
How we foiled a new customer’s 5-month-hidden cyberattack
In August 2023, a new customer partnered with CloudGuard to enhance their...
Welcome to another week of Critical Chatter, CloudGuard’s weekly roundup of security articles curated by Guardians. This week’s news flash has been curated by Ed Bailey (SOC Intern).
The analysis of nearly 20 million information-stealing malware logs sold on the dark web and Telegram channels revealed significant infiltration into business environments. Information stealers target data stored in applications like web browsers, email clients, cryptocurrency wallets, and more, packaging stolen information into ‘logs’ for cybercriminal use.
The most prominent information-stealing families, including Redline, Raccoon, Titan, Aurora, and Vidar, are offered on a subscription-based model to cybercriminals, allowing them to conduct malware campaigns and steal data from infected devices.
Notably, these information-stealing malware infections have a massive impact on corporate environments due to employees using personal devices for work or accessing personal content on work computers. This practice results in the theft of business credentials and authentication cookies, with approximately 375,000 logs containing access to business applications such as Salesforce, Hubspot, Quickbooks, AWS, GCP, Okta, and DocuSign.
Flare, a cybersecurity firm, discovered over 200,000 stealer logs containing OpenAI credentials, posing a risk of leaking proprietary information, internal business strategies, and source code.
The logs containing corporate access were mainly found on Russian-speaking marketplaces and VIP Telegram channels, suggesting possible intentional targeting of corporate entities. Corporate credentials are highly valued in the cybercrime underground and are sold on private Telegram channels or forums for significant profit.
To minimise the risk of info-stealer malware infections, businesses are advised to enforce the use of password managers, multi-factor authentication, and strict controls on personal device use. Additionally, employees should receive training to identify and avoid common infection channels such as malicious Google Ads, YouTube videos, and Facebook posts.
Article link: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/over-400-000-corporate-credentials-stolen-by-info-stealing-malware/
A new cybercrime AI tool named FraudGPT has surfaced on the dark web and Telegram channels, following the release of WormGPT. Offered for a monthly subscription of $200 (or $1,000 for six months and $1,700 for a year), FraudGPT is designed exclusively for offensive purposes, including crafting spear-phishing emails, creating cracking tools, and carding.
Netenrich security researcher Rakesh Krishnan revealed that the tool can be used for writing malicious code, generating undetectable malware, finding leaks and vulnerabilities. The specific large language model (LLM) used to develop FraudGPT remains unknown. The actor behind the tool, known as CanadianKingpin, claims it provides exclusive tools and features with limitless possibilities.
Threat actors are increasingly leveraging AI tools like ChatGPT from OpenAI to create new adversarial variants for various cybercriminal activities without restrictions. This development poses a significant risk, as it enables novice actors to launch convincing phishing and business email compromise (BEC) attacks on a large scale, leading to data theft and unauthorised wire payments.
Krishnan highlights that although organisations can develop AI tools with ethical safeguards, cybercriminals can easily reimplement the technology without these restrictions. To counter these fast-moving threats, implementing a defence-in-depth strategy and utilsing security telemetry for fast analytics have become crucial in identifying and stopping potential attacks before they escalate into ransomware or data breaches.
Article link: https://thehackernews.com/2023/07/new-ai-tool-fraudgpt-emerges-tailored.html
The Storm-0558 breach, which granted Chinese advanced persistent threat (APT) actors’ access to emails in at least 25 US government agencies, may have a more extensive and severe impact than initially thought. The breach involved a stolen Microsoft account (MSA) key, allowing the APT to forge authentication tokens and pose as authorised Azure Active Directory (AD) users. This provided access to Microsoft 365 enterprise email accounts and potentially sensitive information.
Further research by Wiz has revealed that the stolen MSA key could have allowed the attackers to forge access tokens for various Azure Active Directory applications, including personal account authentication services like SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive, and applications supporting “login with Microsoft” functionality. Personal Microsoft accounts for services like Skype and Xbox were also found to be vulnerable.
Although Microsoft has revoked the stolen key and released indicators of compromise (IoCs) for the email attack, the full scope of the breach’s impact remains uncertain. Many organisations lack authentication logging, making it challenging to detect the use of forged tokens against applications. This lack of visibility stems from advanced logging, which was previously available only as a paid premium service. Microsoft’s commitment to making advanced logging free may help, but implementation will take time.
The stakes are high, as compromised Azure AD keys can lead to serious consequences, similar to the SolarWinds breach. Wiz warns that despite key revocation, some Azure AD customers may still be at risk, as the attackers could have established persistence or set up backdoors using their access. Applications relying on cached keys or older certificates may also remain susceptible to token forgery.
Organisations are advised to update their Azure SDKs and refresh trusted certificates to mitigate the risk. The incident’s impact is expected to have long-lasting implications for cloud trust, especially concerning the identity layer, which forms the basis of cloud operations.
Article link: https://www.darkreading.com/cloud/microsoft-365-breach-risk-widens-millions-of-azure-ad-apps
Software company Atlassian has disclosed three remote code execution (RCE) security vulnerabilities in Atlassian Confluence Data Center & Server and Bamboo, which pose a significant risk to cloud infrastructure and software supply chains. Confluence, a widely used corporate wiki for collaboration, has more than 60,000 customers, including LinkedIn, NASA, and the New York Times. Bamboo is a continuous integration and continuous delivery server for software development.
The CVE-2023-22505 (CVSS 8.5) and CVE-2023-22508 (CVSS 8.0) vulnerabilities affect Confluence, while the CVE-2023-22506 (CVSS 7.5) vulnerability impacts Bamboo Data Centre. Successful exploitation of these flaws grants attackers’ system-level access without requiring any user interaction. Although authenticated access is needed, the vulnerabilities open a wide-open door for threat actors to execute arbitrary code and compromise confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
Atlassian has released patches for Confluence versions 8.3.2 and 8.4.0 to address the security issues. For Bamboo, users should update to versions 9.2.3 and 9.3.1 to mitigate the risks.
Given Atlassian’s presence in corporate networks, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) emphasizes the importance of promptly applying the patches to safeguard Atlassian instances.
Article link: https://www.darkreading.com/cloud/atlassian-rce-bugs-plague-confluence-bamboo
Decoy Dog, a new malware discovered by Infoblox, has been identified as a significant upgrade over the Pupy RAT, a remote access trojan it is based on. Decoy Dog possesses powerful, previously unknown capabilities, including the ability to move victims to another controller, allowing the malware to maintain communication with compromised machines and stay hidden for extended periods. Some victims have been actively communicating with Decoy Dog servers for over a year.
The malware’s additional features include executing arbitrary Java code on the client and connecting to emergency controllers using a mechanism similar to a traditional DNS domain generation algorithm (DGA). The use of DNS for command-and-control (C2) communication enables endpoint compromise and instructions exchange between the malware and the controller.
The origins of Decoy Dog remain unclear, but it is believed to be operated by a few nation-state hackers who adapt their attack infrastructure in response to disclosures. They have taken down DNS nameservers and registered new replacement domains to maintain remote persistence and access to existing victims.
Decoy Dog’s deployment dates to late-March or early-April 2022, with several clusters detected under the control of different controllers. The threat actors have demonstrated agility by incorporating a geofencing technique to limit responses to client IP addresses in specific locations, particularly Russia and Eastern Europe.
Infoblox warns that Decoy Dog is an ongoing and serious threat, with its lack of insight into the vulnerabilities exploited in victim systems. The best defence against this malware is using DNS. The malware’s modifications to Pupy RAT for C2 raise questions about the motives behind this choice and highlight the need to remain vigilant and adaptive in defending against evolving threats.
Article link: https://thehackernews.com/2023/07/decoy-dog-new-breed-of-malware-posing.html