AI-powered cyber defense service protects against phishing attacks for businesses on unlimited handset plans.

**SAN FRANCISCO****,** **May 17, 2023** **/PRNewswire/ --** ActZero®, a leading cybersecurity provider for small and mid-sized enterprises, announced it is teaming with UScellular, making it the first and only wireless carrier to offer the ActZero Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service. Together the two organizations make it easier for businesses to secure mobile devices from ransomware and phishing attacks. UScellular Business Ultimate and Business Premium unlimited handset plans now include ActZero MDR for Mobile.

"UScellular and ActZero share a common goal: to bring better performance and better security to businesses at a fair price," said Sameer Bhalotra, chief executive officer for ActZero. "With ActZero's on-device cyberdefense technology plus 24x7 security operations staff, UScellular business customers can stop mobile threats quickly, before they spread into the corporate network."

With 24/7 threat coverage, ActZero stops breaches on mobile devices and networks, with a 90% block rate and response time of 15 minutes for critical alerts. Customers can easily deploy ActZero MDR for Mobile within minutes to their employees' iOS, Android, or Chrome mobile phones, tablets, and laptops. On-device protection and real-time notifications eliminate delays if a mobile device is compromised. ActZero's patent-pending AI means better cyberdefense and fewer false alarms.

"ActZero delivers a powerful and affordable cybersecurity service businesses need to prioritize threat and vulnerability management," said Kim Kerr, senior vice president, enterprise sales and operations for UScellular. "Our customers often don't have the IT resources to ensure they are protecting their network and devices from malware, phishing, and ransomware attacks. The unique artificial intelligence and machine learning from ActZero intelligently pinpoints threats so less time is spent filtering noise and more time is focused on the action that should be taken, when it's truly important."

**About ActZero**

ActZero is a Gartner-recognized provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services that delivers a powerful and affordable cybersecurity service to protect small and mid-sized enterprises against ransomware attacks. By continuously testing defenses against the latest attack techniques and variants, ActZero ensures AI detections and human threat hunters quickly stop threats. The company brings deep roots and expertise in cybersecurity to deliver measurable ransomware defense, reducing false alerts and responding quickly on a customer's behalf. Combined with exceptional service, ActZero empowers businesses with confidence that the company and customers are protected. For more information, please visit actzero.com.

**About UScellular Business** 

UScellular is the fourth-largest full-service wireless carrier in the United States, providing national network coverage and industry-leading innovations designed to elevate the customer experience. The Chicago\-based carrier provides a strong, reliable network supported by the latest technology and plays a critical role in helping businesses of all sizes navigate the wireless ecosystem, delivering advanced technology, increased network security and reliability. To learn more about UScellular's business solutions, visit one of its retail stores or uscellular.com/business.

ActZero Teams Up With UScellular to Secure Mobile Devices From Ransomware Attacks

Launched in partnership with Immunefi, bounty to promote Web3 security.

**VANCOUVER, BC****,** **May 17, 2023** **/PRNewswire/ --** LayerZero Labs, the team that launched the leading cross-chain messaging protocol LayerZero, today announced that it has launched a $15 million bug bounty in partnership with Immunefi, the leading bug bounty and security services platform for Web3, protecting over $60 billion in user funds.

The bug bounty will be the largest in the history of the software industry and shows LayerZero's undying commitment to security as well as the developers and users in the LayerZero ecosystem. LayerZero Labs is offering a maximum reward of $15M for each new vulnerability found by participants who uncover vulnerabilities at the highest severity level. With this incentive, LayerZero Labs is setting a new bar for bug bounties across all areas of the software industry.

"With the launch of the largest bug bounty in the world we hope that LayerZero's commitment to Web3 security and the individuals who make the community stronger is clear," commented Bryan Pellegrino, CEO of LayerZero Labs. "We care deeply about building the safest, most used messaging protocol in the world."

"We're thrilled to partner with LayerZero to launch the world's biggest bounty and help ensure the safety of its ecosystem," said Mitchell Amador, Founder and CEO at Immunefi. "We've paved the way to reach the highest security standards in the industry and worked to provide projects with the necessary structure and access to the strongest security talent. LayerZero's bounty is a testament to what we should continue moving towards, and that's an undeniable commitment to security."

Immunefi has facilitated the most significant bug bounties in the software industry, with over $75 million in rewards paid out. It is the largest and most widely adopted bug bounty platform in Web3, where a massive community of leading security talent review projects' blockchain and smart contract code, find and responsibly disclose vulnerabilities, and get paid for making the ecosystem safer.

The terms and conditions of the bug bounty, including eligibility criteria, can be found here: https://immunefi.com/bounty/layerzero/. Vulnerabilities must meet the criteria determined by LayerZero Labs at its sole discretion.

**About Immunefi**

Immunefi is the leading bug bounty and security services platform for Web3, which features the world's largest bounties. Immunefi guards over $60 billion in user funds across projects like Synthetix, Chainlink, SushiSwap, Polygon, Bancor, MakerDAO, TheGraph, Optimism, and others. The company has paid out the most significant bug bounties in the software industry, amounting to over $75 million, and has pioneered the scaling Web3 bug bounties standard.

For more information, please visit https://immunefi.com

**About LayerZero Labs**

LayerZero Labs is the team that launched the leading blockchain messaging protocol LayerZero. LayerZero's advanced messaging infrastructure seamlessly connects over 30 blockchains and facilitates transparent and secure cross-chain messaging from one easy-to-use interface. Since going live in March 2022, the LayerZero protocol has processed more than 10 million messages with thousands of mainnet contracts being deployed by thousands of developer teams. Backed by leading venture capital firms including a16z, Sequoia, Binance Labs, Christie's, Lightspeed, Opensea, Bond, Samsung Next, and GBV, LayerZero was recently valued at $3 billion. Developers building on LayerZero can create interoperable, omnichain dApps, which will lead to the establishment of a unified digital asset ecosystem.

For additional information on LayerZero, visit: https://layerzero.network/

LayerZero Labs Launches $15M Bug Bounty; Largest in the World

SECOM CO., LTD, a $15B enterprise and one of the largest security integration companies in the world, invests in the two global cloud physical security leaders, accelerating the use of AI and improving safety and security.

**AUSTIN, Texas, BETHESDA, Maryland — May 17, 2023** — Eagle Eye Networks, the global leader in cloud video surveillance and Brivo, the global leader of cloud-based access control and smart space technologies, today announced one of the largest investments to date in cloud physical security. SECOM CO., LTD, one of the largest security integration companies in the world, according to Forbes Global 2000, has made a primary equity investment of $192 million in the two companies, $100M in Eagle Eye Networks and $92M in Brivo.

Eagle Eye Networks and Brivo are independent companies majority owned by Dean Drako. Drako founded Eagle Eye Networks in 2012 and serves as CEO; he acquired a majority stake in Brivo in 2015 and is chairman. 

“The SECOM investment underscores that cloud and AI are the future of physical security,” said Drako. “Both Eagle Eye and Brivo will use a significant portion of the investment to further develop AI that dramatically improves the security of enterprises and businesses globally. The Eagle Eye and Brivo open platforms provide customers with choice, efficiencies, and innovation, all of which this investment will accelerate.” 

As independent, open platform companies, Eagle Eye Networks and Brivo integrate with many third-party technology providers, including the leading property management and Proptech platforms. In addition, Eagle Eye and Brivo provide a fully integrated solution that global businesses use to manage risk, identify threats, and respond.The companies’ joint capabilities deliver real-time AI-enabled video and access control events analysis, optimizing safety and security.

Eagle Eye Networks will use the investment for continued development of its AI-based analytics capabilities such as Eagle Eye Smart Video Search, Smart Alarms, and Vehicle Intelligence, and to expand its worldwide operations. 

Brivo will use the investment to grow sales and marketing, accelerate product development and scale support and operational functions, and evaluate strategic acquisitions. Brivo will also use the additional investment to continue expanding in Europe, Latin America, and Asia Pacific, and enhance the smart spaces and AI functionality in the Brivo Access Platform for its enterprise, multifamily, and commercial real estate customers. 

“SECOM has a proud history of innovation going back to Japan's first online security system for commercial use in 1966,” said Sadahiro Sato, SECOM Managing Executive Officer. “We’re committed to delivering services and systems that deliver safety, peace of mind and business efficiency. Our investment in Eagle Eye Networks and Brivo, the market leaders in cloud physical security, is an investment in the mission our three companies share: to provide the best technology possible to keep businesses and communities safe.”

**About Eagle Eye Networks**

Eagle Eye Networks is the global leader in cloud video surveillance, delivering cyber-secure, cloud-based video with artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics to make businesses more efficient and the world a safer place. Businesses of all sizes utilize the Eagle Eye Cloud VMS (video management system) to centralize their video surveillance and obtain better security and operations. Purpose built for the cloud and AI, the Eagle Eye Cloud VMS addresses customers’ security and operational needs with unlimited scalability, simple usage-based subscription pricing, advanced analytics, integrated AI, and an open RESTful API platform delivering flexibility. Eagle Eye sells through a global network of resellers and integrators. Founded in 2012, Eagle Eye is headquartered in Austin, Texas, with offices in Amsterdam, Bangalore, and Tokyo. Learn more at www.een.com. 

**About Brivo** 

Brivo, Inc., created the cloud-based access control and smart spaces technology category over 20 years ago and remains the global leader serving commercial real estate, multifamily residential, and large distributed enterprises. The company’s comprehensive product ecosystem and open API provide businesses with powerful digital tools to increase security automation, elevate employee and tenant experience, and improve the safety of all people and assets in the built environment. Brivo’s building access platform is now the digital foundation for the largest collection of customer facilities in the world, protecting over 450 million square feet across 60 countries. Learn more at www.Brivo.com. 

**About SECOM**

SECOM CO., LTD., a pioneer in Japan’s security services industry, was established in 1962. Since then, the Company has sought to create innovative services that benefit society as a whole, in line with its mission of helping achieve a society free from concerns. Today, SECOM, comprising the parent company and the companies of the SECOM Group, strives to create services and systems that deliver safety and peace of mind, as well as make life more comfortable and convenient, whenever and wherever necessary, for anyone and everyone, and in so doing to realize its Social System Industry vision, which describes a framework of distinctive, integrated services and systems. The Company’s extensive business portfolio currently encompasses security services, fire protection services, medical services, insurance services, geospatial information services, business process outsourcing and information and communications technology (BPO and ICT) services, and other services.

Eagle Eye Networks and Brivo Announce $192M Investment — One of the Largest Ever in Cloud Physical Security

Lemon Group's Guerrilla malware model an example of how threat actors are monetizing compromised Android devices, researchers say.

Millions of Android phone users around the world are contributing daily to the financial wellbeing of an outfit called the Lemon Group, merely by virtue of owning the devices.

Unbeknownst to those users, the operators of the Lemon Group have pre-infected their devices before they even bought them. Now, they're quietly using their phones as tools for stealing and selling SMS messages and one-time passwords (OTPs), serving up unwanted ads, setting up online messaging and social media accounts, and other purposes.

Lemon Group itself has claimed it has a base of nearly 9 million Guerrilla-infected Android devices that its customers can abuse in different ways. But Trend Micro believes the actual number may be even higher.

**Building a Business on Infected Devices**

Lemon Group is among several cybercriminal groups that have built profitable business models around pre-infected Android devices in recent years.

Researchers from Trend Micro first began unraveling the operation when doing forensic analysis on the ROM image of an Android device infected with malware dubbed "Guerrilla." Their investigation showed the group has infected devices belonging to Android users in 180 countries. More than 55% of the victims are in Asia, some 17% are in North America and nearly 10% in Africa. Trend Micro was able to identify more than 50 brands of — mostly inexpensive — mobile devices.

In a presentation at the just concluded Black Hat Asia 2023, and in a blog post this week, Trend Micro researchers Fyodor Yarochkin, Zhengyu Dong, and Paul Pajares shared their insights on the threat that outfits like Lemon Group pose to Android users. They described it as a continuously growing problem that has begun touching not just Android phone users but owners of Android Smart TVs, TV boxes, Android-based entertainment systems, and even Android-based children's watches.

"Following our timeline estimates, the threat actor has spread this malware over the last five years," the researchers said. "A compromise on any significant critical infrastructure with this infection can likely yield a significant profit for Lemon Group in the long run at the expense of legitimate users."

**An Old but Evolving Malware Infection Issue**

The issue of Android phones being shipped with malware pre-installed on them is certainly not new. Numerous security vendors — including Trend Micro, Kaspersky, and Google — have reported over the years on bad actors introducing potentially harmful applications at the firmware layer on Android devices.

In many instances, the tampering has happened when an Android OEM, looking to add additional features to a standard Android system image, outsourced the task to a third-party. In some instances, bad actors have also managed to sneak in potentially harmful applications and malware via firmware over-the-air (FOTA) updates. A few years ago, most of the malware found preinstalled on Android devices were information stealers and ad servers.

Typically, such tampering has involved inexpensive devices from mostly unknown and smaller brands. But on occasion, devices belonging to bigger vendors and OEMs have been impacted as well. Back in 2017 for instance, Check Point reported finding as many as 37 Android device models from a large multi-national telecommunication company, pre-installed with such malware. The threat actor behind the caper added six of the malware samples to the device ROM so the user couldn't remove them without re-flashing the devices.

**Pre-Installed Malware Gets More Dangerous**

In recent years, some of the malware found pre-installed on Android devices have become much more dangerous. The best example is Triada, a Trojan that modified the core Zygote process in the Android OSa. It also actively substituted system files and operated mostly in the system's RAM, making it very hard to detect. Threat actors behind the malware used it to, among other things, intercept incoming and outgoing SMS messages for transaction verification codes, display unwanted ads and manipulate search results.

Trend Micro's research in the Guerrilla malware campaign showed overlaps — in the command-and-control infrastructure and communications for instance — between Lemon Group's operations and that of Triada. For instance, Trend Micro found the Lemon Group implant tampering with the Zygote process and essentially becoming a part of every app on a compromised device. Also, the malware consists of a main plugin that loads multiple other plugins, each with a very specific purpose. Those include one designed to intercept SMS messages and read OTPs from platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and a shopping app called JingDong.

**Plugins for Different Malicious Activities**

One plugin is a crucial component of a SMS phone verified account (SMS PVA) service that Lemon Group operates for its customers. SMS PVA services basically provides users with temporary or disposable phone numbers they can use for phone number verification when registering for an online service, for instance, and for receiving two-factor authentication and one-time passwords for authenticating to them later. While some use such services for privacy reasons, threat actors like Lemon Group use them to enable customers to bulk register spam accounts, create fake social media accounts, and other malicious activities.

Another Guerrilla plugin allows Lemon Group to essentially rent out an infected phone's resources from short periods to customers; a cookie plugin hooks to Facebook-related apps on the user's devices for ad-fraud related uses; and a WhatsApp plugin hijacks a user's WhatsApp sessions to send unwanted messages. Another plugin enables silent installation of apps that would require installation permission for specific activities.

"We identified some of these businesses used for different monetization techniques, such as heavy loading of advertisements using the silent plugins pushed to infected phones, smart TV ads, and Google play apps with hidden advertisements," according to Trend Micro's analysis. "We believe that the threat actor's operations can also be a case of stealing information from the infected device to be used for big data collection before selling it to other threat actors as another post-infection monetization scheme."

Lemon Group Uses Millions of Pre-Infected Android Phones to Enable Cybercrime Enterprise

Organizations can focus on these key considerations to develop their cybersecurity testing programs sustainably.

The importance for organizations to understand who their adversaries are and how they operate against their enterprise environments cannot be understated. An organization's approach to cybersecurity testing and resilience improvements in the face of an increasingly volatile threat landscape must be underpinned around this perspective.

The core elements of a well-designed cybersecurity testing program should help the organization identify and remediate vulnerabilities, continuously challenge detection and response capabilities, refine threat intelligence-gathering priorities, and enhance overall incident preparedness through continuous stress-testing of response plans. IBM's "Cost of a Data Breach 2022" report shows that organizations that regularly test their incident response plans save $2.66 million (circa £2 million), which is the cost of an average breach.

Although there is no one-size-fits-all solution, here are five key considerations that organizations can focus on while developing an overarching strategy to build and maintain a cybersecurity testing program.

**1\. Collaborate Across Teams**

Collaboration is where the organization's strength lies, so security teams should focus on building out internal relationships with different groups. Security teams should remember that the human component is critical and define a clear process to effectively allow representatives from the security operations center (SOC), risk/compliance, vulnerability management (VM), cyber threat intelligence (CTI), and security testing functions to drive collaboration.

Where possible, encourage these teams to have in-person discussions. This will create an opportunity for cross-team rapport at a personal level and develop a sense of camaraderie that will go a long way in achieving a common goal.

Creating a governance framework that defines clear responsibilities and promotes transparent communications between these teams to share findings quickly will allow for better decision-making, faster incident response, and a well-rounded appreciation of the organization's cyber capabilities.

Collaboration allows for an enhanced appreciation of each other's techniques and methods, as well as the exchange of knowledge and expertise to improve threat detection and mitigation strategies.

**2\. Follow an Intelligence-Led and Risk-Based Approach to Scope Definition**

A process to continuously curate threat intelligence should enable organizations to build and maintain a comprehensive, up-to-date library of baseline attack scenarios. First, determine which threat actor groups are likely motivated to target the organization. Overlaying this with established baseline scenarios will help define a comprehensive list of tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).

Organizations often have several assets in their environments, which makes identifying risk points and assessing where and how much money should be spent on vulnerability identification and remediation difficult. It may not be realistic from a timing perspective to assess the full list of identified TTPs against all of the assets in scope.

A more risk-based approach is to carve out a plausible subset of TTP sequences and creatively mix-and-match infrastructure and software details, without being bound to an extensive checklist. This creates targeted sub-scenarios for the attack simulation team to initially focus on.

This approach will help CISOs more granularly measure the strength of practical mitigations that exist and identify high-priority areas across critical business services, while optimally using existing resources.

**3\. Perform Continuous Stress-Testing of Cyber-Defense Controls**

Leverage the scenarios and prioritized list of TTPs defined to constantly exercise the organization's technical and business response. The scenarios subset should increase in complexity as the incident response program matures. Where the security team failed previously, these scenarios must be repeated so the organization can improve the process in the event of a real attack.

It is important to select "low-and-slow" tactics that the SOC can detect and the VM team can remediate — but don't make things too easy. Carefully selecting TTPs that are harder for the SOC to defend against encourages this team to constantly sharpen their technique, as well as push the organization to update response strategies.

The choice between complexity, stealth, and speed will be driven by the organization's risk profile and threat priorities that have contributed to shaping the specific scenario for testing.

**4\. Set Metrics for Shared Understanding and Improvement Tracking**

Success criteria need to be defined and tracked to demonstrate overall risk reduction to organizational assets. Metrics such as reduced detection and/or response times, a decrease in successful attacks, and so on are useful to effectively articulate improvements to the board.

It is useful to compare results of previous and subsequent penetration tests, red-team exercises, and/or targeted attack simulations, focusing on the number of high-risk vulnerabilities identified and exploited, as well as the overall success rate for the testers.

Being able to analyze changes in the threat landscape and demonstrate an increased ability to mitigate current and evolving threats will help CISOs demonstrate improved risk reduction.

**5\. Establish Feedback Channels to Drive Process Improvements**

Break down test observations against executed TTPs along with actionable mitigations identified along the attack chain. Test results will also provide an improved understanding of which vulnerabilities are most likely to be exploited and can help refine risk prioritization in the VM process.

Sharing these results in real time to the CTI team allows them to monitor for potential threats that may exploit vulnerabilities, improves theoretical understanding of documented threats, and provides insight into previously unknown vulnerabilities, as well as helps prioritize areas for further research and analysis.

A centralized dashboard to aggregate test outputs in real time from the field, which can provide the relevant SOC team stakeholders with gaps identified in security monitoring tools and alerting systems, is extremely useful.

Providing a training range to practice and validate incident response plans, and to identify areas where response times must be improved, is useful to improve overall incident preparedness.

**The End Goal**

The World Economic Forum's "Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2023" report states that 43% of business leaders believe that their organizations are likely to be hit by a major attack within the next two years. An all-encompassing change to cybersecurity testing, through increased collaboration and improved risk management processes, enhances resilience to cyberattacks.

5 Ways Security Testing Can Aid Incident Response

CISA urges small and midsized organizations as well as critical infrastructure to implement mitigations immediately to shield themselves from further data exfiltration attacks.

In an advisory this week, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) alongside the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) are warning organizations of attacks made by the ransomware developer and data extortion group known as BianLian. 

BianLian has been active since 2022. In the past, the ransomware gang has focused on using a double-extortion model where they encrypt victims' systems and steal data, threatening to release the acquired data if the payment is not received. In January though, BianLian shifted its attack methods to focus primarily on exfiltration-based extortion rather than leading with encryption, the alert warned.

The group uses stolen remote desktop protocol (RDP) credentials to access victims' networks, as well as open-source tools and command-line scripting to move around the network. Then it exfiltrates data through File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Rclone, or Mega. After this is completed, the group goes on to extort its victims.

Cybersecurity service provider \[redacted\] released research on the group in March detailing its high-level operational security and skill penetration, and its continued growth while operating as a ransomware organization. It's these tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) that have allowed the gang to target critical infrastructure organizations in the US and Australia as well as professional services and property development organizations.

"More often than not, extortion via data leak is the modus operandi of choice," says Tom Kellerman, senior vice president of cyberstrategy at Contrast Security, in response to the advisory. "The shift is due to the successful collaboration between law enforcement and the cyber community to not only decrypt the ransomware but to disrupt the infrastructure that sustains it."

CISA urges organizations to implement the mitigations it has provided in the advisory, such as auditing remote access tools, reviewing logs for execution of remote access software, and enabling enhanced PowerShell logging, in light of these attacks.

Keep up with the latest cybersecurity threats, newly-discovered vulnerabilities, data breach information, and emerging trends. Delivered daily or weekly right to your email inbox.

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BianLian Cybercrime Group Changes Up Extortion Methods, Warns CISA

Pro-Houthi OilAlpha uses spoofed Android apps to monitor victims across the Arab peninsula working to bring stability to Yemen.

An ongoing spyware campaign is targeting attendees of Saudi government-led negotiations on Yemen, along with humanitarian and reconstruction aid workers working toward Yemeni stability on behalf of the pro-Houthi movement.

Insikt Group researchers has been monitoring the activities of threat group OilAlpha since May 2022, which they reported has been using messenger applications like WhatsApp to social engineer targets into downloading a malicious Android application. The app comes loaded with remote access Trojans (RATs) like SpyNore and SpyMax, the researchers said.

Tellingly, OilAlpha uses infrastructure that the Insikt Group traced back to the Public Telecommunication Corporation (PTC), a business owned by the government of Yemen, and under the control of Houthi-aligned officials, the report added.

"The group's operations have reportedly included targeting persons attending Saudi Arabian government-led negotiations; coupled with the use of spoofed Android applications mimicking entities tied to the Saudi Arabian government, and a UAE humanitarian organization (among others)," the report said. "As of this writing, we suspect that the attackers targeted individuals the Houthis wanted direct access to."

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Houthi-Backed Spyware Effort Targets Yemen Aid Workers

DNS rebinding attacks are not often seen in the wild, which is one reason why browser makers have taken a slower approach to adopting the web security standard.

Browser companies and network-security vendors have created a variety of defenses for the three-decades-old attack technique known as DNS rebinding, but protection remains spotty due to uneven acceptance and updated exploitation techniques.

DNS rebinding — which allows external malicious sites visited by an unsuspecting victim to access internal servers and services —is similar to cross-site request forgery, where an attacker can use a JavaScript component or Java applet to request resources from another site or network. DNS rebinding typically works by attracting a user to a malicious website and using the site's content and a short time-to-live (TTL) to force the browser to send a new domain name system (DNS) request, to which the attacker's site responds with an internal network IP address. The attack essentially allows an attacker to use a victim's browser to send requests to servers and devices on the internal network.

The attack, however, can be made harder to execute with a variety of defenses, including enforcing the Same-Origin Policy by pinning the domain name in the browser, looking for anomalous requests through the targeted user's DNS service, and adopting Local Network Access, a proposed Web security standard by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that blocks DNS-based attacks. While these defenses work to make DNS rebinding attacks more difficult, they can be bypassed under some circumstances, NCC Group said in a recent report.

Because DNS rebinding exposes the attack surfaces of internal Web applications to malicious websites, the attack could be useful against enterprise targets as a way to gain access to credential data and resources hosted on internal networks, says Zhanhao Chen, a principal researcher for network security at Palo Alto Networks.

"In the real world, the attacker can build a website with a DNS rebinding script and trick the victim to open it in their browser," he says. "Once the malicious website is open on an employee's browser, the attacker can manipulate or steal information from internal Web applications that are vulnerable."

**DNS Rebinding Attacks Face Difficult Defenses**

Every browser does some form of DNS pinning, preventing the assigning of new network addresses for a specific website or host name for a certain time period, such as an hour. DNS-based security services, such as Cisco's Umbrella, also prevent anomalous changes in DNS data using suspicious response filters, which identify potential attacks and stop them.

The W3C's Local Network Access spec, previously called "Private Network Access," places a barriers between global, local, and internal addresses, such as the loopback address for the local host, and forces services to gain permission to explicitly access the local network.

In the latest analysis published by NCC Group, however, Roger Meyer, a technical director at NCC Group, argues that the defenses still are not complete. Using the 0.0.0.0 address, which can access Linux and Mac OS systems' internal IP address, for example, bypasses the current Local Network Access protections, Meyer says.

"Usually, that specific 0.0.0.0 IP address is non-routable and should not work as an IP address. You should not be able to even use it for accessing anything, but it just works on Mac OS and Linux devices," he says.

NCC Group opened up a bug report with Google, an early adopter of the Local Network Access specification, to get the issue fixed in the Chromium codebase, Meyer says.

**Bolstering Defenses**

DNS rebinding attacks are not often seen in the wild, which is one reason why browser makers have taken a slower approach to mitigating the issue. Another is that companies do not want to break internal applications, whose developers may rely on the ability to handle cross-origin requests.

If Web application developers adopt the HTTPS encrypted Web protocols as a general rule, they can prevent their applications from being used in a DNS rebinding attack, says Palo Alto Networks' Chen.

"This kind of mitigation depends on the developer of internal services, \[so\] it is not scalable," he says. "As third-party Web applications populate in both home and enterprise environments, it's more difficult for the network owners to identify and fix all potentially vulnerable servers."

While DNS rebinding is not as common as other widely spread threats, such as DNS tunneling, domain-generation algorithms, DNS amplification denial-of-service attacks, and DNS hijacking, many Web applications remain vulnerable to DNS rebinding, and attackers are actively exploiting it, Chen says. Palo Alto Networks noted that seven DNS-binding-related CVEs were released in 2021 and nine in 2022, and the company continues to see attack traffic in the wild.

Companies can help bolster their defenses by using DNS services that detect attacks and help remote employees protect their at-home environments. Because an attacker needs to either know information about the victim's environment or know they are using common devices or applications, those common services should be hardened against attack, NCC Group's Meyer says.

"There are ways to discover if there are vulnerable services on the network or on employee devices, so the company could scan the network to find those vulnerable services," he says. "There are intrusion detection systems or other kinds of security software that can look for services listening on developer machines or any other employees' systems, and any services that are listening on a localhost are potentially vulnerable to DNS rebinding."

Rebinding Attacks Persist With Spotty Browser Defenses

The mobile phone and MacBook giant also rejected nearly 1.7 million app submissions last year in an effort to root out malware and fraud.

The Apple App Store supports more than 36 million registered Apple developers, but not all of those coding partners are benign. In a report on App Store safety this week, the computing giant noted that last year it booted nearly a half-million (428,000) developer accounts from the platform for carrying out fraud and abuse.

Apple said that in all, it prevented more than $2 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions in 2022, rejecting nearly 1.7 million app submissions for privacy violations, spammy or misleading features, or containing hidden or undocumented capabilities.

It also dismantled 282 million customer accounts for fraud and blocked nearly 105,000 Apple Developer Program enrollments for suspected malicious activities before they could submit apps to the App Store. And it detected and blocked more than 147 million fraudulent ratings and reviews.

**Enterprise App Bust**

On a separate note, in the last 30 days, Apple said that it blocked close to 3.9 million attempts to install or launch apps distributed illicitly through the Developer Enterprise Program, which allows large organizations to deploy internal apps for use by employees.

"Apple performs a number of safety checks on every app before it makes its way onto the App Store," the mobile behemoth noted in its App Store misuse report. "On average, the team reviews over 100,000 app submissions a week, with nearly 90 percent of them receiving a review within 24 hours."

The stats come hard on the heels of a similar report from Google, in which it said it banned 173,000 developer accounts from Google Play in 2022.

Despite best efforts, both Apple and Google have wrestled with malicious apps making their way into their official app stores. Cybercriminals are constantly improving their tactics, including submitting benign apps to make it past filters, which they update later with malicious functionality. App stores catch up to such tricks eventually (Google has implemented AI patrols, for instance), but it continues to be a game of whack-a-mole to root out the offenders.

"Apple's work to keep the App Store a safe and trusted place for users and developers is never done," Apple asserted in its report. "As bad actors evolve their dishonest tactics and methods of deception, Apple supplements its antifraud initiatives with feedback gleaned from a myriad of channels — from news stories to social media to AppleCare calls — and will continue to develop new approaches and tools designed to prevent fraud from harming App Store users and developers."

Apple Boots a Half-Million Developers From Official App Store

It's as they say: Teams is only as strong as its weakest links. Microsoft's collaboration platform offers Tabs, Meetings, and Messages functions, and they all can be exploited.

Researchers have identified several ways hackers can leverage Microsoft Teams functionalities to phish users, or deliver malware directly to their computers without their knowing it.

Using tabs in the Teams user interface, bad actors could potentially trigger a malicious payload, or redirect users to malicious sites while hardly leaving any trace, according to a report this week from Proofpoint. Additionally, through meeting invites or messages, hackers could replace legitimate URLs with malicious ones — again, without any obvious means for users to suss out the difference before it's too late.

"These risky Teams functionalities provide a nearly ideal attack platform for threat actors to target victims without being detected," the researchers tell Dark Reading.

Crucially, all of the proposed scenarios require an attacker to already have a compromised account or session token on hand. But as the researchers are quick to point out, hackers have long been targeting and cracking enterprise Teams environments.

According to the report, around 60% of Microsoft 365 tenants were subject to at least one successful account takeover incident in 2022. Teams, for its part, was the tenth most-targeted sign-in application last year, with 39% of targeted organizations experiencing at least one unauthorized, malicious login attempt.

**Teams' Tabs Problem**

Rarely do tabs evoke fear. Only, perhaps, when we've got too many of them open at once.

Unlike browsers, however, Teams tabs can point to applications, websites, and files. For example, the default "Files" tab — first and foremost in any channel or chat window — is associated with SharePoint and OneDrive. And users can create tabs, of course — say, by pinning a particular web domain to a new tab.

A malicious user could do the same with a malicious domain, but that's just the beginning. Using undocumented API calls, a hacker could rename and reposition a malicious tab to break Teams' conventions.

In theory, a hacker could create a tab pointing to a malicious URL, rename it "Files," and reposition it to supersede the legitimate "Files" tab in a user's chat window.

"This could be extremely attractive for attackers," the researchers wrote, "seeing as, by design, a website tab's URL is not displayed to users unless they deliberately visit the tab's 'Settings' menu."

But why go through the trouble? Alternatively, a hacker could simply point their tab to a malicious file. If the user is accessing Teams via the desktop or Web client, Teams will automatically download the file to the user's device, no questions asked.

**Modifying Links in Meetings and Messages**

Tabs aren't the only Teams functionalities malicious actors could hone in on.

Take meetings. With API calls, an attacker could sabotage auto-generated meeting links in calendar invites, swapping them out with malicious ones. Because meeting links tend to be busy — not so simple as www.\_\_\_\_.com — victims may have a difficult time telling the difference.

A malicious actor might also manipulate hyperlinks in chat messages, modifying the underlying URL to point somewhere malicious.

Proofpoint's researchers speculated that, "given that Teams API allows for the rapid and automatic enumeration and editing of links included in private or group chat messages, a simple script run by attackers could weaponize countless URLs within seconds," retroactively.

**Teamwork, to Make Teams Work**

Teams is a hugely popular communications platform, where business users often share highly sensitive information and documents. Thus, the consequences of compromise can be high.

"We have seen thousands of organizations experience Teams account takeover," the researchers explain, "which subsequently led to financial fraud, brand abuse, sabotage, data theft, and other risks. According to multiple studies, the average cost of an account takeover incident can cost thousands to millions of dollars."

The solutions, by contrast, can be simple. "Organizations can make informed decisions when there is greater transparency about the inherent risks of first party applications," the researchers say.

For instance, "it should be easier for 'hidden' URLs, which are inaccessible to the average user, to be viewed. Alternatively, adding and strengthening security measures to prevent automatic redirection to unwanted websites and block automatic file downloads would also help mitigate vulnerabilities."

When reached for comment, Microsoft offered the following response to Proofpoint:

"Microsoft encourages users to observe security best practices in Microsoft Teams and to adopt industry-standard best practices for security and data protection including embracing the Zero Trust Security model and adopting robust strategies to manage security updates, antivirus updates, and authentication. More information on Zero Trust Security is available at https://aka.ms/zerotrust."

Source

DARKReading