Attacks Leak Critical Operational Technology Information

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Guest Jon DiMaggio, Chief Security Strategist at Analyst1, joins Dave Bittner to discuss his team's research "A History of REvil" that chronicles the rise and fall of REvil. The REvil gang is an organized criminal enterprise based primarily out of Russia that runs a Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) operation. The core members of the gang reside and operate out of Russia. REvil leverages hackers for hire, known as affiliates, to conduct the breach, steal victim data, delete backups, and infect victim systems with ransomware for a share of the profits. Affiliates primarily stem across eastern Europe, though a small percentage operate outside that region. In return, the core gang maintains and provides the ransomware payload, hosts the victim data leak/auction site, facilitates victim communication and payment services, and distributes the decryption key. In simpler terms, the core gang are the service provider and persona behind the operation, while the affiliates are the hired muscle facilitating attacks. Jon walks us through the team's findings and details REvil's story.

The research can be found here:

• A History of REvil

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Guest Mike Benjamin, VP of Security Research at Fastly, joins Dave Bittner to talk about the Fastly Security Research Team's work on "Open redirects: real-world abuse and recommendations." Open URL redirection is a class of web application security problems that makes it easier for attackers to direct users to malicious resources. This vulnerability class, also known as “open redirects,” arises when an application allows attackers to pass information to the app that results in users being sent to another location. That location can be an attacker-controlled website or server used to distribute malware, trick a user into trusting a link, execute malicious code in a trusted way, drive ad fraud, or even perform SEO manipulation. Knowing how an open redirect can be abused is helpful — but knowing how to design around it in the first place is even more important.

Mike walks us through what his team uncovered, explains how redirects are used, how they can be abused, and how you can prevent that abuse.

The research can be found here:

• Open redirects: real-world abuse and recommendations

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Guest Dick O'Brien, Principal Editor at Symantec, joins Dave to discuss their team's research, "Noberus: Technical Analysis Shows Sophistication of New Rust-based Ransomware." Noberus is new ransomware used in mid-November attack, ConnectWise was likely infection vector.

Symantec, a division of Broadcom Software, tracks this ransomware as Ransom.Noberus and our researchers first spotted it on a victim organization on November 18, 2021, with three variants of Noberus deployed by the attackers over the course of that attack. This would appear to show that this ransomware was active earlier than was previously reported, with MalwareHunterTeam having told BleepingComputer they first saw this ransomware on November 21.

Noberus is an interesting ransomware because it is coded in Rust, and this is the first time we have seen a professional ransomware strain that has been used in real-world attacks coded in this programming language. Noberus appears to carry out the now-typical double extortion ransomware attacks where they first steal information from victim networks before encrypting files. Noberus adds the .sykffle extension to encrypted files.

The research can be found here:

• Noberus: Technical Analysis Shows Sophistication of New Rust-based Ransomware

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Guest Marcelle Lee, Senior Security Researcher and Emerging Threats Lead, from SecureWorks joins Dave to share her team's work on "Ransoms Demanded for Hijacked Instagram Accounts." An extensive phishing campaign has targeted corporate Instagram accounts since approximately August 2021. The threat actors demand ransoms from the victims to restore access.

Organizations typically focus on traditional enterprise cybersecurity threats. However, some threats are more subtle, targeting organizations on unexpected platforms. In October 2021, Secureworks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) researchers identified a phishing campaign that hijacks corporate Instagram accounts, as well as accounts of individual influencers who have a large number of followers. The threat actors then extort ransom payments from the victims. The activity continues at the time of the interview.

The research can be found here:

• Ransoms Demanded for Hijacked Instagram Accounts

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Guests Avigayil Mechtinger and Ryan Robinson from Intezer discuss SysJoker malware, a backdoor that targets Windows, Linux and MacOS, Malware targeting multiple operating systems has become no exception in the malware threat landscape. Vermilion Strike, which was documented just last September, is among the latest examples until now.  

In December 2021, the team at Intezer discovered a new multi-platform backdoor that targets Windows, Mac, and Linux. The Linux and Mac versions are fully undetected in VirusTotal. Intezer named this backdoor SysJoker.

SysJoker was first discovered during an active attack on a Linux-based web server of a leading educational institution. After further investigation, Intezer found that SysJoker also has Mach-O and Windows PE versions. Based on Command and Control (C2) domain registration and samples found in VirusTotal, Intezer estimates that the SysJoker attack was initiated during the second half of 2021.  

The research can be found here:

• New SysJoker Backdoor Targets Windows, Linux, and macOS

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Guest Danny Adamitis from Black Lotus Labs joins Dave to discuss their team's new research "New Konni Campaign Kicks the New Year Off by Targeting Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs." Black Lotus Labs, the threat research team of Lumen Technologies, uncovered a series of targeted actions against the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MID). Based upon the totality of information available and the close correlation with prior reporting, we assess with moderate confidence these actions leveraged the Konni malware, which has previously been associated with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and were undertaken to establish access to the MID network for the purpose of espionage. This activity cluster demonstrates the patient and persistent nature of advanced actors in waging multi-phased campaigns against perceived high-value networks. After gaining access through stolen credentials, the actor was able to exploit trusted connections to distribute and load the malware, first by impersonating a government software program coinciding with new Covid mandates, and then through sending trojanized files from a compromised account.

The research can be found here:

• New Konni Campaign Kicks Off The New Year By Targeting Russian Ministry Of Foreign Affairs

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Guest Sylvester Segura from the Symantec Threat Hunter Team joins Dave to discuss their team's work on "Espionage Campaign Targets Telecoms Organizations across Middle East and Asia." Attackers most likely linked to Iran have attacked a string of telecoms operators in the Middle East and Asia over the past six months, in addition to a number of IT services organizations and a utility company.

Organizations in Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Thailand, and Laos were targeted in the campaign, which appears to have made no use of custom malware and instead relied on a mixture of legitimate tools, publicly available malware, and living-off-the-land tactics. While the identity of the attackers remains unconfirmed, there is some evidence to suggest a link to the Iranian Seedworm (aka MuddyWater) group. The targeting and tactics are consistent with Iranian-sponsored actors.

The research can be found here:

• Espionage Campaign Targets Telecoms Organizations across Middle East and Asia

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Guest Rob Boyce, Accenture's Global Lead for Cyber Incident Response and Transformation Services, joins Dave to discuss joint research done by Accenture’s Cyber Threat Intelligence (ACTI) group and Prevailion’s Adversarial Counterintelligence Team (PACT). The teams dug into recently publicized campaigns of the cyber espionage threat group Lyceum (aka HEXANE, Spirlin) to further analyze the operational infrastructure and victimology of this actor. The team’s findings corroborate and reinforce previous ClearSky and Kaspersky research indicating a primary focus on computer network intrusion events aimed at telecommunications providers in the Middle East. Additionally, the research expands on this victim set by identifying additional targets within internet service providers (ISPs) and government agencies. Although all victim-identifying information has been redacted, this report seeks to provide these targeted industry and geographic verticals with additional knowledge of the threat and mitigation opportunities.

The research can be found here:

• Who are latest targets of cyber group Lyceum?

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This episode features guest Alissa Knight, former hacker and partner at Knight Ink, along with Karl Mattson, CISO from Noname Security, discussing findings on severe API vulnerabilities in U.S. banking applications research that was conducted by Alissa and funded by Noname Security. The research, “Scorched Earth: Hacking Bank APIs,” unveils a number of vulnerabilities in the banking, cryptocurrency exchange, and FinTech industries.

In her Money 20/20 keynote presentation entitled “Scorched Earth: Hacking Bank APIs”. In her presentation, Alissa revealed that she was able to gain access to 55 different banks and change PIN codes and move money in and out of accounts. Three lessons learned include: API security vulnerabilities affect all enterprises, API security needs to be operationalized across the enterprise, and API security requires posture management, runtime security, and active testing.

Details can be found here:

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