NETWORK THREAT DETECTION
Lacework | August 31, 2021
Lacework, the data-driven security platform for the cloud, today released its quarterly cloud threat report, unveiling the new techniques and avenues cybercriminals are infiltrating to profit from businesses.
The rapid shift of applications and infrastructure to the cloud creates gaps in the security posture of organizations everywhere. This has increased the opportunities for cybercriminals to steal data, take advantage of an organization's assets, and to gain illicit network access.
"It's in enterprises' best interest to start thinking of cybercriminals as business competitors," said James Condon, Director of Research at Lacework. "Last year alone, cybercrime and ransomware attacks cost companies $4 billion in damages. As more companies shift to cloud environments, we're seeing an increase in demand for stolen access to cloud accounts and evolving techniques from cybercriminals, making enterprises even more vulnerable to cloud threats."
New research from Lacework Labs, the dedicated research team at Lacework that focuses on new threats and attack surface risks within the public cloud, sheds light on the crimeware and growing ransomware landscape in the face of new threat models and emerging cybersecurity challenges. Based on anonymized data across the Lacework platform from May 2021 - July 2021, key findings of the report include:
Initial Access Brokers (IABs) Expand to Cloud Accounts
As corporate infrastructure continues to expand to the cloud, so do opportunistic adversaries as they look to capitalize on the opportunity. Illicit access into cloud infrastructure of companies with valuable data/resources or wide-reaching access into other organizations offers attackers an incredible return on investment. In particular, Lacework Labs found Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure administrative accounts are gaining popularity in underground marketplaces.
Threat Actor Campaigns Continue to Evolve: Lacework Labs has observed a variety of malicious activity originating from known adversary groups and malware families. This section showcases those who continue evolving their operators as a valuable return on investment:
8220 Gang Botnet and Custom Miner: Lacework Labs recently found a new cluster of activity linked to an 8220 Gang adversary group campaign of infecting hosts, primarily through common cloud services, with a custom miner and IRC bot for further attacks and remote control. This cluster shows operations are evolving on many levels, including efforts of hiding botnet scale and mining profits.This is indicative of attacks growing in size.
TeamTNT Docker Image Compromise: The Lacework Labs team discovered threat actor TeamTNT backdooring legitimate Docker Images in a supply chain-like attack. Networks running the trusted image were unknowingly infected.
Developer teams need to be certain they know what's in the image they pull. They need to validate the source or they could open a door to their environment.
Popular cloud relevant crimeware and actors:
Cpuminer, the open-source multi-algorithm miner, has been legitimately used for years. However, Lacework Labs observed an increase in its illicit use for cryptomining altcoins.
Monero and XMRig are the most common accounts for cryptomining against cloud resources, hence activity involving lesser-seen coins and tools may be more likely to go undetected.
Cloud services probing:
Lacework Labs captures a range of telemetry in both product deployments and custom honeypots, which allows the company to see trends relevant to cloud defense purposes. For these sources, many cloud-relevant applications are continually targeted, but Lacework found that AWS S3, SSH, Docker, SQL and Redis were by far the most targeted.
Based on the findings of this report, Lacework Labs recommends that defenders:
Ensure Docker sockets are not publicly exposed and appropriate firewall rules/ security groups and other network controls are in place. This will help to prevent unauthorized access to network services running in an organization.
Ensure the access policies you set via the console on S3 buckets are not being overridden by an automation tool. Frequent auditing of S3 policies and automation around S3 bucket creation can ensure data stays private.
About Lacework
Lacework is the data-driven security platform for the cloud. The Lacework Cloud Security Platform, powered by Polygraph, automates cloud security at scale so our customers can innovate with speed and safety. Polygraph is the only security solution that can collect, analyze, and accurately correlate data across an organization's AWS, Azure, GCP, and Kubernetes environments, and narrow it down to the handful of security events that matter. Customers all over the globe depend on Lacework to drive revenue, bring products to market faster and safer and consolidate point security solutions into a single platform. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in San Jose, Calif., with offices all over the world, Lacework is backed by leading investors like Sutter Hill Ventures, Altimeter Capital, Liberty Global Ventures, and Snowflake Ventures, among others.
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DATA SECURITY
Vulcan Cyber | March 18, 2021
An Israel-based and cybersecurity start-up company, Vulcan Cyber, announced that it had raised a $21 million Series B funding round led by Dawn Capital. The company is into fixing security vulnerabilities has now participated with Wipro Ventures and existing Vulcan Cyber investors YL Ventures and Ten Eleven Ventures. The raised funds will support the novel vulnerability remediation solutions for cloud and application security teams. It will also deliver Vulcan Free, the industry's first free risk-based vulnerability management (RBVM) platform created for vulnerability and cyber risk prioritization.
With this new development, Vulcan Cyber’s overall funding up until presently is $35 million. The company experienced a 500% growth in annual recurring revenue. The new funding will also satisfy considerable demand for a SaaS solution that goes ahead with vulnerability scanning and management. This will help IT, and security teams accomplish vulnerability scanning and management in a fixed way.
The company’s focus has always been to warn its customers about potential vulnerabilities and prioritizing them based on the severity of the risk and the threat to a company’s business assets. After all, security teams are often inundated by alerts as not every scanner represents a high-priority risk for a business. Hence, the promise of Vulcan Cyber’s platform to build a vulnerable one will help teams to figure out where to focus their resources best.
In the end, with this new free offering, Vulcan’s freemium portfolio now includes Vulcan Free. This provides core prioritization and vulnerability management features to the company and its existing free vulnerability intelligence database.
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SOFTWARE SECURITY
Black Kite | August 20, 2021
Black Kite, the trusted cyber risk ratings company, today launched the Black Kite Aviator partner program. Aviator enables IT solutions providers to bolster their portfolio of cyber risk services and help customers secure their supply chains. More than 50 companies have already signed on to the Aviator program.
Aviator partner program members will have access to Black Kite's industry-leading platform that simplifies third-party risk management, leverages open-source intelligence and non-intrusive scans, offers automated and continuous monitoring, and quantifies third-party technical, financial, and compliance risk. Starting today, program members also have access to Black Kite's partner portal, which holds a library of sales and marketing materials, a formal deal registration process, and other enablement tools.
"Every organization needs third-party risk visibility and a means of determining the financial, brand, and reputational costs," said Paul Paget, CEO of Black Kite. "The Aviator partner program will make Black Kite's unique cyber risk and ransomware rating tools available to companies in the healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, and automotive verticals."
Black Kite offers a suite of cyber risk solutions to include the Ransomware Susceptibility IndexTM (RSITM), the OpenFairTM Tool, and a scalable platform that reduces vendor assessment times from weeks to hours.
The RSI calculates event susceptibility and identifies vendors most prone to ransomware. The OpenFair Tool is the first automated risk-assessment product that estimates the financial costs of cyber breaches in quantitative, easy-to-understand business terms for C-suite executives. The Black Kite platform keeps vendor risk assessments up-to-date, continuously monitoring for changes across 20 cybersecurity categories.
About Black Kite
One in four organizations suffered from a cyber attack in the last year, resulting in production, reputation, and financial losses. The real problem is adversaries attack companies via third parties, island-hopping their way into target organizations. Black Kite is redefining third-party risk management (TPRM) with the world's first global third-party cyber risk monitoring platform, built from a hacker's perspective. With 200+ customers across the globe and counting, we're committed to improving the health and safety of the entire planet's cyber ecosystem with the industry's most accurate and comprehensive cyber intelligence.
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