An evolution of threat actor

Motivation and a diverse network of people and capabilities can go a long way, then add in digital skills and winning steak… and you have: scattered spider!

There’s a big difference between zero day spraying the internet and planting webshells or copying someone’s open S3 bucket and say…. doxing staff, their families and attacking them and their assets in the real and digital worlds.

I think people won’t broadly grasp the effects that can be achieved (harm) when the adversary is motivated, dedicated, capable, resourced and has very little moral qualms.

There is no magic bullet to defend against an adversary like this, you need a whole of organisation defence (and to pursue even more than that!).

Threat Intel

Threat Analysis Tools

I’ve not blogged in a while, but I wanted to put down a note of some useful tools people can use to help them combat cyber crime.

This isn’t going to be an in depth look at each tool, however I do want to, in the near future, try and do some demos/videos etc. of how to investigate potential/suspected or identified threats. I’ll drop a list of some of the useful tools below and also do a quick demo of investigating an event (from this blog)

Threat Intel

The RoyalMail Ransomware Saga

Last update we had was when LockBit released a transcript of a chat alleged to be between LockBit and the RoyalMail ransomware negotiator.

Thanks to Domonic far tagging me, we can see an update has occurred on the LB site:

Defence

Office Microsoft Support Diagnostic Tool (MSDT) Vulnerability “Follina”

This is a fast publish!

Confirmed all Office (ISO Install/PRO and 365) when using the Rich Text Format (RTF) method.

Office 365 has some sort of patch against the .DOCX format.

oh dear….
Windows 11 (not 100% up to date from APRIL)
Office 365 (should be fully patched)

.RTF

MSDT Exploit! pic.twitter.com/M2Xn1TxANX
— MrR3b00t | #StandWithUkraine #DefendAsOne (@UK_Daniel_Card) May 31, 2022

WGET Execution

Defence

CVE-2022-22972 & CVE-2022-22973

More VMware Workspace One Vulns

This is a fast publish

Vmware just released patches for two new vulnerabilities in Workspace One, followed by guidance from CISA to patch by May 23^rd or remove the devices from the network/internet!

“All Federal Civilian Executive Branch agencies must complete the following actions:

By 5:00 PM EDT on Monday, May 23, 2022:

Enumerate all instances of impacted VMware products [VMware Workspace ONE Access (Access), VMware Identity Manager (vIDM), VMware vRealize Automation (vRA), VMware Cloud Foundation, and vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager] on agency networks.

Defense

Threat Modelling 101

What is a threat?

https://csrc.nist.gov/glossary/term/threat

According to those clever people at NIST it is:

“Any circumstance or event with the potential to adversely impact organizational operations (including mission, functions, image, or reputation), organizational assets, or individuals through an information system via unauthorized access, destruction, disclosure, modification of information, and/or denial of service. Also, the potential for a threat-source to successfully exploit a particular information system vulnerability.” Read more “Threat Modelling 101” →

Defense

Understanding Penetration Testing Scopes

“Can I have a penetration test please” is about in line with saying “Can I have a car please?”. Why am I writing a blog about this? Well, where do I start, so I have been working on the technology world basically all my career and over the last 20 odd years one area of digital security management that I think a lot of organisations and people struggle with is understanding just what a penetration test is, how it should be used, how long they can take and what is involved. Read more “Understanding Penetration Testing Scopes” →

Breach

British Airways breach

Not what you want to see when you’ve just paid for a holiday!

As reported across major news networks over the world, British Airways has suffered a data breach that not only includes customer data but also includes payment details. Details from 380,000 customers have been accessed by an unauthorised third party. More details can be found on news sites such as:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/06/british_airways_hacked/

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-45440850

It’s likely that attackers have compromised a web service which is linked to payment services, however no specific details have been released yet so until then we can only speculate.

In this post we look at the information reported by British Airways, guidance for customers from BA, ourselves and NCSC but also we discuss the steps business’s should be taking to ensure they have a strong security posture, especially where customer data is concerned. Read more “British Airways breach” →