Displaying items by tag: threat landscape

Black Hat 2023 – Las Vegas, NV – One of my personal focuses is understanding the “Why” behind changes in the threat landscape. In simple terms understanding the Why of something gives you a good understanding of potential pivots and changes. After all a personal Why is what motivates and moves you, it stands to reason that identifying the Why behind threat groups gives you an insight into their motivations and drivers (besides money). With this in mind I sat down with Don Smith, VP of Threat Intelligence, Counter Threat Unit. The same team that identified the abandoned reply URL flaw in Power Platform.

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.

There is nothing like hearing about a new information stealer on a Monday. In this case the malware in question goes by the name of Mystic Stealer and was first pushed onto the world in April of 2023. It boasts some pretty impressive features like being able to steal data from 40 different web browsers and over 70 browser extensions. This list of features is on top of targeting crypto wallets, Steam accounts, and Telegram Accounts.

The Threat Landscape is an interesting topic of discussion. It is a constantly changing thing and even the best predictions can often fall short of the actual threat. This is because in most cases, the attackers are a step ahead of the defenders. They have the advantage, to coin a D&D phrase, they won the initiative roll. Defenders are always waiting to see what might happen, they plan without really knowing what the attackers are going to do which means they have to be secure everywhere (not really a possibility). To help them put their resources in the right places, most security teams rely on threat intelligence feeds and an understanding of the Threat Landscape.