Tag: cybercrime

Defense

Ransomware Realities

Everything is much worse now, or is it? 

”The world is burning, the world is burning but then if you look around, it always has been…” 

Computer systems and security go together much like chalk and cheese! Probably sounds a bit odd but miniaturization, consumerization and mobility have put more technology out in the world than we can really comprehend, yet technology security is still dramatically overlooked by most organizations. 

The insane pace of change, the drive for faster, better, cheaper and the reality that it probably isn’t a stretch to say most people (and organizations) do not really understand what ‘secure’ or ‘hardened’ looks like.

Read more “Ransomware Realities” →
Defense

Ransomware Defence: Part 2a – Persistence, Privilege Escalation and…

Recap

In Part 1 (Initial Access Defence and Checklist) we looked at ways of hardening your attack surface to defend against initial access. When it comes to ransomware there is a range of elements and variables in the kill chain that need to be successful for the outcomes to be achieved by the criminals. Here we are going to move further into the kill chain to look at further defences. Remember you need to have an “Assume Breach” mindset if you are going to be able to defend against ransomware, that being said, there is a hell of a lot of things you can do for 0 to low investment costs that provide a great ROI. Now some of this is going to be repeated guidance from part 1, that’s ok repetition is good (make sure you are covered from multiple perspectives). Ok let us get to it! Read more “Ransomware Defence: Part 2a – Persistence, Privilege Escalation and Lateral Movement” →

Defense

Ransomware Defence Checklist – Part 1 : Initial Access

Defending the Realm

We keep seeing organization get hit, in some kind of a sick way I think me and some of my friends in the industry are bored with the over dramatic responses of “sophisticated” “advanced” and “unpreventable” because most times the kill chains simply are not like this. But still the onslaught keeps coming. Well I know this much, whilst I would love to deploy with the team and harden everyone’s networks that simply isn’t possible. So what we thought we would do is write something to try and spread the knowledge a bit further and hopefully have some positive impact.

Ransomware 101

It’s not just that your data will be encrypted, it will likely be exfiltrated and sold. You will likely have access sold, data sold and be extorted. The Ransomware business model is adapting to defender responses. Even if you can restore from backup they will likely try and attempt to extort. This brings a key point in this equation, the best position is to NOT get pwn3d to start with. Ok that might sound silly to say but when we look at these kill chains you might start to see the world from my perspective a little. Read more “Ransomware Defence Checklist – Part 1 : Initial Access” →

Breach

Following a Kill Chain – Defending against Babuk group’s…

Washington Police Department Pwn3d by Ransomware Group Babuk

So it’s all over the news outlets, a police department (Washington DC PD) has been hit by a ransomware syndicate, Babuk. So firstly, let’s be realistic everyone can get pwn3d and at this time our thoughts go out to those affected and to the teams working the response. Being hit by ransomware is NOT fun and not something we would wish upon anyone. That being said this isn’t an ambulance chase, what I want to do hear is look at the TTPs from Babuk in a bit more detail so hopefully we can help inform and educate people so they can strengthen their security postures.

References

https://news.sky.com/story/russian-hackers-target-washington-dc-police-department-in-apparent-ransomware-attack-12288183

https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/27/washington_dc_police_ransomware/ Read more “Following a Kill Chain – Defending against Babuk group’s TTPs” →

Defense

Business Email Compromise in Office 365

BEC

Business email compromise can be a prelude to a range of attacks but commonly it’s either Ransomware of Scammers. In this post we are focsing on scammer activity which uses a ‘man in the mailbox’ attack to get in between two parties in an email converstation with the aim of attempting theft by fradulently altering a wire transfer so that the third party sends funds to the scammers not to the victim. There are cleary other avenues that can be leveraged (the compromised mailbox may be used to phish or email malware to another victim).

Initial Access

To gain access to the mailbox a range of techniques can be employed which includes:

  • Credential stuffing
  • Phishing and credential harvesting
  • Malware

Once they have your logon credentials, they now will attempt to access your mailbox.

Avoiding Geo Location Alerts

A scammer may use a public VPN service (such as services from AVAST etc.) to move their internet connection the target mailbox region. They can usually locate a person through some OSINT.

By moving to the normal area of the user they are less likely to trip geo location alerts. Read more “Business Email Compromise in Office 365” →

Guides

Becoming a Cyber Criminal (Pro) – Basic External Attacks

This is an experiment to combine a near real time thread on twitter and a blog… I have no idea if this will work. The premise is, we are conducting a adversary simulation against a target and want to see how this translates into a ‘plain language’ blog/story about how these things work. (I’ve also not included sales/scoping/documentaiton and clearly not all of this is in real time) but it is real!

The Fundamental Steps

Ok so first thing is first – the criminal part is a joke! We are here to help people. What we are going to do however is consider the general cyber threat landscape, look at the organisation from an ‘external threat actor’ perspective and then see what we can map out from an attack surface point of view.

Read more “Becoming a Cyber Criminal (Pro) – Basic External Attacks” →
Defense

ProxyLogon (CVE-2021-26855) PoC and Metasploit Module Released

The last two weeks we’ve seen major activity around the world with defenders and criminals rushing to respond to the recent zero day vulnerability patches and then the race to reverse engineer the kill chain to create an explot. We saw a PoC fairly early but it required that you reverse engineer some exchange DLLs and/or TAP the 443 to 444 interface on an exchange server to work out how to weaponise it. Things however have progressed, 8 hours ago we saw a metasploit module go online:

Read more “ProxyLogon (CVE-2021-26855) PoC and Metasploit Module Released” →
Breach

ProxyLogon – A god mode backdoor even when used…

Imagine

Imagine being able to read emails from any mailbox from a corporation! But everyone uses office 365… don’t they? Well ok even if that was the case (It’s not) then the RCE would come into play. An RCE into system level access to Exchange which is so heavily tied to active directory they are almost joined at the hip) is a killer foothold. However, you pain the scenarios they aren’t good!

All knowing and all powerful

Imagine if you could read everyone’s email! What could you do with this?

  • Steal IP
  • Steal data
  • Steal credentials
  • Extort, blackmail and bribe

The SSRF vulnerability enabling a threat actor to gain unauthenticated read access to mailboxes would be a killer tool for both nation state spies and criminals alike. Read more “ProxyLogon – A god mode backdoor even when used with READ only” →

Defense

WordPress Security Considerations

WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems in the world today. I believe it is about 35% of the market share globally. That is a lot of sites.

I have been using WordPress for years myself; some people give it some stick for being vulnerable but that is usually them referring to third party plugins. I like it because you can build a site easily, without having to spend ages and you can deploy it and migrate etc. without having a huge headache. Read more “WordPress Security Considerations” →

Defense

Combating Cyber Crime: Should we really be charging to…

Sensational Press or Cyber War Mongering?

I do not know Mr Martin, but I would assume that his role at NCSC and GCHQ would have given him a good insight into the realities of cybercrime, cyber terrorism, nation state affairs and how to effectively defend against cyber criminals (and other threat actors) so please read this blog as it is intended, it’s an analysis on the quoted statements and reporting style and general view of mine about current cyber war rhetoric, not an analysis of the person. Why am I writing this? Well, I am seeing an increased level of FUD, snake oil and cyber war rhetoric and I wanted to share some of my thoughts, opinions, and ideas in this space. For it is far too easy to call for war and in cyberspace do we even know what that means? Read more “Combating Cyber Crime: Should we really be charging to cyber war?” →

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