The infamous Russian threat actor has created a custom tool called GooseEgg to exploit CVE-2022-38028 in cyber-espionage attacks against targets in Ukraine, Western Europe, and North America.

Source: Science Photo Library via Alamy Stock Photo

A well-known Russian advanced persistent threat (APT) group has been using a custom tool to exploit a bug that been around for several years in the Windows Print Spooler service to elevate privileges and steal credentials in numerous intelligence-gathering attacks around the globe. It also appears to be paving the way for further attacks.

Fancy Bear (aka APT28, Forest Blizzard, Pawn Storm, Sofacy Group, and Strontium) is linked to the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate. It has been using a tool called GooseEgg since at least June 2020 and possibly as early as April 2019 to exploit the CVE-2022-38028 vulnerability in Windows Print Spooler service, Microsoft Threat Intelligence revealed in a blog post on April 22.

Microsoft patched the flaw, which allows an attacker who successfully exploits it to gain SYSTEM privileges, in October 2022. Fancy Bear is using GooseEgg to modify a JavaScript constraints file and execute it with SYSTEM-level permissions.

"While a simple launcher application, GooseEgg is capable of spawning other applications specified at the command line with elevated permissions, allowing threat actors to support any follow-on objectives such as remote code execution, installing a backdoor, and moving laterally through compromised networks," according to the post.

Microsoft discovered Fancy Bear deploying GooseEgg in attacks against various Ukrainian, Western European, and North American government, nongovernmental, education, and transportation sector organizations.

Windows Print Spooler, a printer services technology, is a popular target for attackers, who tend to pounce on numerous flaws affecting the software that manages the printing process in Windows. The most well-known of these is two security vulnerabilities collectively called PrintNightmare that were discovered in late June 2021 and spawned a series of well-documented attacks.

**GooseEgg Malware Tailored for Windows Print Spooler**

That Fancy Bear targeted the service itself is not out of the ordinary, according to Microsoft; however, its use of the newly discovered GooseEgg to elevate privileges in these attacks is a novel threat activity for the group. GooseEgg is typically deployed with a batch script that invokes a corresponding GooseEgg executable and sets up persistence as a scheduled task.

The GooseEgg binary then takes one of four commands, each with different runpaths. "While the binary appears to launch a trivial given command, in fact the binary does this in a unique and sophisticated manner, likely to help conceal the activity," according to the post.

Two of the binary's commands trigger the exploit for the Print Spooler flaw and launch either a provided dynamic link library (DLL) or executable with elevated permissions, while another command tests the exploit and checks that it has succeeded.

The name of an embedded malicious DLL file launched by GooseEgg typically includes the phrase "wayzgoose," such as wayzgoose23.dll. That DLL as well as other components of the malware are deployed to one of several installation subdirectories created under the Windows directory C:\\ProgramData, according to Microsoft Threat Intelligence.

The exploit ultimately replaces the C: drive symbolic link in the object manager to point to the newly created directory, resulting in Print Spooler being redirected to the actor-controlled directory containing the copied driver packages when it attempts to load this registry: C:\\Windows\\System32\\DriverStore\\FileRepository\\pnms009.inf\_amd64\_a7412a554c9bc1fd\\MPDW-Constraints.js.

Eventually, the auxiliary DLL wayzgoose.dll file launches in the context of the PrintSpooler service with SYSTEM permissions as "a basic launcher application capable of spawning other applications" with the same permissions, according to the post.

**Keeping Fancy Bear Cyber Espionage at Bay**

Fancy Bear has a history of attacking known vulnerabilities, particularly in Microsoft products, to compromise targets for its nefarious activities — which primarily involve, but are not limited to, intelligence gathering. Last year, it mounted a flurry of cyber-espionage attacks against government agencies in NATO countries and organizations in the Middle East that exploited CVE-2023-23397, a zero-click vulnerability in Microsoft's Outlook email client.

While the group's most high-profile attack may be its ties to hacking aimed at running interference in the 2016 US presidential elections, the group has been most notably active of late in various attacks against Ukraine since Russia's war against the country began in February 2022.

The best way that organizations can protect themselves against attacks from the Russian APT is to apply patches for the vulnerable products that it targets. Microsoft recommended that users apply the CVE-2022-38028 security update to mitigate the GooseEgg threat against Windows Print Spooler; meanwhile, the Microsoft Defender Antivirus detects the specific Forest Blizzard capability as HackTool:Win64/GooseEgg.

Another way to mitigate the issue is to disable the Windows Print Spooler service domain controller operations, since it isn't required, according to Microsoft. To help identify domain controllers that have the Print Spooler service enabled, Microsoft Defender for Identity has a built-in security assessment that tracks the availability of Print Spooler services on domain controllers.

Greg Fitzgerald, co-founder at Sevco Security, notes that printer bugs are particularly difficult to remediate because printers are often under-inventoried.

“Security teams have become incredibly efficient at identifying and remediating CVEs, but increasingly it's these environmental vulnerabilities that create security gaps giving malicious actors access to data," Fitzgerald says. "These vulnerabilities are hiding in plain sight throughout IT environments, creating a landscape of threats that security teams can’t see, but are still accountable for. The unfortunate reality is that most organizations are unable to create an accurate IT asset inventory that reflects the entirety of their attack surface. This puts them at the mercy of attackers who know where to look for forgotten IT assets that contain exploitable vulnerabilities.”

**About the Author(s)**

Elizabeth Montalbano is a freelance writer, journalist, and therapeutic writing mentor with more than 25 years of professional experience. Her areas of expertise include technology, business, and culture. Elizabeth previously lived and worked as a full-time journalist in Phoenix, San Francisco, and New York City; she currently resides in a village on the southwest coast of Portugal. In her free time, she enjoys surfing, hiking with her dogs, traveling, playing music, yoga, and cooking.

Russia's Fancy Bear Pummels Windows Print Spooler Bug

State-sponsored groups are targeting critical vulnerabilities in virtual private network (VPN) gateways, firewall appliances, and other edge devices to make life difficult for incident responders, who rarely have visibility into the devices.

Source: Wright Studio via Shutterstock

Earlier this year, Mandiant Consulting's incident response team tracked an attack by a China-linked espionage group back to the compromise of an edge device in its client's network, but because the appliance is a closed system, the victim of the attack had to request a forensic image from the maker of the network appliance.

Two months later, the client is still waiting.

This difficulty in detecting — and then investigating — compromises of edge appliances highlights why many nation-state attackers are increasingly targeting firewalls, email gateways, VPNs, and other devices, says Charles Carmakal, CTO for Mandiant Consulting at Google Cloud. The threat groups not only evade detection longer, but even when defenders get wind of the attack, investigating the incident is much more difficult.

It's a problem that Mandiant deals with "all the time," he says.

"We have much better telemetry for Windows computers today, mostly because of the maturity of EDR \[endpoint detection and response\] solutions," Carmakal says. "The telemetry on edge devices ... is often completely nonexistent. To be able to triage and forensically examine the device, you've got to get a forensic image, but you can't just open up the device and pull the hard drive out."

Espionage attackers' shift to exploiting edge devices is one of the major trends that Google Cloud's Mandiant Consulting saw in 2023, according to the M-Trends 2024 report published on April 23. Overall, the company tracked and reported on more than two dozen campaigns and global events in 2023 related to its investigations.

The amount of time an attacker is active on a compromised systems before detection, known as dwell time, continued to shrink — to 10 days in 2023, down from 16 days the previous year. Ransomware accounted for 23% of Mandiant's investigations in 2023, up from 18% in 2022. Companies became aware of most incidents (54%) because a third party — often the attacker themselves, in the case of ransomware — notified the victim.

With ransomware often notifying victims, external detection rose to 54%. Source: Google Cloud's Mandiant

**Attackers Move to Less Visible Environments**

While edge devices require knowledgeable attackers to compromise and control them, these high-availability environments also usually offer their own utilities and features to deal with native formats and functionality. By "living off the land" and using the built-in capabilities, attackers can build more reliable malware and still run less risk of being detected, because of the lack of visibility defenders have into the internal operations of the devices.

"\[M\]any of these devices are put through rigorous testing regimes by the manufacturer during development to ensure their stability," Mandiant stated in the report. "China-nexus malware developers take advantage of the built-in functionality included in these systems ... leveraging native capabilities \[that can\] reduce the overall complexity of the malware by instead weaponizing existing features within that have been rigorously tested by the organization."

In one incident, Mandiant consultants discovered the BoldMove backdoor malware, Chinese attackers crafted to infect a Fortinet device, disabling two logging features and allowing the attacker to remain undetected for a longer period. BoldMove was created specifically for Fortinet environments.

Incident response efforts are also often hampered by the lack of easy access for consultants and defenders to the underlying operating system. With no way to analyze the underlying code to seek out compromised devices, incident responders often cannot determine the root cause of a compromise, says Mandiant's Carmakal.

"Some vendors refuse to give forensic images, \[which\] I understand ... because they have a lot of intellectual property on the device," he says. "Companies need to understand the scope and extent of a compromise, and if it starts on a network device, and you need to look into that."

**Exploit Use Rises, More Data Leak Sites**

Attackers have doubled down on using exploits as the initial access point for attacks, with 38% of attacks Mandiant investigated where it could determine an initial vector starting with an exploit. Phishing, a distant second place, accounted for 17% of the initial actions in an attack. Running a close third, prior compromises inadvertently left exploitable accounted for 15% of all initial access vectors.

"Attackers continue to leverage effective tactics to gain access to target environments and conduct their operations," the Mandiant report stated. "While the most popular infection vectors fluctuate, organizations must focus on defense-in-depth strategies. This approach can help mitigate the impact of both common and less frequent initial intrusion methods."

Finally, Mandiant investigators have also seen data leak sites (DLS) increase over time, which now account for more than a third (36%) of all financially motivated attacks.

**About the Author(s)**

Veteran technology journalist of more than 20 years. Former research engineer. Written for more than two dozen publications, including CNET News.com, Dark Reading, MIT's Technology Review, Popular Science, and Wired News. Five awards for journalism, including Best Deadline Journalism (Online) in 2003 for coverage of the Blaster worm. Crunches numbers on various trends using Python and R. Recent reports include analyses of the shortage in cybersecurity workers and annual vulnerability trends.

Teetering on the Edge: VPNs, Firewalls' Nonexistent Telemetry Lures APTs

Malaysia, Singapore, and Ghana are among the first countries to pass laws that require cybersecurity firms — and in some cases, individual consultants — to obtain licenses to do business, but concerns remain.

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Malaysia has joined at least two other nations — Singapore and Ghana — in passing laws that require cybersecurity professionals or their firms to be certified and licensed to provide some cybersecurity services in their country.

On April 3, the upper house of the Malaysian Parliament, known as the Dewan Negara, passed the Cyber Security Bill 2024, following its passage in the lower house the previous month. The bill, which will become law following its signing by the King and its publication in the Government Gazette, is structured as umbrella legislation and will act as a framework for future government activity securing critical infrastructure and improving the national state of cybersecurity.

While the legislation mandates licensing, the actual requirements for cybersecurity professionals and service providers will come later, Malaysia-based law firm Christopher & Lee Ong stated in an advisory.

"While the Bill does not specify the types of cyber security services that are subject to the licensing regime ... this will likely apply to service providers that provide services to safeguard information and communications technology device of another person — \[for example,\] penetration testing providers and security operation centres," the law firm stated.

Malaysia joins Asia-Pacific neighbor Singapore, which has required the licensing of cybersecurity service providers (CSPs) for the past two years, and the West African nation of Ghana, which requires the licensing of CSPs and the accreditation of cybersecurity professionals. More widely, governments such as the European Union have normalized cybersecurity certifications, while other agencies — such as the US state of New York — require certification and licenses for cybersecurity capabilities in specific industries.

**License to Hack in Ghana**

While many governments require businesses to obtain licenses to offer cybersecurity services, Ghana is the only nation to require individuals to have a license, says Alexey Lukatsky, managing director of cybersecurity business consulting at Positive Technologies, a Moscow-based cybersecurity provider.

"The uniqueness of Ghana's approach lies in the fact that licensing requirements apply not to all cybersecurity specialists, but to those who plan to work in four specific areas — vulnerability assessment and penetration testing, digital forensics, managed cybersecurity services, cybersecurity training, and cybersecurity GRC," he says.

Singapore's government has taken a proactive approach to prompting private industry to adopt stringent cybersecurity regulations, with organizations so far implementing more than 70% of the requirements needed for a "Cyber Essentials" certification.

"We most certainly think that having a bare minimum standard will engender more confidence across the ecosystem as there will be assurance that — among others — penetration testing, security audits, and incident response services to be provided are on par with industry expectations and evolving technologies," says Serene Kan, a partner in the IP & technology practice at Wong & Partners, member firm of Baker McKenzie International.

In the United States, such efforts have not gained much ground. Instead, many professional organizations offer certification of specific sets of skills. ISC2, for example, administers the well-known Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) accreditation, while CompTIA offers the Security+ certification, and ISACA — formerly the Information Systems Audit and Control Association — offers the Certified Information System Auditor (CISA) certification, among others.

ISC2 and ISACA declined to comment for this article.

**Lack of Protections for Free Speech**

While the requirements appear to improve the overall maturity of the countries' cybersecurity posture, legislation has often raised concerns over potential cost to freedom of speech and other individual rights.

Governments that gain broad power to regulate activities related to cybersecurity by default have powers to control digital services. This often results in targeting journalistic activities and whistleblowers by requiring "pre-approval under arbitrary standards subject to change or revocation," according to Article 19, a human rights organization.

The Malaysian cybersecurity bill, for example, is "unnecessary and flawed in its current state," the organization stated.

"Although posing as a ‘cybersecurity’ instrument, the Bill will give the government unaccountable control of computer-related activities, as well as nearly unlimited search and seizure powers," the organization said in an analysis of the bill. "Its criminal provisions do not require any actual intent to violate, effectively introducing many strict liability offences."

In particular, cybersecurity researchers could be put in jeopardy, since the release of source code or cyber-offensive research would require a license, the organization stated.

Yet often licensing requirements are just putting a government stamp on certification best practices that already exist and requirements that job applicants have specific cybersecurity certifications, but with a local twist, says Positive Technologies' Lukatsky.

The approach that Ghana has pursued, for example, "resembles the establishment of a registry of all cybersecurity specialists since it is unlikely that in this or any other country there are many independent lone specialists who can work with serious organizations, where the risks of hiring unqualified personnel are too high," he says. "The main reason for such requirements is that as the number of cyberattacks grows, specialists who understand what they are doing and why they are doing it are needed to detect and prevent them — how to apply international best practices and how to adapt them to local specifics."

**About the Author(s)**

Veteran technology journalist of more than 20 years. Former research engineer. Written for more than two dozen publications, including CNET News.com, Dark Reading, MIT's Technology Review, Popular Science, and Wired News. Five awards for journalism, including Best Deadline Journalism (Online) in 2003 for coverage of the Blaster worm. Crunches numbers on various trends using Python and R. Recent reports include analyses of the shortage in cybersecurity workers and annual vulnerability trends.

Licensed to Bill? Nations Mandate Certification &amp; Licensure of Cybersecurity Pros

The threat actor is deploying multiple connections into victim environments to maintain persistence and steal data.

Source: RooM the Agency via Alamy Stock Photo

An advanced persistent threat (APT) group known as ToddyCat is collecting data on an industrial scale from government and defense targets in the Asia-Pacific region.

Researchers from Kaspersky tracking the campaign described the threat actor this week as using multiple simultaneous connections into victim environments to maintain persistence and to steal data from them. They also discovered a set of new tools that ToddyCat (which is a common name for the Asian palm civet) is using to enable data collection from victim systems and browsers.

**Multiple Traffic Tunnels in ToddyCat Cyberattacks**

"Having several tunnels to the infected infrastructure implemented with different tools allow \[the\] attackers to maintain access to systems even if one of the tunnels is discovered and eliminated," Kaspersky security researchers said in a blog post this week. "By securing constant access to the infrastructure, \[the\] attackers are able to perform reconnaissance and connect to remote hosts."

ToddyCat is a likely Chinese-language speaking threat actor that Kaspersky has been able to link to attacks going back to at least December 2020. In its initial stages, the group appeared focused on just a small number of organizations in Taiwan and Vietnam. But the threat actor quickly ramped up attacks following the public disclosure of the so-called ProxyLogon vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server in February 2021. Kaspersky believes ToddyCat might have been among a group of threat actors that targeted the ProxyLogon vulnerabilities even prior to February 2021, but says it has not found evidence yet to back up that conjecture.  

In 2022, Kaspersky reported finding ToddyCat actors using two sophisticated new malware tools dubbed Samurai and Ninja to distribute China Chopper — a well-known commodity Web shell used in the Microsoft Exchange Server attacks — on systems belonging to victims in Asia and Europe.

**Maintaining Persistent Access, Fresh Malware**

Kaspersky's latest investigation into ToddyCat's activities showed the threat actor's tactic to maintain persistent remote access to a compromised network is to establish multiple tunnels to it using different tools. These include using a reverse SSH tunnel to gain access to remote network services; using SoftEther VPN, an open source tool that enables VPN connections via OpenVPN, L2TP/IPSec, and other protocols; and using a lightweight agent (Ngrok) to redirect command-and-control from an attacker-controlled cloud infrastructure to target hosts in the victim environment.

In addition, Kaspersky researchers found ToddyCat actors to be using a fast reverse proxy client to enable access from the Internet to servers behind a firewall or network address translation (NAT) mechanism.

Kaspersky's investigation also showed the threat actor using at least three new tools in its data-collection campaign. One of them is malware that Kaspersky had dubbed "Cuthead" that allows ToddyCat to search for files with specific extensions or words on the victim network, and to store them in an archive.

Another new tool that Kaspersky found ToddyCat using is "WAExp." The malware's task is to search for and collect browser data from the Web version of WhatsApp. 

"For users of the WhatsApp web app, their browser local storage contains their profile details, chat data, the phone numbers of users they chat with and current session data," Kaspersky researchers said. WAExp allows the attacks to gain access to this data by copying the browser's local storage files, the security vendor noted.  

The third tool meanwhile is dubbed "TomBerBil," and allows ToddyCat actors to steal passwords from Chrome and Edge browsers.

"We looked at several tools that allow the attackers to maintain access to target infrastructures and automatically search for and collect data of interest," Kaspersky said. "The attackers are actively using techniques to bypass defenses in an attempt to mask their presence in the system."

The security vendor recommends that organizations block IP addresses of cloud services that provide traffic tunneling and limit the tools that administrators can use to access hosts remotely. Organizations also need to either remove or closely monitor any unused remote access tools in the environment and encourage users not to store passwords in their browsers, Kaspersky said.

**About the Author(s)**

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 career at Computerworld, Jai also covered a variety of other technology topics, including big data, Hadoop, Internet of Things, e-voting, and data analytics. Prior to Computerworld, Jai covered technology issues for The Economic Times in Bangalore, India. Jai has a Master's degree in Statistics and lives in Naperville, Ill.

ToddyCat APT Is Stealing Data on 'Industrial Scale'

An open direct vulnerability in the Nespresso Web domain lets attackers bypass detection as they attempt to steal victims' Microsoft credentials.

Source: GOIMAGES via Alamy Stock Photo

A phishing campaign exploiting a bug in Nespresso's website has been able to evade detection by taking advantage of security tools that fail to look for malicious nested or hidden links.

The campaign starts with a phishing email that appears to have been sent from an employee with Bank of America, with a message to "please check your recent \[Microsoft\] sign-in activity." If a target clicks, they are then directed to a legitimate but infected URL controlled by Nespresso. according to research today from Perception Point.

Because the address is legitimate, the hijacked Nespresso site triggers no security warnings, the report explained. The Nespresso URL then delivers a malicious .html file doctored up to look like a Microsoft login page, intended to capture the victim's credentials, the Perception Point team added.

The attackers are making use of an open redirect vulnerability in the coffee giant's webpage, the researchers explained: "Open redirect vulnerabilities occur when an attacker manages to redirect users to an external, untrusted URL through a trusted domain. This is possible when a website or URL allows data to be controlled from an external source."

Attackers know that some security vendors "only inspect the initial link, not digging further to discover any hidden or embedded links," they added. "With this knowledge, it makes sense that the attacker would host the redirect on Nespresso, as the legitimate domain would likely be sufficient to bypass many security vendors, detecting only the reputable URL and not the subsequent malicious ones."

This particular campaign has been launched from several different sender domains, but it consistently uses the infected Nespresso URL and the fake Bank of America email in the cyberattacks, the report added. According to Perception Point, the redirect has not yet been fixed.

“We were alerted of a phishing attempt, where a modified redirection website link disguised as a Nespresso address was used to try to obtain personal credentials from people (not necessarily Nespresso customers)," a spokesperson tells Dark Reading. "We can confirm that our customers’ data has not been compromised in any way. We ask everyone to be aware and vigilant of emails that redirect them to unknown websites.”

Nespresso Domain Serves Up Steamy Cup of Phish, No Cream or Sugar

The irony is lost on few, as a nation-state threat actor used eight MITRE techniques to breach MITRE itself — including exploiting the Ivanti bugs that attackers have been swarming on for months.

Source: Kristoffer Tripplaar via Alamy Stock Photo

Foreign nation-state hackers have used vulnerable Ivanti edge devices to gain three months' worth of "deep" access to one of MITRE Corp.'s unclassified networks.

MITRE, steward of the ubiquitous ATT&CK glossary of commonly known cyberattack techniques, previously went 15 years without a major incident. The streak snapped in January when, like so many other organizations, its Ivanti gateway devices were exploited.

The breach affected the Networked Experimentation, Research, and Virtualization Environment (NERVE), an unclassified, collaborative network the organization uses for research, development, and prototyping. The extent of the NERVE damage (pun intended) is currently being assessed.

Dark Reading reached out to MITRE to confirm the timeline and details of the attack. MITRE did not provide further clarification.

**MITRE's ATT&CK**

Stop me if you've heard this one before: In January, after an initial reconnaissance period, a threat actor exploited one of the company's virtual private networks (VPNs) through two Ivanti Connect Secure zero-day vulnerabilities (ATT&CK technique T1190, Exploit Public-Facing Applications).

According to a blog post from MITRE's Center for Threat-Informed Defense, the attackers bypassed the multifactor authentication (MFA) protecting the system with some session hijacking (MITRE ATT&CK T1563, Remote Service Session Hijacking).

They attempted to leverage several different remote services (T1021, Remote Services), including the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and Secure Shell (SSH), to gain access to a valid administrator account (T1078, Valid Accounts). With it, they pivoted and "dug deep" into the network's VMware virtualization infrastructure.

There, they deployed Web shells (T1505.003, Server Software Component: Web Shell) for persistence, and backdoors to run commands (T1059, Command and Scripting Interpreter) and steal credentials, exfiltrating any stolen data to a command-and-control server (T1041, Exfiltration Over C2 Channel). To hide this activity, the group created its own virtual instances to run within the environment (T1564.006, Hide Artifacts: Run Virtual Instance).

**MITRE's Defense**

"The impact of this cyberattack should not be taken lightly," says Darren Guccione, CEO and co-founder at Keeper Security, highlighting "both the foreign ties of the attackers and the ability of the attackers to exploit two serious zero-day vulnerabilities in their quest to compromise MITRE’s NERVE, which could potentially expose sensitive research data and intellectual property."

He posits, "Nation-state actors often have strategic motivations behind their cyber operations, and the targeting of a prominent research institution like MITRE, that works on behalf of the US government, could be just one component of a larger effort."

Whatever its goals were, the hackers had ample time to carry them out. Though the compromise occurred in January, MITRE was only able to detect it in April, leaving a quarter-year gap in between.

"MITRE followed best practices, vendor instructions, and the government’s advice to upgrade, replace, and harden our Ivanti system," the organization wrote on Medium, "but we did not detect the lateral movement into our VMware infrastructure. At the time we believed we took all the necessary actions to mitigate the vulnerability, but these actions were clearly insufficient."

Editor's note: An earlier version of the story attributed the attacks to UNC5221. That attribution has not been made at this time.

**About the Author(s)**

Nate Nelson is a freelance writer based in New York City. Formerly a reporter at Threatpost, he contributes to a number of cybersecurity blogs and podcasts. He writes "Malicious Life" -- an award-winning Top 20 tech podcast on Apple and Spotify -- and hosts every other episode, featuring interviews with leading voices in security. He also co-hosts "The Industrial Security Podcast," the most popular show in its field.

MITRE ATT&amp;CKED: InfoSec's Most Trusted Name Falls to Ivanti Bugs

Though organizations are increasingly incorporating zero-trust strategies, for many, these strategies fail to address the entirety of an operation, according to Gartner.

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According to the latest research by Gartner Inc., 63% of organizations globally have implemented a zero-trust strategy into their operations, whether that be partially or fully. 

More than half (56%) of that group said they were doing so because a zero-trust approach is considered to be "an industry best practice." However, a zero-trust strategy often addresses only half of an organization's environment, at most, in many cases, said John Watts, vice president analyst and KI leader at Gartner. 

"Enterprises are not sure what top practices are for zero-trust implementations," he noted in the firm's announcement on the survey, which was conducted in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Gartner has three recommendations for security leaders looking to implement a zero-trust strategy: recognize the scope of what it can reasonably cover (which usually is not the entirety of an organization); incorporate metrics to measure success and risk, and keep your audience in mind when communicating such information; and prepare for an increase in staffing and costs.

These practices potentially can make the transition to zero trust more successful and beneficial to organizations. While 35% of organizations reported failures that interrupted their implementation of zero-trust strategies, Watts added that "organizations should have a zero-trust strategic plan outlining operational metrics and measure the effectiveness of zero-trust policies in order to minimize delays."

**About the Author(s)**

Zero Trust Takes Over: 63% of Orgs Implementing Globally

The five intelligence sources that power social engineering scams.

Source: LightField Studios Inc. via Alamy Stock Photo

COMMENTARY

Social engineering is one of the most prevalent attack vectors used by cyber scammers to infiltrate organizations. These manipulative attacks typically are executed in four phases: 

1.  Information gathering (attacker gathers information about the target)
    
2.  Relationship development (attacker engages the target and earns their trust)
    
3.  Exploitation (attacker persuades the target to carry out an action)
    
4.  Execution (the information collected through exploitation is operationalized to execute the attack)
    

The first phase obviously is the most important — without the right information, it can be difficult to execute a targeted social engineering attack. 

**Five Sources of Intelligence**

So how do attackers gather data about their targets? There are five sources of intelligence cybercriminals can use to gather and analyze information about their targets. They are:

1\. OSINT (open source intelligence)

OSINT is a technique hackers use to collect and assess publicly available information about organizations and their people. Threat actors can use OSINT tools to learn about their target's IT and security infrastructure; exploitable assets such as open ports and email addresses; IP addresses; vulnerabilities in websites, servers, and IoT (Internet of Things) devices; leaked or stolen credentials; and more. Attackers weaponize this information to launch social engineering attacks.

2\. SOCMINT (social media intelligence)

Although SOCMINT is a subset of OSINT, it deserves a mention. Most people voluntarily expose personal and professional details about their lives on popular social media platforms: their headshot, their interests and hobbies, their family, friends and connections, where they live and work, their current job position, and lots of other details. Using SOCINT tools such as Social Analyzer, Whatsmyname, and NameCheckup.com, attackers can filter social media activity and information about an individual and design targeted social engineering scams. 

3\. ADINT (advertising intelligence)

Say you download a free chess app on your phone. There's a small area on the app that serves location-based ads from sponsors and event organizers, updating users on local players, events, and chess meetups. Whenever this ad gets displayed, the app shares certain details about the user with the advertising exchange service, which includes things like IP addresses, the type of operating system in use (iOS or Android), the name of the mobile phone carrier, the user's screen resolution, GPS coordinates, etc. Typically, ad exchanges store and process this information for serving up relevant ads based on user interest, activity, and location. Ad exchanges also sell this valuable data. What if a threat actor or a rogue government buys this information? That's exactly what intelligence agencies and adversaries have been doing to track activity and hack their targets. 

4\. DARKINT (Dark Web intelligence)

The Dark Web is a billion-dollar illicit marketplace transacting corporate espionage services, DIY ransomware kits, drugs and weapons, human trafficking, et al. Billions of stolen records (personally identifiable information, healthcare records, banking and transaction data, corporate data, compromised credentials) are available for purchase on the Dark Web. Threat actors can purchase off-the-shelf data and mobilize it for their social engineering schemes. They can also choose to outsource professionals who will socially engineer people on their behalf or discover hidden vulnerabilities in target organizations. In addition, there are hidden online forums and instant messaging platforms (such as Telegram) where people can access information about potential targets. 

5\. AI-INT (AI intelligence)

Some analysts are calling AI the sixth intelligence discipline, on top of the five core disciplines. With recent advancements in generative AI technology like Google Gemini and ChatGPT, it's not hard to imagine cybercriminals deploying AI tools to mine, assimilate, process, and filter information about their targets. Threat researchers are already reporting the presence of malicious AI-based tools that are popping up in Dark Web forums such as FraudGPT and WormGPT. Such tools can significantly reduce the research time for social engineers and provide actionable information they can use to execute social engineering schemes. 

**What Can Businesses Do to Mitigate Social Engineering Attacks?**

The root cause of all social engineering attacks is information and the careless handling of it. If businesses and employees can reduce their information exposure, they will lower social engineering attacks by a significant degree. Here's how:

*   Train staff monthly: Using phishing simulators and classroom training, teach employees to avoid posting sensitive or personal information about themselves, their families, their coworkers, or the organization.
    
*   Draft AI-use policies: Make it clear to employees what is acceptable and unacceptable online behavior. For example, prompting ChatGPT with a line of code or proprietary data is unacceptable; responding to unusual or suspicious requests without proper verification is unacceptable.
    
*   Leverage the same tools hackers use: Use the same intelligence sources highlighted above to proactively understand how much information about your organization, your people, and your infrastructure is available online. Develop an ongoing process to reduce that exposure.
    

Good cybersecurity hygiene begins with clamping down on root causes. The root cause behind 80% to 90% of all cyberattacks is attributed to social engineering and bad judgement. Organizations must focus on two things primarily: reducing information exposure and controlling human behavior via training exercises and education. By applying efforts in these two areas, organizations can significantly reduce their threat exposure and the potential downstream impact of that exposure.

**About the Author(s)**

Founder & CEO, KnowBe4, Inc.

Stu Sjouwerman is founder and CEO of KnowBe4, provider of the world’s largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform used by more than 65,000 organizations around the globe. He was co-founder of Sunbelt Software, the anti-malware software company acquired in 2010. He is the author of four books, including Cyberheist: The Biggest Financial Threat Facing American Businesses.

Where Hackers Find Your Weak Spots

SecOps highlights this week include the executive role in "cyber readiness;" Cisco's Hypershield promise; and Middle East cyber ops heat up.

Source: Panther Media GmbH via Alamy Stock Photo

Welcome to CISO Corner, Dark Reading's weekly digest of articles tailored specifically to security operations readers and security leaders. Every week, we'll offer articles gleaned from across our news operation, The Edge, DR Technology, DR Global, and our Commentary section. We're committed to bringing you a diverse set of perspectives to support the job of operationalizing cybersecurity strategies, for leaders at organizations of all shapes and sizes.

**In This Issue of CISO Corner:**

*   GPT-4 Can Exploit Most Vulns Just by Reading Threat Advisories
    
*   Break Security Burnout: Combining Leadership With Neuroscience
    
*   Global: Cyber Operations Intensify in Middle East, With Israel the Main Target
    
*   Cisco's Complex Road to Deliver on Its Hypershield Promise
    
*   Rebalancing NIST: Why 'Recovery' Can't Stand Alone
    
*   3 Steps Executives and Boards Should Take to Ensure Cyber Readiness
    
*   Rethinking How You Work With Detection and Response Metrics
    

**GPT-4 Can Exploit Most Vulns Just by Reading Threat Advisories**

By Nate Nelson, Contributing Writer, Dark Reading

A slicker phishing lure and some basic malware was about all threat actors have been able to squeeze out of artificial intelligence (AI) and large language model (LLM) tools so far — but that's about to change, according to a team of academics.

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have demonstrated that by using GPT-4 they can automate the process of gathering threat advisories and exploiting vulnerabilities as soon as they are made public. In fact, GPT-4 was able to exploit 87% of vulnerabilities it was tested against, according to the research. Other models weren't as effective.

Although the AI technology is new, the report advises that in response, organizations should tighten up tried-and-true best security practices, particularly patching, to defend against automated exploits enabled by AI. Moving forward, as adversaries adopt more sophisticated AI and LLM tools, security teams might consider using the same technologies to defend their systems, the researchers added. The report pointed to automating malware analysis a promising use-case example.

Read more: GPT-4 Can Exploit Most Vulns Just by Reading Threat Advisories

Related: First Step in Securing AI/ML Tools Is Locating Them

**Break Security Burnout: Combining Leadership With Neuroscience**

By Elizabeth Montalbano, Contributing Writer, Dark Reading

Widely reported burnout among cybersecurity professionals is only getting worse. It starts at the top with pressure on CISOs mounting from all sides — regulators, boards, shareholders, and customers — to assume all the responsibility for an entire organization's security, without much control of budgeting or priorities. Wider enterprise cybersecurity teams are wearing down too under the weight of putting in long, stressful hours to prevent seemingly inevitable cyberattacks.

Certainly awareness of the stress and strain driving talent away from the cybersecurity profession is widely acknowledged, but workable solutions have been elusive.

Now two professionals looking to break what they call the "security fatigue cycle" say leaning on neuroscience can help. Peter Coroneros, founder of Cybermindz and Kayla Williams, CISO of Devo, have come together to advocate for more empathetic leadership informed by a better understanding of mental health, and will be presenting their ideas in more detail at this year's RSA Conference.

For example, they found tools like iRest (Integrative Restoration) attention training techniques, which have been used for 40 years by US and Australian militaries help people under chronic stress get out of the "flight-or-flight" state and relax. iRest could also be a useful tool for frazzled cybersecurity teams, they said.

Read more: Break Security Burnout: Combining Leadership With Neuroscience

**Global: Cyber Operations Intensify in Middle East, With Israel the Main Target**

By Robert Lemos, Contributing Writer, Dark Reading

The unraveling crisis in the Middle East continues to produce historic volumes of cyberattacks to support military operations.

There are two categories of adversary groups at work, according to experts — nation-state threat actors working as an arm of a military operation and hacktivist groups attacking willy-nilly based on opportunity and a victim's perceived proximity to the group's enemies.

Israel's National Cyber Directive boss said Iranian- and Hezbollah-affiliated groups have been trying to take down the country's networks "around the clock."

Cybersecurity experts warns Israel should prepare for destructive cyberattacks to continue as the Iran-Israel cyber conflict escalates.

Read more: Cyber Operations Intensify in Middle East, With Israel the Main Target

Related: Iran-Backed Hackers Blast Out Threatening Texts to Israelis

**Cisco's Complex Road to Deliver on Its Hypershield Promise**

By Robert Lemos, Contributing Writer

Cisco's big reveal of its AI-powered cloud security platform Hypershield was big on buzzwords and left industry watchers with questions about how the tool is going to deliver on its pitch.

Automated patching, anomalous behavior detection and blocking, AI-agents maintaining real-time security controls around every workload, and a new "digital twin" approach are all touted as Hypershield features.

The modern approach would be a major step forward "If they pull it off," David Holmes, a principal analyst with Forrester Research said.

Jon Oltisk, analyst emeritus at Enterprise Strategy Group, compared Hypershield's ambitions to the development of driver-assist features in cars, "The trick is how it comes together."

Cisco Hypershield is scheduled for release in August.

Read more: Cisco's Complex Road to Deliver on Its Hypershield Promise

Related: First Wave of Vulnerability-Fixing AIs Available for Developers

**Rebalancing NIST: Why 'Recovery' Can't Stand Alone**

Commentary By Alex Janas, Field Chief Technology Officer, Commvault

Although NIST's new guidance on data security is an important basic overview, but falls short on offering best practices for how to recover from a cyberattack once it's already happened.

Today, organizations need to assume they have been, or will be, breached and plan accordingly. That advice is perhaps even more important than the other elements of the new NIST framework, this commentary argues.

Companies should immediately work to address any gaps in cybersecurity preparedness and response playbooks.

Read more: Rebalancing NIST: Why 'Recovery' Can't Stand Alone

Related: NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0: 4 Steps to Get Started

**3 Steps Executives and Boards Should Take to Ensure Cyber Readiness**

Commentary By Chris Crummey, Director, Executive & Board Cyber Services, Sygnia

Working to develop an effective and tested incident response plan is the best thing executives can do to prepare their organization for a cyber incident. Most major mistakes happen in the first "golden hour" of a cyber incident response, the commentary explains. That means ensuring every member of the team has a well-defined role and can get to work quickly on finding the best path forward, and crucially, not making remediation errors that can upend recovery timelines.

Read more: 3 Steps Executives and Boards Should Take to Ensure Cyber Readiness

Related: 7 Things Your Ransomware Response Playbook Is Likely Missing

**Rethinking How You Work With Detection and Response Metrics**

By Jeffrey Schwartz, Contributing Writer, Dark Reading

During the recent Black Hat Asia conference Allyn Stott, senior staff engineer with Airbnb challenged every security professional to rethink the role metrics play in their organization's threat detection and response.

Metrics drive better performance and help cybersecurity managers demonstrate how detection and response program investment translates into less business risk to leadership.

The single most important security operations center metric: alert volume, Stott explained. He added looking back over his past work, he regrets how much he leaned on the MITRE ATT&CK framework. He recommends incorporating others including SANS SABRE framework and Hunting Maturity Model.

Read more: Rethinking How You Work With Detection and Response Metrics

Related: SANS Institute Research Shows What Frameworks, Benchmarks, and Techniques Organizations Use on their Path to Security Maturity

CISO Corner: Breaking Staff Burnout, GPT-4 Exploits, Rebalancing NIST

PRESS RELEASE

TEL AVIV, Israel -- (BUSINESS WIRE)-- Miggo, a cybersecurity startup introducing the first Application Detection and Response (ADR) platform, announced today $7.5 million in seed funding led by global cybersecurity VC firm YL Ventures with the participation of CCL (Cyber Club London), cybersecurity leaders from Elastic and Everon and former CISOs of Google, Zscaler and Nike. Miggo's ADR platform addresses a critical gap in application security by enabling security teams to detect and respond to targeted application attacks in real-time.

2023 saw a rise in high-profile application attacks that went undetected by traditional tools. The MOVEit, Microsoft SharePoint, Ivanti Gateway and GoAnywhere breaches highlight critical AppSec blind spots of application behavior in runtime and how attackers are hedging their bets on this well-known, ongoing security gap. According to Justin Somaini, Partner at YL Ventures and former CISO of Unity, SAP and Yahoo!, “Applications in production constitute one of the few true blind spots of today’s security programs. Last year’s incidents alone underscore how critically we need to secure the application layer. This is a space that still needs a lot of innovation to address what traditional tools cannot.”

Today, applications are the primary target of nearly 80% of data attacks, according to Verizon’s 2023 Data Breach Investigations Report. More recent shifts to distributed application architecture, which requires multiple chains of trust between different services, have further broadened the domain’s threat landscape. Attackers can manipulate flows between services without detecting existing security sensors like EDR, WAF and CNAPP tools. The only way to identify such malicious activity is with direct views into applications while they're running.

Under the leadership of Daniel Shechter, CEO and co-founder, and Itai Goldman, CTO and co-founder, Miggo developed a platform that analyzes interactions and data flows within applications to detect and mitigate attacks before they can escalate into breaches. "We need to proactively tackle this massive and largely unseen attack surface. Not only do we need precise detection and response for unexpected behaviors directly in live application environments, but also insight and understanding into the inner workings of today’s distributed applications as they run," explained Shechter.

Miggo's technology precisely discovers and maps the architecture of distributed applications to establish behavioral baselines and monitor for deviations from intended design or code execution flows. Leveraging live in-application context, Miggo determines if a deviation indicates that the application is exploitable, under active exploitation or backdoored, and initiates targeted mitigations to contain breaches by pinpointing the offender and affected areas to recommend precise remediation strategies.

The combined ability to detect live threats to applications and respond within the applications themselves are key innovations, according to CISO Mike Melo. “Miggo is finally providing transparency for our most significant attack vector with the exact tools each stakeholder requires to protect and defend mission-critical assets. ADR is the unified solution we need to not only give us application-layer visibility and control but also dramatically lower our mean time to detect and respond to application attacks,” he said.

Discover how Miggo can safeguard your applications against the next generation of cyber threats. Visit miggo.io for more information and to schedule a demo.

About Miggo  
Miggo is the first Application Detection and Response platform, providing the visibility, response and understanding you need to prevent application breaches. Using in-application context to shed light on your biggest attack surface, Miggo’s ADR enables businesses to monitor how applications behave in runtime and stop attackers from manipulating chains of trust between distributed services. With Miggo, monitor application weak spots and identify and mitigate attacks in real-time. Visit miggo.io for more information.

About YL Ventures  
YL Ventures funds and supports visionary cybersecurity entrepreneurs from seed to scale to help them evolve transformative ideas into market-leading companies. The firm accelerates company growth with tailored support through its powerful network of Chief Information Security Officers, global industry leaders and a dedicated team of multidisciplinary experts. Based in Silicon Valley, New York and Tel Aviv, YL Ventures manages five funds with $800M in total AUM. The firm has a track record of seeding cybersecurity unicorns such as Axonius and Orca Security and its portfolio companies have been successfully acquired by high-profile, global industry leaders including Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft, Okta and Proofpoint. In 2022, YL Ventures ranked 8th out of over 250 venture capital firms in PitchBook’s prestigious Global Manager Performance Score League Tables and was the only cybersecurity-focused VC to secure a top 10 spot.

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