Two of Microsoft's Patch Tuesday updates need a do-over after causing certificate-based authentication errors.

If you updated servers running Active Directory Certificate Services and Window domain controllers responsible for certificate-based authentication with Microsoft's May 10 Patch Tuesday update, you may need a re-do. 

The company said the original patch for CVE-2022-26931 and CVE-2022-26923 was intended to stop certificate spoofing via privilege escalation, but an unintended consequence of the fix was a rash of authentication errors. So, it rushed a new patch, available as of Thursday.

After installing the original Patch Tuesday updates, several Reddit users complained of certificate-authentication errors in r/sysadmin subreddit Patch Tuesday Megathread for May 10. 

"My \[Network Policy Server\] NPS policies (with certificate auth) have been failing to work since the update, stating 'Authentication failed due to a user credentials mismatch,'" Reddit user RiceeeChrispies wrote. "Either the user name provided does not map to an existing account, or the password was incorrect.”

Microsoft added that once the update is installed, it won't be necessary to renew client-authentication certificates. 

"Renewal is not required," Microsoft said in its statement acknowledging the authentication errors. "The CA will ship in Compatibility Mode. If you want a strong mapping using the ObjectSID extension, you will need a new certificate."

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Microsoft Rushes a Fix After May Patch Tuesday Breaks Authentication

To succeed against dynamic cybercriminals, organizations must go multiple steps further and build a learning system that evolves over time to keep up with attacker tactics.

Identity is the new currency, and digital adversaries are chasing wealth. According to Verizon's "Data Breach Investigations Report," 61% of data breaches can be traced back to compromised credentials. Why? Breaking into systems with legitimate user credentials often enables attackers to move undetected across a network for intelligence gathering, data theft, extortion, and more.

Access control is foundational to defending systems, but like any tool, it has its limits. Motivated attackers try to find ways around the edges of access control systems to gain access to accounts. Many companies have invested in anti-fraud technologies to detect and mitigate these types of attacks against high-value targets, such as login and payment flows.

However, fraudsters' tactics can work equally as well in areas beyond login and payment flows. Therefore, we see persistent attackers who now target "identity construction" systems like provisioning, device enrollment, password reset, and other account management systems.

Because these identity provider systems establish the basis for all access control, they are now attracting dedicated attention from cybercriminals. For example, LockBit, Avaddon, DarkSide, Conti, and BlackByte ransomware groups are all utilizing initial access brokers (IABs) to purchase access to vulnerable organizations on Dark Web forums. IABs have grown in popularity within the last couple of years and are significantly lowering the barriers to entering the world of cybercrime.

**An Uptick in Identity-Related Attacks  
**Recent attacks and extortion attempts on major third-party software like Okta and Microsoft are clear examples of the damage that can be done when compromised credentials are used to carry out account takeover (ATO) attacks. The Lapsus$ ransomware group conducted all of their ATO activity using stolen credentials that were obtained using unconventional and sophisticated means. Recent news suggests that the group continues buying compromised account credentials until it finds one with source code access.

While all online accounts are vulnerable to ATO fraud, bad actors tend to target accounts they consider highly valuable, like bank accounts and retail accounts with stored payment information. Bad actors typically will use automated tools such as botnets and machine learning (ML) to engage in massive and ongoing attacks against consumer-facing websites. With automated tools, they commit ATO fraud using techniques such as credential stuffing and brute-force attacks, as shown by Lapsus$.

However, fraudsters don’t always use automated tools for ATO fraud. They can gain access through phishing, call-center scams, man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks, and Dark Web marketplaces. Some have even been known to employ human labor ("click farms") to manually enter login credentials so that the attacks go undetected by tools that look for automated login attempts. Nevertheless, ATO is now the weapon of choice for many fraudsters, perhaps accelerated by the pandemic, with attempted ATO fraud rising 282% between 2019 and 2020.

Identity-based fraud can be extremely difficult to detect considering the advanced tactics and randomness of different crime groups. Most of the breaches we hear about in the news are a result of businesses relying on automated access control tools rather than tracking user accounts to detect unusual behavior quickly.

**Access Control Layers Are Not Enough  
**Historically, access control implements authentication and authorization services to verify identity. Authentication focuses on who a user is. Authorization focuses on what they should be allowed to do.

These types of access control layers are a good first defense against identity-based fraud, but as made evident in recent attacks like Okta and Microsoft, fraudsters can bypass these tools fairly easily. There must be a second line of defense in the form of a detection system that learns and adapts. Therefore, companies should consider going beyond who a user is and what they are allowed to do, and ensure your identity system monitors and learns from what the user _is actually doing._

**The Need for a More Dynamic System  
**Many of the techniques that cybercriminals use lie at the intersection of security and usability. Simply looking at either security or usability misses the point. If we look only at how the security protocol _should_ work, we miss the point of how users will realistically use it. And if we only think about how to make it easy to use, we miss how to keep the bad people out. The protection layer from access control establishes the "allowed/not allowed" decision, but it should be backstopped by another layer of detection that observes and learns based on how the system is used and attempts at misuse. This second layer's job includes identifying the tactics used to takeover accounts through brute force, redirection, tampering, and other means.

As mentioned above, authentication is a static set of something you know, something you are, and something you have. But in a war against attackers that are dynamic, a static "shield" doesn’t do much for the sake of defense. To address this gap, a robust learning system is required to identify and block dynamically changing attacker tactics.

Companies are investing in identity graph technologies for many authentication and high-value flows. Identity graphs are a real-time prevention technique that collects data on more than a billion identities, including personas and behavior patterns, so that security teams can quickly identify unusual behavior from user accounts. \[Note: The author's company is one of a number using identity graph technology.\] With this type of real-time, data-driven approach, teams can identify behavior and activities generated from automated tools like bots and ML algorithms and can detect unusual behavior before it causes any damage, such as theft or fraudulent purchases.

To succeed against dynamic cybercriminals, organizations must go multiple steps further and build a learning system that evolves over time to keep up with attacker tactics. Identity graph technologies can help organizations recognize attacker tactics across the whole identity life cycle, including provisioning and account maintenance. These techniques can ebb and flow with the sophisticated threat landscape we're witnessing today.

Authentication Is Static, Yet Attackers Are Dynamic: Filling the Critical Gap

Hexa and IDQL allow organizations using cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform to apply consistent access policy across all applications, regardless of environment.

Multicloud is a reality for many organizations – whether by design or accident. And when applications and data are deployed across multiple cloud environments, creating and managing consistent identity access policies become a challenge.

Hexa is a new open source project from identity orchestration company Strata Identity to unify disparate cloud identity systems and allow consistent policies. Since each cloud provider has its own tool and policy format, Hexa relies on IDQL, a common policy format for defining identity access policies, Strata says.

Each cloud provider relies on proprietary identity systems and its own policy languages to create and manage identity and access on its platform. Most security engineers tend to be well-versed in one, maybe two, of the public clouds, but rarely more than that. In the era of multicloud, however, security engineers need to be able to create, read, and manage policies across multiple environments and be able to keep up with changing tools and new capabilities. IDQL is the universal declarative policy language that can translate policies into the individual provider’s proprietary format, says Gerry Gebel, Strata Identity’s head of standards. Hexa is the reference software built on top of the IDQL policy language and handles the tasks of discovering, translating, and orchestration policies across cloud environments, he says.

“Hexa is the open source reference software that brings IDQL to life and makes it operational in the real world,” Gebel says.

**Case for Managing Cloud Identities**

In a recent Dark Reading Report on the state of cloud computing, just 19% of respondents said their organizations work with only one cloud provider, while 43% said they worked with two to three providers. There are many reasons why organizations may be juggling multiple cloud providers. Organizations may require multicloud for redundancy and resiliency – such as one provider experiencing an outage – or to meet regulatory requirements about where the data could be stored. In some organizations, cloud infrastructure may have been originally set up without IT’s awareness, which is why the provider and policies may not be in sync with others.

Regardless of the reasons that led to multicloud, identity and access need to be consistent and managed. In a report from Palo Alto Networks, Unit42 researchers analyzed more than 680,000 identities across 18,000 cloud accounts and over 200 different organizations, and found 99% of cloud users, roles, services, and resources were granted excessive permissions. Not only were the permissions excessive, they were also left unused for 60 days, the report found.

Misconfigured identities are behind 65% of detected cloud security incidents, Unit42 said. Threat actors can abuse these identities and move laterally through the cloud environment or expand the pool of systems they can target.

Strata Identity’s own research found that only 25% of respondents said they have visibility into multicloud access policies.

**A Universal Policy Language**

Each cloud provider has its own identity system, and each application has to be hard-coded to work with that identity system. If the application is to work on multiple cloud platforms, traditionally the application would have to be modified for each one. Hexa, however, has been designed to use IDQL to bring multiple identity systems to work together as a unified whole and not have to make changes to the applications, according to Strata Identity. For policy discovery, Hexa abstracts identity and access policies from cloud platforms, authorization systems, data resources, and zero-trust networks.

Strata Identity set up an example multiregional banking application to demonstrate Hexa and its policy discovery management capabilities, Gebel says. The US region in this scenario deploys the application on Google Cloud Platform using App Engine, while another two regions rely on Kubernetes. Hexa connects to the Google Cloud instance to discover the resources and associated policies, and then converts the policies into IDQL. The analyst can make changes to the policies and then use Hexa to translate the new policies back into GCP format and push the changes on to the platform, he explains.

Hexa handles policy discovery by analyzing the environment to discover applications and resources being used and creating an inventory of all existing policies, users, and roles. Security teams have a comprehensive view of all the policies in place once they have been retrieved and translated into IDQL. Organizations can potentially develop tools to analyze the ISQL for any policy gaps, duplicates, or other error conditions. This capability is not in the open source Hexa, Gebel says, but it is something organizations can do on their own after converting to IDQL.

While it may seem that IDQL adds a layer of complexity to cloud identity access management, the reality is that organizations have to manage hundreds to thousands of cloud, SaaS, and on-premises apps, says Jack Poller, an ESG analyst covering identity and data security. Each application has a separate concept of identity and access authorization, and organizations are currently stuck with manually translating high level business access policies into each application’s own policy language or management tool.

"IDQL provides a lingua franca for authorization policies," Poller says. "Organizations can use Hexa or develop their own tools to orchestrate and automate access policies throughout the IT environment, closing the gaps that occur with manual policy management and ensuring continuous and consistent application of authorization policies."

**Cross-Platform Technologies**

IDQL and Hexa were created by some of the co-authors of Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), the cross-platform standard for single sign-on that lets users move across cloud platforms and Web applications without re-entering their credentials. However, Gebel notes that IDQL should not be viewed as a replacement for modern standards such as the Open Policy Agent (OPA), but "are complementary to them."

OPA is a unified declarative policy language that enables cloud-native developers to "decouple policy from the service's code so you can release, analyze, and review policies (which security and compliance teams love) without sacrificing availability or performance," Poller says, noting that IDQL is very similar to OPA.

"Just as Kubernetes transformed computing by allowing applications to transparently move from one machine to another, IDQL enables access policies to move freely between proprietary identity systems," said Eric Olden, CEO of Strata Identity and one of the co-authors of the SAML standard, said in a statement. "IDQL and Hexa eliminate identity silos in the cloud and on-premises by creating an intelligent, distributed identity system with one brain."

New Open Source Project Brings Consistent Identity Access to Multicloud

New professional certification program establishes a pathway into the workforce for students and career changers by demonstrating their foundational knowledge, skills and abilities to employers.

ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 19, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- (ISC)² – the world's largest nonprofit association of certified cybersecurity professionals – today announced that more than 1,000 cybersecurity career hopefuls have taken their first step toward a professional certification by completing the (ISC)2 entry-level cybersecurity certification pilot exam since the program launched on Jan. 31.

(ISC)2 created the certification to support and nurture a new generation of cybersecurity professionals entering the field – from recent university graduates to career changers to IT professionals – seeking to validate their security skills. The certification will provide employers with assurance that newcomers have the foundational knowledge, skills and abilities to succeed in entry- and junior-level roles.

"The outstanding response to our pilot program shows the pent-up need for this certification. The (ISC)2 entry-level cybersecurity certification satisfies a void the industry has been struggling to fill for years, and promises to be among the fastest-growing, in-demand cybersecurity certifications," said Clar Rosso, CEO, (ISC)2. "We are facing a global cybersecurity workforce gap of more than 2.7 million people. We can only close that gap if we increase pathways into the field and make a cybersecurity career more accessible to more people. Candidates who pass our exam will show employers that they can contribute to their organizations' missions and have the aptitude to learn and grow on the job."

**How the Exam Works  
**The (ISC)2 entry-level cybersecurity certification pilot exam evaluates candidates across five domains – security principles, business continuity (BC), disaster recovery (DR) and incident response concepts, access controls concepts, network security and security operations. A pilot exam outline is available that contains more details on the content within each domain.

Candidates who pass the (ISC)2 entry-level cybersecurity certification pilot exam become full members of (ISC)2, with access to continuing education, thought leadership, peer support, industry events and other professional development opportunities. Membership supports cybersecurity practitioners in their immediate and future careers as they gain experience and work towards more advanced and specialized certifications, such as the globally renowned (ISC)2 CISSP.

Learn more about the (ISC)2 entry-level cybersecurity certification pilot program, here. There will be no disruption to exam registration and administration throughout the pilot program and any time prior to the launch of the official certification program.

**Exam-Prep Resources Available  
**To prepare for the (ISC)2 entry-level cybersecurity certification pilot exam, candidates can access a series of domain review sessions delivered in online instructor-led or online self-paced formats. All courses review the main themes and areas of expertise covered by the pilot certification exam outline. The courses also include sample questions, helping candidates focus on what to expect during the pilot exam. Candidates will receive a certificate of completion for the review session. Learn more here.

**About (ISC)²**  
(ISC)² is an international nonprofit membership association focused on inspiring a safe and secure cyber world. Best known for the acclaimed Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP®) certification, (ISC)² offers a portfolio of credentials that are part of a holistic, pragmatic approach to security. Our membership, more than 168,000 strong, is made up of certified cyber, information, software and infrastructure security professionals who are making a difference and helping to advance the industry. Our vision is supported by our commitment to educate and reach the general public through our charitable foundation – The enter for Cyber Safety and Education™. For more information on (ISC)², visit www.isc2.org, follow us on Twitter or connect with us on Facebook and LinkedIn.

© 2022 (ISC)² Inc., (ISC)², CISSP, SSCP, CCSP, CAP, CSSLP, HCISPP, CISSP-ISSAP, CISSP-ISSEP, CISSP-ISSMP and CBK are registered marks of (ISC)², Inc.

More Than 1,000 Cybersecurity Career Pursuers Complete the (ISC)² Entry-Level Cybersecurity Certification Pilot Exam

QNAP is urging customers of its NAS products to update QTS and avoid exposing the devices to the Internet.

Network-attached storage provider QNAP is warning that its NAS devices are under active attack by the so-called Deadbolt ransomware. 

QNAP NAS device models affected are primarily TS-x51 series and TS-x53 series using QTS 4.3.6 and QTS 4.4.1, according to the company.  

"QNAP urges all NAS users to check and update QTS to the latest version as soon as possible, and avoid exposing their NAS to the Internet," the company advised. 

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Deadbolt Ransomware Targeting QNAP NAS Devices

In the three months since the war started, Russian operatives and those allied with the nation's interests have unleashed a deluge of disinformation and fake news to try and sow fear and confusion in Ukraine, security vendor says.

In March, in the middle of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a video surfaced that showed Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky announcing his country's surrender to the Russian forces. Another story the same month said he had committed suicide in the military bunker in Kyiv where he had been directing his country's fight against Russia, apparently because of Ukrainian military failures.

The video was a sophisticated deepfake of Zelensky generated by artificial intelligence. The story of his suicide was a completely concocted report from a group set up to spread fabricated narratives aligned with Russian interests. Both are examples of what Mandiant on Thursday described as systematic, targeted, and organized cyber-enabled information operations (IO) that has targeted Ukraine's population and audiences in other regions of the world since the war began in February.

Many of the actors behind these campaigns are previously known Russian, Belarusian, and other pro-Russian groups. Their goal is threefold, according to Mandiant: to demoralize Ukrainians; to cause division between the beleaguered nation and its allies; and to foster a positive perception of Russia internationally. Also in the fray are actors from Iran and China that are opportunistically using the war to advance their own anti-US and anti-West narratives.

**Success Hard to Gauge  
**The success of these information operations is hard to gauge given its scope, says Alden Wahlstrom, a senior analyst at Mandiant. "With the Russia-aligned activity, we’ve observed multiple instances in which the Ukrainian government has appeared to rapidly engage with and issue counter-messaging to disinformation narratives promoted by \[information\] operations," he says. But the sheer scale and tempo of operations has made the task challenging, Wahlstrom says. "One concern when looking at this activity in aggregate is that it helps to build an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty among the population in which individuals potentially question the validity of legitimate sources of information."

Mandiant's analysis shows several known groups are behind the information operations activity in Ukraine. Among them is APT28, a threat group that the US government and others have attributed to a unit of the Russian General Staff’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU). Mandiant observed members of APT28 using Telegram channels previously associated with the GRU to promote content designed to demoralize Ukrainians and weaken support from allies.

The Belarus-based operator of Ghostwriter, a long-running disinformation campaign in Europe is another actor that is active in Ukraine. In April, Mandiant observed the threat actor using what appeared to be a previously compromised website and likely compromised or threat actor-controlled social media accounts to publish and promote fake content aimed at fomenting distrust between Ukraine and Poland, its ally.

In the weeks leading up the Russia's invasion of Ukraine and in the months since then, Mandiant also observed an information campaign tracked as "Secondary Infektion" targeting audiences in Ukraine with fake narratives about the war. It was Secondary Infektion, for instance, that was responsible for the fake report about Zelensky's suicide. The same group also promoted stories about operatives from Ukraine's Azov Regiment — a unit that Russia has labeled as being comprised of Nazis — apparently seeking vengeance on Zelensky for allegedly letting Ukrainian soldiers die in Mariupol.

The group was often observed using forged documents, pamphlets, screenshots, and other fake source materials to support its fake content.

**False Narratives to Sow Fear and Confusion  
**Mandiant said it observed several other operatives engaged in a wide range of similar information operations in Ukraine often using bot-generated social media accounts and fake personas to promote a variety of Russia-aligned narratives. This has included fake content about growing resentment in Poland over refugees from Ukraine and Polish criminal gangs harvesting organs from Ukrainians fleeing into their country.

Often the information operations have coincided with other disruptive and destructive cyber activity, according to Mandiant. For example, the content about Zelensky's alleged surrender to Russia broke the same time that threat actors hit a Ukrainian organization with a disk-wiping malware tool that was scheduled to execute three hours before a Zelensky speech to the UN.

Wahlstrom says Mandiant has not been able to definitively link the information operations to the concurrent destructive attacks. 

"However, this limited pattern of overlap is worth paying attention to and may suggest that the actors behind the information operations are at least linked to groups with more extensive capabilities," he says. The coordinated attacks also suggest a full spectrum of actors and tactics are being employed in operations targeting Ukraine, Wahlstrom says.

For the most part, the information operations activity in Ukraine that the various groups are engaged in appear consistent with what they have engaged in previously. But one notable evolution is the prominence of dual-purpose information ops, says Sam Riddell, an analyst at Mandiant. "Popular pro-Russian 'hacktivist'  activity and coordinated 'grassroots' campaigns have pursued specific influence objectives while simultaneously attempting to create the impression of broad popular support for the Kremlin," he says.

The conflict in Ukraine has also shown how rapidly information operation assets and infrastructure can be repurposed for the theme of the day, he says. "At the onset of the war, a whole ecosystem of pro-Russian IO assets was able to quickly flip a switch and engage in wartime IO at high volumes," he says. "For defenders, this means that disrupting assets before significant global events break out is paramount."

Mandiant's report coincided with another one from Nisos this week that shed light on a Internet of Things botnet, tracked as "Fronton," that apparently was developed a few years ago at the direction of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB). The botnet's primary purpose, according to Fronton, is to serve as a platform for creating and distributing fake content and disinformation on a global scale. It includes what Nisos described as a Web-based dashboard called SANA for formulating and deploying trending social media events on a mass scale. 

Nisos' report on Fronton is based on a review of documents that were publicly leaked after a hacktivist group called Digital Revolution broke into systems belonging to a subcontractor who developed the botnet for FSB.

Vincas Ciziunas, research principal at Nisos, says there is no evidence of Fronton or SANA being used in the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine. But presumably the FSB has some use for the technology, Ciziunas adds. "We only have demo footage and documentation," he says. But the FSB did appear to create a fake network of Kazakh users on the Russian social media platform V Kontakte, and they did have some fake content related to a squirrel statue in a Kazakhstan city that appears to later have become the basis for a BBC report.

"The conversation related to the statue led to a BBC report," Ciziunas says. "We did not directly identify any of the social media postings mentioned in the BBC article as having been made by the platform."

Pro-Russian Information Operations Escalate in Ukraine War

Revised policy means security analysts won't be charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

The US Department of Justice announced this week that it has revised a policy that explicitly states it will not charge security researchers with violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

The new guidance recognizes "good faith" security research done to promote safety and not carried out in a way that causes harm. The new policy, effective immediately, replaces the previous CFAA charging policy from 2014, the DOJ said. 

"Computer security research is a key driver of improved cybersecurity," said Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco in a statement about the new DOJ policy. "The department has never been interested in prosecuting good-faith computer security research as a crime, and today’s announcement promotes cybersecurity by providing clarity for good-faith security researchers who root out vulnerabilities for the common good."

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DoJ Won't Charge 'Good Faith' Security Researchers

Shadowserver Foundation researchers find 380,000 open Kubernetes API servers.

Researchers with Shadowserver Foundation have discovered more than 380,000 open Kubernetes API servers exposed on the Internet. That represents 84% of all global Kubernetes API instances observable online.

The research was conducted across IPv4 infrastructure using HTTP GET requests. The researchers didn’t do any intrusive checks to figure out exactly the level of exposure that the servers exhibited, but the findings suggest potential trouble across this landscape.

“While this does not mean that these instances are fully open or vulnerable to an attack, it is likely that this level of access was not intended, and these instances are an unnecessarily exposed attack surface,” according to the Shadowserver report. “They also allow for information leakage on version and builds.”

The densest cluster of exposed API servers was found in the US, where some 201,348 of these open API instances were discovered. That accounts for 53% of the total open servers found.

This report is yet more evidence in a growing body of research around API security that shows many organizations are unprepared to protect against, respond to, or even have visibility into potential API attacks.

**Data Breaches via API Incidents  
**According to the recent "State of API Security 2022" report from Salt Security, approximately 34% of organizations have absolutely no API security strategy in place, and an additional 27% say that they have just a basic strategy that involves minimal scanning and manual reviews of API security status and no controls or management over them. Another study, from 451 Research on behalf of Noname Security, found that 41% of organizations had an API security incident in the last 12 months. Of those, 63% involved a data breach or data loss.

The scope of the potential API attack surface in modern application and cloud infrastructure is huge. According to the 451 Research study, large enterprises on average have more than 25,000 APIs connected to or operating within their infrastructure. The number is set to keep growing, and in a recent Gartner Predicts 2022 document, analysts say they believe that less than 50% of enterprise APIs will be managed three years from now “as explosive growth in APIs surpasses the capabilities of API management tools."

The Kubernetes exposure found by Shadowserver is evidence for a particularly acute problem in cloud security today. APIs are often one of the weakest links in cloud infrastructure management because they are usually at the heart of the control plane that handles configuration of cloud infrastructures and applications.

“All cloud breaches follow the same pattern: control plane compromise. The control plane is the API’s surface that configures and operates the cloud. APIs are the primary driver of cloud computing; think of them as 'software middlemen' that allow different applications to interact with each other,” explains Josh Stella, chief architect at Snyk and the founder of Fugue, which was recently acquired by Snyk. “The API control plane is the collection of APIs used to configure and operate the cloud. Unfortunately, the security industry remains a step behind the hackers because many vendor solutions do not protect their customers against attacks that target the cloud control plane.”

In the Predicts piece, Gartner analysts agree that newly created APIs that are churning into the scene are an integral part of the emerging cloud and application architectures that are at the heart of the modern continuous delivery model of application development.

“This situation resembles the early days of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) deployment, as ungoverned API usage is on the rise. As the architecture and operational technologies continue to mature, security controls try to apply old paradigms to new problems,” according to Gartner. “These controls can be a temporary solution, but it will take a long time for security controls and practices to catch up with the new architecture paradigm.”

Majority of Kubernetes API Servers Exposed to the Public Internet

CrowdStrike and CyberArk invest in Dig's seed round, which was led by Team8, alongside Merlin Ventures and chairs of MongoDB and Exabeam.

TEL AVIV, Israel, May 19, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Cloud data security company **Dig** emerged from stealth today, announcing $11M in seed funding for the first cloud Data Detection and Response (DDR) solution. The seed round was led by **Team8**, with cybersecurity firms **CrowdStrike**, through their Falcon Fund, and **CyberArk** joining as strategic investors alongside **Merlin Ventures**. Moving beyond posture solutions, Dig Security helps organizations discover, monitor, detect, protect and govern their cloud data in real time through a single unified policy engine.

Angel investors include Tom Killalea (Chairman of MongoDB), Jeff Fagnan (Carbon Black, Veracode), Nir Polak (Founder of Exabeam), Ori Fragman (CISO Europe of Ahold Delhaize) and Nitzan Shapira (Founder of Epsagon).\[1\]

Data is the ultimate target of most cyberattacks; it's the easiest way to profit from hacking. However, data in the cloud is fragmented across multiple clouds and services. A typical enterprise stores data on more than 20 types of service and thousands of instances. These organizations don't have visibility, context or control over their cloud data. Existing data security solutions weren't built to protect _cloud_ data and are often irrelevant.

"I've spoken to more than a hundred CISOs and hear the same complaints over and over", said Dan Benjamin, CEO and co-founder of Dig. "Companies don't know what data they hold in the cloud, where it is, or — most importantly — how to protect it. They have tools to protect endpoints, networks, APIs… but nothing to actively secure their data in public clouds".

Dig gives organizations complete control over their cloud data, providing **real-time Data Detection and Response (DDR)**. Using one of the industry's most comprehensive threat models for cloud data attacks, Dig detects, analyzes and responds instantly to threats to cloud data, triggering alerts on suspicious or anomalous activity, stopping attacks, exfiltrations and employee data misuse.

The solution discovers all data assets across public clouds and brings context to how they are used. It also tracks whether each data source supports compliance like SOC2 and HIPAA.

Dig was founded by Dan Benjamin, Ido Azran and Gad Akuka, three veteran entrepreneurs who've previously founded successful companies that were acquired by major firms. They also gained experience at tech giants including Google and Microsoft. Since it was founded, Dig has grown extremely quickly; the company already has a large data security research team and paying customers.

"It's rare to meet a founding team who have both an insider view of cloud security challenges from within Microsoft and Google's cloud organizations, alongside the experience of founding successfully acquired security companies," said Liran Grinberg, Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Team8. "Dig's active approach, bringing detection and response to data in the cloud, is precisely what the market needs. Data security in the cloud is high on the priority list of most CISOs today and we're proud to invest in the company we believe will lead this category."

"Organizations that lack visibility across their infrastructure have data protection challenges," said Michael Sentonas, Chief Technology Officer at CrowdStrike. "Through our Falcon Fund, we look forward to supporting Dig in their journey to provide data transparency, improving cloud data security and protection."

\[1\] Angel investors in their personal capacities. Affiliations included for identification purposes only.

Dig Exits Stealth With $11M for Cloud Data Detection and Response Solution

Mobile attacks have been going on for many years, but the threat is rapidly evolving as more sophisticated malware families with novel features enter the scene.

Mobile platforms are increasingly under threat as criminal and nation-state actors look for new ways to install malicious implants with advanced capabilities on iPhone and Android devices.

Although mobile attacks have been an ongoing problem for many years, the threat is rapidly evolving as more sophisticated malware families with novel features enter the scene.

Attackers are now actively deploying malware with full remote access capabilities, modular design, and, in some cases, worm-like characteristics that can pose significant threats to users and the companies they work for. Many of these malware families are continually improving through regular development updates, and cybercriminals are getting better at beating the review process of official app stores. Meanwhile, both the US and EU are considering new antitrust regulations that could make "sideloading" apps a consumer right.

It is important for businesses to recognize that mobile attacks are a key focus area for sophisticated threat actors. These attacks will continue to evolve as new tools and tactics emerge, posing unique challenges to traditional corporate security.

Here are six mobile malware tactics that companies need to prepare for:

**1\. On-Device Fraud  
**One of the most concerning new mobile malware advancements is the ability to carry out fraudulent actions directly from the victim’s device. Known as on-device fraud (ODF), this advanced capability has been detected in recent mobile banking Trojans, most notably Octo, TeaBot, Vultur, and Escobar. In Octo's case, the malware exploited Android's MediaProjection service (to enable screen sharing) and Accessibility Service (to perform actions on the device remotely). This hands-on remote access feature has also been enabled through an implementation of VNC Viewer, as in the case of Escobar and Vultur.

ODF marks a significant turning point for mobile attacks, which have largely focused on overlay-based credential theft and other types of data exfiltration. Although most ODF Trojans are primarily focused on financial theft, these modules could be adapted to target other types of accounts and communications tools used by businesses, such as Slack, Teams, and Google Docs.

**2\. Phone Call Redirection  
**Another troubling capability is the interception of legitimate phone calls, which recently emerged in the Fakecalls banking Trojan.

In this attack, the malware can break the connection of a user-initiated call without the caller's knowledge and redirect the call to another number under the attacker's control. Since the call screen continues to show the legitimate phone number, the victim has no way of knowing they have been diverted to a fake call service. The malware achieves this by securing call handling permission during the app installation.

**3\. Notification Direct Reply Abuse  
**In February, FluBot spyware (Version 5.4) introduced the novel capability of abusing Android’s Notification Direct Reply feature, which allows the malware to intercept and directly reply to push notifications in the applications it targets. This feature has since been discovered in other mobile malware, including Medusa and Sharkbot.

This unique capability allows the malware to sign fraudulent financial transactions, intercept two-factor authentication codes, and modify push notifications. However, this feature can also be used to spread the malware in a worm-like manner to the victim's contacts by sending automated malicious responses to social application notifications (such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger), a tactic known as "push message phishing."

**4\. Domain Generation Algorithm  
**The Sharkbot banking Trojan is also notable for another feature: domain generation algorithm (DGA), which it uses to avoid detection. As with other conventional malware with DGA, the mobile malware constantly creates new domain names and IP addresses for its command-and-control (C2) servers, which makes it difficult for security teams to detect and block the malware.

**5\. Bypassing App Store Detection  
**The app review process has always been a cat-and-mouse game with malware developers, but recent cybercriminal tactics are worth noting. The CryptoRom criminal campaign, for example, abused Apple’s TestFlight beta testing platform and Web Clips feature to deliver malware to iPhone users by bypassing the App Store altogether. Google Play's security process was bypassed by one criminal actor that paid developers to use its malicious SDK in their apps, which then stole personal data from users.

While droppers have become increasingly common for mobile malware distribution, researchers have recently noticed an uptick in activity in the underground market for these services, along with other distribution actors. .

**6\. More Refined Development Practices  
**While modular malware design isn't new, Android banking Trojans are now being developed with sophisticated update capabilities, such as the recently discovered Xenomorph malware. Xenomorph combines a modular design, accessibility engine, infrastructure and C2 protocol to allow for significant update capabilities that could enable it to become a far more advanced Trojan down the line, including the automatic transfer system (ATS) feature. Going forward, more mobile malware families will incorporate better update processes to enable enhanced features and entirely new functionality on compromised devices.

**Fight Back by Boosting Corporate Defenses  
**To fight back against these new mobile malware tactics, businesses need to make sure their cybersecurity programs include robust defenses. These include mobile device management solutions, multifactor authentication, and strong employee access controls. And, since mobile malware infections typically begin with social engineering, companies should provide security awareness training and consider technology that monitors communication channels for these attacks.

Source

DARKReading