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Ransomware remains a risk, but here’s how you can avoid infection

It’s been a case of good news/bad news when it comes to ransomware recently. New figures from Microsoft suggest that Ireland had one of the lowest rates of infection in the world in 2018. But in early May, a sophisticated strain of ransomware called MegaCortex began spiking across Ireland, the US, Canada, Argentina, France, Indonesia and elsewhere.

Data from Microsoft’s products found that malware and ransomware attacks declined by 60 per cent in Ireland between March and December 2018. Just 1.26 per cent reported so-called ‘encounter rates’, giving Ireland the lowest score in the world.

Hoorays on hold

Don’t break out the bunting just yet, though. As BH Consulting’s CEO Brian Honan told the Daily Swig, the risk for businesses hasn’t disappeared the way it seems. One explanation for the reduced infection rates could be that 2017 happened to be a banner year for ransomware. In that context, that year’s global WannaCry and NotPetya outbreaks skewed the figures and by that reasoning, the ‘fall’ in 2018 is more likely just a regression to the mean.

Security company Sophos analysed MegaCortex and found it uses a formula “designed to spread the infection to more victims, more quickly.” The ransomware has manual components similar to Ryuk and BitPaymer but the adversaries behind MegaCortex use more automated tools to carry out the ransomware attack, which is “unique”, said Sophos.

History lesson

The risk of ransomware is still very much alive for many organisations, so we’ve combed through our blog archives to uncover some key developments. The content also includes tips and advice to help you stay secure.

In truth, ransomware isn’t a new threat, as a look back through our blog shows. New strains keep appearing, but it’s clear from earlier posts that some broad trends have stayed the same. As Brian recalled in 2014, many victims chose to pay because they couldn’t afford to lose their data. He pointed out that not everyone who parts with their cash gets their data back, which is still true today. “In some cases they not only lose their data but also the ransom money too as the criminals have not given them the code to decrypt it,” he said.

The same dynamic held true in subsequent years. In 2015, Lee Munson wrote that 31 per cent of security professionals would pay if it meant getting data back. It was a similar story one year later. A survey found that 44 per cent of British ransomware victims would pay to access their files again. Lee said this tendency to pay explains ransomware’s popularity among criminals. It’s literally easy money. For victims, however, it’s a hard lesson in how to secure their computer.

Here’s a quick recap of those lessons for individuals and businesses:

  • Keep software patched and up to date
  • Employ reputable antivirus software and keep it up to date
  • Backup your data regularly and most importantly verify that the backups have worked and you can retrieve your data
  • Make staff and those who use your computers aware of the risks and how to work securely online

Preventative measures

By taking those preventative steps, victims of a ransomware infection are in a better position to not pay the ransom. As Brian said in the post: “It doesn’t guarantee that they will get their data back in 100 per cent of cases, and payment only encourages criminals. We have also seen that once victims pay to have their data decrypted, they’re often targeted repeatedly because criminals see them as a soft touch.”

Fortunately, as 2016 wore on, there was some encouraging news. Law enforcement and industry collaborated on the No More Ransom initiative, combining the resources of the Dutch National Police, Europol, Intel Security and Kaspersky Lab. Later that year, BH Consulting was one of 20 organisations accepted on to the programme which expanded to combat the rising tide of infections.

The main No More Ransom website, which remains active today, has information about how the malware works and advice on ransomware protection. It also has free ransomware decryptor tools to help victims unlock their infected devices. Keys are available for some of the most common ransomware variants.

Steps to keeping out ransomware

By 2017, ransomware was showing no signs of stopping. Some variants like WannaCry caused havoc across the healthcare sector and beyond. In May of that year, as a wave of incidents showed no signs of letting up, BH Consulting published a free vendor-neutral guide to preventing ransomware. This nine-page document was aimed at a technical audience and included a series of detailed recommendations such as:

  • Implement geo-blocking for suspicious domains and regions
  • Review backup processes
  • Conduct regular testing of restore process from backup tapes
  • Review your incident response process
  • Implement a robust cybersecurity training programme
  • Implement network segmentation
  • Monitor DNS logs for unusual activity.

The guide goes into more detail on each bullet point, and is available to download from this link.

Infection investigation

Later that year, we also blogged about a digital forensics investigation into a ransomware infection. It was a fascinating in-depth look at the methodical detective work needed to trace the source, identify the specific malware type and figure out what had triggered the infection. (Spoiler: it was a malicious advert.)

Although ransomware is indiscriminate by nature, looking back over three years’ worth of blogs shows some clear patterns. As we noted in a blog published in October 2017, local government agencies and public bodies seem to be especially at risk. Inadequate security practices make it hard to recover from an incident – and increase the chances of needing to pay the criminals.

Obviously, that’s an outcome no-one wants. That’s why all of these blogs share our aim of giving practical advice to avoid becoming another victim. Much of the steps involve simple security hygiene such as keeping anti malware tools updated, and performing regular virus scans and backups. In other words, basic good practice will usually be enough to keep out avoidable infections. Otherwise, as Brian is fond of quoting, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.

The post Ransomware remains a risk, but here’s how you can avoid infection appeared first on BH Consulting.

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Password-less future moves closer as Google takes FIDO2 for a walk

For years, many organisations – and their users – have struggled with the challenge of password management. The technology industry has toiled on this problem by trying to remove the need to remember passwords at all. Recent developments suggest we might finally be reaching a (finger) tipping point.

At Mobile World Congress this year, Google and the FIDO Alliance announced that most devices running Android 7.0 or later can provide password-less logins in their browsers. To clarify, the FIDO2 authentication standard is sometimes called password-less web authentication. Strictly speaking, that’s a slightly misleading name because people still need to authenticate to their devices a PIN, or a using a biometric identifier like a fingerprint. It’s more accurate to say FIDO2 authentication, but not surprisingly, the term ‘password-less’ seems to have caught the imagination.

Wired reported that web developers can now make their sites work with FIDO2, which would mean people can log in to their online accounts on their phones without a password. This feature will be available to an estimated one billion Android devices, so it’s potentially a significant milestone on the road to a password-less future. Last November, Microsoft announced password-less sign-in for its account users, with the same FIDO2 standard. One caveat: Microsoft’s option requires using the Edge browser on Windows 10 1809 build. So, the true number of users is likely to be far lower than the 800 million Microsoft had been promising. But this is just the latest place where Microsoft has inserted FIDO technology into its products.

It’s not what you know

I spoke to Neha Thethi, BH Consulting’s senior information security analyst, who gave her reaction to this development. “Through this standard, FIDO and Google pave way for users to authenticate primarily using ‘something they have’ – the phone – rather than ‘something they know’ – the password. While a fingerprint or PIN would typically be required to unlock the device itself, no shared secret or private key is transferred over the network or stored with the website, as it is in case of a password. Only a public key is exchanged between the user and the website.”  

From the perspective of improving security, Google’s adoption of FIDO2 is a welcome development, Neha added. “Most of the account compromises that we’ve seen in past few years is because of leaked passwords, on the likes of Pastebin or through phishing, exploited by attackers. The HaveIbeenpwned website gives a sense of the scale of this problem. By that measure, going password-less for logging in to online accounts will definitely decrease the attack surface significantly,” she said.

“The technology that enables this ease of authentication is public key cryptography, and it has been around since the 1970s. The industry has recognised this problem of shared secrets for a long time now. Personally, I welcome this solution to quickly and securely log in to online accounts. It might not be bulletproof, but it takes an onerous task of remembering passwords away from individuals,” she said.

Don’t try to cache me

Organisations have been using passwords for a long time to log into systems that store their confidential or sensitive information. However, even today, many of these organisations don’t have a systematic way of managing passwords for their staff. If an organisation or business wants to become certified to the ISO 27001 security standard, for example, they will need to put in place measures in the form of education, process and technology, to ensure secure storage and use of passwords. Otherwise, you tend to see less than ideal user behaviour like storing passwords on a sticky note or in the web browser cache. “I discourage clients from storing passwords in the browser cache because if their machine gets hacked, the attacker will have access to all that information,” said Neha. 

That’s not to criticise users, she emphasised. “If an organisation is not facilitating staff with a password management tool, they will find the means. They try the best they can, but ultimately they want to get on with their work.”

The credential conundrum

The security industry has struggled with the problem of access and authentication for years. It hasn’t helped by shifting the burden onto the people least qualified to do something about it. Most people aren’t security experts, and it’s unfair to expect them to be. Many of us struggle to remember our own phone numbers, let alone a complex password. Yet some companies force their employees to change their passwords regularly. What happens next is the law of unintended consequences in action. People choose a really simple password, or one that barely changes from the one they’d been using before.

For years, many security professionals followed the advice of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for secure passwords. NIST recommended using a minimum of seven characters, and to include numbers, capital letters or special characters. By that measure, a password like ‘Password1’ would meet the recommendations even if no-one would think it was secure.

Poor password advice

Bill Burr, the man who literally wrote the book on passwords for NIST, has since walked back on his own advice. In 2017, he told the Wall Street Journal, “much of what I did I now regret”. He added: “In the end, it was probably too complicated for a lot of folks to understand very well, and the truth is, it was barking up the wrong tree”. NIST has since updated its password advice, and you can find the revised recommendations here.

As well as fending off cybercrime risks, another good reason for implementing good access control is GDPR compliance. Although the General Data Protection Regulation doesn’t specifically refer to passwords, it requires organisations to process personal data in a secure manner. The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office has published useful free guidance about good password practices with GDPR in mind.

Until your organisation implements the password-less login, ensure you protect your current login details. Neha recommends using a pass phrase instead of a password along with two factor authentication where possible. People should also use different pass phrases for each website or online service we use, because using the same phrase over and over again puts us at risk if attackers compromised any one of those sites. Once they get one set of login credentials, they try them on other popular websites to see if they work. She also recommends using a good password manager or password keeper in place of having to remember multiple pass phrases or passwords. Just remember to think of a strong master password to protect all of those other login details!

The post Password-less future moves closer as Google takes FIDO2 for a walk appeared first on BH Consulting.

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It’s oh so quiet: get ready for stealthy malware in 2019

It’s unlikely we’ll ever look back fondly to a time when ransomware would announce itself noisily. But at least victims knew they were under attack. Now, the signs are that malware’s adopting sneaky tactics to avoid detection.

Fileless malware looks set to be a significant security threat in 2019, and that could be bad news for anyone using traditional antivirus tools. In the past, most infections involved installing malicious software on a target’s hard disk. But in doing so, it left a signature that alerted security software to its presence. Fileless malware, on the other hand, exists only in memory. It leaves none of the traces that traditional infections do, making it much harder to identify, stop, and remove.

That’s leading to a potential gap in security defences that attackers seem to be exploiting in growing numbers. SentinelOne tracked a 94 per cent rise in fileless attacks during the first half of last year. Research from the Ponemon Institute and Barkly found fileless attacks accounted for 35 per cent of all attacks during 2018.

Under the radar

Now, most leading security software companies like Symantec, Trend Micro and McAfee Labs recognise this type of undetected malware. It was also the subject of a recent webinar by Malwarebytes. Its senior product marketing manager Helge Husemann namechecked SamSam, Sorebrect, Emotet and TrickBot as some of the biggest fileless malware types from 2018.

Emotet is the biggest example of this type of “under the radar” malware. It’s been around since 2014 and it acts as a downloader for other malware. It uses leaked NSA exploits and it comes with a built-in spam module that allows it to spread to other systems. The attack often starts as an email that pretends to come from a government service, like the tax office.

Husemann said Emotet’s primary focus has been English-speaking, Western countries. Many of its targets were in the US, while the UK had more Emotet infections than any other European country in 2018. Last October, Emotet was used to spread ransomware to the North Carolina Water Authority.

Malwarebytes categorises the SamSam ransomware as semi-fileless. Husemann said attackers usually install it manually through patch scripts once they have already broken into a victim’s network. The city of Atlanta, which suffered a major outbreak of SamSam in March 2018, has spent around $2.6 million on recovery.

A common attack vector for fileless malware is via PowerShell, which is a legitimate Windows scripting tool but is also popular with cybercriminals. “It provides an opportunity for the attacker to hide the malware and make system modifications if they need to. We will definitely see the usage of PowerShell happening much more,” Husemann said.  

Watching for weak points

Another way to get an infection is by visiting a compromised website. The site’s code then exploits a vulnerability like an unpatched browser or an unsecured Flash plugin on the user’s computer.

Rebooting a system will usually get rid of a fileless infection – but you would need to know you’re infected in the first place. What’s more, rebooting creates challenges for digital forensics investigations because of how fileless malware operates in-memory. Once the infected system is turned off, it leaves no evidence behind.

With thousands of new malware variants coming out every day, it won’t be enough to rely only on signature-based security tools to spot threats. “Malware may be hiding in the one place you’re not checking, which is process memory. After years of loud and obvious ransomware we are entering the stage of quiet information stealers,” Husemann said.  

An effective endpoint solution should consist of three components, Husemann said. First is the ability to prevent a cyberattack through multiple protection layers including web protection, application hardening and behaviour, exploit mitigation, and payload analysis. The second component is the ability to detect threats, using advanced techniques. The third element concerns response: being able to remediate an incident in the fastest possible time, to minimise disruption to business and reduce the impact on end users.

BH Consulting is independent so we don’t have ties to any one product vendor. No matter which security tool you use, it’s clear that the software we used to call “antivirus” still has an important role in protecting organisations’ valuable data.

The post It’s oh so quiet: get ready for stealthy malware in 2019 appeared first on BH Consulting.

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The value in vulnerability assessments: closing gaps to improve security

Vulnerability assessments usually involve using automated tools such as Nessus or Qualys to carry out a passive scan of an organisation’s systems. The process produces a list of security gaps and ranks them in order of risk. It gives an organisation clear data to guide the process of deciding which issues to prioritise first based on budget, available resources, or likelihood of the threat.

If forewarned is forearmed, then the value of a vulnerability assessment is that it identifies weaknesses in your systems proactively. It’s different to a penetration test which not only finds security gaps but actively exploits them to replicate the damage a malicious attacker could do without the repercussions.

Why check for vulnerabilities?

Lately, we’re seeing organisations carry out vulnerability assessments, or get an independent provider to do it for them, much more frequently. I think there are two reasons for this. One is the increasing adoption of the ISO 27001 information security standard. We advise organisations that want to get certified or stay compliant to check for vulnerabilities at least twice a year and perform a penetration test at least once a year.

The second driver is – surprise, surprise – GDPR. Growing numbers of businesses and public sector agencies are now aware that they need to protect data. Checking for weak points can help them put safeguards in place to avoid breaches. In the event of a breach, an organisation may avoid heavier penalties if it can prove to the regulator that it has been carrying out vulnerability assessments and doing their due diligence. On the other hand, the authorities won’t look too kindly on breach victims that were running old operating systems with no security controls or patching mechanisms in place.

What to fix

I carry out vulnerability assessments every week, and many of the risks I find are very common. Many of them fall into the categories of medium or high risk. For example, many websites still use old versions of SSL or TLS for encrypting data transfers. Some people might assume that a brochure website doesn’t need this level of protection, but I think that’s a mistake. Even a static page may have a function that calls another function that talks to the database or another application. This is a relatively easy issue to fix, and it addresses a potentially large security hole.

Even for a brochure website, it’s worth doing this upgrade since it’s a big gain for relatively little effort. Implementing TLS carries little cost and eliminates a lot of potential weaknesses. Since SSL was deprecated, it’s a matter of changing to TLS 1.1 or 1.2 which in some cases is as simple as checking a box.

To upgrade or not to upgrade

Another common issue that vulnerability assessments will uncover is out of date software like Apache or OpenSSH. (I recently found one site using a five-year-old version of OpenSSH!) As with the risks I referred to above, fixing them is often a matter of clicking the ‘update’ button in the application.

Whether an organisation updates or not will depend on its attitude to risk. Some choose not to do so because they are concerned about affecting their production environment. Or, they might not have time and resources to test the stability of an application on the new version. I would always argue in favour of acting, but at the very least, a vulnerability assessment will highlight areas that you can rank in order of priority.

The length of time it takes to conduct the assessment will vary. It’s not necessarily as simple a calculation as adding up the number of IP addresses to check. I’ve seen three IP addresses take four hours to scan. It also depends what software the organisation uses, and whether it’s patched or unpatched.

Taking action afterwards

Let’s say the testing lasts a day. Writing the report then involves taking the findings from the automated scanning tool and translating that into language that will allow a client to weigh up its business risk. Some companies take the report and fix the issues that it covers. Some use it as a talking point with their software development teams, to make them aware of certain vulnerabilities. Best practice advises that those organisations run an assessment a few months later to check that any fixes they implemented were successful.

However, I’ve also seen the opposite, where I have carried out monthly vulnerability checks and the client chooses not to fix the issues that the report raises. That goes to the heart of security: making decisions based on the level of risk you’re prepared to bear. Good security practice suggests looking for weak points in your security before someone with malicious intentions does it for you.

 

The post The value in vulnerability assessments: closing gaps to improve security appeared first on BH Consulting.