Microsoft bolsters threat intelligence security portfolio with two new products

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Drawing from last year’s acquisition of RiskIQ, Microsoft is adding two new threat-intelligence applications to its Defender product family, and separately offering new detection and response capabilities for SAP ERP systems to its Sentinel SIEM (security information and event management) product.

Combining intelligence from the security research team at RiskIQ with existing in-house security findings, Microsoft has developed Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence, a standalone library of raw adversary data. Microsoft says it is offering the library for free, accessible directly by all users, or from within its existing Defender family of security products, according to a blog post from Vasu Jakkal, a Microsoft vice president for security, compliance, identity, and management.

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Analyzing the Vulnerabilities Associated with the Top Malware Strains of 2021

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Analyzing the Vulnerabilities Associated with the Top Malware Strains of 2021

International cybersecurity agencies issue a joint alert outlining the top malware strains of 2021. We identified vulnerabilities associated with these strains.

Background

On August 4, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) released a joint cybersecurity advisory regarding the top malware strains observed being exploited throughout 2021. According to this advisory, most of these top strains have been seen in use for over five years, through different variations and evolutions.

While malware is used for a variety of purposes, the government agencies point out that ransomware is a primary use case.

Analysis

Malware is most commonly distributed in phishing messages or malicious documents and websites; it often still relies on unpatched vulnerabilities to gain elevated privileges, move throughout target environments and execute code. We have analyzed reports on the malware strains to identify any vulnerabilities associated with them. This doesn’t represent an exhaustive list of vulnerabilities exploited by malware, but it is a helpful starting point for organizations to cut off attack paths for these most prevalent strains.

Based on this list, we have identified a few key themes regarding the vulnerabilities used in malware.

CVE
Description
CVSSv3
VPR*

CVE-2015-5122
Adobe Flash Player user-after-free
v2 10.0
9.7

CVE-2016-0189
Scripting Engine memory corruption
7.5
9.8

CVE-2016-4171
Adobe Flash Player arbitrary code execution (apsa16-03)
9.8
8.9

CVE-2017-0144
Windows SMB remote code execution (EternalBlue)
8.1
9.6

CVE-2017-0199
Microsoft Office/WordPad remote code execution
7.8
9.8

CVE-2017-11882
Microsoft Office memory corruption
7.8
9.9

CVE-2017-8570
Microsoft Office remote code execution
7.8
9.8

CVE-2017-8750
Microsoft Browser memory corruption
7.5
8.9

CVE-2017-8759
.NET Framework remote code execution
7.8
9.8

CVE-2018-0798
Microsoft Office memory corruption
8.8
9.8

CVE-2018-0802
Microsoft Office memory corruption
7.8
9.8

CVE-2018-14847
MikroTik RouterOS remote code execution
9.1
8.8

CVE-2020-0787
Windows Background Intelligent Transfer Service elevation of privilege
7.8
9.8

CVE-2021-34527
Windows Print Spooler remote code execution (PrintNightmare)
8.8
9.8

CVE-2021-40444
Microsoft MSHTML remote code execution
7.8
9.8

CVE-2021-43890
Windows AppX installer spoofing vulnerability
7.1
9.2

CVE-2022-30190
Microsoft Windows Support Diagnostic Tool remote code execution (Follina)
7.8
9.8

*Please note: Tenable’s Vulnerability Priority Rating (VPR) scores are calculated nightly. This blog post was published on August 4 and reflects VPR at that time.

Source: Tenable Research, August 2022

Notably, 14 of the 17 vulnerabilities identified are in Microsoft products. Nine of the flaws are code execution vulnerabilities and five are memory corruption. It is interesting to see that there is only one elevation of privilege flaw, given that vulnerability type’s utility to other threat actors.

CVE-2017-11882, a memory corruption remote code execution flaw in Microsoft Office, is an interesting case. From what we have seen, it is widely exploited by malware, including six of the 11 strains listed in this advisory and Emotet. In 2019, CVE-2017-11882 was identified as the most common delivery method for spreading malware by Cofense. It was also identified as a routinely exploited vulnerability in both 2020 and 2021 according to several government cybersecurity agencies.

We routinely see CVE-2017-11882 being used by various malware strains, including Trickbot and Qakbot, which are both first-stage malware components that download secondary and tertiary malware, which may include a variety of ransomware. Ultimately, vulnerabilities like CVE-2017-11882, CVE-2017-0199 and CVE-2021-40444 are just vehicles for threat actors to gain initial access into a targeted network.

Vulnerabilities used by ransomware affiliates and IABs

Several vulnerabilities connected to the joint alert have been utilized by key players in the ransomware ecosystem, including Initial Access Brokers (IABs) and ransomware affiliates. The flaws have also been used as part of first stage malware components to deploy ransomware.

The LockBit ransomware group and its affiliates have been seen using CVE-2020-0787, an elevation of privilege vulnerability in the Microsoft Windows Background Intelligent Transfer Service. CVE-2021-34527, an elevation of privilege vulnerability in the Windows Print Spooler service, referred to as PrintNightmare, has been utilized by several ransomware groups including Vice Society, Conti, Magniber and Black Basta. Elevation of privilege vulnerabilities are valuable tools as part of post-compromise activity, once an attacker has gained access to a vulnerable system with limited privileges.

CVE-2021-40444, a remote code execution vulnerability in Microsoft MSHTML, was used by EXOTIC LILY, an IAB that worked directly with the Conti ransomware group. IABs specialize in gaining initial access to an organization and selling access to a variety of threat actors, including ransomware affiliates or in rare instances, partnering directly with ransomware groups like Conti. We dive into the various players in our Ransomware Ecosystem report, which includes a broader list of known vulnerabilities leveraged by IABs, affiliates and ransomware groups.

Adoption of CVE-2022-30190, aka Follina

The majority of the vulnerabilities identified are at least two years old, which tracks with the “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” approach most attackers take in their toolsets. If seven-year-old vulnerabilities are still working, why would they adopt new ones?

One vulnerability that busts this trend is CVE-2022-30190, aka “Follina,” a zero day publicly disclosed in May of this year based on attacks in April. Its speedy adoption into malware (Qakbot and Remco specifically) shows the confounding nature of threat actors. They will rely on old faithful vulnerabilities like CVE-2017-11882, but they’ll also bring new flaws into their repertoire, especially when there is publicly available proof-of-concept code.

Top malware use top exploited vulnerabilities of 2021

In April, CISA, the National Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, ACSC, Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, New Zealand National Cyber Security Centre, and United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre released an advisory listing the top routinely exploited vulnerabilities of 2021. The report highlighted 36 vulnerabilities frequently exploited by threat actors; four of those are also represented in malware associated with this latest advisory — two of them were released after the relevant timeframe.

Two of the vulnerabilities that appear on both lists, CVE-2021-34527 (PrintNightmare) and CVE-2021-40444, were also among the top five vulnerabilities of 2021 in Tenable’s Threat Landscape Retrospective. We have seen sustained exploitation of these flaws by diverse threat actors since their disclosure. The continued exploitation is troubling evidence that organizations are leaving these flaws unremediated, which is particularly concerning considering how many Print Spooler flaws Microsoft has patched in the intervening year since PrintNightmare.

When making prioritization decisions, it’s always valuable to consider multiple data points. While the majority of the vulnerabilities associated with this malware advisory may not have been the top exploited flaws in 2021, remediating them is still an important step to reducing risk. It’s about cutting down known paths of exploitation.

Identifying affected systems

A list of Tenable plugins to identify these vulnerabilities can be found here. This link uses a search filter to ensure that all matching plugin coverage will appear for the vulnerabilities referenced in this post.

Get more information

Joint Cybersecurity Advisory A22-216A
AA22-117A: 2021 Top Routinely Exploited Vulnerabilities
Tenable’s Ransomware Ecosystem report

Join Tenable’s Security Response Team on the Tenable Community.

Learn more about Tenable, the first Cyber Exposure platform for holistic management of your modern attack surface.

Get a free 30-day trial of Tenable.io Vulnerability Management.

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Deep Instinct’s Prevention for Applications detects malicious files in transit

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Cybersecurity vendor Deep Instinct has announced the launch of Deep Instinct Prevention for Applications, a new antimalware software product that detects and stops malicious files in transit.

Prevention for Applications is deployed via a container within a customer’s environment and does not require cloud access, with device and system agnostic flexibility that allows it to be implemented to protect any application. It advances threat protection beyond the endpoint with in-transit file scanning via API.

Karen Crowley, Director of Product Solutions at Deep Instinct, tells CSO that PDF and Office files remain a large attack target as they are so widely used. “PDF documents can contain text, images, and codes that can be weaponized with hidden scripts that won’t be detected and endanger the organization,” she says. “These files could open a backdoor and allow cybercriminals to access devices and then pivot to other areas of the network.”

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SIKE Broken

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SIKE is one of the new algorithms that NIST recently added to the post-quantum cryptography competition.

It was just broken, really badly.

We present an efficient key recovery attack on the Supersingular Isogeny Diffie­-Hellman protocol (SIDH), based on a “glue-and-split” theorem due to Kani. Our attack exploits the existence of a small non-scalar endomorphism on the starting curve, and it also relies on the auxiliary torsion point information that Alice and Bob share during the protocol. Our Magma implementation breaks the instantiation SIKEp434, which aims at security level 1 of the Post-Quantum Cryptography standardization process currently ran by NIST, in about one hour on a single core.

News article.

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Smashing Security podcast #286: Hackers doxxed, Pornhub probs, and Co-op security measures

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Pornhub has a problem, the UK’s Co-op supermarket is accused of big brother tactics, and we take a look at how a security researcher is revealing the true identify of hackers.

All this and much much more is discussed in the latest edition of the “Smashing Security” podcast by computer security veterans Graham Cluley and Carole Theriault, joined this week by Maria Varmazis.

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