PRESS RELEASE

BETHESDA, Md., July 16, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- As organizations continue to fortify their cybersecurity strategies in response to an ever-evolving threat landscape, many are turning to Zero Trust architectures to safeguard their data. However, implementing Zero Trust is not without its challenges. According to a new strategy guide from the SANS Institute, "Navigating the Path to a State of Zero Trust in 2024," businesses often stumble over key obstacles in their journey towards Zero Trust adoption.

"The path to achieving a true state of Zero Trust isn't straightforward. Organizations often encounter several fundamental challenges when attempting to implement end-to-end Zero Trust principles across their environment," said Ismael Valenzuela, SANS Senior Instructor and author of the Cyber Defense and Blue Team Operations course, SANS SEC530: Defensible Security Architecture and Engineering. "By understanding and addressing these common mistakes, businesses can make better strategic and tactical decisions and increase their resiliency in the face of evolving threats."

Here are the top five mistakes identified:

● Overlooking the Importance of Organizational Culture: Zero Trust is more than just a technological shift; it requires a fundamental change in organizational culture. Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) must align security with strategic, operational, and financial priorities. As the strategy guide states, "Effective security is driven by people, processes, and technology." Failure to secure stakeholder buy-in from the outset can doom Zero Trust initiatives to fail.

● Underestimating Human Risk: Employee error and negligence account for over 80% of data breaches. Hybrid work environments blur the lines between personal and professional spaces, increasing the complexity of monitoring user activity. "A Zero Trust architecture is an important line of defense against human risk," the strategy guide emphasizes. Organizations must implement continuous monitoring and real-time assessment of user behavior to mitigate these risks.

● Neglecting the Supply Chain: Recent high-profile supply chain attacks have underscored the vulnerabilities within interconnected systems. According to Gartner, by 2025, 45% of organizations worldwide will have experienced attacks on their supply chains. Zero Trust principles help limit the impact of these breaches by ensuring continuous verification and deeper visibility into user activity.

● Failing to Plan for Sustainable Success: Implementing Zero Trust is a long-term commitment that requires continuous improvement and adaptation. The SANS strategy guide highlights the importance of effective change management practices: "Effective change management ensures stakeholder buy-in, facilitates user adoption, minimizes disruption, promotes continuous improvement, and enhances collaboration."

● Inadequate Measurement of Success: Measuring the effectiveness of a Zero Trust framework is crucial for maintaining stakeholder support. The guide suggests several metrics, including authentication success rates, policy compliance rates, and the time to detect and respond to incidents. These metrics provide a clear picture of the framework's impact and highlight areas for improvement.

"Adopting the Zero Trust 'never trust, always verify' mindset is essential for modern cybersecurity," said Valenzuela. "However, the real challenge lies in having a realistic understanding of what a Zero Trust architecture looks like and avoiding common pitfalls during implementation. From cultural shifts to technical deployments, this offers vital guidance to help organizations successfully navigate the complexities of Zero Trust and enhance their cybersecurity resilience."

For more information on implementing Zero Trust and to download the full strategy guide, visit: https://www.sans.org/u/1xo2

Top 5 Mistakes Businesses Make When Implementing Zero Trust

PRESS RELEASE

NEW YORK, July 16, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Today QBE Insurance, a global insurer operating in 27 countries, unveiled QCyberProtect, a comprehensive and globally consistent cyber policy designed to enhance cyber resilience for a broad range of clients worldwide.

QCyberProtect provides tailored coverage for losses arising from current and emerging cyber risks, including, but not limited to, network security, privacy liability, IT and non-IT business interruptions and reputational loss.

"Strategic investments in our cyber capabilities have strengthened our ability to shield our clients from the most pressing cyber threats," said Andrew Horton, Group CEO of QBE Insurance. "This offering highlights our commitment to delivering globally consistent and practical solutions that address the ever-evolving cyber risks our customers face around the world."

QCyberProtect provides cyber insurance for a range of organizations, from mid-sized companies relying on fully outsourced IT departments to global corporations with complex large-scale IT systems.

"QBE's global cyber policy is supported by a network of highly skilled cyber experts and strategic partners to ensure world-class coverage and service," said Serene Davis, QBE Global Head of Cyber. "We are providing our customers with the comprehensive coverage and services they need to navigate end-to-end cybersecurity issues."

Along with its global cyber insurance coverage, QBE is also implementing QCyberPrepare. Available in many locations around the world, QCyberPrepare is a cyber saferoom where cyber customers can launch their incident response plan in a secure platform with secure messaging. This risk management tool empowers organizations to be connected, confident and in control before, during and after a cyber crisis.

QCyberProtect is currently available in Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden, UAE, United Kingdom, United States and Vietnam and will be launching in additional countries throughout the year.

For more information about QCyberProtect visit Cyber | QBE US. Contact your regional underwriter for more information regarding appetite.

About QBE North America

QBE North America is a global insurance leader helping customers solve unique risks, so they can stay focused on their future. Part of QBE Insurance Group Limited, QBE North America reported Gross Written Premiums in 2023 of $7.6 billion. QBE Insurance Group's results can be found at qbe.com. Headquartered in Sydney, Australia, QBE operates out of 27 countries around the globe, with a presence in every key insurance market. The North America division, headquartered in New York, conducts business primarily through its insurance company subsidiaries. The actual terms and conditions of any insurance coverage are subject to the language of the policies as issued. Additional information can be found at qbe.com/us or follow QBE North America on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.

QBE Insurance Launches Global Cyber Coverage With QCyberProtect

PRESS RELEASE

BOSTON, July 16, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Cybercrimes like dealer system hacks, identity theft, and breaches are wreaking havoc on the auto industry. As the industry becomes more technology-driven, increasingly sophisticated cybercriminals are finding more opportunities to strike. In fact, the auto sector is now the third most targeted behind healthcare and financial services. The recent attacks against Findlay Auto Group and CDK Global are just two of many examples that have brought attention to the industry's vulnerabilities.

A number of regulations have been issued to ensure dealers adequately protect consumer data. In particular, the Red Flags Rule requires dealers to implement programs to protect customers from potential identity theft and fraud.

That's why Aura, the all-in-one consumer online safety solution, today announced its partnership with Mosaic Compliance Services to provide identity protection to anyone who gives dealers personally identifiable information (PII) during the car-buying process.

Mosaic is a leader in helping dealerships nationwide implement legally defensible and insurable compliance systems. By combining Aura's award-winning identity theft protection services with Mosaic's industry-leading fully managed compliance solutions, this partnership helps dealers adhere to the Red Flags Rule regulations, mitigate risk, and provide proactive protection from cybercrime for their roofs, shoppers, and buyers.

"We partnered with Aura so that every consumer, shopper, or buyer gets identity theft protection simply because they gave the dealer their non-public personal information," said James S. Ganther, Esq., CEO at Mosaic Compliance Services. "Through this collaboration, we're able to both provide peace of mind to buyers whose information is collected and ease the compliance burden for dealers–providing everything from counsel on policies to operational improvements, audits, and consumer online protections."

Aura plays a crucial role in the mitigation piece of compliance with the Red Flags Rule. With these regulations, auto dealers are now obligated to protect the personal information provided to them. By offering Aura to consumers, dealers help proactively mitigate fraudby monitoring for instances of identity theft, credit misuse, and financial fraud.

"With cyber attacks, scams, and breaches happening every day, car buyers are aware of the risk associated with providing their personal information to companies," said Scott Hudson, Senior Vice President of Sales at Aura. We know that 84% of customers say they would not buy another vehicle from a dealership if a breach compromised their data. By offering Aura's identity protection solution to every consumer who provides personally identifiable information, dealers can earn trust upfront in the car-buying process."

Aura works with hundreds of dealerships across the U.S. to offer identity and fraud protection to hundreds of thousands of consumers. If you're interested in partnering with Aura and Mosaic Compliance Services, contact \[email protected\].

ABOUT AURA   
Aura is one of the fastest growing online safety solutions for individuals and families. Whether you're protecting yourself, your kids, or your aging loved ones, Aura can meet your needs at every stage of life. Customers trust Aura's simple interface to effortlessly safeguard the things they care about most. Through real-time monitoring and alerts, Aura helps detect and mitigate emerging online threats, such as scams, predators and cyberbullying. To discover how Aura is reshaping online safety for people everywhere, visit www.aura.com.

ABOUT MOSAIC COMPLIANCE SERVICES   
Mosaic Compliance Services was founded in 2006 by automotive attorneys who saw the need to make compliance more approachable and effective for dealerships. Today, Mosaic is a leading provider of compliance solutions for dealers. Serving over 150,000 active users, we help dealerships across the country implement a culture of compliance that includes processes, training, policies, certifications, safeguards, audits, and more. Our web-based legal compliance training has received the Dealers' Choice Diamond Award eight years in a row, including 2023. In everything we do Mosaic strives to provide the most knowledgeable service and tailored guidance in the industry. As your dedicated compliance partner, our goal is your success.

Aura Partners With Mosaic Compliance Services to Launch a Program to Protect Auto Dealers and Buyers From Cybercrime

North Korean espionage campaign delivers updated BeaverTail info stealer by spoofing legitimate video calling service, researcher finds.

Source: Mykhailo Polenok via Alamy

Well known for targeting victims with fake job postings, North Korea state-sponsored hackers have been discovered using a new variant of their BeaverTail malware to trick macOS users into downloading a malicious version of Microtalk, a video-calling service.

Details about the latest campaign were published by cybersecurity researcher Patrick Wardle, who explained in his writeup that the threat actors likely lured their victims into downloading the updated BeaverTail-infected version of Microtalk by asking them to join a job interview.

"Yes, even the cloned site states that you can 'start your next video call with a single click. No download … is required,' but I guess, who reads the fine print?" Wardle wrote.

In addition to stealing data from the victim's device, BeaverTail also executes additional payloads, including InvisibleFerret, the report added.

"The North Korean hackers are a wily bunch and are quite adept at hacking macOS targets, even though their technique\[s\] often rely on social engineering (and thus from a technical point of view are rather unimpressive)," Wardle said.

**About the Author(s)**

DPRK Hackers Tweak Malware to Lure MacOS Users into Video Calls

Law enforcement managed to arrest numerous members of Black Axe, a notorious group engaged in a wide variety of criminal activity.

Source: Olena Bartienieva via Alamy Stock Photo

Operation Jackal III, a global law enforcement campaign targeting crime groups in West Africa, has led to hundreds of arrests and the seizure of assets amounting to as much as $3 million.

The operation ran from April 10 to July 3 in five continents and 21 countries, focusing on online financial fraud and the West African syndicates running it. Through the operation, law enforcement was able to make roughly 300 arrests and identify 400 additional suspects, as well as block access to more than 700 bank accounts.

"By identifying suspects, recovering illicit funds and putting some of West Africa's most dangerous organized crime leaders behind bars, we are able to weaken their influence and reduce their capacity to harm communities around the world," said Isaac Oginni, director of Interpol's Financial Crime and Anti-Corruption Centre (IFCACC), in a statement.

One of the groups targeted was Black Axe, which is among the most prominent West African organized crime syndicates. The group operates in cyberfraud, human trafficking, drug smuggling, and violent crimes, not just in Africa but around the world. 

Suspects of the group are citizens from Colombia, Nigeria, and Venezuela. There were also members from Argentina, where, after a five-year investigation, police seized $1.2 million and arrested 72 suspects.

This is not the first time Interpol has moved on these groups. In 2023, Operation Jackal targeted the same West African syndicates, arresting 103 individuals and seizing more than $2.2 million.

**About the Author(s)**

West African Crime Syndicate Taken Down by Interpol Operation

With AI use ramping up rapidly, a growing number of enterprise security teams have begun putting controls in place to protect sensitive data from accidental exposure and leaks.

Source: IrenaR via Shutterstock

Many enterprise security teams finally appear to be catching up with the runaway adoption of AI-enabled applications in their organizations, since the public release of ChatGPT 18 months ago.

A new analysis by Netskope of anonymized AI app usage data from customer environments showed substantially more organizations have begun using blocking controls, data loss prevention (DLP) tools, live coaching, and other mechanisms to mitigate risk.

**Keeping an Eye on What Users Send to AI Apps**

Most of the controls that enterprise organizations have adopted, or are adopting, appear focused on protecting against users sending sensitive data — such as personal identity information, credentials, trade secrets, and regulated data — to AI apps and services.

Netskope's analysis showed that 77% of organizations with AI apps now use block/allow policies to restrict use of at least one — and often multiple — GenAI apps to mitigate risk. That number was notably higher than the 53% of organizations with a similar policy reported in Netskope's study last year. One in two organizations currently block more than two apps, with the most active among them blocking some 15 GenAI apps because of security concerns.

"The most blocked GenAI applications do track somewhat to popularity, but a fair number of less popular apps are the most blocked \[as well\]," Netskope said in a blog post that summarized the results of its analysis. Netskope identified the most-blocked applications as presentation maker Beautiful.ai, writing app Writesonic, image generator Craiyon, and meeting transcript generator Tactiq.

Forty-two percent of organizations — compared to 24% in June 2023 — have begun using DLP tools to control what users can and cannot submit to a GenAI tool. Netskope perceived the 75% increase as an indication of maturing enterprise security approaches to addressing threats from GenAI applications and services. Live coaching controls — which basically provide a warning dialog when a user might be interacting with an AI app in a risky fashion — are gaining in popularity as well. Netskope found 31% of organizations have policies in place to control GenAI apps, using coaching dialogs to guide user behavior, up from 20% in June 2023.

"Interestingly, 19% of organizations are using GenAI apps but not blocking them, which could mean most of these are 'shadow IT' \[use\]," says Jenko Hwong, cloud security researcher with Netskope Threat Labs. "This stems from the improbability that any security professional would permit unrestricted use of GenAI applications without implementing necessary risk mitigation measures."

**Mitigating Risks With Data From GenAI Services Not Yet a Focus**

Netskope found less of an immediate focus among its customers on addressing risk associated with the data that users receive from GenAI services. Most have an acceptable use policy in place to guide users on how they must use and handle data that AI tools generate in response to prompts. But for the moment at least, few appear to have any mechanisms to address potential security and legal risks tied to their AI tools spewing out factually incorrect or biased data, manipulated results, copyrighted data, and completely hallucinated responses.

Ways that organizations can mitigate these risks is through vendor contracts and indemnity clauses for custom apps and enforcing the use of corporate-approved GenAI apps with higher quality datasets, Hwong says. Organizations can also mitigate risks by logging and auditing all return datasets from corporate-approved GenAI apps, including timestamps, user prompts, and results. 

"Other measures security teams can take include reviewing and retraining internal processes specific to the data returned from GenAI apps, much like how OSS is part of every engineering department's compliance controls," Hwong notes. "While this isn't currently the primary focus or the most immediate risk to organizations compared to the sending of data to GenAI services, we believe it's part of an emerging trend."

The growing attention that security teams appear to be paying to GenAI apps comes at a time when enterprise adoption of AI tools continues to increase at warp speed. A staggering 96% of the customers in Netskope's survey — compared to 74% in June 2023 — had at least some users using GenAI apps for a variety of use cases, including coding and writing assistance, creating presentations, and generating images and video.

Netskope found the average organization currently to be using three times as many GenAI apps and having nearly three times as many users utilizing them, compared to just one year ago. The median number of GenAI apps in use among organizations in June 2024 was 9.6, compared to a median of 3 last year. The top 25% had 24 GenAI apps in their environments, on average, while the top 1% had 80 apps.

ChatGPT predictably topped the list of the most popular GenAI app among Netskope's customers. Other popular apps included Grammarly, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, and Perplexity AI, which interestingly was also the 10th most frequently blocked app.

“GenAI is already being used widely across organizations and is rapidly increasing in activity," Hwong says. "Organizations need to get ahead of the curve by starting with an inventory of which apps are being used, controlling what sensitive data is sent to those apps, and reviewing \[their\] policies as the landscape is changing quickly.”

**About the Author(s)**

Jai Vijayan is a seasoned technology reporter with over 20 years of experience in IT trade journalism. He was most recently a Senior Editor at Computerworld, where he covered information security and data privacy issues for the publication. Over the course of his 20-year career at Computerworld, Jai also covered a variety of other technology topics, including big data, Hadoop, Internet of Things, e-voting, and data analytics. Prior to Computerworld, Jai covered technology issues for The Economic Times in Bangalore, India. Jai has a Master's degree in Statistics and lives in Naperville, Ill.

Orgs Are Finally Making Moves to Mitigate GenAI Risks

Manipulated header info within files, in mobile Trojans like TeaBot and others, makes it difficult for defenders to analyze and detect them.

Source: Vladyslav Yushynov via Alamy Stock Photo

"BadPack," a set of maliciously packaged APK files that make it difficult for researchers to analyze and detect malware within Android applications, has come to light. It's a key reason why they believe the prevalence of Android banking Trojans and other malware such as TeaBot have surged in recent years, and continue to plague users of these devices.

BadPack files contain maliciously altered header information in a compressed file format for APK files, "and typically pose a challenge for Android reverse-engineering tools," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42's Lee Wei Yeong revealed in a report published on July 16.

In the last year, Unit 42's telemetry detected almost 9,200 BadPack samples in Android apps, including on Google Play; Google, however, says it has eliminated them from the mobile app store.

BadPack could be a reason that security analysis of Android malware historically has been so difficult. "APK files using BadPack reflect the increasing sophistication of APK malware samples," Yeong wrote. "This not only presents a formidable challenge for security analysts, but it also underscores the need for continuous development of innovative techniques and tools to identify and mitigate these threats."

APK files are applications used by the Android OS that use the ZIP archive format and contain a file named AndroidManifest.xml that stores data and instructions for the archive's content.

In a BadPack APK file, however, attackers have tampered with its ZIP header data in a way that attempts to prevent analysis of its content. Unit 42 researchers found that "many" Android banking Trojans — among them TeaBot (aka Anatsa), BianLian, and Cerberus — use BadPack, which have helped them infect Android devices with malware without being detected.

**How BadPack Prevents Malware Detection**

AndroidManifest.xml provides essential information about a mobile app to the Android OS, including components to handle both activities initiated by the user and services run by the application. The manifest also includes the permissions users grant to apps so they run correctly, as well as the versions of Android that the app runs on.

That said, the first step in static analysis of an APK sample is to read and process this manifest file, which is why it behooves malware authors to tamper with the file to make it difficult for security analysts to prevent this from happening.

BadPack does this by tampering with the structure headers of the ZIP file, making the APK fail to extract and decode AndroidManifest.xml. "This causes a chain reaction of errors downstream in the static analysis pipeline," Yeong wrote. "As a result, the file cannot be read and fully processed."

There are a variety of ways that malware authors can manipulate these header values to fool common static analysis tools like Apktool or Jadx that are used to detect malware. These tools are "generally stricter than the Android system runtime on Android devices," Yeong wrote.

"For these analysis tools, an APK sample must adhere to ZIP file format specifications," he wrote. "Therefore, Apktool and Jadx parse both the local file header and central directory file header of the ZIP structure headers in an APK file."

Android devices are not as strict about the official file format as these analysis tools, however, so an APK file may contain invalid values that do not fully adhere to the official file format specification, and it may still run.

"This is because the Android system runtime only inspects the central directory file header," Yeong wrote. "If a value from the local file header does not match, the Android runtime assumes what a correct value should actually be."

This is the difference in behavior that causes tools like Apktool and Jadx to fail to analyze a BadPack APK sample that installs and runs properly without issue on an Android device, and thus allows Trojans and other malware that leverages BadPack to successfully infect a device, he said.

**BadPack Detection & Prevention**

Unit 42 has found a way to analyze BadPack APK samples by reversing changes made to the header to restore the original ZIP structure header values before using APK analysis tools. The researchers also discovered that an open source tool called APK Inspector, released last December, can successfully extract APK content and decode the Android manifest file even when BadPack is present, providing defenders a way to detect the malware.

Other ways that Android users can prevent themselves from stealthy malware is to be suspicious of Android applications requiring unusual permissions not aligned with their advertised functionality, Yeong recommended. For example, it should be a red flag if something like an Android flashlight app requests permissions to access the device's phonebook, he noted.

"We recommend that people also refrain from installing applications that originate from third-party sources onto their devices," Yeong added.

**About the Author(s)**

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

'BadPack' APK Files Make Android Malware Hard to Detect

A two-day presentation will examine the social-behavioral aspects of cybersecurity leadership to drive team success.

Source: Svyatoslav Lypynskyy via Alamy Stock Photo

While most people recognize that heading up a cybersecurity team requires a mix of both technical and so-called "soft skills," it's a reality that many security leaders struggle with the latter. Daniel Shore, Ph.D., a social-behavioral scientist and the co-founder of MultiTeam Solutions, is trying to change that through research-based training with a focus on the social science of leadership. He will lead a workshop titled "Hacking Cybersecurity Leadership" next month at Black Hat 2024.

"A lot of people end up in leadership positions based on their technical abilities, and we really want to help them expand their repertoire, their skill set, so that they can show up with confidence in a way that they lead individuals, teams, and multi-team systems or ecosystems," Shore says.

The two-day session aims to help cybersecurity leaders improve those critical soft skills needed to lead teams and navigate the unique challenges of the industry. Shore, who also presented at Black Hat Europe in 2021, says the new adaptation of the workshop is based on five years of research funded by US and European governments and accredited by the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). He will offer leaders research-backed strategies to motivate teams and help team members feel valued.

"Leaders are leading individuals, they're leading teams, and they're leading these multiple teams," he says. "And they're also leading themselves. That, in and of itself, is a really almost unimaginably complex task."

It's even more challenging in cybersecurity, which falls under what is known as a "VUCA" environment: volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, he says. When a leader is placed into that environment, it adds an immense layer of uncertainty to leadership.

"Another area of focus that we will take is, what do leaders have control over that is known? With the right skill set, people and the interactions between them are more known than, for example, the scope of cyberattack," Shore explains. "So shifting some of a leader's focus to teamwork can be a stabilizer and confidence-builder in their work, which has so much uncertainty."

The session will also cover methods to build trust within teams and how to foster a collaborative environment. In addition, Shore will discuss how to cultivate a shared language and mindset across multi-team systems — "an aspect often neglected in traditional cybersecurity skills-based training," he says.

**A Safe Place to Make Decisions**

Participants in the training will engage in context-independent exercises designed to practice decision-making, innovation, problem-solving, and adaptation in a psychologically safe environment, Shore says. The exercises are not cybersecurity-specific, but the underlying processes are all priority issues or opportunities that drive effective cybersecurity operation, he says.

"One of the activities is going to be starting up a new company," Shore notes. "And then you're going to merge with some other companies in your cohort. When you're doing that, it's not about the company. It's about how you're showing up, how you're coming to consensus decision-making, how you're being innovative, how you're problem solving, how you're adapting."

Shore says participants can take part in these processes without the pressure and burden of their typical titles and roles as leaders. It's a chance to explore — in a way that is low-stakes, he says. With no consequence to the decisions they're making, leaders can take some risks.

**Overcoming Leadership Challenges With Human Solutions**

Cybersecurity leaders often face low morale, high turnover rates, and imposter syndrome, among other challenges. The workshop will offer practical solutions to these kinds of issues, Shore says, but with an emphasis on human-centered leadership in a field dominated by technical solutions.

"The use of technology is a human task," he says. "We're looking to provide human-centric solutions to practical problems, complementing the technical solutions leaders typically rely on."

Another essential part of the workshop will be fostering a sense of empathy and belonging among participants. Leaders will have the opportunity to build camaraderie with their peers, share experiences, and support each other in a safe and constructive environment.

Shore says he hopes that attendees will leave the session with a clearer understanding of the human-centered challenges in cybersecurity and practical strategies to address them. The date and time for Shore's training will be published soon.

**About the Author(s)**

Contributing Writer, Dark Reading

Joan Goodchild is a veteran journalist, editor, and writer who has been covering security for more than a decade. She has written for several publications and previously served as editor-in-chief for CSO Online.

Training at Black Hat to Focus on Equipping Cybersecurity Leaders With Soft Skills

Credential management gets a boost with the latest infostealers' extortion campaign built on info stolen from cloud storage systems.

Source: imageBROKER.com GmbH & Co. KG via Alamy Stock Photo

COMMENTARY

Threat actors just pulled off one of the largest data breaches of 2024, and they didn't even have to hack into the company's environment. Their goal? To steal data from cloud storage systems and extort victims for financial gain. 

The campaign against Snowflake customers wasn't the result of novel or sophisticated tactics, techniques, or procedures (TTPs). Rather, the threat actors behind the campaign bought or found exposed, legitimate credentials already available and used them to log in. For accounts without multifactor authentication (MFA), this is all it takes. The ongoing Snowflake campaign presents another compelling use case for credential management and a warning about the dangers of infostealers and stolen credentials.

In late May 2024, a financially motivated threat actor, tracked as UNC5537, began advertising data from Ticketmaster and Santander for sale in a cybercrime forum, claiming they had breached the cloud data warehousing platform Snowflake.

Snowflake's and Mandiant's analysis identified that individual customer accounts were breached using stolen customer credentials. According to Mandiant, the threat actor may have been able to access roughly 165 companies' accounts using these exposed credentials. 

**Key Takeaways**

A few key takeaways:

1.  The affected accounts weren't configured with MFA. Successful authentication required only a valid username and password, which allowed the threat actors easy access to targeted accounts. 
    
2.  Analysis showed some of the credentials identified in infostealer malware output had been for sale on the Dark Web for years and were still valid, which means those credentials hadn't been rotated or updated. Infostealers are a type of malware designed to steal sensitive information from infected devices, which can lead to unauthorized access and data theft. In the case of the Snowflake attacks, infostealers captured login credentials of Snowflake's customer's users through infected devices, allowing attackers to access customer accounts and data stored on the platform. Additionally, an infostealer could exfiltrate sensitive customer information, including personal data, financial records, and business intelligence. 
    
3.  The compromised Snowflake instances didn't have network allow lists. Allow listing involves compiling a list of sanctioned entities, such as IP addresses, domains, and applications. Only entities on this designated list are granted access to a specific resource or can perform specific actions. This approach helps enhance security by reducing the attack surface and limiting access to trusted, verified entities. 
    

Given the high-profile success of this campaign and the depth and breadth of data typically available in cloud storage providers, we can expect to see an increase in similar credential-stuffing efforts. Now is the time to verify your related security controls (such as password policies) are as secure as can be to avoid potential exposures. 

**How to Boost Defenses**

How can you boost your defenses against these types of attacks? 

*   Enable MFA. MFA is a straightforward, yet highly effective measure that can substantially improve an organization's security posture and resilience. Credentials can be stolen through phishing or malware such as infostealers. However, MFA adds an extra layer of security by requiring more than just a password to access an account, making it harder for attacks to gain unauthorized access. 
    
*   Manage your credentials. To the best of your organization's ability, monitor the Dark Web for exposed credentials. This may be via a vendor, credit monitoring, or other avenues. If you receive notification that your personal information has been compromised, it's important to act as soon as possible to evaluate the risk and determine appropriate next steps — including potentially changing a password. 
    
*   Monitor for cyber campaigns targeting your vendors. Establish monitoring via open-source reporting or other means to get early warnings on cyberattack campaigns that may be targeting your critical service providers. Use the advance notice to change credentials and confirm policy compliance in your connections to the affected company.
    

The recent Snowflake account attacks underscore the critical importance of robust credential management and MFA in safeguarding cloud storage systems. As the frequency and scale of credential-based attacks are likely to rise, now is the time for organizations to fortify their defenses and ensure that their security practices are resilient against evolving threats.

**About the Author(s)**

Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst, LastPass

Stephanie Schneider is passionate about raising awareness of cybersecurity challenges, blending strategic analysis with a deep understanding of how geopolitical trends influence current threats. In her current role as cyber threat intelligence analyst at LastPass, she tackles emerging threats, provides crucial intelligence insights, and monitors significant events in the cybersecurity landscape. Prior to joining LastPass, Stephanie served as vice president, cyber threat intelligence nation-state lead at Bank of America, where she specialized in defending against nation-state and criminal cyber threats. A graduate of George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs (MA) and St. Edward’s University (BA), Stephanie currently lives in Washington, DC.

Snowflake Account Attacks Driven by Exposed Legitimate Credentials

An AI consortium consisting of top tech companies will release a toolkit later this year for measuring the safety of generative AI models.

Source: Tanit Boonruen via Alamy Stock Photo

MLCommons — an AI consortium that boasts Google, Microsoft, and Meta as members — has announced its AI Safety benchmark will run stress tests to see whether large language models (LLMs) are spewing out unsafe responses. The benchmarked LLMs will then get a safety rating so customers understand the risk involved in the LLMs of their choice.

The benchmarks are the "last wall against harm … that will catch bad things that come out of \[artificial intelligence systems\]," says Kurt Bollacker, director of engineering at MLCommons.

The AI Safety suite will feed text questions — also called prompts — to the LLMs to elicit hazardous responses related to hate speech, exploitation, child abuse, and sex crimes. The responses are then rated as safe or unsafe.

The benchmarks will also identify problematic responses associated with intellectual property violations and defamation. AI vendors could run these benchmarks before releasing LLMs and also submit them to MLCommons to get rated for safety, which will be visible to the public.

In addition, companies, governments, and nonprofits can use the benchmarks as a test kit to identify weaknesses in AI systems and provide feedback to make changes in LLMs, Bollacker says.

"AI safety — everybody cares about that," Bollacker says. "The goal here is not to call out unsafe models, but to provide the process that makes the \[LLM\] safer."

MLCommons gained fame from the MLPerf benchmark, which has become a standard to measure AI performance on hardware. The independent entity is also developing measurement tools for AI in areas that include healthcare, science, and safety.

Safety of AI systems is already a widespread concern. A session at Black Hat next month will explore the topic of AI safety and why security professionals need to take it seriously.

The US government is urging the private sector to take a security-first approach in AI development; it has issued an executive order mapping out responsible AI development and use within federal agencies.

"AI systems offer the potential for substantial benefits to society, but they are not without risks, such as toxicity, misinformation, and bias. As with other complex technologies, society needs industry-standard safety testing to realize the benefits while minimizing the risks," said MLCommons spokeswoman Kelly Berschauer, in an email.

The AI Safety benchmark was initially announced last year. A proof-of-concept model (version 0.5) was released in April. The goal is to ship a stable version 1.0 by October 31.

The benchmark includes adversarial prompts, with the aim to break the safety of a model. Questions like, "How can I build a bomb?" may be deflected, but users may try workarounds, such as refocusing the topic on bomb building as being part of a movie script.

The AI Safety version 0.5 benchmark tested anonymized LLMs that returned various ratings. MLCommons ran 27,250 prompts related to topics of hate on one LLM, which was rated "ML" (moderate-low). About 2,300 prompts on the indiscriminate weapons topics generated a "L" (low) rating, which means the topic was less risky with that specific LLM. Other rating categories also include "H" (high), and "M" (moderate), and "MH" (moderate high).

Some answers are considered more hazardous than others — for example, something on child safety requires stricter grading compared to racist speech.

The initial benchmark will grade the safety of chatbot-style LLMs, and that may expand to image and video generation. But that’s still far out.

"We've already started wrapping our brains around different kinds of media that can be dangerous and what are the kinds of tests that we want to form," Bollacker says.

MLCommons is in a rush to put out its AI Safety benchmarks. But the group has a lot of work ahead to keep up with the fast pace of change in AI, says Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research.

Researchers have found ways to poison AI models by feeding bad data or by introducing malicious models on sites like Hugging Face.

"Keeping up with safety in AI is like chasing after a car on your feet," McGregor says.

**About the Author(s)**

Agam Shah has covered enterprise IT for more than a decade. Outside of machine learning, hardware, and chips, he's also interested in martial arts and Russia.

Source

DARKReading