Russian-speaking cyberattackers boast they are behind disruption of Colorado, Kentucky, and Mississippi government websites.

A hacktvist group with ties to the Russian government has claimed credit for cyberattacks on the government websites of three US states: Colorado, Kentucky, and Mississippi. 

The sites for Mississippi and Kentucky were functioning Thursday, following the Russian cyberattacks, while the Colorado State Official Web Portal was displaying a message that the "homepage is currently offline," earlier in the day. By Thursday afternoon, the homepage appeared back online. 

Reports of the compromise of state government systems by the so-called Killnet hacktivist group is particularly alarming in light of upcoming November US midterm elections, which rely on individual states to administer voting. 

"In the case of these state government websites, the disruption of service, while inconvenient, is far less of a problem than a data breach involving the theft of personally identifiable information," Erich Kron, security awareness advocate with KnowBe4, said in an emailed statement in reaction to news of the cyberattack. "Whether it's the defacement of websites, or taking them offline with attacks such as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, it does erode public trust in the organizations that these websites represent."

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Russian Hackers Shut Down US State Government Websites

The trend, spotted by Consumer Reports, could mean good news for organizations struggling to contain remote work challenges.

A survey on US consumer attitudes toward online privacy and security holds some potentially good news for enterprise organizations in an era of work-from-home and hybrid work models.

The survey of 2,103 US adults, conducted by Consumer Reports (CR), showed substantial improvement in consumer cybersecurity and privacy practices over the past three years. Many more individuals appear aware of the security and privacy risks associated with their digital footprint, and have modified their behavior significantly to try and protect it better.

Some of the changes — such as a surge in the use of multifactor authentication (MFA) — appear tied to the fact that more and more organizations require it for accessing online accounts and services. That said, a lot of the behavioral changes are likely also being driven by a higher awareness of cyber-risks, several security experts say.

"The harsh reality is that the explosive growth in ransomware attacks and data breaches has raised awareness of cybersecurity to a level we’ve never seen before," says Darren Guccione, CEO and co-founder at Keeper Security. "When people are unable to get fuel at the gas pump or their bank data is leaked on the Dark Web, they immediately understand the tangible impact cyberattacks can have on their personal lives."

The trend has upside for enterprise organizations that are struggling to contain security challenges tied to the use of insecure home networks and devices by their work-from-home and remote employees. It could mean less of an uphill battle for them, says Brian Dunagan, vice president of engineering at Retrospect, a StorCentric company.

It suggests that people are taking communications regarding security directives seriously and are taking the time to read, learn, and ask questions if necessary — which is a notable shift. 

"Now is the time for security leaders to make the case for increased security budgets, whether it is added personnel or added security technology solutions," Dunagan says.

**Significant Security Improvements for Consumers**

When it comes to better consumer adoption of certain security practices, 88% of survey respondents, for instance, said they use what CR describes as strong passwords — eight characters or more, with upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols — to protect access to their Wi-Fi networks. That's up from 74% in the last survey. Similarly, 85%, up from 69%, have implemented measures such as requiring a password, PIN, TouchID, or FaceID to unlock their smartphone.

The survey revealed a greater understanding among US consumers of the potential privacy and security implications of allowing mobile applications the unfettered ability to track their location and movements. Eighty-one percent of consumers now only allow an app to access their location when they are using the application. Eighty percent claimed they did not install applications that they perceived as collecting too much information about them, and 78% block apps from having access to the camera, location, or contacts if they think the app does not require that access.

The numbers in each instance were significantly higher compared with the 2019 survey. For example, just 60% blocked app access to their cameras and contacts three years ago, and 65% ensured a mobile app had access to their location only when the app was in use.

One of the most significant changes was in the use of multifactor authentication: 77% of survey respondents said they now use MFA, up from 50% in 2019. Security experts consider MFA to be a fundamental security best practice for protecting online accounts against takeover and compromise.

"Many products and companies have started to encourage consumers to enable better cyber hygiene," says Amira Dhalla, director of impact partnerships and programs at Consumer Reports. **"**It's common that when you log in to your bank or email account, they encourage or mandate \[that\] you have to use multifactor authentication."

**Consumers Are More in Control, but Work Needs to Be Done**

Dhalla says that CR's survey showed that consumers overall feel more in control of their personal data because of the steps they are taking to control and secure it. 

“As more security and privacy tools have become available and marketed to everyday consumers, they feel they have more at their disposal to combat the security of their data," she notes. "\[They\] are placing more responsibility on themselves to protect themselves.”

At the same time, they are less secure with how companies are handling and storing their data. At least 75% of the respondents in the CR survey expressed concern about the privacy of personal data that companies collected online. "We know consumers are holding themselves more accountable. They just need knowledge and tools to be able to protect themselves more."

Roger Grimes, data-driven defense evangelist at KnowBe4, perceives the improved consumer habits as the result of a trickle-down effect. "What's largely driving the change is businesses are now taking cybersecurity threats more seriously, which trickles down to consumers because they work for those businesses and are impacted as customers," he says. "If your employer is training you to be more cybersecurity aware on the job, those are also skills you can apply at home and teach to your family."

Grimes says while the trends in the CR survey are encouraging, it's also important to view them in the right perspective. He points to the survey's definition of what constitutes a strong password as one example. "Eight-character passwords, even with complexity, are no longer considered secure," he says. "For someone's password to be truly secure it must be 12 characters or longer and fully random or 20 characters or longer if made up out of someone's head."

Similarly, using MFA alone is not sufficient, if it is not also phishing resistant, he says. "Unfortunately, 90% to 95% of MFA is easily phish-able \[and\] no harder to steal or bypass than a password. Telling people to use any MFA is bad advice."

US Consumers Are Finally Becoming More Security & Privacy Conscious

Cybercriminals are focusing more and more on crafting special email attacks that evade Microsoft Defender and Office security.

Increasingly, cyberattackers are laser-focused on crafting attacks that are specialized to bypass Microsoft's default security, researchers say — which is going to require a shift in defense posture for organizations going forward.

"Many hackers think of email and Microsoft 365 as their initial points of compromise, \[so they\] will test and verify that they are able to bypass Microsoft’s default security," according to a new report from Avanan that flags an uptick in its customer telemetry of malicious emails landing in Microsoft-protected email boxes. "This does not mean that Microsoft's security got worse. It means that the hackers got better, faster, and learned more methods to obfuscate and bypass the default security."

Some of the eye-catching numbers in the report, gleaned from analyzing 3 million corporate emails in the past year, include:

*   About 19% of phishing emails observed by Avanan bypassed Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) and Defender.
*   Since 2020, Defender's missed phishing rates among Avanan's customers have increased by 74%.
*   On average, Defender sends only 7% of phishing messages received by Avanan customers to the Junk folder.
*   In good news: Microsoft flagged and blocked 93% of business email compromise attempts.
*   Microsoft catches 90% of emails booby-trapped with malware-laden attachments.

Again, the numbers speak to the evolution of phishing and the fact that attackers are increasingly using tactics like leveraging legitimate services to avoid including obviously malicious links in emails, using masking techniques like vanity URLs, and avoiding attachments altogether.

To defend themselves against these custom-built attacks, organizations can go to basic defense-in-depth approaches with four main prongs, according to Roger Grimes, data-driven defense evangelist at KnowBe4.

Those prongs include: A better focus on preventing social engineering, using a best defense-in-depth combination of policies, technical defenses, and education; patch software and firmware, especially any that are listed on CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerability Catalog; use phishing-resistant multifactor authentication (MFA); and using different, secure, passwords for every site and service where MFA cannot be used.

"There are no other defenses, besides these four, that would have the most impact on decreasing cybersecurity risk," Grimes says. "It is the world's lack of focus on these four defenses that has made hackers and malware so successful for so long."

Hackers Have It Out for Microsoft Email Defenses

The malware-as-a-service group Eternity is selling a one-stop shop for various malware modules it's been distributing individually via a subscription model on Telegram.

An emerging Russia-linked threat group is ramping up its malware-as-a-service operation by packaging several of its modules into a multifunctional malware offering, dubbed LilithBot, that it's peddling via Telegram.

The Eternity group — aka EternityTeam or Eternity Project — has been active since at least January and uses an "as-a-service" subscription model to distribute different Eternity-branded malware modules in underground forums. Its individual malicious offerings include a stealer, miner, botnet, ransomware, worm with a dropper, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) bot, researchers from Zscaler ThreatLabz revealed in a blog post published this week.

In a recently observed campaign, Eternity put a number of those modules together into "one-stop shopping for these various payloads," Zscaler security researcher Shatak Jain and senior program manager Aditya Sharma wrote in the post. The threat actor is distributing the multifunctional LilithBot malware through its dedicated Telegram group and a Tor link.

"In addition to its primary botnet functionality, it also had built-in stealer, clipper, and miner capabilities," the researchers wrote of the LilithBot campaign, which appears to have multiple variants.

**Who Is EternityTeam?**

The EternityTeam has links to the Russian Jester Group and offers a malware toolkit sold through a malware-as-a-service subscription service advertised via a dedicated Telegram channel, named @EternityDeveloper.

Other security companies have also studied the group. Security firm Cyberint in January identified the group and its various malware modules as an emerging force to be reckoned with on the underground cybercrime industry. In May, research from security firm Sekoia.IO identified the group as a new "prominent malware seller" and provided analysis on the various tools in its arsenal.

Typically, EternityTeam offers different services individually — including a stealer, miner, clipper, ransomware, worm plus dropper, and DDoS Bot — and accepts payment through various cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero, and Tether/USDT, among others.

Eternity also offers customized viruses and will create viruses with add-on features upon customer request. The price of the various malware the group sells ranges from US$90 to $470, with its ransomware product priced the highest.

The cybercrime group runs a tight ship: Its business is extremely "user-friendly" for a number of reasons, the Zscaler researchers noted. It's easy for cybercriminals to purchase and operate via Tor, and the service accepts crypto as payment; it's customizable to fit clients' needs; and it's regularly updated at no additional charge, they said. The group also offers add-on discounts and referral rewards to its customers.

**LilithBot Campaign**

As legitimate businesses often see the value in bundling services together, so do cybercrime operators. LilithBot is an example of this practice, with Eternity selling the multifunctional malware as a subscription, similar to how it distributes its individual malware-as-a-service modules.

There are plenty of other examples of attackers distributing malware that relies not on one core competency but a combined range of malicious functionality in one package. The Chaos malware is one example of this, having evolved recently from its original ransomware builder into a DDoS and cryptomining tool.

Though LilithBot is different in that it is starting out as a combination of a threat group's existing services rather than evolving into a new type of malware, it's similar in that it packs a malicious, multifunctional punch.

LilithBot initiates its nefarious activity by registering as a botnet on an affected system and then decrypts itself step by step to drop its configuration file, the researchers said. It goes on to steal files and user information, which it then uploads via a zip file to a command-and-control (C2) server using the Tor network. LilithBot also uses fake certificates to bypass detections and deliver its various functionality as a stealer, cryptominer, and clipper.

Zscaler researchers observed two variants of LilithBot being distributed by Eternity, with slight differences in the main functions of each release, they said. Specifically, some commands that were present in earlier variants were absent from the newest variant that researchers analyzed.

The latest version of LilithBot no longer checks for the presence of various DLLs related to virtual software like Sandboxie, 360 Total Security, Avast, and COMODO Avs, nor for the Win32\_PortConnector that represents physical connection ports such as DB-25 pin male, Centronics, or PS/2 to ensure the malware is running on a physical machine rather than a virtual one.

"It is likely that the group is still performing these functions," the researchers wrote, "but doing so in more sophisticated ways: such as performing it dynamically, encrypting the functions like other regions of code, or using other advanced tactics."

Russia-Linked Cybercrime Group Hawks Combo of Malicious Services With LilithBot

While organizations wait for an official patch for the two zero-day flaws in Microsoft Exchange, they should scan their networks for signs of exploitation and apply these mitigations.

Microsoft has confirmed two new zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server (CVE-2022-41040 and CVE-2022-41082) are being exploited in "limited, targeted attacks." In the absence of an official patch, organizations should check their environments for signs of exploitation and then apply the emergency mitigation steps.

*   CVE-2022-41040 — Server-side request forgery, allowing authenticated attackers to make requests posing as the affected machine
*   CVE-2022-41082 — Remote Code Execution, allowing authenticated attackers to execute arbitrary PowerShell.

"Currently, there are no known proof-of-concept scripts or exploitation tooling available in the wild," wrote John Hammond, a threat hunter with Huntress. However, that just means the clock is ticking. With renewed focus on the vulnerability it is just a matter of time before new exploits or proof-of-concept scripts become available.

**Steps to Detect Exploitation**

The first vulnerability — the server-side request forgery flaw — can be used to achieve the second — the remote code execution vulnerability — but the attack vector requires the adversary to already be authentication on the server.

Per GTSC, organizations can check if their Exchange Servers have already been exploited by running the following PowerShell command:

Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Path <Path\_IIS\_Logs> -Filter "\*.log" | Select-String -Pattern 'powershell.\*Autodiscover\\.json.\*\\@.\*200

GTSC has also developed a tool to search for signs of exploitation and released it on GitHub. _This list will be updated as other companies release their tools._

**Microsoft-Specific Tools**

*   According to Microsoft, there are queries in Microsoft Sentinel that could be used to hunt for this specific threat. One such query is the Exchange SSRF Autodiscover ProxyShell detection, which was created in response to ProxyShell. The new Exchange Server Suspicious File Downloads query specifically looks for suspicious downloads in IIS logs.
*   Alerts from Microsoft Defender for Endpoint regarding possible web shell installation, possible IIS web shell, suspicious Exchange Process Execution, possible exploitation of Exchange Server vulnerabilities, suspicious processes indicative of a web shell, and possible IIS compromise can also be signs the Exchange Server has been compromised via the two vulnerabilities.
*   Microsoft Defender will detect the post-exploitation attempts as _Backdoor:ASP/Webshell.Y_ and _Backdoor:Win32/RewriteHttp.A_.

Several security vendors have announced updates to their products to detect exploitation, as well.

Huntress said it monitors approximately 4,500 Exchange servers and is currently investigating those servers for potential signs of exploitation in these servers. "At the moment, Huntress has not seen any signs of exploitation or indicators of compromise on our partners' devices," Hammond wrote.

**Mitigation Steps to Take**

Microsoft promised that it is fast-tracking a fix. Until then, organizations should apply the following mitigations to Exchange Server to protect their networks.

Per Microsoft, on-premises Microsoft Exchange customers should apply new rules through the URL Rewrite Rule module on IIS server.

*   In IIS Manager -> Default Web Site -> Autodiscover -> URL Rewrite -> Actions, select Request Blocking and add the following string to the URL Path:

.\*autodiscover\\.json.\*\\@.\*Powershell.\*

The condition input should be set to {REQUEST\_URI}

*   Block ports 5985 (HTTP) and 5986 (HTTPS) as they are used for Remote PowerShell.

_**If you are using Exchange Online:**_

Microsoft said Exchange Online customers are not affected and do not need to take any action. However, organizations using Exchange Online are likely to have hybrid Exchange environments, with a mix of on-prem and cloud systems. They should follow the above guidance to protect the on-prem servers.

Worried About the Exchange Zero-Day? Here's What to Do

Weeks after it breached the Los Angeles Unified School District, the Vice Society ransomware group is threatening to leak the stolen data, unless they get paid.

The clock is ticking for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) — the second largest in the country. Following a ransomware attack at the beginning of the month, it has now has been given an ultimatum: meet Vice Society's ransom payment demands or have their data released to the public for anyone, including phishers and other cybercriminals, to access.

Brett Callow, a threat analyst for Emsisoft, shared a screen capture of the Vice Society leak site that shows the ransomware group is threatening to publish the goods in just a few days.

"The papers will be published by London time on October 4, 2022 at 12:00 a.m." the notice read.

The district has not provided an update on the types of information the cyberattackers are threatening to release, one district parent told Dark Reading.

"I do wish they'd sent out a notice about what personal information of our kids and ourselves could be included in this planned release," she says. "And whether we could do anything about reducing harm."

**LAUSD Refuses to Pay Ransom**

The school district acknowledged the attack in a Sept. 5 statement and said it was working with law enforcement to investigate the breach. Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent Alberto Carvalho confirmed a ransomware demand was made after the cyberattack was announced, and that the district was not paying up.

"We can confirm that there was a demand made," Carvalho said during a Sept. 20 interview with the Los Angeles Times. "There has been no response to the demand."

At press time, all of the systems used by parents and students are fully functioning, the district parent confirms.

"I'm generally supportive of how the district has handled the breach — they brought in the Feds immediately and stood firm on not paying the ransom," she says. "I could quibble here and there about communication and the actual implementation of the password reset, but all things considered, they've done OK."

The LAUSD hit was part of a series of ransomware attacks against schools by Vice Society, which hoped to capitalize on the busy back-to-school season.

The wave of early September attacks also prompted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) to issue a warning about Vice Society's campaign against educational institutions.

LA School District Ransomware Attackers Now Threaten to Leak Stolen Data

It's time to dispel notions of deepfakes as an emergent threat. All the pieces for widespread attacks are in place and readily available to cybercriminals, even unsophisticated ones.

Malicious campaigns involving the use of deepfake technologies are a lot closer than many might assume. Furthermore, mitigation and detection of them are hard.

A new study of the use and abuse of deepfakes by cybercriminals shows that all the needed elements for widespread use of the technology are in place and readily available in underground markets and open forums. The study by Trend Micro shows that many deepfake-enabled phishing, business email compromise (BEC), and promotional scams are already happening and are quickly reshaping the threat landscape.

**No Longer a Hypothetical Threat**

"From hypothetical and proof-of-concept threats, \[deepfake-enabled attacks\] have moved to the stage where non-mature criminals are capable of using such technologies," says Vladimir Kropotov, security researcher with Trend Micro and the main author of a report on the topic that the security vendor released this week. 

'We already see how deepfakes are integrated into attacks against financial institutions, scams, and attempts to impersonate politicians," he says, adding that what's scary is that many of these attacks use identities of real people — often scraped from content they post on social media networks.

One of the main takeaways from Trend Micro's study is the ready availability of tools, images, and videos for generating deepfakes. The security vendor found, for example, that multiple forums, including GitHub, offer source code for developing deepfakes to anyone who wants it. Similarly, enough high-quality images and videos of ordinary individuals and public figures are available for bad actors to be able to create millions of fake identities or to impersonate politicians, business leaders, and other famous personalities.

Demand for deepfake services and people with expertise on the topic is also growing in underground forums. Trend Micro found ads from criminals searching for these skills to carry out cryptocurrency scams and fraud targeting individual financial accounts. 

"Actors can already impersonate and steal the identities of politicians, C-level executives, and celebrities," Trend Micro said in its report. "This could significantly increase the success rate of certain attacks such as financial schemes, short-lived disinformation campaigns, public opinion manipulation, and extortion."

**A Plethora of Risks**

There's a growing risk also of stolen or recreated identities belonging to ordinary people being used to defraud the impersonated victims, or to conduct malicious activities under their identities. 

In many discussion groups, Trend Micro found users actively discussing ways to use deepfakes to bypass banking and other account verification controls — especially those involving video and face-to-face verification methods.

For example, criminals could use a victim's identity and use a deepfake video of them to open bank accounts, which could later be used for money laundering activities. They can similarly hijack accounts, impersonate top-level executives at organizations to initiate fraudulent money transfer or plant fake evidence to extort individuals, Trend Micro said. 

Devices like Amazon's Alexa and the iPhone, which use voice or face recognition, could soon be on the list of target devices for deepfake-based attacks, the security vendor noted.

"Since many companies are still working in remote or mixed mode, there is an increased risk of personnel impersonation in conference calls which can affect internal and external business communications and sensitive business processes and financial flows," Kropotov says.

Trend Micro isn't alone in sounding the alarm on deepfakes. A recent online survey that VMware conducted of 125 cybersecurity and incident response professionals also found that deepfake-enabled threats are not just coming — they are already here. A startling 66% — up 13% from 2021 — of the respondents said they had experienced a security incident involving deepfake use over the past 12 months.

"Examples of deepfake attacks \[already\] witnessed include CEO voice calls to a CFO leading to a wire transfer, as well as employee calls to IT to initiate a password reset," says Rick McElroy, VMware's principal cybersecurity strategist.

**Few Mitigations for Deepfake Attacks & Detection Is Hard**

Generally speaking, these types of attacks can be effective, because no technological fixes are available yet to address the challenge, McElroy says. 

"Given the rising use and sophistication in creating deepfakes, I see this as one of the biggest threats to organizations from a fraud and scam perspective moving forward," he warns. 

The most effective way to mitigate the threat currently is to increase awareness of the problem among finance, executive, and IT teams who are the main targets for these social engineering attacks. 

"Organizations can consider low-tech methods to break the cycle. This can include using a challenge and passphrase amongst executives when wiring money out of an organization or having a two-step and verified approval process," he says.

Gil Dabah, co-founder and CEO of Piaano, also recommends strict access control as a mitigating measure. No user should have access to big chunks of personal data and organizations need to set rate limits as well as anomaly detection, he says.

"Even systems like business intelligence, which require big data analysis, should access only masked data," Dabah notes, adding that no sensitive personal data should be kept in plaintext and data such as PII should be tokenized and protected.

Meanwhile on the detection front, developments in technologies such as AI-based Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have made deepfake detection harder. "That means we can't rely on content containing 'artifact' clues that there has been alteration," says Lou Steinberg, co-founder and managing partner at CTM Insights.

To detect manipulated content, organizations need fingerprints or signatures that prove something is unchanged, he adds.

"Even better is to take micro-fingerprints over portions of the content and be able to identify what's changed and what hasn't," he says. "That's very valuable when an image has been edited, but even more so when someone is trying to hide an image from detection."

**Three Broad Threat Categories**

Steinberg says deepfake threats fall into three broad categories. The first is disinformation campaigns mostly involving edits to legitimate content to change the meaning. As an example, Steinberg points to nation-state actors using fake news images and videos on social media or inserting someone into a photo that wasn't present originally — something that is often used for things like implied product endorsements or revenge porn.

Another category involves subtle changes to images, logos, and other content to bypass automated detection tools such as those used to detect knockoff product logos, images used in phishing campaigns or even tools for detecting child pornography.

The third category involves synthetic or composite deepfakes that are derived from a collection of originals to create something completely new, Steinberg says. 

"We started seeing this with audio a few years back, using computer synthesized speech to defeat voiceprints in financial services call centers," he says. "Video is now being used for things like a modern version of business email compromise or to damage a reputation by having someone 'say' something they never said."

Reshaping the Threat Landscape: Deepfake Cyberattacks Are Here

While ransomware seems stalled, business email compromise (BEC) attacks continue to make profits from the ProxyShell and Log4j vulnerabilities, nearly doubling in the latest quarter.

While published trends in ransomware attacks have been contradictory — with some firms tracking more incidents and other fewer — business email compromise (BEC) attacks continue to have proven success against organizations.

BEC cases, as a share of all incident-response cases, more than doubled in the second quarter of the year, to 34% from 17% in the first quarter of 2022. That's according to Arctic Wolf's "1H 2022 Incident Response Insights" report, published on Sept. 29, which found that specific industries — including financial, insurance, business services, and law firms, as well as government agencies — experienced more than double their previous number of cases, the company said.

Overall, the number of BEC attacks encountered per email box has grown by 84% in the first half of 2022, according to data from cybersecurity firm Abnormal Security.  

Meanwhile, so far this year, threat reports released by organizations have revealed contradictory trends for ransomware. Arctic Wolf and the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) have seen drops in the number of successful ransomware attacks, while business customers seem to be encountering ransomware less often, according to security firm Trellix. At the same time, network security firm WatchGuard had a contrary take, noting that its detection of ransomware attacks skyrocketed 80% in the first quarter of 2022, compared with all of last year.

**The Gleam of BEC Outshines Ransomware**

The surging state of BEC landscape is unsurprising, says Daniel Thanos, vice president of Arctic Wolf Labs, because BEC attacks offer cybercriminals advantages over ransomware. Specifically, BEC gains do not rely on the value of cryptocurrency, and attacks are often more successful at escaping notice while in progress.

"Our research shows that threat actors are unfortunately very opportunistic," he says.  

For that reason, BEC — which uses social engineering and internal systems to steal funds from businesses — continues to be a stronger source of revenue for cybercriminals. In 2021, BEC attacks accounted for 35%, or $2.4 billion, of the $6.9 billion in potential losses tracked by the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), while ransomware remained a small fraction (0.7%) of the total. 

In terms of revenue from individual attacks on businesses, the Arctic Wolf analysis noted that the median ransom for the first quarter was about $450,000, but the research team did not provide the average loss for victims of BEC attacks.

**Shifting Financially Motivated Cyber Tactics**

Abnormal Security found in its threat report earlier this year that that the vast majority of all cybercrime incidents (81%) involved external vulnerabilities in a few highly targeted products — namely, Microsoft's Exchange server and VMware's Horizon virtual-desktop software — as well as poorly configured remote services, such as Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).

Unpatched versions of Microsoft Exchange in particular are vulnerable to the ProxyShell exploit (and now the ProxyNotShell bugs), which uses three vulnerabilities to give attackers administrative access to an Exchange system. While Microsoft patched the issues more than a year ago, the company did not publicize the vulnerabilities until a few months later.

VMware Horizon is a popular virtual desktop and app product vulnerable to the Log4Shell attack that exploited the infamous Log4j 2.0 vulnerabilities.

Both avenues are fueling BEC campaigns specifically, researchers have noted. 

In addition, many cyber gangs are using data or credentials stolen from businesses during ransomware attacks to fuel BEC campaigns.

"As organizations and employees become more aware of one tactic, threat actors will adjust their strategies in an effort to stay one step ahead of email security platforms and security awareness training," Abnormal Security said earlier this year. "The changes noted in this research are just some of the indicators that those shifts are already occurring, and organizations should expect to see more in the future."

    

81% of incidents involved an external vulnerability or weakness. Source: Arctic Wolf

Social engineering is popular, too, as ever. While external attacks on vulnerabilities and misconfigurations are the most prevalent way that attackers gain access to systems, human users and their credentials continue to be a popular target in BEC attacks, says Arctic Wolf's Thanos.

"BEC cases are often the result of social engineering, compared to ransomware cases, which are often caused by exploitation of unpatched vulnerabilities or remote access tools," he says. "In our experience, threat actors are more likely to attack a company via remote exploit than dupe a human.  

**How to Avoid BEC Compromise**

To avoid being a victim, basic security measures can go a long way, Arctic Wolf found. In fact, many companies falling prey to BEC attacks did not have security controls that potentially could have prevented damage, the company stated in its analysis. 

For instance, the research found that 80% of those companies suffering a BEC incident had no multifactor authentication in place. In addition, other controls, such as network segmentation and security awareness training, could help prevent BEC attacks from being costly, even after the attacker successfully compromises an external system.

"Companies should strengthen their employee defenses through security training," Thanos says, "but they also need to address the vulnerabilities that threat actors focus on."

Cybercriminals See Allure in BEC Attacks Over Ransomware

Malicious Comm100 files have been found scattered throughout North America, and across sectors including tech, healthcare, manufacturing, telecom, insurance, and others.

A new supply chain attack uses a Trojanized version of the Comm 100 Live Chat Application to compromise networks, and until Sept. 29, it was actively available for download from Comm 100's official website. 

The Comm100 Live Chat application enables organizations to communicate with real-time chat and boasts more than 15,000 customers across 51 countries. 

Researchers with CrowdStrike reported the malicious Comm100 installer was available for download on the company's website and was signed on Sept. 26. 

Following the CrowdStrike disclosure, Comm100 has released an updated installer (10.0.9) on Thursday and is performing a deep analysis to learn more about the attack, the researchers said.  

Despite the relatively short lifespan of the supply chain attack, the malware was able to infect several organizations, with some infections still active.

"The trojanized file was identified at organizations in the industrial, healthcare, technology, manufacturing, insurance and telecommunications sectors in North America and Europe," the report on the supply chain attack said. 

The CrowdStrike team members added they are moderately confident the threat actors are from China, based on several factors, including the use of the Chinese language in notes in the code. 

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Trojanized, Signed Comm100 Chat Installer Anchors Supply Chain Attack

The "ProxyNotShell" security vulnerabilities can be chained for remote code execution and total takeover of corporate email platforms.

Microsoft is fast-tracking patches for two Exchange Server zero-day vulnerabilities reported overnight, but in the meantime, businesses should be on the lookout for attacks. The computing giant said in a Friday update that it's already seeing "limited targeted attacks" chaining the bugs together for initial access and takeover of the email system.

The flaws specifically affect on-premises versions of Microsoft Exchange Server 2013, 2016, and 2019 that face the Internet, according to Microsoft. However, it's worth noting that security researcher Kevin Beaumont says that Microsoft Exchange Online Customers running Exchange hybrid servers with Outlook Web Access (OWA) are also at risk, despite the official advisory stating that Online instances aren't impacted. The team at Rapid7 echoed that assessment.

The bugs are tracked as follows:

*   CVE-2022-41040 (CVSS 8.8), a server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerability giving access to any mailbox in Exchange;
*   CVE-2022-41082 (CVSS 6.3), which allows authenticated remote code execution (RCE) when PowerShell is accessible to the attacker.

Importantly, authenticated access to the Exchange Server is necessary for exploitation, Microsoft's alert pointed out. Beaumont added, "Please note exploitation needs valid non-admin credentials for any email user."

**Patches & Mitigations for CVE-2022-41040, CVE-2022-41082**

So far, there's no patch available, but Microsoft has triaged the bugs and is fast-tracking a fix.

"We are working on an accelerated timeline to release a fix," according to Microsoft's Friday advisory. "Until then, we're providing the mitigations and detections guidance."

The mitigations include adding a blocking rule in "IIS Manager -> Default Web Site -> Autodiscover -> URL Rewrite -> Actions" to block the known attack patterns; and the company included URL rewrite instructions in the advisory, which it said it "confirmed are successful in breaking current attack chains."

Also, the alert noted that "since authenticated attackers who can access PowerShell Remoting on vulnerable Exchange systems will be able to trigger RCE using CVE-2022-41082, blocking the ports used for Remote PowerShell can limit the attacks."

**Blindsiding-Bug Disclosure**

The flaws were disclosed in a blog post from Vietnamese security company GTSC, which noted that it submitted bug reports to Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative last month. While typically this would have resulted in a responsible vulnerability disclosure process in which Microsoft would have 120 days to patch before the findings were made public, GTSC decided to publish after seeing in-the-wild attacks, it said.

"After careful testing, we confirmed that those systems were being attacked using this 0-day vulnerability," GTSC researchers noted in its Thursday blog post. "To help the community temporarily stop the attack before an official patch from Microsoft is available, we publish this article aiming to those organizations who are using Microsoft Exchange email system."

It also offered detail analysis of the bug chain, which is similar under the hood to the ProxyShell group of Exchange Server vulnerabilities. This prompted Beaumont (@gossithedog) to dub the chain "ProxyNotShell," complete with its own logo.

He said in his analysis on Friday that while many attributes of the bugs are exactly like ProxyShell, the ProxyShell patches don't fix the issue. He also noted that in terms of attack surface, "near a quarter of a million vulnerable Exchange servers face the internet, give or take."

He characterized the situation as "pretty risky" in a Twitter feed, noting that exploitation seems to have been going on for at least a month, and that now that the flaws are public, things could "go south pretty quickly." He also called into question Microsoft's mitigation guidance.

"My guidance would be to stop representing OWA to the internet until there is a patch, unless you want to go down the mitigation route ... but that has been known about for a year, and, eh — there's other ways to exploit Exchange for RCE without PowerShell," Beaumont tweeted. "For example, if you have SSRF (CVE-2022-41040) you are god in Exchange, and can access any mailbox via EWS — see the prior activity. So, I'm not sure that mitigation will hold."

Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Dark Reading.

Source

DARKReading