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.

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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."

Microsoft Teams Features Amp Up Orgs' Cyberattack Exposure

Pending new SEC rules reinforce how integral cybersecurity is to modern business operations, and will help close the gap between security teams and those making policy decisions.

Cybersecurity is no longer a fringe issue for businesses. What was once a siloed function, there out of necessity more than anything, is now woven into the fabric of any successful business. Any business still treating its cybersecurity initiatives as a side project is setting itself up to fail.

The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) has laid to rest any doubts about the importance of cybersecurity with new regulations around how boards of directors should approach it. The regulations, which are in the process of being finalized, will require companies to openly report any serious cybersecurity attack and explain who on their board is responsible for dealing with it. The regulations also will require businesses to include board of directors' cybersecurity experience and credentials as part of any public disclosure. This is yet another indication of how integral cybersecurity is becoming to modern business operations.

**Growing Downtime Costs**

In 2021, more than two-thirds (66%) of businesses were hit by a ransomware attack, according to a survey by Sophos. That's a 78% increase from the previous year, with damages incurred totaling costs of around $20 billion. These costs aren't just down to ransom payments, but also include the downtime and disruption targeted businesses endure. In the Information Technology Industry Council's Hourly Cost of Downtime Survey, more than 40% of companies reported that hourly downtime costs ranged from $1 million to $5 million USD, not including any legal fees, fines, or penalties — which publicly traded companies who fall short of cybersecurity standards can be subject to.

The evolving threat landscape — combined with new regulatory frameworks like that put forward by the SEC — means that cybersecurity cannot be an afterthought or a bolt-on. It must be core to business operations, and that means it needs a seat at the boardroom table. However, according to a recent analysis of data by the CAP Group, 90% of boards are _not_ ready for the new SEC cyber regulations.

**Failure to Prepare Is Preparing to Fail**

The cybersecurity ecosystem has progressed in leaps and bounds in recent years. Once a siloed function of business, using reactionary tactics to chase down and isolate threats, it now has a proactive, networkwide presence that often leverages threat intelligence, penetration testing, and AI to bolster cyber resilience. However, most cybersecurity teams are still heavily focused on addressing technical-level threats, which are then used to inform security policy and mitigate risk. This leaves a gap of understanding between security teams and those authoring policies and making decisions higher up the chain.

This gap is a vulnerability. Most cybersecurity teams lack the tools or functionality needed to contextualize threats in a way that can be acted upon by other business, operational, and financial personnel. If this "disconnect" between business objectives and cyber resiliency continues, businesses will leave themselves exposed regardless of how thorough their cybersecurity initiatives are. 

**Closing the Communication Gap**

It's the responsibility of chief information and security officers to evaluate threats and understand to what extent they might threaten their organization, so that action can be taken in line with new security regulations. This means that threats need to be contextualized and communicated as part of an overall enterprise risk management strategy involving finance, compliance, operational, and management teams, as well as board members. 

To achieve this, CISOs will need to step out of their technical jargon comfort zone and communicate threats and their potential impact to other C-suite executives in a way that can be easily interpreted and understood.

This will mean evolving security initiatives into broader risk-mitigation initiatives. Machine learning-powered risk mitigation can play a significant role in helping businesses contextualize cyber threats. By analyzing large volumes of data and detecting patterns that may not be immediately visible to human analysts, machine learning algorithms can identify potential security threats so that businesses can take proactive measures to deal with them.

For example, machine learning algorithms can analyze user behavior data to identify patterns that deviate from normal usage patterns, such as repeated failed login attempts or access attempts from unusual locations or devices. By identifying these anomalies, businesses can take proactive measures to identify a potential attack, such as locking user accounts or implementing additional authentication measures. 

Another area where machine learning can be useful in the context of cyber-threat mitigation is in predicting the likelihood of future attacks. By analyzing historical attack data and identifying common characteristics of successful attacks, algorithms can identify potential attack vectors and help businesses prioritize their security efforts accordingly. This might involve analyzing patterns in the frequency and severity of attacks, as well as the methods and techniques used by attackers. This information can then be used to develop predictive models that can help businesses anticipate future threats and take measures to not only mitigate them, but identify and communicate about them with those at the top.

It's vital that publicly traded companies have a firm understanding of their risk posture and vulnerability. With directors now being held responsible for their company's cybersecurity infrastructure, it's even more vital that director-level teams can quickly and easily understand this vulnerability and any potential breaches. This can be achieved through a combination of new, machine learning-powered solutions, advisory hires that can "translate" and parse the potential fallout of threats, and CISOs taking a more consultative and advisory approach in how they deal with cyber threat resilience.

Cybersecurity is no longer a fringe issue — it has a seat at the boardroom table, and if businesses can't fill that seat, they need to make sure the person sitting there is as well-informed as possible.

Talking Security Strategy: Cybersecurity Has a Seat at the Boardroom Table

Cobalt's fifth edition of "The State of Penetration Testing Report" taps into data from 3,100 pen tests and more than 1,000 responses from security practitioners.

We live in a digital world, so there’s no shortage of threats facing organizations today. Cobalt recently released its fifth annual "State of Penetration Testing 2023" report, which provides valuable insights into the vulnerabilities and threats companies are encountering. As new technologies emerge, the risks associated with data breaches and cyberattacks continue to grow. This data underscores what many security practitioners know to be true: The importance of staying up to date with the latest security trends and implementing proactive measures to protect against these threats is critical.

One of the key takeaways from the report is the prevalence of Web application vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities, which include things such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting, are a major source of risk for many organizations. In fact, Cobalt found that Web application vulnerabilities accounted for over 40% of all vulnerabilities discovered in 2022. This is a significant increase from the previous year, and highlights the need for organizations to prioritize their Web application security efforts.

Another major vulnerability we’re seeing is the use of insecure protocols. The report found that many organizations continue to use outdated, insecure protocols like FTP and Telnet, despite the known risks associated with these protocols. This is concerning, as these protocols are easily exploited by attackers and can result in significant data breaches. The known solutions exist, yet the prevalence of the issues remain.

Additionally, the threat posed by social engineering attacks ranks highly as a pitfall across companies of all sizes. Social engineering attacks, which include things such as phishing and spear-phishing, are an ever-growing concern for organizations. These attacks rely on psychological manipulation to trick individuals into divulging sensitive information or performing actions that could compromise security. We found that social engineering attacks accounted for 20% of all reported security incidents in 2022, making them a significant threat to organizations regardless of size.

**What Can Organizations Do to Protect Against These Vulnerabilities and Threats?**

One of the most important things companies can do is focus on proactive security measures. This includes things like regular vulnerability scanning, penetration testing, as well as the implementation of robust security protocols and procedures like consistent employee cyber training. You are only as strong as your weakest link.

Regular vulnerability scanning and penetration testing are essential for identifying potential vulnerabilities in an organization's network and applications. By regularly scanning for vulnerabilities, organizations can proactively identify and remediate security risks before they can be exploited by attackers. Additionally, penetration testing can help organizations to better understand their overall security posture, and identify potential weaknesses before they can be exploited by malicious actors.

In addition to regular scanning and testing, organizations should also prioritize the implementation of robust security protocols and procedures. This includes things like the use of strong passwords and two-factor authentication, as well as secure protocols like SSH and HTTPS. Moreover, organizations should develop and implement a comprehensive security policy that outlines the steps that employees should take to protect sensitive data and systems.

Finally, it is important for organizations to remain vigilant when it comes to social engineering attacks. This means providing regular training to employees on how to identify and avoid these types of attacks, as well as implementing robust security protocols to protect against phishing and other social engineering tactics before they reach employees.

Overall, the new "State of Penetration Testing 2023" report highlights the need for organizations to remain vigilant when it comes to the risks associated with data breaches and cyberattacks. By implementing proactive security measures and staying up to date with the latest security trends, organizations can protect themselves against these threats and ensure the safety of their sensitive data and systems. With the continued evolution of technology and the increasing sophistication of attackers, it's more important than ever for organizations to prioritize their security efforts and take a proactive approach to protecting against vulnerabilities and threats.

**About the Author**

    

Andrew Obadiaru is the chief information security officer at Cobalt, which provides a pentest-as-a-service (PtaaS) platform that is modernizing the traditional, static pentesting model. Andrew is responsible for maintaining the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of Cobalt's systems and data. Andrew has 20+ years in the security and technology space, with a history of managing and mitigating risk across changing technologies, software, and diverse platforms.

How to Protect Your Organization From Vulnerabilities

It's still unclear when systems for Pennsylvania's largest media outlet will be fully restored, as employees were told to stay at home through Tuesday.

The city of Philadelphia's largest newspaper couldn't publish its Sunday edition last week due to a weekend cyberattack that caused the largest disruption to its production in 27 years. It's still affecting daily operations, with no end in sight.

Staff of the Philadelphia Inquirer also were told to stay at home through at least May 16 due to ongoing disruptions, as the media company and third-party cybersecurity experts continue to work to restore systems after the attack, according to a report that the newspaper published on its website that detailed the incident.

The Inquirer continues to publish and update stories to Inquirer.com, "though sometimes slower than normal," the article by the Inquirer's Jonathan Lai said. Moreover, management still isn't sure when the paper's systems will be fully restored, said Inquirer publisher Lisa Hughes, who answered Dark Reading's emails through a spokesperson.

The largest disruption occurred within print production, which left readers without a physical copy of their Sunday paper, and management and employees were unsure if they could publish on May 15. They did eventually manage the latter, but Monday's print edition was without its classified and obituary sections, which will only reappear in the paper again on May 17, according to the article.

The incident — in which threat actors exploited a undisclosed vulnerability present on the paper's system — so far has been the greatest publication disruption to the Inquirer since the blizzard of Jan. 7-8, 1996. It also came at an inopportune time for the news organization, just days before a key election that occurred yesterday in the city's mayoral race.

The halt in production harks back to a major 2019 cybersecurity incident against Tribune Publishing, which owns several major US newspapers — including the Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun, as well as the Los Angeles Times — and affected production and delivery of those papers.

"We appreciate everyone's patience and understanding as we work to fully restore systems and complete this investigation as soon as possible," Hughes said, according to the article. "We will keep our employees and readers informed as we learn more."

**Attack Timeline**

Inquirer management and staff still are not clear about when the attack began, though the first alert to suspicious activity occurred on Thursday, May 11, when Cynet, a vendor that manages the Inquirer's network security, noticed something was amiss.

The paper operated normally through May 11-12, but on the morning of Sunday, May 14 employees could not access the paper's content-management systems and had to put in place workarounds to post to Inquirer.com over the weekend, according to the article.

Though specifically what type of attack occurred or who is behind it has not been divulged by the paper, it's clear by the extent of the disruption that it blindsided the media company, part of a sector that's becoming an increasingly attractive target for cyber criminals, noted one security expert.

Indeed, the disruption in the wake of the attack is a stark reminder of the potential consequences of cyber threats and the urgent need for all organizations to have "robust cybersecurity measures," noted Justin Rapacz, senior vice president of managed services at Netrix, a global provider of cybersecurity, cloud, and IT services.

"Comprehensive cybersecurity measures are no longer optional; they're a necessity — this includes firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and antivirus software, complemented by regular updates and patches to eliminate potential vulnerabilities," he says in an email to Dark Reading.

**Stronger Cybersecurity Measures Needed**

The attack on The Inquirer is not the first time the media outlet has been targeted by cybercriminals. Employees also have been targeted by spear-phishing campaigns that impersonated Hughes and other management, she said in her responses for Lai's article.

And while one of the most basic cornerstones of security that an organization can take these days is multi-factor authentication (MFA), the Inquirer's Hughes acknowledged that the paper has not so far required MFA across its key systems. That said, the effectiveness of MFA is diminishing as cybercriminals become more sophisticated, Netrix's Rapacz notes.

"Having MFA is no longer enough," he says. "The rise of hardware tokens represents the next step in MFA. These devices significantly reduce the risk of interception and duplication, providing an added layer of security and making them a more effective and secure form of MFA in the face of evolving cyber threats."

Organizations also should practice regular penetration tests and an effective vulnerability management process to identify and address security weaknesses before they can be exploited by cybercriminals, Rapacz says.

"Proactive cybersecurity measures, such as continuous monitoring and regular security audits, can go a long way in preventing cyberattacks," he says.

While Hughes said that The Inquirer has invested significantly in digital security in recent years — including monitoring and regular security audits from Cynet — the vulnerability that was exploited in the attack had not previously been flagged for investigation.

The incident also serves as a reminder of how important it is for organizations in general to develop "solid incident response and business-continuity plans," Rapacz adds, as they "can help minimize downtime and maintain operations in the event of a cyberattack."

Source

DARKReading