Security stands on the shoulders of giants. We take a moment to remember their contributions toward keeping people, data, and systems safe.

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In Memoriam: Remembering Those Who Passed

Using command-and-control servers from the decade-old Andromeda malware, the group is installing reconnaissance tools and a backdoor on previously infected systems to target Ukrainian victims.

A hacking group — suspected to be the Russia-linked Turla Team — reregistered at least three old domains associated with the decade-old Andromeda malware, allowing the group to distribute its own reconnaissance and surveillance tools to Ukrainian targets.

Cybersecurity firm Mandiant stated in a Thursday advisory that Turla Team APT, also known by Mandiant's designation of UNC4210, took control of three domains that were part of Andromeda's defunct command-and-control (C2) infrastructure to reconnect to the compromised systems. The endgame was to distribute a reconnaissance utility known as Kopiluwak and a backdoor known as QuietCanary.

Andromeda, an off-the-shelf commercial malware program, dates back to at least 2013 and compromises systems through infected USB drives. Post-compromise, it connects to a list of domains, most of which have been taken offline.

There is no relationship between the Turla Team and the group behind Andromeda, making the co-opting of previous infected systems quite novel, says Tyler McLellan, senior principal analyst at Mandiant.

"Co-opting the Andromeda domains and using them to deliver malware to Andromeda victims is a new one," he says. "We've seen threat actors reregister another group's domains, but never observed a group deliver malware to victims of another."

The slow spread of Andromeda allows attackers to wrest control of infected systems for free.

"As older Andromeda malware continues to spread from compromised USB devices, these re-registered domains pose a risk as new threat actors can take control and deliver new malware to victims," Mandiant stated in the advisory. "This novel technique of claiming expired domains used by widely distributed, financially motivated malware can enable follow-on compromises at a wide array of entities."

While the hijacking of another group's infected assets is uncommon, it has happened in the past, with hackers fighting over compromised machines, stealing each other's systems, or using the same vulnerability to infect a system and overwrite a previous infection. In the early 2000s, for example, the MyDoom worm infected systems but left the compromised computers open to further attack, leading to a scramble between hackers looking to increase their stable of exploited systems.

Today, cybercriminals are more likely to compromise systems and then sell those infected machines, or credentials to access those systems, on underground forums and dark markets as part of the initial access broker subeconomy.

****A Slowly Moving Galaxy of Andromeda Infections****

The attack began in December 2021, when an infected USB drive was inserted into a system at a Ukrainian organization and an employee inadvertently clicked on the malicious link. The cyberattack infected the system with a version of Andromeda first seen in March 2013 by the antivirus scanning service VirusTotal, Mandiant stated.

Mandiant first detected the attack in September 2022. Turla is a Russian-based threat group, but it has targeted a wide variety of organizations in some 45 countries over nearly two decades, according to the MITRE ATT&CK page.

While there is no relationship between Turla and Andromeda, using the Andromeda malware to infect other systems has helped keep the Turla operation under the radar, says Tyler McLellan, senior principal analyst at Mandiant.

"Despite Andromeda being old and not likely operational today, we still see a lot of victims," he says. "As a user inserts a clean USB into an already infected system, that new USB can become infected and continue the spread."

****Carefully Selected Targets: A Very Specific Threat****

The attackers attempted to remain as stealthy as possible by profiling systems to determine the most interesting targets and then only attacking a handful of those systems. Mandiant only observed the Turla-controlled servers active for short periods of time, usually a few days, with weeks of downtime, the company stated.

"Mandiant identified several different hosts with beaconing Andromeda stager samples," the company stated in the advisory. "However, we only observed one case in which Turla-related malware was dropped in additional stages, suggesting a high level of specificity in choosing which victims received a follow-on payload."

The Turla Team operation underscores the importance of eliminating vectors of attack and responding to incidents, even if they appear to be low priority, McLellan says.

"Companies should pay attention to what USB's are in their environment and discourage employees from using them where possible," he says. "This incident should also raise concerns of what longer-term malware infections are in your environment, and could a threat actor co-opt that C2 infrastructure to gain access."

Russia-Linked Turla APT Sneakily Co-Opts Ancient Andromeda USB Infections

In what's become a pattern, the cybercriminal ring stole data, demanded payment, and posted personal information when ransom was denied.

Another month, another release of personal information stolen from a school system. This time, it's a group of 14 schools in the United Kingdom.

Once again, the perpetrator appears to be Vice Society, which is well known for targeting educational systems in the US. As the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) pointed out in a bulletin from Sept. 6, "K-12 institutions may be seen as particularly lucrative targets due to the amount of sensitive student data accessible through school systems or their managed service providers."

The UK hack may have turned up even more confidential information than the Los Angeles school system breach last year. As the BBC reported on Jan. 6, "One folder marked 'passports' contains passport scans for pupils and parents on school trips going back to 2011, whereas another marked 'contract' contains contractual offers made to staff alongside teaching documents on muscle contractions."

Some prominent school cyberattacks in the US include public school districts in Chicago, Baltimore, and Los Angeles. A new study from digital learning platform Clever claims that one in four schools experienced a cyber-incident over the past year, and according to a new report from security software vendor Emsisoft, at least 45 school districts and 44 higher learning institutions suffered ransomware attacks in 2022.

"Schools are an attractive target as they are typically data-rich and resource-poor," Karen Sorady, vice president of member engagement at the Center for Internet Security (CIS), told Michigan Live in November, after a K-12 school district in Jackson, Mich., was hit. "Without proper resources in terms of dedicated staffing and the necessary tools and training to protect against cyber-attacks, schools can be a soft target."

Many of the 14 schools hit by this latest leak are colleges and universities, but primary and secondary schools were also hit, according to the BBC's list.

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Vice Society Releases Info Stolen From 14 UK Schools, Including Passport Scans

The macro issues shaping the threat landscape can help security pros reset their priorities and reformulate strategy.

As remote work grows, many organizations are managing a complex web of in-person, online, and hybrid work scenarios while also juggling cloud migration to support their diversified workforce. For CISOs, this has created a variety of new challenges.

Based on our conversations with security leaders, Microsoft has identified the top three focus areas that CISOs are prioritizing today so you can understand what steps your organization should take to guard against ongoing cybersecurity threats.

**1\. Rapidly Shifting Threat Landscape and Attack Vectors**

The new technologies required to facilitate stronger remote collaboration and productivity have opened up new vulnerabilities for cybercriminals to exploit. Based on a 2020 Microsoft study of CISOs, 55% of security leaders have detected an increase in phishing attacks since the beginning of the pandemic, and 88% say that phishing attacks have affected their organizations.

While news headlines are dominated by increasingly aggressive nation-state attacks and novel incidents like the Nobelium supply-chain attack, even advanced threat actors tend to focus on low-cost, high-value attacks of opportunity. Take the uptick in password-spray attacks, for example. While large-scale attacks like the above aren’t an everyday occurrence, it is still important for security teams to be prepared in the event of a breach.

A healthy cybersecurity posture often comes down to a careful balance between managing risk and strengthening cyber hygiene practices. Microsoft estimates that basic security hygiene like multifactor authentication (MFA), patching, and vulnerability management can protect against 98% of attacks.

**2\. Rise in Increasingly Complex Supply Chain Risks**

The global supply chain is also top-of-mind for CISOs, as many have been forced to expand their security perimeter outside of the security organization and IT. This focus makes sense given the 650% increase in supply-chain attacks from 2020 to 2021.

As security leaders continue outsourcing apps, infrastructure, and human capital, they’re also searching for more effective frameworks and tools to evaluate and mitigate their risk across suppliers. Traditional vetting methods can help reduce risk when choosing a new vendor, but they aren’t foolproof. Security teams also need a way to enforce compliance and mitigate risk in real time, not just during the selection process or a point-in-time review cycle.

One effective method for decreasing the impact of major supply chain attacks and improving the overall efficiency of supply chain operations is zero trust. Many security leaders rely on zero-trust principles, such as explicit verification, least privileged access, and assumed breach, to protect their supply chains and strengthen their cyber hygiene foundation. For example, attackers typically weaken the supply chain by exploiting gaps in explicit verification. They might target a highly privileged vendor account that isn’t protected with MFA or inject malicious code into a trusted application. Through zero trust, security teams can strengthen their verification methods and extend security policy requirements to third-party users, limit the impact of compromised resources, and increase threat detection and response times.

**3\. Creative Organizational Security Despite Talent Shortage**

Finally, CISOs are focused on finding and retaining top talent as a result of the industry’s workforce shortage. The number of unfilled cybersecurity jobs grew by 350%, from 1 million positions in 2013 to 3.5 million in 2021. However, there’s also a push to make security everyone’s job — regardless of their positions within the organization or their level of knowledge about cybersecurity best practices.

To start, development teams, system administrators, and even end users should be familiar with the security policies that are relevant to them. Likewise, some CISOs have said they are deputizing employees outside of the security team by boosting and enhancing end-user knowledge of security threats. Employees and end users alike should know how to recognize common phishing techniques and the signs of more subtle cyberattacks. IT teams should also be kept in the loop and briefed on current security strategies. Focusing on automation and other proactive workflow and task management strategies is another easy way for CISOs to maximize their impact. 

These three trends are only the tip of the iceberg when talking about where CISOs are prioritizing responsibilities; however, they paint a solid picture of the main concerns on their minds in today’s modern threat landscape. This is a great opportunity for organizations to reset and take a look at what they are prioritizing to determine whether they are properly protected. 

For more information on the latest cybersecurity threat trends, download the full "CISO Insider" report.

CISOs Are Focused on These 3 Trends. Are You?

The Automated Libra group is deploying all components of its campaign in an automated manner via containers, stealing free trial resources for cryptomining, but the threat could get larger.

More information has become available on "PurpleUrchin," a malicious campaign in which a threat group called Automated Libra is using DevOps and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) practices to mine cryptocurrency on cloud platforms using free trial accounts.

The campaign began in August 2019 and has mainly targeted platforms such as GitHub, Heroku, and ToggleBox. Security vendor Sysdig first reported on the campaign last October. This week, Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 threat hunting team provided fresh insight on the campaign based on a recent analysis of the threat group's activities — and noted that while cryptomining is the game now, the infrastructure could be used to deliver much worse threats down the road.

Unit 42's research showed that Automated Libra has so far created some 180,000 free trial accounts on various cloud platforms — substantially more than Sysdig had initially reported — using an automated container-based approach for spinning them up. At its peak last November, Automated Libra was creating between three and five new accounts on GitHub every minute. Sysdig previously had estimated that the coin-mining activity via free trial accounts was costing GitHub some $100,000 in lost revenue per user account.

**A Fully Containerized Operation**

Unit 42's analysis showed each individual component of PurpleUrchin's cryptomining operation — from user account creation to coin-mining and trading — shipped within a container and deployed in a highly automated manner. 

An initial container contains all the tools needed for automatic account creation. That container automatically creates new accounts on a targeted cloud provider's platform, while also pulling down tools for creating additional containers with cryptomining components for each of the user accounts.

These additional containers house the individual and unique containerized components of the larger operation, says William Gamazo, principal threat researcher for Unit 42 at Palo Alto Networks. For example, they include containers specific to the accounts created for each targeted cloud provider, containers created for system administration (like panel displays for monitoring the mining operation), and containers created for coin-miners themselves.

The threat actors have implemented each component in the architecture as a container, Gamazo says. "In some cases, the entire process starts with a single script," he notes. That script calls on a configuration file stored in DockerHub, GitHub, or BitBucket for its base operational guidelines, Gamazo tells Dark Reading.

"From here, the process becomes highly dynamic and modular, with the creation of a user account that pulls down a container that will start the mass container generation process — essentially a single container that builds all of the additional containers required to perform the mining operation."

The container functionality for initial account creation on GitHub also includes a feature that allows Automated Libra to bypass CAPTCHA images using relatively straightforward image analysis techniques. The CAPTCHA bypass technique basically reuses publicly available tools, though in some cases the threat actors did perform some custom processing.

"While we didn’t feel the actor was very sophisticated, they were very effective with this tactic," Gamazo notes.

**A DevOps Approach to Optimize Resource Utilization**

Unit 42 researchers assessed that Automated Libra had adopted the DevOps and CI/CD approaches to optimize its ability to utilize the limited resources available to them under the free trial programs that many cloud vendors offer. 

"We have not directly witnessed other threat actors performing these types of containerized operations," Gamazo says. "However, last year we saw DDoS attack implementations using containers as part of the deployment," he notes pointing to a pro-Ukrainian denial-of-service campaign that CrowdStrike reported on last May that involved compromised Docker honeypots.

To create user accounts for free trials, the threat actors likely used stolen or fake credit cards, Unit 42 said. In some cases, the attackers adopted what the security vendor described as a "play and run" approach where they used a cloud provider's resources for a certain period of time but then disappeared without paying the bill for those services. 

The largest unpaid balance that Unit 42 researchers were able to uncover during their research was just $190. But the unpaid balances in other fake accounts could have been much larger considering the scale and breadth of the PurpleUrchin cryptomining operation, they noted.

**Cryptomining Now; Much Worse Later?**

Cryptomining attacks — where a threat actor stealthily uses an organization's computing resources to mine for cryptocurrencies — have become extremely common in recent years. A study that Kaspersky conducted last year showed that threat actors mainly distribute malicious mining software via unpatched vulnerabilities. In 2022's third quarter, more than 15% of vulnerability exploits that Kaspersky analyzed involved cryptomining tools. In the same quarter, Kaspersky counted more than 150,000 new miner variants, or more than triple the number from 2021's third quarter.

Nathaniel Quist, manager of cloud threat intelligence at Unit 42, says that in the PurpleUrchin campaign, Automated Libra actors were using free or limited-use cloud services specifically for their CPU resources. But that doesn't mean that they couldn’t have used it for other purposes as well. The actors, for instance, could have used these resources to perform malicious operations targeting victim organizations such as scanning, brute-forcing accounts, or hosting malicious content.

"If this happened, the victim would have been targeted by attacks originating from the trusted cloud service providers where the actors were creating these accounts," he notes.

The key takeaway for enterprise organizations is that threat actors will increasingly use containers for malicious infrastructure deployment in coming years. "Trusted sources such as cloud providers, cloud storage services, and public services hosted on clouds will be leveraged for launching attacks and it will be prevalent and difficult to detect," he says.

PurpleUrchin Gang Embraces DevOps in Massive Cloud Malware Campaign

Security vulnerabilities plague automakers, and as vehicles become more connected, a more proactive stance on cybersecurity will be required — alongside regulations.

A range of automakers from Acura to Toyota are plagued by security vulnerabilities within their vehicles that could allow hackers to access personally identifiable information (PII), lock owners out of their vehicles, and even take over functions like starting and stopping the vehicle's engine.

According to a team of seven security researchers, whose efforts were detailed on Web application security specialist Sam Curry's blog, vulnerabilities across automakers' internal applications and systems allowed them in a proof-of-concept hack to send commands using only the VIN (vehicle identification number), which can be seen through the windshield outside the car.

In all, the team uncovered serious security issues from automakers such as BMW, Ferrari, Ford, Volvo, and many others, across Europe, Asia, and the United States. It also found issues at suppliers and telematics companies including Spireon, which develops GPS-based vehicle tracking solutions.

A BMW Group spokesperson tells Dark Reading that IT and data security have the "highest priority" for the company and that it is continuously monitoring its system landscape for possible vulnerabilities or security threats.

The spokesperson adds that the vulnerability mentioned in the report has been known since beginning of November, and has been processed according to BMW's "security standard operating procedures," e.g., its bug-bounty program.

"The relevant addressed vulnerability issues were closed within 24 hours and we have no indication of any data leaks," the spokesperson says. "No vehicle-related IT systems were affected nor compromised. No BMW Group customers or employee accounts were compromised."

This is only the latest security concern to come to light. In March, telemetry from industrial systems security firm Dragos spotted Emotet command-and-control servers communicating with several automotive manufacturer systems. The malware is commonly used as an initial infection vector to drop ransomware.

In December, at least three mobile apps tailored to allow drivers to remotely start or unlock their vehicles were found to have security vulnerabilities that could allow unauthenticated malicious types to do the same from afar.

**Automakers Slow to Recognize Growing Threat**

Even though security vulnerabilities have been an issue in the industry for some time (going back to Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek's infamous 2015 Jeep hack detailed at Black Hat USA), automakers have been slow to recognize the potential severity of the developments, says Gartner automotive industry analyst Pedro Pacheco.

He explains that as automakers transition into becoming software developers, they are struggling to address all points of that development cycle — including security.

"One very simple notion is if you're not good in software, you're probably not going to be very good in making that software safe," he says. "That is guaranteed."

From his perspective, automakers are also too complacent when it comes to addressing and patching security vulnerabilities right away.

"Automakers look at this in a more reactive way than a proactive way, basically saying we'll address the small number of customers affected and solve the issue and then everything goes back to normal," he says. "That's the way of thinking for many carmakers."

As automakers develop more complex ecosystems that connect customers with application stores and connect them with their smartphones and other connected devices, the stakes are raised.

"This is the reason why cybersecurity is going to become more and more of a pressing issue," he says. "The more the vehicle takes over driving, then of course the more chances there are that this can be used against the customer and against the automaker. It hasn't happened yet, but it could very well happen in the future."

John Bambenek, principal threat hunter at Netenrich, adds another problem is that as technology evolves, car manufacturers implement it into their vehicles before the technology is truly vetted.

"Web apps have their own security concerns distinct from that path of communication," he explains. "I don’t have to own the entire communication stack. I just need to find a soft spot and researchers continue to find them. The reality is that it’s all put together with defective duct tape and bailing wire — it always has been."

He points out that the more things are put online, the more it gives opportunities for criminals.

"In this case, I’m less concerned about cybercriminals and more for stalkers and their ilk," he says. "This opens a new genre of digital harassment, which may be hard to track and harder to prosecute. That’s where I think the real risk is."

**Mandating Automotive Security Through Regulations**

Help is on the way, however. Pacheco points to the adoption of UN Regulation No. 155, focused on mandating standards for automotive cybersecurity, which went into power in July and will be enforced in Japan and South Korea — a total of 60 countries will ultimately enforce this regulation.

"This is a new dawn for cybersecurity in the automotive industry, because from this point on, cybersecurity in the vehicle becomes a legal requirement," he says. "This is the reason many automakers have already spent a considerable amount of money and time building up new cybersecurity management systems in accordance with this regulation."

He explains that under the regulation, every three years, the cybersecurity management system from the automaker from a particular vehicle will have to be audited by authorities to assess whether it complies to the regulation or not.

"Now we will start seeing a lot more things happening in cybersecurity than in the past, because until 2022 it was a bit more casual," he says.

He advises automakers not to wait to revise their security every three years but rather to incrementally update and improve their security software.

"They need to keep raising the bar in terms of the performance of their cybersecurity management system," Pacheco says. "This means adding the best cybersecurity technology in terms of hardware and software into the vehicle and running an advanced vehicle security operations center."

**Automakers Must Change Their Approach**

Pacheco explains that the industry is reaching a tipping point when it comes to cyber safety — but that improving automotive security will require a cultural shift.

"In the end, it always starts with a mindset, meaning when you have a certain threat, it must first be perceived as a threat," he says. "This is what they need to start by doing."

This could include actions as simple as running a competition amongst white hat hackers to search for any vulnerabilities they can find in this vehicle.

"Above all, automakers must be very open towards addressing \[these\] vulnerabilities and cybersecurity issues," Pacheco says. "Unfortunately, what happens is several automakers have a culture of hiding these issues."

He cautions the industry is approaching a point where automakers have less and less margin to maneuver to wait for the problems to happen.

"If they don't take considerable steps towards improving cybersecurity, it will hurt them a lot in the future," he says.

From Ferrari to Ford, Cybersecurity Bugs Plague Automotive Safety

It's imperative we collaborate and partner to improve software security. This may require developing tools and standards that can enrich SBOMs and provide deeper analysis.

Many in our industry are weighing the benefits that software bills of materials (SBOMs) could possibly bring to software quality and security. I think SBOMs are needed to understand and assess risk in software because they should provide visibility into the software construction process for a given software system. At some level, SBOMs already exist for certain products and software systems; however, their application for evaluating quality and security as stipulated in Executive Order 14028, Improving the Nation's Cybersecurity and recent federal guidance by the US Office of Management and Budget, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency is fairly new and unproven at scale.

**The Royce Bill That Never Passed****

Around 2013, SBOM legislation H.R.5793 – Cyber Supply Chain Management and Transparency Act (known as the Royce Bill) was introduced but never gained the momentum it needed to pass as a mandate, bill, or requirement. The industry did not then have the appetite for transparency to manage software supply chain risk.

The issues this legislation would have addressed are outlined in the Congressional Record – Extensions of Remarks. These issues have now been exacerbated given the overwhelming amount of complexity and growing size in modern software development, and the increasing rate of attacks against open source software. With the increasing consumption rate of open source software in modern software development, consumers must be aware of the technical debt in open source software projects that has accumulated over time to better manage software risk. The idea of more software complexity, larger software systems, and mounting technical debt does not bode well for the federal government's desire for software integrity and trustworthiness through the software supply chain.

The fact that the Royce Bill didn't pass can be seen as a missed opportunity to address the growing threats and risk in software security at the time. Almost a decade later, the industry is still struggling to figure out how to implement SBOMs and strike the right balance to make them useful and not a target for adversaries to exploit. This raises major concern in industry about whether SBOMs are ready for prime time given the skepticism regarding the current requirements outlined in federal guidance.

****SBOM Must Inform About Unknown Risk****

One of the challenges for SBOMs is advancing and understanding how risky software is determined. I use the term "risky" because all software has vulnerabilities, and the SBOM must be able to differentiate or provide context to the level of risk associated with a software component, whether in isolation or once it has been implemented and integrated into a software system. To simply say you can't use this software component because it has CVEs (common vulnerabilities and exposures) associated with it becomes moot because all software can have vulnerabilities. SBOMs must be able to succinctly qualify which CVEs are the most dangerous and exploitable given the context the software will be implemented and used — the component function (logging, encryption, access control, authorization), the environment, and whether it can be hardened to reduce a given attack surface. The way in which software components are integrated into a system matters because software components can be implemented poorly or incorrectly, exposing vulnerabilities in software systems.

Using CVEs to establish a security baseline for open source software consumption make sense; however, tallying a bunch of CVEs to determine what software is less risky or riskier only focuses on the "known knowns" (as shown in the figure below) and does very little to help organizations understand what weaknesses are lurking that may expose vulnerabilities and impact the overall hygiene of that software component (over a period of time). Furthermore, the current state of practice regarding SBOMs doesn't encourage software supply chainers to understand the defect proneness or attack proneness rates associated with software. This is important because some software components are highly targeted and require significant patching due to inherent technical debt, low code quality, and security issues that expose vulnerabilities. More patching means developers and engineering teams are spending less time on creating and delivering new features and functionality to customers.

Defect proneness refers to the likelihood that a software component will be defective after a software product is released. There are various socio-technical factors that contribute to defect proneness such as low code quality and design flaws. Attack proneness refers to the rate at which software components can be successfully exploited, or the likelihood that software components will contain exploitable weaknesses — bug, defect, or flaw — or vulnerabilities.

    

Source: Kevin Greene

SBOM solutions must give organizations visibility into potential risk for a given software component as shown in the figure above, helping organizations make informed decisions about which software components to use and which software components to avoid. For instance, advice in the National Security Agency (NSA) Cybersecurity Information Sheet encourages developers to avoid using software developed in C and C++ because those programming languages were not intended to enforce good memory management checks. It will be interesting to see how this advice will affect the software supply chain, mainly for embedded safety critical systems, and whether suppliers will turn to programming languages that are memory safe, such as Rust and Go.

****Go Deeper to Guide SBOM****

SBOMs are not going away, so it's imperative we all collaborate and partner to improve software security. This may require developing tools and standards that can enrich SBOMs and provide deeper analysis and insight about the characteristics of software that help inform about software risk. This will help organizations effectively evaluate and attest to software integrity, as well as other software assurance properties. Ultimately, it's important for software supply chainers to understand not just the risk associated with a given software component but the potential maintenance associated with using that software component over a period of time, given the challenges in industry to remediate vulnerabilities in software in a timely fashion. The use of defect and attack proneness rates could provide actionable intelligence that helps lower the consumption of risky software with poor hygiene, and guide software supply chainers in building software systems that are more resilient to cyberattacks. 

In theory, software components with high defect and attack proneness rates should be avoided to help stimulate and encourage the use of alternatives with better hygiene. In my opinion, SBOMs don't improve code quality and security directly, but they can make software supply chainers more aware of risk in their software construction process. Improving code quality and security for open source software requires a culture shift given that having many eyes does not make all bugs shallow.

**

Don't Be Blindsided by Software Bills of Materials

The role of artificial intelligence in cybersecurity is growing. A new AI model highlights the opportunities and challenges.

_Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize many aspects of our lives, including how we approach cybersecurity. However, it also presents new risks and challenges that need to be carefully managed._

_One way that AI can be used in cybersecurity is through the development of intelligent systems that can detect and respond to cyber threats._

This was the AI chatbot’s reply when I asked it to write about AI and cyber threats. I am sure by now you know I am talking about the most popular lad in town, ChatGPT.

In November 2022, OpenAI, an AI research and development company, introduced ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) based on a variation of its InstructGPT model, which is trained on a massive pool of data to answer queries. It interacts in a conversational way once given a detailed prompt, admits mistakes, and even rejects inappropriate requests. Though only available for beta testing right now, it has become extremely popular among the public. OpenAI plans to launch an advanced version, ChatGPT-4, in 2023.

ChatGPT is different from other AI models in the way it can write software in different languages, debug the code, explain a complex topic in multiple ways, prepare for an interview, or draft an essay. Similar to what one can do through Web searches to learn these topics, ChatGPT makes such tasks easier, even providing the final output.

The wave of AI tools and apps has been growing for some time. Before ChatGPT, we saw the Lensa AI app and Dall-E 2 making noise for digitally creating images from text. Though these apps have shown exceptional results that could be nice to use, the digital art community was not very happy that their work, which was used to train these models, is now being used against them as it raised major privacy and ethical concerns. Artists have found their work was used to train the model and now has been used by app users to create images without their consent.

**Pros and Cons**

As with any new technology, ChatGPT has its own benefits and challenges and will have a significant impact on the cybersecurity market.

AI is a promising technology to help develop advanced cybersecurity products. Many believe broader use of AI and machine learning are critical to identifying potential threats more quickly. ChatGPT could play a crucial role in detecting and responding to cyberattacks and improving communication within the organization during such times. It could also be used for bug bounty programs. But where there is the technology, they are cyber-risks, which must not be overlooked.

**Good or Bad Code**

ChatGPT will not write a malware code if asked to write one; it does have guardrails, such as security protocols to identify inappropriate requests.

But in the past few days, developers have tried various ways to bypass the protocols and succeeded to get the desired output. If a prompt is detailed enough to explain to the bot steps of writing the malware instead of a direct prompt, it will answer the prompt, effectively constructing malware on demand.

Considering there are already criminal groups offering malware-as-a-service, with the assistance of an AI program such as ChatGPT, it may soon become quicker and easier for attackers to launch cyberattacks with the help of AI-generated code. ChatGPT has given the power to even less experienced attackers to be able to write a more accurate malware code, which previously could only be done by experts.

**Business Email Compromise**

ChatGPT is excellent at replying to any content query, such as emails and essays. This is especially applicable when paired with an attack method called business email compromise, or BEC.

With BEC, attackers use a template to generate a deceptive email that tricks a recipient into providing the attacker with the information or asset they want.

Security tools are often employed to detect BEC attacks, but with the help of ChatGPT, attackers could potentially have unique content for each email generated for them with the help of AI, making these attacks harder to detect.

Similarly, writing phishing emails may become easier, without any of the typos or unique formats that today are often critical to differentiate these attacks from legitimate emails. The scary part is it’s possible can add as many variations to the prompt, such as "_making the email look urgent_," "_email with a high likelihood of recipients clicking on the link_," "_social engineering email requestion wire transfer_," and so on.

Below was my attempt to see how ChatGPT would reply to my prompt, and it returned results that were surprisingly good.

    

**Where Do We Go From Here?**

ChatGPT tool is transformational in many cybersecurity scenarios if put to good use.

From my experience researching with the tool and from what the public is posting online, ChatGPT is proving to be accurate with most detailed requests, but it still is not as accurate as a human. The more prompts used, the more the model trains itself.

It will be interesting to see what potential uses, positive and negative, come with ChatGPT. One thing is for sure: The industry cannot merely wait and watch if it creates a security problem. Threats from AI are not a new problem it has been around, it's just that now ChatGPT is showing distinct examples that look scary. We expect the security vendors will be more proactive to implement behavioral AI-based tools to detect these AI-generated attacks.

ChatGPT Artificial Intelligence: An Upcoming Cybersecurity Threat?

The hosting services provider shared new details on the breach that took down its Hosted Exchange Email service.

Rackspace has completed its forensic investigation into the Dec. 2 ransomware attack that took down its Hosted Exchange Email service and announced that it will discontinue that offering and transition it to cloud-based Microsoft 365.

The company said it has no plans to rebuild the hosted Exchange server environment, which has been down since the attack, and that it already had been on track to migrate to 365 before the ransomware incident.

Rackspace had decided not to apply Microsoft's ProxyNotShell patch to its Exchange Servers amid concerns over reports that the software update caused "authentication errors" that the company feared could take down its servers. Instead, it stuck with Microsoft's recommended mitigations for the vulnerabilities to thwart a ProxyNotShell attack.

That strategy fell apart, as the Play ransomware group was able to bypass Microsoft's mitigations with a new exploit abusing the CVE-2022-41080 vulnerability that breached Rackspace's Hosted Exchange systems. "Microsoft disclosed CVE-2022-41080 as a privilege escalation vulnerability and did not include notes for being part of a Remote Code Execution chain that was exploitable," Rackspace noted in a post today.

**Play Stole Data from 27 Rackspace Customers**

According to the managed cloud hosting services company, the attackers grabbed the Personal Storage Tables (PSTs) of 27 of its around 30,000 Hosted Exchange customers, but there is no evidence the Play hackers ever viewed or distributed the pilfered information. "Customers who were not contacted directly by the Rackspace team can be assured that their PST data was not accessed by the threat actor," the company said.

"As a reminder, no other Rackspace products, platforms, solutions, or businesses were affected or experienced downtime due to this incident," Rackspace asserted.

Meanwhile, the email data recovery efforts remain underway for its Hosted Exchange customers. "As of today, more than half of impacted customers have some or all of their data available to them for download. However, less than 5% of those customers have actually downloaded the mailboxes we have made available. This indicates to us that many of our customers have data backed up locally, archived, or otherwise do not need the historical data," Rackspace said. The company also will offer an on-demand option for customers who want to download their data.

Rackspace said it's contacting customers for which it has recovered more than half of their mailboxes; their recovered data is available via its customer portal. "To check if your historical email data is available, please follow Step 2 on our Data Recovery Resources page (https://www.rackspace.com/hosted-exchange-incident-data-recovery-resources) and see if your mailbox is ready to download," the company said in its post, which provides additional resources as well.

Rackspace Sunsets Email Service Downed in Ransomware Attack

Encrypting data while in use, not just in transit and at rest, closes one more avenue of cyberattack.

Digital transformation initiatives, spurred by COVID-19, are helping companies scale new heights in efficiency and productivity. However, they have also highlighted to enterprise leaders the need for tighter cybersecurity measures — especially as attackers continue to ride the wave of new technologies to launch sophisticated attacks. The number of records exposed in data breaches consistently went up throughout 2022 — 3.33 million records in the first quarter of 2022, 5.54 million records in the second quarter, and 14.78 million records in the third quarter — according to data from Statista.

Organizations face various challenges as they grapple with managing and securing the explosion of data created, in part, by remote environments. This, coupled with the lack of visibility across dispersed networks and growing migration to the cloud, has increased the risk of attacks across multiple industries, including healthcare, financial services, and decentralized finance (DeFi).

Confidential computing segregates data and code from the host computer's system and makes it harder for unauthorized third parties to access the data. The way that confidential computing protects sensitive data could smooth the way for increased cloud adoption in highly regulated sectors such as finance and healthcare, according to Gartner.

As more organizations handle large volumes of data, ushering in a greater need for privacy and data security, confidential computing is poised to close that security gap by ensuring data remains confidential at all times — while at rest, in transit, and in use.

**A Different Approach to Cybersecurity**

Most encryption schemes focus on protecting while at rest, or while in transit. Confidential computing protects data while in use — by allowing data to remain encrypted even as it’s being processed and used in applications. The market for confidential computing is expected to grow up to $54 billion by 2026, according to a report by Everest Group.

"Everybody wants to continue to reduce the attack surface of data. Up to this point, it is obviously encrypted in transit and at rest. Confidential computing solves the encrypted in-use at the infrastructure level," said Justin Boitano, vice president and general manager of Nvidia's enterprise and edge computing operations, in a previous article on Dark Reading.

Anil Rao, vice president and general manager for systems architecture and engineering at Intel's office of the chief technology officer, also noted in the article that confidential computing will also help enterprises build a new class of applications where third-party data sets can mingle with proprietary data sets in a secure area to create better learning models.

The hardware element of confidential computing makes it uniquely secure, says Jay Harel, VP of product at Opaque Systems. "A hacker must literally crack the CPU open and tap into the silicon die in order to steal any confidential data," Harel says. "Most data breaches happen remotely, over the Internet. Confidential computing requires physical access to the hardware, making a breach much less likely."

Cloud vendors Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud make confidential computing available through CPUs from Intel and AMD, while Amazon AWS uses its own Nitro technology. "I wouldn't say that the hardware is fully mainstream yet, as most compute resources offered by these vendors still don't have confidential computing capabilities," Harel notes.

As Noam Dror, senior vice president of solution engineering at Hub Security, puts it, "Today, when hackers get past standard security controls, they can access data in use which is totally exposed and unencrypted. Existing cybersecurity measures have a hard time dealing with these issues. This is where confidential computing comes in, providing comprehensive cyber protection across all levels. These most sensitive data must be protected leveraging confidential computing because the computing environment will always be vulnerable."

**Helps Industries Share Data Securely**

The confidential computing approach to cybersecurity offers several advantages, particularly in sectors where client or patient data is highly sensitive and regulated — like the healthcare sector, for example. In such sectors, confidential computing can enable secure multiparty training of AI for different purposes and ensure data privacy.

Cloud security company Fortanix says that financial services in particular should invest in confidential computing, for several reasons: it involves masses of personally identifiable information (PII), it is heavily regulated, its monetary value attracts attention from cyber criminals, and "it's an industry that hasn't figured out a secure way to share valuable data among each other that can be used to detect fraud or money laundering," a Fortanix spokesperson says. Fortanix adds it is also seeing interest in confidential computing from industries with similar characteristics, such as healthcare enterprises and government entities.

"Confidential computing reduces the trusted computing base to the minimum. It takes the trust away from configuration files, and secrets and passwords managed by humans, which can be error-prone. The trust circle is reduced to the CPU, and the application, and everything in between — the operating system, the network, the administrators, can be removed from that trust circle. Confidential computing gets closest to achieving zero trust when establishing communication between app-to-app or machine-to-machine," Fortanix says.

**Complete Control Over Data**

Today's protective solutions are insufficient and leave critical data exposed. Cloud providers AMD, Intel, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Red Hat, and IBM have already deployed confidential computing offerings. A growing number of cybersecurity companies, including Fortinet, Anjuna Security, Gradient Flow, and Hub Security, are also providing such solutions.

Harel says, "Confidential computing is a natural addition to their security arsenal, allowing them to evolve their breach defense and take it to the next level. It allows them to finally protect data in use, after spending decades and billions of dollars protecting data at rest and in transit."

Nataraj Nagaratnam, IBM distinguished engineer and CTO for cloud security, believes that confidential computing is a game-changer, especially because it gives customers complete control of their data. "Confidential computing primarily aims to provide greater assurance to companies that their data in the cloud is protected and confidential. It encourages companies to move more of their sensitive data and computing workloads to public cloud services," he notes.

Source

DARKReading