Uncovering the market in vulnerability exploits
It won't come as any surprise that there's a thriving market among threat actors for the latest vulnerability exploits. A new report from Flashpoint lifts the lid on this world and reveals the exact vulnerability exploits that were listed for sale, purchased, and/or traded in the first half of 2023.
One of the most expensive was a remote code execution exploit for Adobe Commerce -- the eCommerce platform formerly known as Magneto -- which was listed for sale at $30,000. A Citrix ShareFile exploit was priced at $25,000.
Enterprises struggle with basic security hygiene
Both ransomware groups and APTs continue to exploit vulnerabilities in public-facing applications, particularly in security appliances, business email technologies and enterprise file transfer products.
The latest mid-year threat review from Rapid7, based on the company's threat analytics and underground intelligence data, shows almost 40 percent of incidents Rapid7 managed services teams saw in the first half of 2023 were the result of missing or lax enforcement of multi-factor authentication, particularly for VPNs and virtual desktop infrastructure.
Cybercriminals step up their targeting of macOS
Historically Windows has been the favorite target of cybercriminals, but new research from Accenture suggests macOS is becoming a lucrative priority on the dark web and information on exploits is being traded for millions of dollars.
The Accenture Cyber Threat Intelligence (ACTI) team has noted a significant upward trend in dark-web threat actors targeting macOS from 2019 to 2022 and the volume from 2023 has overtaken 2022 in just the first six months.
Dark web market in infostealers is booming
A new report from the Secureworks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) uncovers a thriving market in infostealer logs that serves as a key enabler for some of the most damaging forms of cybercrime such as ransomware attacks.
On the 'Russian Market' site alone, the number of logs for sale increased by 150 percent in less than nine months, from two million on a single day in June 2022 to over five million on a single day in late February 2023.
Technology sector suffers most from poor cyber hygiene
Analysis of exposed dark web assets from SpyCloud finds that the technology sector has the highest number of malware-infected employees and consumers, the highest number of exposed corporate credentials, and the most exposed malware cookie records.
In the analysis of the darknet exposure of employees of Fortune 1000 enterprises across 21 industry sectors, researchers uncovered 27.48 million pairs of credentials with corporate email addresses and plain text passwords, with over 223,000 exfiltrated by malware.
Dark web intelligence is critical to defending the enterprise
A new survey of over a thousand CISOs from large enterprises in the US and UK, finds that 93 percent are concerned about dark web threats and 72 percent believe that intelligence on cybercriminals is critical to defending their organization.
The report from Searchlight Cyber looks at how CISOs are gathering data from the dark web to improve their security posture.
The dark data challenge
It is estimated that by 2025, the annual global data consumption will amount to 181 zettabytes -- over ten times more than in 2015. Does it mean we will make ten times better-informed business decisions? Most likely not, and the reason is simple: according to different sources, 75 percent or more of the data companies collect lurks in the dark.
'Dark data' is the vast amount of information collected by businesses but never analyzed or used. It can be web and app logs, email correspondence, visitor tracking data, the information generated by IoT devices, etc. Nowadays, every business activity is recorded somehow. Most of this data is unstructured and gathered in different formats. This cornucopia of information has to be processed, stored, secured, and maintained. Instead of increasing ROI, it increases noise, hidden costs, and safety issues since companies are legally responsible for all the collected data, even if they don’t use it.
Happy phishing day to you!
Phishing emails usually try to trick the user into opening an attachment or visiting a website. Often this is by instilling a sense of urgency -- telling you your account is about to expire, for example.
Researchers at NordVPN have uncovered a new tactic involving email birthday cards. After all, if it's your birthday and you've opened several eCards already you're not going to think there's anything phishy about another one.
How much is your streaming account worth on the Dark Web?
Netflix recently announced a crackdown on the sharing of account details and has introduced a paid sharing option to allow multiple users. It isn't surprising then that there's a thriving Dark Web market for streaming account details.
Research from AtlasVPN shows that account logins for popular streaming services are being sold for an average of $11.
PayPal gets stuffed by large-scale credential attack
Yesterday PayPal began sending out data breach notifications to thousands of its users who have had their accounts accessed via credential stuffing attacks which exposed some personal data.
BleepingComputer reports that almost 35,000 accounts were compromised in the attack which took place between December 6 and December 8, 2022.
Pssstt... Wanna buy an identity? The price of data on the dark web
We all know that stolen information is traded on the dark web, and new research by Trustwave looks at what is available and how much it costs. It also uncovers the additional services that are being offered to make it easier to commit fraud.
Details of a stolen credit card can be bought for as little as $8. Much more valuable though is a card with 'fullz' -- extra information on the victim that makes the card more usable. These can cost up to $70.
Stolen data used to launch more effective BEC attacks
New research from Accenture shows that data stolen in ransomware and other cyberattacks is being weaponized in order to carry out business email compromise (BEC) attacks.
Underground forums have sets of credentials for sale for as little as $10 that provide access to genuine corporate email accounts, making malicious emails seem genuine.
Ransomware uses malicious macros to infect target systems
A new study reveals that 87 percent of the ransomware found on the dark web can be delivered via malicious macros in order to infect targeted systems.
The research from Venafi, in partnership with criminal intelligence provider, Forensic Pathways, looked at 35 million dark web URLs and forums to uncover a thriving ransomware community with highly damaging macro-enabled strains readily available.
Honor among cyber thieves, the professional side of the dark web
Much like the legitimate eCommerce world, trust and reputation have become essential parts of the cybercriminal trade. New research by HP Wolf Security finds 77 percent of cybercriminal marketplaces analyzed require a vendor bond -- a license to sell -- which can cost up to $3,000.
In other evidence of a professional approach, 85 percent of these sites use escrow payments, and 92 percent have a third-party dispute resolution service. Every marketplace provides vendor feedback scores too. Cybercriminals also try to stay a step ahead of law enforcement by transferring reputations between websites -- as the average lifespan of a dark net website is only 55 days.
Why code signing is the talk of the dark web
Code signing certificates are an essential part of our software world. Every software update is signed with a unique machine identity, combining a time stamp with an encryption algorithm in the form of a x.509 certificate issued by a trusted certificate authority. This allows other machines to know they are authentic and can be trusted.
Developers sign their code with a private key, and an end-user uses the public key from that developer to validate that the code hasn’t changed since the developer signed it. If someone has altered the code, the signature will provide an untrusted alert, in the same way a website with an untrusted or expired certificate does with transport layer security (TLS) machine identities. Without this system of identity, it would be impossible to deliver software. Without this you couldn’t use Windows, Mac, or iPhone let alone fly on a modern Airbus or Boeing aircraft. And it’s quickly becoming the same way in the cloud-native world of Kubernetes.
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