Sophos research unveiled at Black Hat Europe details a thriving subeconomy of fraud on the cybercrime underground, aimed at Dark Web forum users.

Cybercriminals are often seen as parasites, feeding off a wide swath of victims of every size and stripe. But as it turns out, they've become targets in their own right, with a host of bottom-feeding "metaparasites" flocking to Dark Web marketplaces to find their own set of marks.

It's a phenomenon that has the happy side effect of exposing a rich vein of threat intelligence to researchers, including contact and location details of cybercriminals.

Sophos senior threat researcher Matt Wixey took to the stage at Black Hat Europe 2022 to discuss the metaparasite ecosystem, in a session entitled "Scammers Who Scam Scammers, Hackers Who Hack Hackers." According to research he did with fellow researcher Angela Gunn, the underground economy is riddled with a wide variety of fraudsters, who successfully extract millions of dollars per year from their fellow cybercriminals.

The pair examined 12 months of data across three Dark Web forums (Russian-speaking Exploit and XSS, and English-speaking Breach Forums), and uncovered thousands of successful scam efforts.

"It's pretty rich pickings," Wixey said. "Scammers scammed users of these forums out of about $2.5 million US dollars over the course of 12 months. The amounts per scam can be as little as $2 on up to the low six figures."

    

Source: Sophos

The tactics vary, but one of the most common — and the most crude — is a gambit known as the "rip and run." This refers to one of two "rip" variants: A buyer receives goods (an exploit, sensitive data, valid credentials, credit-card numbers, etc.) but doesn't pay for them; or, a seller is paid and never delivers what's been promised. The "run" portion refers to the scammer disappearing from the marketplace and refusing to answer any enquiries. Consider it a Dark Web version of the dine-and-dash.

There are also plenty of scammers hawking fake goods — such as nonexistent crypto accounts, macro builders that build nothing nefarious, fake data, or databases that are either already publicly available or have previously been leaked.

Some of these can get creative, Wixey explained.

"We found a service claiming to be able to bind an .EXE text to a PDF, so that when the victim clicked on the PDF, it would load while in the background, the .EXE would run silently," he said. "What the scammer actually did was just sent them back a document with a PDF icon, which wasn't actually a PDF nor did it contain an .EXE. They were hoping that the buyer didn't really know what they're asking for or how to check it."

Also common are scams where a seller offers legitimate goods that aren't quite of the quality that has been advertised — like credit card data claiming to be 30% valid, when in reality only 10% of the cards work. Or the databases are real but being advertised as "exclusive" while the seller is actually reselling them to multiple takers.

In some cases, fraudsters work in tandem in more of a long-con fashion, he added. Sites tend to be exclusive, which foments "a degree of intrinsic trust" that they can play upon, according to Wixey.

"One will build a rapport with a target and offer to provide a service; they'll then say that they actually know someone else who can do this work much better, who's an expert on the subject," Wixey explained. "They will often point them to a fake forum that a second person works and operates, which requires some sort of deposit or registration fee. The victim pays the registration fee, and then both scammers just disappear."

**How Forums Fight Back**

The activity has an adverse effect on the use of Dark Web forums — acting as an "effective tax on criminal marketplaces, making it more expensive and more dangerous for everyone else," Wixey noted. As such, ironically, many markets are implementing security measures to help curb the tide of fraud.

Forums face several challenges when it comes to putting in safeguards: There's no recourse to law enforcement or regulatory authorities for one; and it's a semianonymous culture, making it difficult to track culprits. So, the anti-fraud controls that have been put in place tend to focus on tracking the activity and issuing warnings.

For instance, some sites offer plug-ins that will check a URL to make sure it links to a verified cybercrime forum, not a fake site where users are defrauded via a bogus "joining fee." Others might run a "blacklist" of confirmed scammer tools and user names. And most have a dedicated arbitration process, where users can file a scam report.

"If you've been scammed by another user on the forum, you go to one of these arbitration rooms and you start a new thread and you supply some information," according to Wixey. That may consist of the username and contact details of the alleged scammer, proof of purchase or wallet transfer details, and as many details of the scam — including screenshots and chat logs — as possible.

"A moderator reviews the report, they ask for more information as it's needed, and they will then tag the accused person and give them somewhere between 12 and 72 hours to respond, depending on the forum," Wixey said. "The accused might make restitution, but that's pretty rare. What more commonly happens is that the scammer will dispute the report and claim it's due to a misunderstanding of the terms of the sale."

Some just don't respond, and in that case, they're either temporarily or permanently banned.

Another security option for forum users is the use of a guarantor — a site-verified resource that acts as an escrow account. The money to be exchanged is parked there until the goods or services are confirmed as being legitimate. However, guarantors themselves are often impersonated by fraudsters.

**A Treasure Trove of Threat Intelligence**

While the research offers a view into the inner workings of an interesting subsliver of the Dark Web world, Wixey also noted that the arbitration process in particular gives researchers a fantastic source of threat intelligence.

"Forums demand proof when a scam is alleged, and that includes things like screenshots and chat logs — and victims are typically only too happy to oblige," he explained. "A minority of them redact that evidence or restrict it, so it's only visible to a moderator, but most don't. They will post unredacted screenshots and chat logs, which often contain a treasure trove of cryptocurrency addresses, transaction IDs, email addresses, IP addresses, victim names, source code, and other information. And that's in contrast to most other areas of criminal marketplaces where OpSec is normally pretty good."

Some scam reports also include full screenshots of a person's desktop, including date, time, the weather, the language, and the applications — offering breadcrumbs to location.

In other words, normal precautions go out the window. A Sophos analysis of the most recent 250 scam reports on the three forums found that almost 40% of them included some kind of screenshot; only 8% restricted access to evidence or offered to submit it privately.

"In general, scam reports can be useful both for technical intelligence and for strategic intelligence," Wixey concluded.

"The big takeaway here is that threat actors don't seem to be immune to deception, social engineering or fraud," he added. "In fact, they seem to be as vulnerable as anyone else. Which is kind of interesting because these are exactly the kinds of techniques that they're using against other users."

Metaparasites & the Dark Web: Scammers Turn on Their Own

More than 10 days after a ransomware attack, affected Rackspace customers are being told the incident had a "limited impact," and have been invited to a webinar for additional details.

Customers affected by a ransomware attack on Rackspace's Hosted Exchange Email have experienced service outages and a forced transition to Microsoft 365 — and have widely expressed outrage about an overall lack of transparency from the company about the breach.

But Rackspace's latest email to them, provided to Dark Reading by a reader, tries to put a positive spin on the company's response.

"As you know, on Friday, December 2, 2022, Rackspace experienced a ransomware incident in its Hosted Exchange Email business, a managed email solution provided to small and medium businesses," the Rackspace email to customers said. "Due to swift action on the Company's part in disconnecting its network and following its incident response plans, industry-leading global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has confirmed the incident was quickly contained and limited solely to the Hosted Exchange Email business."

It then invites them to attend a webinar on Tuesday hosted by a panel of Rackspace leadership, including its CISO Ed Pawlowski, for additional information and an opportunity to ask questions.

"This was an incident with limited impact," according to the email — a claim that customers are begging to differ on. Users have already filed suit against Rackspace for negligence and have complained bitterly about a lack of customer support with the transition to Microsoft 365, a lack of access to their data, and limited communications with the company.

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Amid Outrage, Rackspace Sends Users Email Touting Its Incident Response

Shopify Plus stores can now easily implement passwordless login with Passkeys support to help reduce drop rate and increase conversion using the free OwnID plug-in.

**NEW YORK****,** **Dec. 12, 2022** **/PRNewswire/ --** OwnID, the passwordless infrastructure for the internet, announced today the release of Passkeys support for all Shopify Plus stores. The new plugin is a low-code way to add passwordless authentication to your store. By eliminating the need to create and remember passwords, it allows users to register and log in with a single click on any device. OwnID offers the technology at no cost, up to 10,000 logins per month. The news comes following OwnID's release of a no-code WordPress plugin.

With Passkeys support, Shopify Plus site owners can eliminate the dependency on passwords, improve the conversion rate by 20% or more, and reduce user drop-offs by 35%. This is based on actual case studies showing improved metrics following the deployment of the OwnID solution. Streamlining the purchase flow and reducing the user drop-off rate are crucial for store owners and marketers. Both can be achieved by eliminating passwords.

Shopify Plus store owners who wish to add passwordless support to their website, will simply follow 4 easy steps to enable multipass login in their store, and connect the Shopify plugin to the OwnID console using a API key. The implementation process was designed to be as simple and easy as possible.

Earlier this year, Apple, Google and Microsoft joined hands with the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium to work on removing passwords for user authentication across the platforms. Apple announced its own implementation of this standard called Passkey. Microsoft and Google released similar statements announcing their own Passkeys implementation.

OwnID is a revolutionary authentication solution that offers a frictionless, faster, and cheaper way to verify a user's identity. It delivers a secure, seamless, and personalized experience for the user. The OwnID solution is a complete end-to-end platform that can be utilized by any application or website to significantly reduce the drop-off rate, improve user experience, and protect users from fraud. It supports Passkeys out of the box. This means that the OwnID solution works for all users, regardless of device type – Apple, Samsung, Google, Microsoft, or any other.

Named as "Best Passwordless technology" by the 2022 CISO Choice Awards, OwnID has helped many top brands adopt a passwordless solution, including Carrefour, Delonghi, Nestle, Carnival Cruise Line and more.

To get started visit ownid.com. 

For more information about Passkeys visit passkeys.com.

**About OwnID**

Helping businesses connect better with their customers online. Dor Shany and Rooly Eliezerov founded OwnID believing that if a business identifies a customer, it will better understand that customer's needs and serve them better. Exceptional service and personalized experiences pave the way for long-term relationships between your business and your customers. But traditional registration and login are cumbersome and get in the way of these relationships. OwnID is here to offer a more friendly and secure authentication experience that keeps you connected to your customers.

Learn more on OwnID.com.

Shopify Plus Stores Can Easily Add Passwordless Login With Passkeys Support

Visibility into every environment, including cloud, enables businesses to mitigate operating risks.

In speaking with security and fraud professionals, visibility remains a top priority. This is no surprise, since visibility into the network, application, and user layers is one of the fundamental building blocks of both successful security programs and successful fraud programs. This visibility is required across all environments — whether on-premises, private cloud, public cloud, multicloud, hybrid, or otherwise.

Given this, it is perhaps a bit surprising that visibility in the cloud has lagged behind the move to those environments. This occurred partially because few options for decent visibility were available to businesses as they moved to the cloud. But it also partially happened because higher priority was placed on deploying to the cloud than on protecting those deployments from security and fraud threats.

This is unfortunate, since what we can't see can hurt us. That being said, it is great news that cloud visibility has become a top priority for many businesses. Here are a few areas where many businesses are looking for visibility to play a key role.

**Compliance**

Compliance may not be the most exciting part of our jobs, but it is necessary. Whether because of regulatory requirements, audit requirements, or otherwise, businesses need to show compliance. There are many ways to do so, and visibility is one of them. There is no better way to provide evidence that we are compliant with a given requirement than to have ground-truth data that clearly shows we are.

**Monitoring**

Before we can detect security and fraud issues within our cloud infrastructure, applications, and APIs, we need to be able to monitor them. This necessitates having the requisite visibility at the network, application, and user layers. This means having logging and insight into the cloud environment at the same level we have within the on-premises environment.

**Investigation**

When we either detect a security or fraud issue or are notified of one, we need to begin an investigation. We need to interrogate the data to understand what happened, when it happened, where it happened (to what infrastructure), why it happened (root cause), and how it happened. As straightforward and logical as this seems, without proper visibility it is impossible. It is best to address visibility sooner rather than later, as there is no way to "put back" data we aren't currently collecting when we need it most.

**Response**

Once an incident has been investigated, the proper response can be architected and implemented. If we don't have proper visibility, however, we can't be sure that we are effectively remediating the issue in its entirety. Without adequate visibility, how can we be sure that we haven't missed other issues or other resources that may be impacted?

**API Discovery**

We can't protect what we don't know exists. Believe it or not, unknown APIs — those which security and fraud teams are unaware of — occur more often than we would like to admit. As such, API discovery is another great use case that shows the value of visibility. It is worth the investment of time, energy, and money to discover APIs that may be deployed at various locations around the cloud, on-premises, and/or hybrid infrastructure. Once we are aware of these APIs, we can begin to take steps to gain visibility into those previously unknown environments.

**Application Breaches**

When an application is compromised, it is not necessarily so easy to detect. Unlike network-level or host-level compromises, application-level compromises don't always look like intrusions. Sometimes, they spring from stolen credentials. Other times, they happen due to business logic abuse. At yet other times, they result from attackers hopping through or "piggybacking" on the sessions of legitimate users.

In all of these cases, without the proper visibility into both the application layer and the user layer, it will be nearly impossible to become wise to a breach. This is another area where visibility plays a big role in detecting application breaches early, thus mitigating the risk that results from breaches that persist for long periods of time.

**Malicious User Detection**

With the move to software-as-a-service (SaaS), user authentication and authorization have become increasingly important for granting and controlling access to applications and resources. Malicious users aren't necessarily hackers or attackers. Rather, they may be users who have logged into one or more resources with the intent to misuse or abuse those resources. Visibility into user behavior as the user navigates the session allows us to look for patterns and signs that the user may actually be a malicious one.

We have been a bit behind in terms of ensuring the requisite visibility into cloud environments. We have lost some time, though it does seem that gaining visibility into the network, application, and user layers is now a priority for many businesses. This is a positive development, as it enables those businesses to better mitigate the risks that operating blindly creates.

What We Can't See Can Hurt Us

Web application firewalls from AWS, Cloudflare, F5, Imperva, and Palo Alto Networks are vulnerable to a database attack using the popular JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format.

Web application firewalls (WAFs) from five major vendors are vulnerable to malicious requests that use the popular JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) to obfuscate database commands and escape detection.

That's according to application-security firm Claroty, whose researchers have found that WAFs produced by Amazon Web Services, Cloudflare, F5, Imperva, and Palo Alto fail to identify malicious SQL commands coded in the JSON format, allowing the forwarding of malicious requests to the back-end database. The research uncovered a fundamental mismatch: Major SQL databases understand commands written in JSON, while WAFs do not.

The technique allows attackers to access and, in some cases, change data as well as compromise the application, says Noam Moshe, a security researcher with Claroty's Team82 research team.

"By bypassing WAF protection, attackers can exploit other vulnerabilities in web applications and potentially take over said applications," he tells Dark Reading. "This is even more relevant in cloud-hosted applications, where many WAFs are deployed by default."

Web application firewalls are a critical layer to protect against application attacks, and often are used to give developers a bit more breathing room from nefarious types trying to exploit coding errors. While they are often relied on as a security crutch by many companies, WAFs are far from perfect and researchers and attackers have found many ways to bypass them. 

In a 2020 survey, for example, four in 10 security professionals claimed that at least half of application attacks had bypassed the WAF. In more recent research released in May, a team of academic researchers from Zhejiang University in China used a variety of methods of obfuscating injection attacks on databases, finding that — among other techniques — JSON could help hide the attacks from cloud-based WAFs.

"Detection signatures were not robust due to various vulnerabilities," the researchers said at the time. "Just adding comments or whitespace can bypass some WAFs, but the most effective mutation depends on specific WAFs."

**WAFs Don't "Get" JSON**

The researchers' first inkling of a potential attack came from unrelated experiments probing the Cambium Networks' wireless device management platform. The developers of that platform appended user-supplied data directly to the end of a query, a technique that convinced Claroty to investigate a more general application.

In the end, the researchers found they could append legitimate JSON queries to benign SQL code, allowing them to bypass the ability of WAFs to detect injection attacks, and giving attackers the ability to gain direct access to back-end databases, Claroty's research showed.

The technique worked against most major relational databases, including PostgreSQL, Microsoft’s MSSQL, MySQL, and SQLite. While the company had to overcome three technical limitations — such as initially only being able to retrieve numbers and not strings of characters — the researchers eventually created a general-purpose bypass for major Web application firewalls.

"After we bypassed all three limitations, we were left with a big payload allowing us to extract any data we chose," the researchers wrote in Claroty's advisory. "And indeed, when we used this payload we managed to exfiltrate sensitive information stored in the database ranging from session cookies to tokens, SSH keys and hashed passwords."

**Obfuscate to Escape**

Obfuscating malicious code to bypass anti-injection security measures has a long history. In 2013, for example, attackers began exploiting a vulnerability in the Ruby on Rails framework that allowed JSON code to be used to bypass authentication and inject SQL commands into a web application.

Companies should upgrade their WAFs solutions to gain the advantage of the latest fixes, Moshe says. The security researcher also stressed the companies should have extra security in place to catch future bypass techniques.

"It is important to not use a WAF solution as your sole line of defense," he says. "Instead, it is recommended to secure your applications using many security mechanisms, like limiting access to your application \[and\] enabling security features."

The researchers notified all five vendors of the vulnerable WAFs, each of which confirmed the issue and have since added JSON syntax support to their products, Claroty stated in its advisory.

Popular WAFs Subverted by JSON Bypass

Ensuring stronger in-house defenses is integral to retaining customer loyalty.

Companies are always absorbing costs that are seen as par for the course of budget planning: maintenance, upgrades, office supplies, wastage, shrinkage, etc. These costs ratchet up the price of a company's products and are then passed on to the consumer. Breaches in cybersecurity and paying out ransoms to hackers should be outside of this remit, and yet more than half of all companies admit to transferring the costs of data breaches on to consumers. Careless or ill-informed employees and other weaknesses in a company's protections lead to catastrophic losses to businesses of around $1,797,945 per minute — and the consumers are paying it off.

**Feeding the Virus**

If a company estimates the recovery costs from a ransomware attack to exceed the requested payment from the hacker, then it feels like a no-brainer — they're better off just cutting their losses and giving in to the cybercriminal's demands. The issue is that this creates an unvirtuous circle of paying the hacker, which enforces nefarious behavior and empowers hackers to increase the number and volume of ransoms.

When it comes to ransomware, 32% of companies pay off hackers, and, of that percentage, the average company only retrieves about 65% of its data. Giving in to hackers is counterintuitive. On an even more disturbing note, one study found that 80% of companies that paid a ransom were targeted a second time, with about 40% paying again and a majority of that 40% paying a higher ransom the second time round. This is ludicrous. With 33% of companies suspending operations following an attack, and nearly 40% resorting to laying off staff, it comes as no surprise that the downstream costs are picked up to some extent by the consumer.

**Targeting the Weaker Defenses**

As for smaller companies, about 50% of US small businesses don't have a cybersecurity plan in place, despite the fact that small businesses are three times more likely to be targeted by cybercriminals than larger companies. An average breach costs these companies around $200,000 and has put many out of business. It isn't simply the cost passed on to consumers, it's also the intangible assets, such as brand reputation.

When data is leaked and a site goes down, customers become rightly anxious when their information is sold to the highest bidder on the Dark Web. To safeguard against this, companies of all sizes should exploit automated solutions while training every single member of staff to recognize and report online threats. Paying a ransom does not guarantee the return of data, and for a smaller business, losing valuable customer information could cause long-term damage way beyond the initial attack.

**Forearmed Is Forewarned**

Cybersecurity professionals, governments, and law enforcement agencies all advise companies to avoid paying the hackers' ransoms. This strategy is affirmed by the success businesses have had in retrieving the stolen data and turning the lights back on — 78% of organizations who say they did not pay a ransom were able to fully restore systems and data without the decryption key. This evidently is not enough to reassure companies who, at the click of a dangerous email being opened, have lost sensitive information and access to their systems and are desperate to get back online. There are many preventative techniques businesses can take advantage of before it even gets to that stage.

Cybersecurity insurance is a way of mitigating financial damage associated with an attack, although a company must meet strict security eligibility requirements to qualify for coverage. This can include ensuring the implementation of measures such as multifactor authentication, endpoint detection and response, privileged access management, and patch management. A more cost-effective and equally necessary route is to conduct a company-wide exercise mimicking an attack — this can highlight frailties in the system. Before ever depositing a cent into a hacker's bank account, a company might consider employing a ransomware negotiator on retainer. Whether negotiation services are available should be determined well in advance in the incident response plan.

**Plan Before You Pay**

Cybersecurity costs are now considered inherent to running a company — and therefore they are referred straight to the consumer. There is no foolproof method for anticipating or preventing ransomware attacks, but there needs to be a real adjustment in how companies deal with them and where the final payment is shifted to.

Paying the piper emboldens the criminal syndicates behind the hackers and only serves to buttress ransom demands, opening the door to more attacks and burdening the consumer with higher prices. Businesses must assess their security perimeters more diligently, as ensuring stronger in-house defenses is integral to retaining customer loyalty, as well as to the survival of the company itself.

When Companies Compensate the Hackers, We All Foot the Bill

New Cortex Xpanse features give organizations visibility and control of their attack surfaces to discover, evaluate, and address cyber risks.

**SANTA CLARA, Calif.****,** **Dec. 12, 2022** **/PRNewswire/ —** Cyberattackers today use highly automated methods to quickly find and exploit weaknesses in target organizations — sometimes within minutes of a new vulnerability being disclosed. Most security teams try to find these weaknesses, but because they are doing this with manual tools they quickly fall behind. Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW), the global cybersecurity leader, introduced a new Cortex® capability: Xpanse Active Attack Surface Management, or Xpanse Active ASM. This helps security teams not just actively find but also proactively fix their known and unknown internet-connected risks. Xpanse Active ASM equips organizations with automation to give them the edge over attackers.

"While the fundamental need for attack surface management hasn't changed, the threat landscape today is much different. Organizations need an active defense system that operates faster than attackers can," said Matt Kraning, chief technology officer of Cortex for Palo Alto Networks. "As the leader and pioneer in the ASM market, we realize that customers need complete, accurate, and timely discovery and remediation of risky exposures in their internet-connected systems. With Xpanse Active ASM, we give defenders the ability not only to see their exposures instantly but also to shut them down automatically with no human labor required."

Available today, Xpanse Active ASM gives organizations the following tools and capabilities:

*   **Active Discovery**: Attackers use frequent, automated probes to find vulnerable and/or exposed assets, and organizations need tools that allow them to have the same visibility. Active Discovery refreshes its internet-scale database several times a day and uses supervised machine learning to accurately map these vulnerabilities back to an organization. This helps them get an outside-in view of their network — the same view attackers have.
*   **Active Learning**: Xpanse continuously processes discovery data, mapping new systems to the people responsible for each system. Active Learning continuously analyzes and maps the streamed discovery data to understand and prioritize top risks in real time. As a result, customers can stay ahead of attackers by closing down the riskiest exposures quickly.
*   **Active Response**: While instant discovery of vulnerabilities and/or exposures can give security teams a realistic risk picture, merely finding issues isn't enough. Automated remediation is key to staying ahead of attackers, saving response time in the SOC by eliminating the manual step of merely creating a ticket for analysts who then must spend multiple hours of manual effort actually tracking down the owner of the affected system and resolving the vulnerability. True automation is completely solving the end-to-end remediation process without human intervention. A critical new capability for security teams, Active Response includes native embedded automatic remediation capabilities that make use of active discovery data and active learning analysis to automatically shut down exposures before they allow threats into a network. It executes ASM-specific playbooks to triage, deactivate and repair vulnerabilities automatically.

The Xpanse Active Response module includes built-in end-to-end remediation playbooks. These playbooks automatically eliminate critical risks such as exposed Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) servers and insecure OpenSSH instances without any manual labor.

Following remediation, Active Response automatically validates that remediation was successful by scanning assets, compiling audited actions and placing investigation details into clear dashboards and reports.

Cortex Xpanse is used today by some of the most complex and demanding organizations in the world. Palo Alto Networks recently announced a multiyear deal for Cortex Xpanse to equip the Department of Defense with Internet Operations Management capabilities.

**Availability**

Cortex Xpanse Active ASM is now available globally with full support.

**Additional Resources**

*   Learn more about Xpanse Active ASM.
*   Register for the Xpanse Active ASM online event.
*   Follow Palo Alto Networks on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.

**About Palo Alto Networks**

Palo Alto Networks is the world's cybersecurity leader. We innovate to outpace cyberthreats, so organizations can embrace technology with confidence. We provide next-gen cybersecurity to thousands of customers globally, across all sectors. Our best-in-class cybersecurity platforms and services are backed by industry-leading threat intelligence and strengthened by state-of-the-art automation. Whether deploying our products to enable the Zero Trust Enterprise, responding to a security incident, or partnering to deliver better security outcomes through a world-class partner ecosystem, we're committed to helping ensure each day is safer than the one before. It's what makes us the cybersecurity partner of choice.

At Palo Alto Networks, we're committed to bringing together the very best people in service of our mission, so we're also proud to be the cybersecurity workplace of choice, recognized among Newsweek's Most Loved Workplaces (2021), Comparably Best Companies for Diversity (2021), and HRC Best Places for LGBTQ Equality (2022). For more information, visit www.paloaltonetworks.com.

_Palo Alto Networks, Cortex, and the Palo Alto Networks logo are registered trademarks of Palo Alto Networks, Inc. in_ _the United States_ _and in jurisdictions throughout the world. All other trademarks, trade names, or service marks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners. Any unreleased services or features (and any services or features not generally available to customers) referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available (or are not yet generally available to customers) and may not be delivered when expected or at all. Customers who purchase Palo Alto Networks applications should make their purchase decisions based on services and features currently generally available._

SOURCE: Palo Alto Networks Inc.

Palo Alto Networks Xpanse Active Attack Surface Management Automatically Remediates Cyber Risks Before They Lead to Cyberattacks

Pulse Connect VPN server software received several updates over the years, and thousands of hosts haven't patched.

Nearly 4,500 Pulse Connect Security SSL virtual private network hosts are running unpatched server software, leaving them open to cyberattacks.

A new analysis from Censys of the Pulse Connect Secure VPN ecosystem of 30,266 hosts found that although several notable flaws have been discovered and patched over the past few years, 4,460 hosts are still running vulnerable versions. Besides Pulse advisories, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in April 2021 issued an alert that some of the documented Pulse Connect bugs were under active attack, Censys added.

The Censys Pulse Connect report includes a breakdown of the unpatched versions, finding the biggest chunk of vulnerable hosts — 1,033 — is in the US.

Overall, Censys said the team was trying to "... paint a picture of the current state of vulnerable Pulse Connect secure devices that are still running on the Internet," the report added.

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Nearly 4,500 Pulse Connect Secure VPNs Left Unpatched and Vulnerable

Funding and new leadership to drive innovation and growth in cloud-native application resiliency; round led by SKK Ventures with T-Mobile and Telefonica.

**FRAMINGHAM, Mass., Dec. 12, 2022 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/** — Trilio, a leading provider of cloud-native data protection, announced today that it has secured $17 million in funding to drive further innovation and growth in the cloud-native application resiliency market. The company also announced the appointment of enterprise software executive Massood Zarrabian as CEO. Zarrabian was formerly Chairman and CEO of BA Insight.

"Trilio is a trusted partner for organizations that are driving digital transformation leveraging cloud-native technologies," said Massood Zarrabian, CEO of Trilio. "The company has established a leading position in the new growth category of Kubernetes with unique application resiliency technology, strong partnerships and a passionate team. Our goal is to leverage those resources to help customers meet their mandates for multi-cloud application mobility, ransomware protection and compliance with disaster recovery protocols. We're pleased to have the continued confidence of SKK Ventures and added support from leading innovators such as Telefonica and T-Mobile, who are also valued customers."

The company will leverage the capital to increase focus on product development, engineering and customer operations. The additional funding is part of the company’s Series B round and was led by SKK Ventures with participation from T-Mobile Ventures, Wayra Telefónica Innovation, Raiven Capital, Genesis Accel, 406 Ventures and Jack Egan. This brings Trilio's total capital raised to $36 million.

In his most recent role, Zarrabian led BA Insight's transformation and growth into a multi-platform enterprise search software company leading to its acquisition by Upland in 2022. Prior to BA Insight, Zarrabian was President and CEO of OutStart where he established the company as a market leader with hundreds of customers. He also served as President of the eService Division of Broadbase Software, a leading provider of eCRM solutions.

David Safaii, who has been CEO since 2014, has transitioned to the role of Executive Chairman of the Board, focusing on the strategic needs of the organization, including corporate and business development.

"Trilio has earned notable success under David's leadership, including building brand awareness, a strong team of dedicated professionals, and a roster of Tier 1 enterprise-class customers from around the world. His expertise will play a vital role going forward as the executive chairman," said Rob Scott, Member of the Trilio Board of Directors.

Scott continued, "We're equally excited to bring on Massood Zarrabian as CEO. Massood is a seasoned operator with experience in driving and scaling software companies like Trilio to the next level. Massood's track record of building teams, culture, and outcomes makes him a great fit for our organization as we move forward into this next chapter."

Additionally, the company announced Christina Lattuca as CFO and VP of Operations. Lattuca joins Trilio to lead the company's finance, accounting, business intelligence, legal and human resources functions. She was most recently CFO of Cygilant, a leading provider of cybersecurity-as-a-service, prior to its acquisition by SilverSky. She has more than 25 years of financial management expertise developing and implementing financial planning, controls, and reporting for international high-tech companies.

**Investor Quotes**

— Stephen Brackett, President and Managing Member of SKK: "SKK believes in the Trilio mission, and we are encouraged by the company's continued progress in the fast-growing market for cloud-native application resiliency. The growth in the company's technology and partner ecosystem is a strong indicator of how the leadership team has elevated the Trilio brand as both a technology innovator and a trusted go-to-market partner."

— Jeff Pellegrini, VP of Investments, T-Mobile Ventures: "Our enthusiasm for Trilio's technology, product and customer-centric approach is driven not just by the due diligence of an investor but by the intensive research of a customer. T-Mobile did an extensive investigation of the players in this space before selecting TrilioVault as its cloud-native application resiliency service. As a result, we became convinced that backing the company strategically was the right move. We're happy to participate in this funding round and support the company's next phase of innovation and growth."

TrilioVault for Kubernetes is a leading cloud-native data protection platform helping organizations migrate to new cloud infrastructure, recover quickly from ransomware attacks and comply with disaster recovery mandates. Trilio is well-positioned to capitalize on a rapidly growing market for cloud-native management solutions. According to IDC, 70% of all net-new apps in production will be cloud-native by 2024, up from just 10% in 2020. This momentous shift to containerized applications means enterprises need robust and reliable data protection for Kubernetes-based applications.

**Recent Milestones**  
— General availability of TrilioVault for Kubernetes v3.0, including Continuous Restore and Red Hat OpenShift Anywhere support.

— Pay-as-you-go consumption-based billing capability for AWS Marketplace customers using Amazon EKS.

**About Trilio**

Trilio is a leader in cloud-native data protection and management for applications using Kubernetes and OpenStack. Our TrilioVault technology is trusted by cloud architects and DevOps engineers for backup and recovery, migration, ransomware protection and application mobility. Customers in telecom, defense, automotive and financial services leverage TrilioVault to easily migrate to new cloud infrastructure, recover quickly from ransomware attacks and comply with disaster recovery protocols. Trilio.io, Twitter and LinkedIn.

SOURCE: Trilio

Trilio Raises $17M, Appoints Massood Zarrabian as CEO

Texas and Maryland this week joined three other states in prohibiting accessing the popular social media app from state-owned devices.

Texas this week become the fifth US state to ban the TikTok app on government-owned devices over concerns about the social media app harvesting sensitive data from user devices and potentially making it available to the Chinese government.

The question now is whether private companies will implement similar restrictions on use of the popular social media app on devices that employees use to access enterprise data and applications.

**Unacceptable Risk**

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday said he had ordered all state agencies to ban TikTok on any state-issued devices effective immediately. Abbott said he has also given each state agency until Feb. 15, 2023 to implement their own policies regarding the use of TikTok on personal devices belonging to employees — subject to approval by the Texas Department of Public Safety.

"TikTok harvests vast amounts of data from its users' devices — including when, where, and how they conduct internet activity — and offers this trove of potentially sensitive information to the Chinese government," Abbott said, echoing concerns that many others have expressed recently.

Abbott pointed to China's 2017 National Intelligence Law, which obligates Chinese companies and individuals to assist in state intelligence-gathering activities, and a recent warning from FBI Director Christopher Wray about TikTok's use in influence operations, as reasons for his decision.

Abbott's order came just one day after Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan issued an emergency directive prohibiting the use of TikTok and other Chinese and Russian-influenced products on state-issued devices, citing the "unacceptable" cybersecurity risk they presented to the state.

His order applies to TikTok, Huawei Technologies, ZTE Corp., Tencent Holdings products including WeChat, Alibaba products including AliPay, and Kaspersky. Hogan's directive requires all Maryland state agencies to remove these products from state networks within 14 days and to implement network-based restrictions preventing access to these services.

Like Abbott, Hogan also cited Wray's warning about TikTok presenting a national security threat in his statement, as well as a recent NBC News report about Chinese hackers stealing millions of dollars in COVID-related benefits.

The three other states that have issued similar directives over similar concerns are South Dakota, South Carolina, and Nebraska. In addition, the US Departments of Defense, State, and Homeland Security have all banned TikTok on federally issued devices. This July, members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence sent a letter to the chair of the Federal Trade Commission urging the agency to investigate what it claimed were deceptive practices by TikTok with regard to its data privacy practices.

**Concerns Mount Despite TikTok's Assurances**

The growing number of bans on the use of TikTok on state and federal devices and networks is sure to encourage other state governments, federal agencies, and private companies to weigh the security and privacy implications of using the social media app.

In a Senate hearing earlier this year, TikTok COO Vanessa Pappas maintained that TikTok does not operate inside China and the app is not available there. She has described the company as incorporated in the US and compliant with US laws. Though TikTok does have employees based in China, the company has strict access control over what data those employees can access and where TikTok stores the data, Pappas testified. Earlier this year, the company also announced it has launched an initiative called Project Texas designed to bolster confidence in the safeguards the company has put in place and will put in place to protect US user data and national security interests. TikTok now stores 100% of US user data in the US in Oracle's cloud environment and is working with Oracle to implement advanced data security controls, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said at the time.

In an emailed comment to Dark Reading, TikTok spokesperson Jamal Brown expressed disappointment over the recent developments. "We believe the concerns driving these decisions are largely fueled by misinformation about our company," Brown says. "We are happy to continue having constructive meetings with state policymakers to discuss our privacy and security practices. We are disappointed that many state agencies, offices, and universities will no longer be able to use TikTok to build communities and connect with constituents."

Despite such assurances, the fact that a China-based entity called ByteDance Ltd owns TikTok and that the Chinese government owns at least a partial stake in one of its subsidiaries continues to be a major source of concern for many. Recent reports about threat actors using the platform to distribute malware have not helped matters.

"The specific situation with TikTok being based in China and being subject to Chinese law, which can give the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) access to user data, is giving many people pause," says Mike Parkin, senior technical engineer at Vulcan Cyber.

Social media applications like TikTok can be problematic for organizations as well. "They are immensely popular, especially with the generations that have grown up with social media," he says. It’s entirely reasonable that organizations would restrict what apps get installed on their organization-provided devices and recommend their employees don’t install it on any personal systems they use to access enterprise systems, Parkin says.

On devices provided by organizations, a ban on TikTok would be absolutely enforceable, he says. But the same wouldn't be true of personally owned and unmanaged devices, he notes. "The organization can lay out the requirements, but enforcing them becomes much more challenging both ethically and legally," Parkin says.

Patrick Tiquet, vice president of security and architecture at Keeper Security, says the rapid proliferation of BYOD policies and distributed remote work environments has contributed to an exponential increase in risk to endpoints and applications for both public and private sector entities. "This puts organizations in a precarious situation, as they must weigh the convenience and cost-savings of BYOD policies with the significant cybersecurity risk," Tiquet says. "Banning specific apps may seem like a simple and straightforward approach to ensuring security, but with a BYOD policy, it is difficult to enforce."

Source

DARKReading