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Ransomware

Cybersecurity in the Workplace is Everyone’s Business

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October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM) in the US, which is an annual effort by the Department of Homeland Security to educate the public about privacy and security in our increasingly connected world. There are different themes each week, and this week the focus is on cybersecurity in the workplace.

Creating a culture of cybersecurity is one of the most important pieces of a business security initiative. Companies often overlook the human element in security, despite investing heavily in firewalls, security gateways, and data protection. Simple passwords and social engineering scams put the company at risk of a larger attack. Spear phishing, for example, can trick an unsuspecting employee into exposing the company to ransomware, data exfiltration, and more.

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Rate of Ransomware Attacks Reaches Epidemic Levels

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They say misery loves company so when it comes to ransomware a new study suggests there’s a lot cold comfort to go around. Thanks to bots another other automation tools the rate at which those attacks will be launched is expected to increase. In fact, Europol, the law enforcement arm of The European Union, in an Internet Organized Crime Threat Assessment 2017 report released this week declared ransomware to be a global epidemic that is being orchestrated by organized criminal syndicates.

A separate ransomware report released this week by Crowd Research Partners finds that the rate at which ransomware attacks provides some additional insight to rate at which ransomware attacks are increasing. The survey of 516 cybersecurity professionals participating in a LinkedIn group managed by Cybersecurity Insiders finds that 75 percent of organizations affected by ransomware have experienced up to five attacks in the last 12 months and that 25 percent experienced six or more attacks.

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Is spear phishing the new ransomware?

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In a 2016 survey on ransomware, 43% of North American consumers said they did not know what ransomware is. That's despite the fact that ransomware activity had increased 300% during the same time period. Toward the end of 2016, ransomware attacks against businesses were taking place every 40 seconds. For individuals, that number increases to once every ten seconds.

The number of people unaware of ransomware attacks is surely smaller now. With global attacks and prime-time ransomware-centered TV shows, ransomware is creeping its way into the minds of computer users and savvy consumers everywhere. Businesses are creating ransom and cyberattack budgets, stockpiling bitcoin, and detailing procedures and thresholds on when to pay.

It looks like spear phishing is taking the same convoluted path through the consciousness of the public. In a recent survey of IT decision makers, only 25% felt confident that users would identify a phishing attempt, though in another survey, 54% of respondents were able to identify phishing emails. Meanwhile, the number of spear phishing attacks continue to increase, and the criminals are getting better at research and impersonation.

So is spear phishing the new ransomware? Let's take a look at a few similarities:

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Threat Spotlight: Email Malware Impersonates Secure Bank Messages

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Everyone seems to be on a heightened alert following the recent Equifax data breach and probably keeping a closer eye on bank statements and credit reports for good measure. You might even be more likely to open an email from your bank these days that perhaps you would’ve ignored in previous months. Monitoring bank accounts and credit reports is always a good idea; however, we’ve seen a recent run of alarming email threat patterns that should make you think twice before you act on an email from your bank.    

In this month’s Threat Spotlight, we dissect an email attack that is impersonating a “secure message” from financial institutions, which we’re quickly finding to be a growing trend. Here’s what we’ve found:

Highlighted Threat: 

Secure Bank Message Impersonation — email attack delivered by spoofed messages from financial institutions

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Ransomware Attacks Have Entered the Realm of the Insidious and Vile

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Ransomware attacks have taken an especially nasty turn in the last week. An individual or group of people going by the pseudonym Dark Overlord has been terrorizing a high school in Montana after launching a ransomware attack. In addition to demanding the usual amount of digital cybercurrency, the attackers have been evoking the images of multiple massacres involving school-aged children to induce local authorities to comply with their demands. The hackers know precisely what it is in this day and age that parents fear most when they send their children off to school every day.

Dark Overlord is the same nom de guerre employed by the individual or group of people that also launched the recent ransomware attacks against HBO and Netflix this year demanding to be paid to not post stolen intellectual property on the Web before the media companies' scheduled broadcast. Even after receiving a reported $50,000 payment the hackers apparently went ahead in one instance and released an episode of Orange is the New Black before its official release.

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Ransomware and K-12 – Threats and Solutions: Backup is Key

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*Note: This is the third and final post in our multi-part blog series that addresses ransomware threats and solutions in K-12 environments.

Last month, I discussed the two most pivotal steps in preventing ransomware attacks from wreaking havoc on your organization: user education and securing your network. While these steps establish a robust security posture to combat cyberattacks, there is still one more layer your organization can add to ensure recovery when an attack does strike: having a solid backup plan.  Let’s chat about a few recent K-12 school districts that had to leverage their backup plan. In the news, we heard about Montana’s Bigfork Public School District who in November 2016 was hit with Ransomware and a payment of $10,000 was demanded. Rather than pay, they restored with an offsite backup. The same is true for Rhinebeck Central School District in New York who was also hit by a ransomware attack and did a restored with off-site backup files as well. As you can see, having a solid backup plan in place can not only prevent a ransomware payment and spare your data but it can also provide peace of mind.

The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team provides some guidelines to help organizations optimize their backup solutions in combatting ransomware:

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Barracuda Advanced Technology Group monitoring aggressive ransomware threat

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The Barracuda Advanced Technology Group is actively monitoring an aggressive ransomware threat that appears to come in the largest volume from Vietnam.  Other significant sources of this attack include India, Columbia, and Turkey and Greece.  Other countries appear to be distributing the same attack in very low volumes.  So far we have seen roughly 20 million of these attacks in the last 24 hours, and that number is growing rapidly.

These attacks are wrapped in either a ‘Herbalife' branded email or a generic email that impersonates a ‘copier' file delivery:

These attacks have been morphing throughout the day, but they all use fake source email addresses.  The earliest examples came from Vietnam and Greece.

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Legal Eagles Start to Feel the Cybersecurity Heat

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Far too many cybersecurity professionals are in the unenviable position of often being the one person in the company continually forecasting imminent doom. But it turns out that another important constituency is also starting to share those concerns.

A new survey of 200 general counsels and in-house lawyers conducted by ALM Intelligence on behalf of the law firm Morrison & Foerster finds that 65 percent of the respondents now recognize privacy and security as being a major challenge. However, over a third (36%) said their companies have no crisis management plan in place and only three percent said their companies were “well prepared” to handle a crisis.

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Active ransomware attack uses impersonation and embedded advanced threats

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In the last 24 hours, the Barracuda advanced security team has observed about 20 million attempts at a ransomware attack through an email attachment “Payment_201708-6165.7z.”  Here is a screenshot of the email with the addresses redacted:

In this attack, the source of the email is a spoofed address, and the attachment name and number is included in the subject line and body of the message.  The full subject line in this example is “Emailing: Payment_201708-6165” and the number in the attachment name is variable. 

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What Can We Learn from a Summer of Ransomware?

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Ransomware has been around now for almost a decade. But incidents in May and June took the threat to a whole new level as the worm-like WannaCry and NotPetya left a global trail of chaos and destruction behind them. Organisations big and small were hit; many are still recovering and the final financial fallout could be massive.

As any good IT security manager will tell you, it’s important to view such incidents constructively, so that if lightning does strike twice you’ll be properly protected the second time around. So what lessons can we learn from a summer of ransomware?

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