From The Blog
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NetSPI’s Offensive Security Offering Leverages Subject Matter Experts to Enhance Pen Testing
Written by Sean KalinichBlack Hat 2023 Las Vegas. The term offensive security has always been an interesting one for me. On the surface is brings to mind reaching…Written on Tuesday, 12 September 2023 17:05 in Security Talk Read 1245 times Read more...
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Black Kite Looks to Offer a Better View of Risk in a Rapidly Changing Threat Landscape
Written by Sean KalinichBlack Hat 2023 – Las Vegas. Risk is an interesting subject and has many different meanings to many different people. For the most part Risk…Written on Tuesday, 12 September 2023 14:56 in Security Talk Read 752 times Read more...
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Microsoft Finally Reveals how they Believe a Consumer Signing Key was Stollen
Written by Sean KalinichIn May of 2023 a few sensitive accounts reported to Microsoft that their environments appeared to be compromised. Due to the nature of these accounts,…Written on Thursday, 07 September 2023 14:40 in Security Talk Read 1131 times Read more...
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Mandiant Releases a Detailed Look at the Campaign Targeting Barracuda Email Security Gateways, I Take a Look at What this all Might Mean
Written by Sean KalinichThe recent attack that leveraged a 0-Day vulnerability to compromise a number of Barracuda Email Security Gateway appliances (physical and virtual, but not cloud) was…Written on Wednesday, 30 August 2023 16:09 in Security Talk Read 920 times Read more...
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Threat Groups Return to Targeting Developers in Recent Software Supply Chain Attacks
Written by Sean KalinichThere is a topic of conversation that really needs to be talked about in the open. It is the danger of developer systems (personal and…Written on Wednesday, 30 August 2023 13:29 in Security Talk Read 992 times Read more...
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Leaked Data from Duolingo incident Shows US is most Impacted
Written by Sean KalinichDuolingo, is a language learning site (not to be confused with an LLM) and has a very large base of users. The site is a…Written on Tuesday, 29 August 2023 19:12 in Security Talk Read 1404 times Read more...
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We talk about the Ransomware Threat Landscape with SecureWorks at Black Hat 2023
Written by Sean KalinichBlack Hat 2023 – Las Vegas, NV – One of my personal focuses is understanding the “Why” behind changes in the threat landscape. In simple…Written on Tuesday, 29 August 2023 18:26 in Security Talk Read 1002 times Read more...
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Now Patched Flaw Leverages Abandoned Reply URL found in Entra ID allows for Privilege Escalation
Written by Sean KalinichMicrosoft has not been having the greatest of months. First it was identified that a stollen MSA signing key was used by a Nation State…Written on Monday, 28 August 2023 15:39 in Security Talk Read 1627 times Read more...
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Qrypt Looking to Attack the Inefficiencies in Quantum Encryption to make Quantum Secure Communication a Reality Today
Written by Sean KalinichBlack Hat 2023, Las Vegas – At Black Hat one of my favorite things to do is see what the latest buzzword(s)/phrases are. One of…Written on Monday, 28 August 2023 12:53 in Security Talk Read 1117 times Read more...
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Displaying items by tag: APT
Microsoft Finally Reveals how they Believe a Consumer Signing Key was Stollen
In May of 2023 a few sensitive accounts reported to Microsoft that their environments appeared to be compromised. Due to the nature of these accounts, Microsoft dove in and discovered that an expired Consumer Microsoft Account Singing Key had been used to gain access to these tenants. It was more than a bit embarrassing as the list included environments that appear to have been related to their Government Cloud Computing tenants, fortunately on the low side (non-classified). Microsoft quickly responded and says they expelled the threat actor while removing the possibility of using that key again (they identified the thumbprint of the key used).
Another Day Another Active Exploit in a Enterprise Tool as Ivanti warns of Exploited MobileIron 0-Day
It used to be a common phrase that the only certain things are Death and Taxes. These days it seems the list has been extended to Death, Taxes, and 0-days in enterprise tools sets. We have seen a number of zero days being abused since the beginning of 2023 such as Barracuda spam filters, MoveIT MFT, Citrix File share MFT, and (the subject of today’s article) Ivanti’s Sentry (the service formerly known as MobileIron). The uptick in exploitation of 0-days is very concerning just on their own, but when looked at as part of a larger effort, it is borderline frightening.
Recently Stolen Microsoft Account Signing Keys can be used to Abuse other Microsoft Identification Related Services
After a recent attack on Federal Civilian Execute Branch (FCEB) Agencies by an APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) group currently suspected of being a nation-state group from China, (whew that was a long start), It has come to the attention of some cloud researchers that these signing keys are not just useful for attacking Exchange Online. According to cloud security company Wiz these MSA Keys can be used to forge tokens for anything that relies on Microsoft Azure AD (Entra ID) Identity services.
US Federal Civilian Executive Branch Agency’s Email Compromised by new Chinese APT Group
It seems that an unnamed FCEB agency had their Outlook Web Access (Exchange Online) environment compromised by a new threat group that is current being attributed to China. The attack and the group were disclosed by CISA and the FBI. With the detection of the FCEB email compromise, Microsoft also identified a much larger espionage campaign involving the newly identified group which includes some 20+ organizations. The timing of the attack is concerning due to it coinciding with a recent NATO meeting.
Double DLL Sideloading, it’s a Thing as Attackers Grow More Sophisticated
DLL sideloading is a common technique for attackers to use when getting their malware in place and has been in use since around 2010. Simply put your malicious DLL in the same directory as the application and Windows in all its helpfulness loads it first instead of the legitimate one that might be in another directory. This method is also referred to as DLL search order hijacking. With the age of this technique and advances in EDR/MDR its usefulness has decreased.
CISA warns that US ICS/SCADA Systems are being Targeted by Threat Groups
CISA has issued another warning that SCADA/ICS systems are being targeted for attack. This time they are in the sights of Nation-State groups and with customized tools. The tools are part of follow-on activities after the initial beachhead has been established. These days gaining initial access to a network, even for infrastructure, does not seem to be a difficult task for nation-state groups.
Another Day, Another Cloud Storage Campaign from the Molerats APT TA402
Dropbox, Google Docs and other cloud storage services are great tools for collaboration and to ensure that your files are kept, relatively, safe. These services can also be used by attackers with the right setup and files. The APT group know as Molerats is just such a group. They have been identified is several attacks that leveraged Dropbox and Google Docs as their C2 and payload sources. In December of 2021 the ThreatLabz team at zscaler noticed some unusual behavior that turned out to be just such an attack.
MoonBounce UEFI Malware linked to APT41 by Kaspersky Researchers
APT group 41 also known as Winnti has been tied to a wonderful new piece of malware that does not infect your operating system, but the UEFI firmware on your device. The malware in question has been dubbed MoonBounce by the security researchers at Kaspersky who are responsible for finding it. APT41 has been in operation for a while and is identified by their tactics techniques and protocols (TTPs) which include stealthy attacks meant to maintain a long-term presence for information gathering on the target.
OSX Networks are insecure
As the Black Hat security conference is going on this week we will be covering a lot of the exploits they find. We have already talked about the SCDA vulnerability, how cars with remote lock/unlock/start are vulnerable and even touched in HTML5 and mobile phone exploits. Now we hear confirmation of something we have known for a while: Apple’s OSX server is not secure.
Experts at the security firm Isec have shown that while individual systems can be secured (the called them islands) once you put the OSX server in play it is “two notches above trivial” to compromise the whole network. Isec showed this off by executing a local DNS exploit that allowed them to scavenge admin credentials and then gain full admin access to the network.
All was not bad news for Apple fans; Isec also said that OSX Lion now “matches” Microsoft’s Windows 7 for local permissions elevation protection and anti-exploit protection. Isec also went on to say that Apple’s marketing has been training consumers to feel safe when using Macs which actually makes them more likely to be open to targeted attacks.