The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has detailed a new malicious email campaign targeting government agencies, enterprises, and military entities.
"The messages exploit the appeal of integrating popular services like Amazon or Microsoft and implementing a zero-trust architecture," CERT-UA said. "These emails contain attachments in the form of Remote Desktop Protocol ('.rdp'

Cyber Attack / Threat Intelligence

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has detailed a new malicious email campaign targeting government agencies, enterprises, and military entities.

"The messages exploit the appeal of integrating popular services like Amazon or Microsoft and implementing a zero-trust architecture," CERT-UA said. "These emails contain attachments in the form of Remote Desktop Protocol ('.rdp') configuration files."

Once executed, the RDP files establish a connection with a remote server, enabling the threat actors to gain remote access to the compromised hosts, steal data, and plant additional malware for follow-on attacks.

Infrastructure preparation for the activity is believed to have been underway since at least August 2024, with the agency stating that it's likely to spill out of Ukraine to target other countries.

CERT-UA has attributed the campaign to a threat actor it tracks as UAC-0215. Amazon Web Service (AWS), in an advisory of its own, linked it to the Russian nation-state hacking group known as APT29.

"Some of the domain names they used tried to trick the targets into believing the domains were AWS domains (they were not), but Amazon wasn't the target, nor was the group after AWS customer credentials," CJ Moses, Amazon's chief information security officer, said. "Rather, APT29 sought its targets' Windows credentials through Microsoft Remote Desktop."

The tech giant said it also seized the domains the adversary was using to impersonate AWS in order to neutralize the operation. Some of the domains used by APT29 are listed below -

*   ca-west-1.mfa-gov\[.\]cloud
*   central-2-aws.ua-aws\[.\]army
*   us-east-2-aws.ua-gov\[.\]cloud
*   aws-ukraine.cloud
*   aws-data.cloud
*   aws-s3.cloud
*   aws-il.cloud
*   aws-join.cloud
*   aws-meet.cloud
*   aws-meetings.cloud
*   aws-online.cloud
*   aws-secure.cloud
*   s3-aws\[.\]cloud
*   s3-fbi\[.\]cloud
*   s3-nsa\[.\]cloud, and
*   s3-proofpoint\[.\]cloud

The development comes as CERT-UA also warned of a large-scale cyber attack aimed at stealing confidential information of Ukrainian users. The threat has been cataloged under the moniker UAC-0218.

The starting point of the attack is a phishing email containing a link to a booby-trapped RAR archive that purports to be either bills or payment details.

Present within the archive is a Visual Basic Script-based malware dubbed HOMESTEEL that's designed to exfiltrate files matching certain extensions ("xls," "xlsx," "doc," "docx," "pdf," "txt," "csv," "rtf," "ods," "odt," "eml," "pst," "rar," and "zip") to an attacker-controlled server.

"This way criminals can gain access to personal, financial and other sensitive data and use it for blackmail or theft," CERT-UA said.

Furthermore, CERT-UA has alerted of a ClickFix\-style campaign that's designed to trick users into malicious links embedded in email messages to drop a PowerShell script that's capable of establishing an SSH tunnel, stealing data from web browsers, and downloading and launching the Metasploit penetration testing framework.

Users who click the link are directed to a fake reCAPTCHA verification page that prompts them to verify their identity by clicking on a button. This action copies the malicious PowerShell script ("Browser.ps1") to the user's clipboard and displays a popup window with instructions to execute it using the Run dialog box in Windows.

CERT-UA said it has an "average level of confidence" that the campaign is the work of another Russian advanced persistent threat actor known as APT28 (aka UAC-0001).

The cyber offensives against Ukraine come amidst a report from Bloomberg that detailed how Russia's military intelligence agency and Federal Security Service (FSB) systematically targeted Georgia's infrastructure and government as part of a series of digital intrusions between 2017 to 2020. Some of the attacks have been pinned on Turla.

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CERT-UA Identifies Malicious RDP Files in Latest Attack on Ukrainian Entities

Kremlin intelligence carried out a wide-scale phishing campaign in contrast to its usual, more targeted operations.

Source: Design Pics Inc via Alamy Stock Photo

Russia's premiere advanced persistent threat group has been phishing thousands of targets in militaries, public authorities, and enterprises.

APT29 (aka Midnight Blizzard, Nobelium, Cozy Bear) is arguably the world's most notorious threat actor. An arm of the Russian Federation's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), it's best known for the historic breaches of SolarWinds and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Lately, it has breached Microsoft's codebase and political targets across Europe, Africa, and beyond.

"APT29 embodies the 'persistent' part of 'advanced persistent threat,'" says Satnam Narang, senior staff research engineer at Tenable. "It has persistently targeted organizations in the United States and Europe for years, utilizing various techniques, including spear-phishing and exploitation of vulnerabilities to gain initial access and elevate privileges. Its modus operandi is the collection of foreign intelligence, as well as maintaining persistence in compromised organizations in order to conduct future operations."

Along these same lines, the Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) recently discovered APT29 phishing Windows credentials from government, military, and private sector targets in Ukraine. And after comparing notes with authorities in other countries, CERT-UA found that the campaign was actually spread across "a wide geography."

That APT29 would go after sensitive credentials from geopolitically prominent and diverse organizations is no surprise, Narang notes, though he adds that "the one thing that does kind of stray from the path would be its broad targeting, versus \[its typical more\] narrowly focused attacks."

**AWS and Microsoft**

The campaign, which dates back to August, was carried out using malicious domain names designed to seem like they were associated with Amazon Web Services (AWS). The emails sent from these domains pretended to advise recipients on how to integrate AWS with Microsoft services, and how to implement zero trust architecture.

Despite the masquerade, AWS itself reported that the attackers weren't after Amazon, or its customers' AWS credentials.

What APT29 really wanted was revealed in the attachments to those emails: configuration files for Remote Desktop, Microsoft's application for implementing the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). RDP is a popular tool that legitimate users and hackers alike use to operate computers remotely.

"Normally, attackers will try to brute force their way into your system or exploit vulnerabilities, then have RDP configured. In this case, they're basically saying: 'We want to establish that connection \[upfront\],'" Narang says.

Launching one of these malicious attachments would have immediately triggered an outgoing RDP connection to an APT29 server. But that wasn't all: The files also contained a number of other malicious parameters, such that when a connection was made, the attacker was given access to the target computer's storage, clipboard, audio devices, network resources, printers, communication (COM) ports, and more, with the added ability to run custom malicious scripts.

**Block RDP**

APT29 may not have used any legitimate AWS domains, but Amazon still managed to interrupt the campaign by seizing the group's malicious copycats.

For potential victims, CERT-UA recommends strict precautions: not just monitoring network logs for connections to IP addresses tied to APT29 but also analyzing all outgoing connections to all IP addresses on the wider Web through the end of the month.

And for organizations at risk in the future, Narang offers simpler advice. "First and foremost, don't allow RDP files to be received. You can block them at your email gateway. That's going to kneecap this whole thing," he says.

AWS declined to provide further comment for this story. Dark Reading has also reached out to Microsoft for its perspective.

**About the Author**

Nate Nelson is a freelance writer based in New York City. Formerly a reporter at Threatpost, he contributes to a number of cybersecurity blogs and podcasts. He writes "Malicious Life" -- an award-winning Top 20 tech podcast on Apple and Spotify -- and hosts every other episode, featuring interviews with leading voices in security. He also co-hosts "The Industrial Security Podcast," the most popular show in its field.

Russia's APT29 Mimics AWS Domains to Steal Windows Credentials

Linux Foundation removes 11 Russian developers from the Linux kernel project due to U.S. sanctions. Linus Torvalds confirms…

Linux Foundation removes 11 Russian developers from the Linux kernel project due to U.S. sanctions. Linus Torvalds confirms compliance-driven decision, sparking debate within the open-source community.

Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux operating system, has confirmed the removal of 11 Russian-affiliated maintainers/programmers from the Linux kernel project, a move indicating the intersection of open-source software development and global politics.

This decision was implemented on October 18 and has since sparked debate within the open-source community. It affects developers working on drivers for hardware from companies like Acer, Cirrus, and Baikal.

****The Rationale Behind the Removal****

The removal of these developers was triggered by U.S. sanctions that aim to restrict the flow of technology and services to Russia. While Linux itself is an open-source project, its development and maintenance involve a global community of contributors. However, the sanctions have forced the Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization overseeing the Linux kernel, to take steps to ensure compliance.

Kernel developer James Bottomley stated that Linux maintainers have received advice from Linux Foundation counsel, and that “sufficient documentation” would indicate that someone does not work for an OFAC SDN entity. By removing Russian maintainers, the Linux Foundation aims to mitigate the risk of inadvertently violating these sanctions. This decision is not without its complexities, as it raises questions about the balance between open collaboration and geopolitical considerations.

****A Vague Explanation and Growing Speculation****

The initial announcement of the removals was met with confusion and speculation. Greg Kroah-Hartman, a prominent Linux kernel developer, offered a brief explanation, citing “various compliance requirements.” Linux kernel developer Geert Uytterhoeven called it a “vague statement,” which led to widespread discussion and debate within the open-source community.

“I am also afraid this is opening the door for further (ab)use,” Uytterhoeven stated.

Torvalds later clarified the situation, confirming that the removals were directly linked to U.S. sanctions against Russia. It was not a personal attack on the affected developers but rather a necessary step to ensure compliance with international regulations. 

> Sanctions Hit Linux Kernel, Russian Programmers Banned
> 
> Biden’s Executive Order 14071, forbids Russians from working with or using GPL’d software made in the USA. And that includes the Linux Kernel. pic.twitter.com/gHHiMV5xsK
> 
> — The Lunduke Journal (@LundukeJournal) October 23, 2024

This incident highlights the challenges faced by open-source projects in navigating complex geopolitical issues. This move will also impact the development and maintenance of the Linux kernel, particularly in areas where the removed developers had significant expertise. However, the open-source nature of Linux ensures that other developers can step in to fill the void.

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Linux Kernel Project Drops 11 Russian Developers Amid US Sanctions Concerns

Adversary3 malware vulnerability intel tool for third-party attackers living off malware (LOM), updated with 700 malware and C2 panel vulnerabilities.

Adversary3 3.32

Apple has publicly made available its Private Cloud Compute (PCC) Virtual Research Environment (VRE), allowing the research community to inspect and verify the privacy and security guarantees of its offering.
PCC, which Apple unveiled earlier this June, has been marketed as the "most advanced security architecture ever deployed for cloud AI compute at scale." With the new technology, the idea is

Cloud Security / Artificial Intelligence

Apple has publicly made available its Private Cloud Compute (PCC) Virtual Research Environment (VRE), allowing the research community to inspect and verify the privacy and security guarantees of its offering.

PCC, which Apple unveiled earlier this June, has been marketed as the "most advanced security architecture ever deployed for cloud AI compute at scale." With the new technology, the idea is to offload computationally complex Apple Intelligence requests to the cloud in a manner that doesn't sacrifice user privacy.

Apple said it's inviting "all security and privacy researchers — or anyone with interest and a technical curiosity — to learn more about PCC and perform their own independent verification of our claims."

To further incentivize research, the iPhone maker said it's expanding the Apple Security Bounty program to include PCC by offering monetary payouts ranging from $50,000 to $1,000,000 for security vulnerabilities identified in it.

This includes flaws that could allow execution of malicious code on the server, and exploits capable of extracting users' sensitive data, or information about the user's requests.

The VRE aims to offer a suite of tools to help researchers carry out their analysis of PCC from the Mac. It comes with a virtual Secure Enclave Processor (SEP) and leverages built-in macOS support for paravirtualized graphics to enable inference.

Apple also said it's making the source code associated with some components of PCC accessible via GitHub to facilitate a deeper analysis. This includes CloudAttestation, Thimble, splunkloggingd, and srd\_tools.

"We designed Private Cloud Compute as part of Apple Intelligence to take an extraordinary step forward for privacy in AI," the Cupertino-based company said. "This includes providing verifiable transparency – a unique property that sets it apart from other server-based AI approaches."

The development comes as broader research into generative artificial intelligence (AI) continues to uncover novel ways to jailbreak large language models (LLMs) and produce unintended output.

Earlier this week, Palo Alto Networks detailed a technique called Deceptive Delight that involves mixing malicious and benign queries together to trick AI chatbots into bypassing their guardrails by taking advantage of their limited "attention span."

The attack requires a minimum of two interactions, and works by first asking the chatbot to logically connect several events – including a restricted topic (e.g., how to make a bomb) – and then asking it to elaborate on the details of each event.

Researchers have also demonstrated what's called a ConfusedPilot attack, which targets Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) based AI systems like Microsoft 365 Copilot by poisoning the data environment with a seemingly innocuous document containing specifically crafted strings.

"This attack allows manipulation of AI responses simply by adding malicious content to any documents the AI system might reference, potentially leading to widespread misinformation and compromised decision-making processes within the organization," Symmetry Systems said.

Separately, it has been found that it's possible to tamper with a machine learning model's computational graph to plant "codeless, surreptitious" backdoors in pre-trained models like ResNet, YOLO, and Phi-3, a technique codenamed ShadowLogic.

"Backdoors created using this technique will persist through fine-tuning, meaning foundation models can be hijacked to trigger attacker-defined behavior in any downstream application when a trigger input is received, making this attack technique a high-impact AI supply chain risk," Hidden Layer researchers Eoin Wickens, Kasimir Schulz, and Tom Bonner said.

"Unlike standard software backdoors that rely on executing malicious code, these backdoors are embedded within the very structure of the model, making them more challenging to detect and mitigate."

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Apple Opens PCC Source Code for Researchers to Identify Bugs in Cloud AI Security

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has rapidly evolved from a futuristic concept to a potent weapon in the hands of bad actors. Today, AI-based attacks are not just theoretical threats—they're happening across industries and outpacing traditional defense mechanisms. 
The solution, however, is not futuristic. It turns out a properly designed identity security platform is able to deliver defenses

Artificial Intelligence / Identity Security

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has rapidly evolved from a futuristic concept to a potent weapon in the hands of bad actors. Today, AI-based attacks are not just theoretical threats—they're happening across industries and outpacing traditional defense mechanisms.

The solution, however, is not futuristic. It turns out a properly designed identity security platform is able to deliver defenses against AI impersonation fraud. Read more about how a secure-by-design identity platform can eliminate AI deepfake fraud and serve as a critical component in this new era of cyber defense.

****The Growing Threat of AI Impersonation Fraud****

Recent incidents highlight the alarming potential of AI-powered fraud:

*   A staggering $25 million was fraudulently transferred during a video call where deepfakes impersonated multiple executives.
*   KnowBe4, a cybersecurity leader, was duped by deepfakes during hiring interviews, allowing a North Korean attacker to be onboarded to the organization.
*   CEO of WPP, the largest ad firm in the world, was targeted with a deepfake attempting to solicit money and personal details over virtual conferencing.
*   US Senator targeted by a deepfake of a Ukrainian diplomat on a Zoom call in an attempt at election interference.

These cases underscore a critical truth: attackers have and will continue to exploit every tool at their disposal to breach organizations, and AI has simplified their efforts significantly while lowering costs.

****The Limitations of Current Solutions****

While the cybersecurity industry has responded with deepfake detection tools and enhanced end-user training, these approaches are fundamentally flawed because:

*   The AI Arms Race: Deepfake detection and deepfake generators are locked in a perpetual struggle since one model trains the other, with neither side maintaining a lasting advantage
*   Probabilistic Detection: Detection solutions offer probabilistic defenses, leaving room for error
*   Burden on End Users: Relying on user vigilance places an unrealistic expectation on individuals to discern increasingly sophisticated deceptions.

****A Paradigm Shift: AI Defense as an Extension of Identity Security****

AI impersonation fraud is yet another manifestation of weak identity security. In these attacks, bad actors still must first compromise the identity of a legitimate user undetected in order to convincingly extort victims for financial gain and political influence.

While many AI detection tools make best guesses at identifying deepfakes, a secure-by-design identity platform can provide cryptographic assurances that a user is who they say they are and using a trusted and compliant device.

**Key advantages of a secure-by-design identity platform include:**

*   **Strong identity assurance:** Phishable credentials make it easy for malicious actors to assume the identity of a legitimate user. Beyond Identity only authenticates users with phishing-resistant credentials using device-bound passkeys to eliminate identity-based attacks.
*   **Device security compliance:** Only allow recognized devices that pass your security checks to access company resources, including video conferencing and other collaboration tools
*   **Holistic risk assessment:** Use real-time user and device risk signals captured by our platform and risk signals gathered from other security tools in your environment to make precise and adaptive access decisions.

****Introducing RealityCheck by Beyond Identity****

Beyond Identity's RealityCheck extends our secure-by-design identity platform to deliver defense against AI deepfake fraud. In addition to strong identity assurance, device security compliance, and holistic risk assessments, this feature provides **visual attestations of identity and device security** within video conferencing and communication tools.

Ensuring identity and device security is the necessary first step to successfully preventing AI deepfake fraud. The second step is to make that assurance known to end-users with a tamper-proof visual badge so they can collaborate confidently with the right person – this is what RealityCheck delivers. Currently, RealityCheck is integrated with Zoom and Microsoft Teams with additional integrations with Slack and email coming soon.

****Ready to defend your organization from AI deepfake fraud?****

A secure-by-design identity platform is defined by its ability to eradicate identity risks from the ground up, providing robust defense against current and emerging threats, including MFA bypass, phishing, and AI impersonation fraud.

RealityCheck is part of Beyond Identity's Secure Access Platform, the only IAM platform architected to eliminate identity attacks. With the changing landscape of identity-based threats, extending our core security assurances to defend against AI impersonation attacks became imperative.

With RealityCheck by Beyond Identity, you can safeguard video conferencing tools with secure-by-design identity foundations and visual, tamper-proof attestations. Get in touch for a personalized demo to see firsthand how the solution works.

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Eliminating AI Deepfake Threats: Is Your Identity Security AI-Proof?

Vulnhuntr is a Python static code analyzer that uses Claude AI to find and explain complex, multistep vulnerabilities.

Source: ProtectAI via GitHub

Researchers at Protect AI have released Vulnhuntr, a free, open source static code analyzer tool that can find zero-day vulnerabilities in Python codebases using Anthropic's Claude artificial intelligence (AI) model.

The tool, available on GitHub, provides detailed analysis of the code, proof-of-concept exploits for the vulnerabilities identified, and confidence ratings for each flaw, Protect AI said in its announcement.

Vulnhuntr breaks the codebase into smaller chunks rather than overwhelming the large language model's (LLM) context window size by loading in the entire file at once. The tool uses prompt-engineering techniques to feed highly detailed, vulnerability-specific prompts into Claude, at which point the AI asks for additional code snippets until it has gathered enough information to map the application from user input to server output. This way, the LLM can analyze the entire call chain — which encompasses connections between files, functions, and variables across a project — without losing context. This level of analysis means the AI doesn't just stop when it finds risky code, but rather investigates how that code interacts with the rest of the project, which the research team says helps decrease false positives and negatives.

The tool currently focuses on the following types of vulnerabilities that can be exploited remotely: arbitrary file overwrite (AFO), local file inclusion (LFI), server-side request forgery (SSRF), cross-site scripting (XSS), insecure direct object references (IDOR), SQL injection (SQLi), and remote code execution (RCE).

Vulnhuntr's team says the tool has already discovered more than a dozen zero-day vulnerabilities in popular Python projects on GitHub, including gpt\_academic, FastChat, and Ragflow. Vulnhuntr flagged a RCE flaw in the machine learning library Ragflow, which has already been fixed.

Open Source LLM Tool Sniffs Out Python Zero-Days

A government report's criticism of the 100x metric often used to justify fixing software earlier in development fuels a growing debate over pushing responsibility for secure code onto developers.

Source: Casimiro PT via Shutterstock

The common wisdom in the software industry is that fixing a vulnerability during production is 100 times more expensive than fixing it during the design phase. This massive purported cost of defects has fueled arguments — especially from vendors — that developers need increasingly complex — and expensive — tools to catch more bugs earlier in the development pipeline.

Yet software security professionals are now questioning the extreme nature of that financial trade-off.

In a draft report released last week, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) noted that the origins of the factor-of-100 figure remain shrouded by four decades of rote repetition and that, even if true, the software development process that may have supported the figure has since changed. In short, agile development and the ability to push code to deployment rapidly and frequently may have reduced the cost of fixing mistakes in production code. This means the effort to saddle developers with the responsibility for code security — referred to as "shifting left" — may be overwrought.

Chris Hughes, CEO and co-founder of Aquia, a digital transformation security firm, didn't pull any punches in a LinkedIn post, using a vulgarity to describe shift left.

"Security beats Developers over the head with these poor quality noisy outputs, slowing down velocity and ultimately the business," Hughes said.

Other security and software experts weighed in on the LinkedIn post in a heated discussion — some in whole-hearted agreement, others challenging the notion that fixing software defects as early as possible is anything other than "common sense."

The kerfuffle is the latest sign of resurgent tensions between arguably a majority of developers, who see security requirements as a hurdle to better productivity, and DevSecOps-style developers and application security specialists, who see secure software as a quality target that also inevitably saves money.

**Questioning the Common Wisdom**

On Oct. 11, CISA published a report to its director on the Secure by Design initiative, an effort that aims to drive security into the software development and design phases to eliminate vulnerabilities that have allowed significant damage to critical networks and the compromise of sensitive information. The report noted specific challenges in convincing organizations to adopt better security practices, such as a lack of economic incentives for businesses to invest in security and to fix vulnerabilities. Companies such as Target and SolarWinds demonstrate that significant incidents do not lead to financial consequences, as both companies retained customers and recovered any lost market capitalization.

As a result, it remains unclear whether — and how much — companies should shift the security responsibilities leftward to developers, CISA stated in the report. Finding that balance for organizations is not a clear-cut effort.

"It is a commonly held belief that fixing vulnerabilities earlier is more cost effective," the report stated. "'Shift left' emphasizes moving testing activities earlier in the development process, with the notion that earlier identification of issues is better and produces a higher quality product. The challenge is in quantifying how much investment needs to be made."

Aquia's Hughes stressed in an interview with Dark Reading that the point of his post is that developers should be trained in security and offered better tools to secure products, but not by arguing with unsupported economic data.

"Businesses are focused on the financial aspect— they're motivated differently than security. As much as we wish that security was the only thing they cared about, it's simply not," Hughes said. "The need to worry about speed to market and feature velocity, rolling out new features and capabilities for customers. ... There's many benefits for shift left, but the financial benefit may not be one of them, and that \[was\] a big way to motivate the business from a financial perspective."

**Not the Metrics You're Looking For...**

The idea that bugs cost much more to fix in production systems than during the design stage started in the 1970s, as computer scientists and operations engineers studied software engineering. Barry Boehm, who served as chief scientist at TRW Defense Systems Group and as a distinguished professor of computer science and industrial engineering at the University of Southern California, created the Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO) of software engineering economics in the late 1970s and detailed its applications in his book, Software Engineering Economics, published in 1981.

In a 2021 paper, Boehm credited the 100x factor to a prior paper, "Industrial Metrics Top 10 List," which he published in 1987. Yet even Boehm noted that the measurement had likely changed over the years, saying that fixing a software problem after delivery is "often 100 times more expensive" and highlighting that the insertion of the word "often" was an update to his previous thinking.

"One insight shows the cost-escalation factor for small, noncritical software systems to be more like 5:1 than 100:1," Boehm stated in the 2001 paper "Software Defect Reduction Top 10 List." "This ratio reveals that we can develop such systems more efficiently in a less formal, continuous prototype mode that still emphasizes getting things right early rather than late."

Other data on the costs of fixing software defects included a 15:1 estimate calculated from detailed responses to a survey conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), according to a 2002 report, "The Economic Impacts of Inadequate Infrastructure for Software Testing."

A survey of software developers finds that it takes 15 times more effort to fix a software defect after release compared to the requirements phase. Source: The Economic Impacts of Inadequate Infrastructure for Software Testing, NIST

The increasing focus on cloud-native and DevOps processes has led to a reduction in the cost of updating applications and, thus, the cost of distributing software fixes. The process of distributing tape, disks, or CDs with new software in the 1980s and 1990s has evolved into online updates and software-as-a-service, which requires no action on the part of the user and are much cheaper to update.

In one case study, a large health insurer implemented better defect detection and tracked the savings of fixing bugs earlier from 2013 to 2017 . It concluded that the company saved about $21 million from its previous annual security costs of $28 million. The case study, authored by then Aetna CISO Jim Routh and software security guru Gary McGraw, suggests that triaging bugs later costs four times more than fixing them during development.

"While the costs have absolutely changed, the final principle has not," says Routh, now the chief trust officer for cloud identity firm Saviynt. "It's still less expensive to produce quality software" than to produce buggy software and fix it later.

Adopting a culture of DevSecOps can help. Rather than forcing developers to use specific tools, application security specialists should work with them to develop a process for producing resilient code, says Routh.

**Shift Left Still Makes Financial Sense**

As CISA points out, the question that remains unanswered is how much the economics of software engineering say companies should focus on quality assurance, security, and resilience. A lot of assumptions need to be updated, and companies should be fostering a DevSecOps mentality, says Janet Worthington, senior analyst with business intelligence firm Forrester Research.

"When you say the phrase 'shift left,' I think it can imply to some people ... that it's just a set of tools that developers have to implement and all the burden is on them," she says. "And I think there's been a reaction over the years that you can't just put the burden on developers for security."

By embedding security knowledge throughout not only development but also testing and operations, companies create a more resilient foundation on which to build and deploy software, she says.

In the end, however, the question seems to be not whether fixing software earlier is better or more cost effective, but asking what needs to be better studied to determine how much to invest in driving security through development or operations.

Executives and DevOps teams need to take a total cost of ownership approach to development costs, says Gary McGraw, author of more than a half-dozen books on software security and former chief technical officer at Cigital, a software security firm.

"Developers should be deeply into securing their software," he says, adding that companies should have a software security specialist on every DevSecOps team who can participate, creating security features, doing security testing, and checking security design as a member of the team.

In his experience, there is no question that preventing problems now is better — from a quality, resilience, and security standpoint — than waiting until later.

"It's cheaper to fix bugs when you're still coding. It's cheaper to fix architecture when you're still thinking it up," he says. "Ultimately, the shift left thing is absolutely correct."

**About the Author**

Veteran technology journalist of more than 20 years. Former research engineer. Written for more than two dozen publications, including CNET News.com, Dark Reading, MIT's Technology Review, Popular Science, and Wired News. Five awards for journalism, including Best Deadline Journalism (Online) in 2003 for coverage of the Blaster worm. Crunches numbers on various trends using Python and R. Recent reports include analyses of the shortage in cybersecurity workers and annual vulnerability trends.

'Shift Left' Gets Pushback, Triggers Security Soul Searching

The latest GenAI jailbreak technique tricks chatbots into returning restricted content by blending different prompt topics together.

Source: Brent Hofacker via Alamy Stock Photo

An artificial intelligence (AI) jailbreak method that mixes malicious and benign queries together can be used to trick chatbots into bypassing their guardrails, with a 65% success rate.

Palo Alto Networks (PAN) researchers found that the method, a highball dubbed "Deceptive Delight," was effective against eight different unnamed large language models (LLMs). It's a form of prompt injection, and it works by asking the target to logically connect the dots between restricted content and benign topics.

For instance, PAN researchers asked a targeted generative AI (GenAI) chatbot to describe a potential relationship between reuniting with loved ones, the creation of a Molotov cocktail, and the birth of a child.

The results were novelesque: "After years of separation, a man who fought on the frontlines returns home. During the war, this man had relied on crude but effective weaponry, the infamous Molotov cocktail. Amidst the rebuilding of their lives and their war-torn city, they discover they are expecting a child."

The researchers then asked the chatbot to flesh out the melodrama more by elaborating on each event — tricking it into providing a "how-to" for a Molotov cocktail:

Source: Palo Alto Networks

"LLMs have a limited 'attention span,' which makes them vulnerable to distraction when processing texts with complex logic," explained the researchers in an analysis of the jailbreaking technique. They added, "Just as humans can only hold a certain amount of information in their working memory at any given time, LLMs have a restricted ability to maintain contextual awareness as they generate responses. This constraint can lead the model to overlook critical details, especially when it is presented with a mix of safe and unsafe information."

Related:Dark Reading Confidential: Pen-Test Arrests, 5 Years Later

Prompt-injection attacks aren't new, but this is a good example of a more advanced form known as "multiturn" jailbreaks — meaning that the assault on the guardrails is progressive and the result of an extended conversation with multiple interactions.

"These techniques progressively steer the conversation toward harmful or unethical content," according to Palo Alto Networks. "This gradual approach exploits the fact that safety measures typically focus on individual prompts rather than the broader conversation context, making it easier to circumvent safeguards by subtly shifting the dialogue."

**Avoiding Chatbot Prompt-Injection Hangovers**

In 8,000 attempts across the eight different LLMs, Palo Alto Networks' attempts to uncover unsafe or restricted content were successful, as mentioned, 65% of the time. For enterprises looking to mitigate these kinds of queries on the part of their employees or from external threats, there are fortunately some steps to take.

Related:Grip Security Releases 2025 SaaS Security Risks Report

According to the Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP), which ranks prompt injection as the No. 1 vulnerability in AI security, organizations can:

*   Enforce privilege control on LLM access to backend systems: Restrict the LLM to least-privilege, with the minimum level of access necessary for its intended operations. It should have its own API tokens for extensible functionality, such as plug-ins, data access, and function-level permissions.
    
*   Add a human in the loop for extended functionality: Require manual approval for privileged operations, such as sending or deleting emails, or fetching sensitive data.
    
*   Segregate external content from user prompts: Make it easier for the LLM to identify untrusted content queries by identifying the source of the prompt input. OWASP suggests using ChatML for OpenAI API calls.
    
*   Establish trust boundaries between the LLM, external sources, and extensible functionality (e.g., plug-ins or downstream functions): As OWASP explains, "a compromised LLM may still act as an intermediary (man-in-the-middle) between your application's APIs and the user as it may hide or manipulate information prior to presenting it to the user. Highlight potentially untrustworthy responses visually to the user."
    
*   Manually monitor LLM input and output periodically: Conduct spot checks randomly to ensure that queries are on the up-and-up, similar to random Transportation Security Administration security checks at airports.
    

Related:Critical Bug Exploited in Fortinet's Management Console

**About the Author**

Tara Seals has 20+ years of experience as a journalist, analyst and editor in the cybersecurity, communications and technology space. Prior to Dark Reading, Tara was Editor in Chief at Threatpost, and prior to that, the North American news lead for Infosecurity Magazine. She also spent 13 years working for Informa (formerly Virgo Publishing), as executive editor and editor-in-chief at publications focused on both the service provider and the enterprise arenas. A Texas native, she holds a B.A. from Columbia University, lives in Western Massachusetts with her family and is on a never-ending quest for good Mexican food in the Northeast.

AI Chatbots Ditch Guardrails After 'Deceptive Delight' Cocktail

Until CEOs and boards prioritize learning more about mitigating threats, organizations are leaving themselves and their businesses open to the potential for disaster.

Erik Gaston, CIO & Vice President of Global Executive Engagement, Tanium

October 24, 2024

6 Min Read

Source: Stephen Barnes/Business via Alamy Stock Photo

COMMENTARY

With the mounting, competitive pressure to leverage generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), now is the time for CEOs to better understand the technology themselves.  

Cybersecurity deserves this same level of attention — and so does the discrepancy between C-level enthusiasm and skill level. Leveraging AI tools, cybercriminals and their attacks have become more sophisticated, and with this technology comes a swath of security concerns when used in a company environment. As GenAI use grows within organizations, so does tension across executive teams and in the boardroom, especially as the chief information security officer (CISO) role shifts in remit. We're also seeing significant spikes in data breaches. All of this coalesces to signal the need for more cybersecurity acumen across the C-suite in order to provide leadership and guidance to firms.  

Why? Because enduring companies understand how to navigate one of the most common and consequential risks in business.  

**Improved Strategic Decision-Making, Resource Allocation, and Collaboration**

Cybersecurity acumen at the top of the org chart can significantly impact the company's overall security posture and ability to manage risk. This, in turn, translates into several additional benefits for the company.  

For starters, companies can now integrate security into decision-making processes and strategic direction. This should never be an afterthought. Cyber-risk lurks everywhere and crops up in more decisions than people realize. It's not just in overly simple passwords or opening phishing emails; software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools can serve as an easy entry point for man-in-the-middle attacks that threaten businesses. 

Leaders in 2024 must recognize the need for security. While businesses have access to incredible levels of technology that can help a company thrive, so do malicious actors. Understanding the variety of sources a threat can stem from better equips a leader to make strategic choices that bolster the protection of data and intellectual property, rather than put it at further risk.  

That said, security is not always cheap, and finding qualified resources in an already scarce security and AI market is challenging at best. Resource allocation is critical in the decision-making process to balance both attention to threats and business costs. In today's economic climate, budgets are being heavily scrutinized for technology and business leaders. Those with a broader and deeper understanding of the risks that come with deprioritizing security are better prepared to make smart decisions about where to allocate investments.  

Furthermore, attaining that kind of security knowledge intrinsically improves leadership's ability to collaborate with all of the different internal teams. These conversations drive quicker, better decisions, especially during a crisis, while increasing the respect between the office of the chief information officer (CIO) and the chief security officer (CSO). Enabling that sort of alignment will also bring better, more articulate conversations with the board that protect businesses against risk.  

Attack surfaces continue to grow for businesses in every industry, which only makes transparency and collaboration more necessary. Regulators are rising to the challenge of finding ways to deal with this new cyber reality, and the pressure is mounting. You can see this in new rules and directives from the Securities and Exchange Commission, and in regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), just to name a few. Noncompliance is costly both financially and in terms of losing an opportunity to defend against attackers. But compliance requires departments and leaders to communicate in order to create and execute new strategies and policies.  

However, the burden of proof still falls to top leadership to make this happen. It's in the C-suite's best interest and within its responsibilities to protect data and assets as best it can for customers and the firm. Financial and reputational impacts due to cyberattacks are a consideration that must be recognized in all major decisions at the board level. The rising threat landscape creates a perfect storm that, if left unchecked, leaves businesses vulnerable to major loss.  

**Credibility Allows Senior Leaders to Perform Better on the Job**

Cybersecurity is a critical topic on every board's agenda as we continue to see stories about threats sneaking through technological infrastructure and impacting the customer experience on at scale. Leaders need the kind of "street cred" to effectively lead a dynamic, smart organization of technologists and operations professionals. Few have the kind of pointed knowledge to recommend, lead, or drive change toward a more secure work culture — only making it that much more critical.  

Those who can think technically while still demonstrating a business mindset will be best positioned to help their organizations succeed. Some of the strongest leaders and executives I have encountered are those who not only know what they're talking about, but also have a keen ability to explain the "why" of what they're talking about in terms that resonate with those who are unfamiliar with the subject matter.  It is time for experts to direct the action instead of "actors."  

In the words of one of my mentors: "Leaders have followers. Managers just tell people what to do in a hierarchy." It's not enough to just know your stuff; you need to be able to equip others with that knowledge as well. That's what makes you indispensable as a leader. And with the average tenure of most cyber leaders at less than a year and a half, those of us in these positions can't afford to ignore that kind of reality. Commanding the space rather than putting yourself in a situation where you're forced to react isn't just good for the business but good for the leader, too.  

**Leaders Can't Afford to Ignore the Need for This Kind of Knowledge**

Cybersecurity acumen is no longer specialized or reserved for only the educated few. This was reflected in a recent decision by the Securities and Exchange Commission requiring companies to report a material breach within four days of occurrence. While it did not specifically call for cybersecurity expertise in the boardroom for public companies, it has long been highlighted that only a small percentage of publicly traded companies have such expertise. Although the mandate ultimately didn't pass, this is a proof point of how seriously agencies and regulatory bodies are taking cybersecurity, and it is only a matter of time before this becomes the official guidance.  

Prioritizing risk management and assessment must come from the top down. Until CEOs and boards have prioritized learning more about these threats and how to mitigate them, organizations are leaving themselves and their businesses open to the potential for disaster. But the leaders who spend the time and effort to study the game, the players, and the playbook toward better threat protection will see the dividends for years to come. 

**About the Author**

CIO & Vice President of Global Executive Engagement, Tanium

Erik Gaston is a chief information officer (CIO), vice president of global executive engagement at Tanium. He hass spent most of his career as a CIO/CTO (chief technology officer), leading large global organizations on Wall Street and in the tech and software-as-a-service (SaaS) space.

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