Intel Broker claims a major data breach at Cisco, allegedly stealing source codes, confidential documents, and credentials from…

Intel Broker claims a major data breach at Cisco, allegedly stealing source codes, confidential documents, and credentials from global firms like Verizon, AT&T, Microsoft, and more. Data is now for sale on Breach Forums.

Intel Broker, a hacker notorious for high-profile data breaches, is claiming to have breached the technology giant Cisco Systems, Inc. In a post on the cybercrime platform **Breach Forums**, the hacker stated that the breach enabled them to steal a massive amount of sensitive information from Cisco’s systems.

According to the hacker, the alleged data breach took place on October 10, 2024, while the Breach Forum post was published earlier today on October 14, 2024.

Intel Broker’s post (Screenshot: Hackread.com)

****What Was Allegedly Stolen?****

As seen by the Hackread.com research team, Intel Broker has listed a massive amount of data that was allegedly stolen in the breach, including:

*   **Source Code**: Projects from GitHub, GitLab, and SonarQube, critical to Cisco’s development efforts.
*   **Hard-Coded Credentials**: Sensitive information like login details embedded in source code.
*   **Certificates and Keys**: SSL certificates, and public and private keys crucial for secure communications.
*   **Confidential Documents**: Internal documents and information classified as “Cisco Confidential.”
*   **API Tokens and Storage Buckets**: AWS private buckets, Azure storage buckets, and API tokens that could be used to access critical systems.
*   **Other Sensitive Information**: Jira tickets, Docker builds, and Cisco premium products are also listed.

****Impact on Major Corporations****

Intel Broker also shared a list of companies whose production source codes were allegedly taken during the breach. The list includes several high-profile firms, particularly in the telecommunications and financial sectors, such as:

*   **Telecom Companies**: Verizon, AT&T (USA and Mexico), British Telecom, T-Mobile (USA and Poland), Vodafone (Albania and Australia), and Turkcell.
*   **Financial Institutions**: Bank of America, Barclays, and National Australian Bank.
*   **Tech and Health**: Microsoft, Liberty Global, and Dignity Health.

Sample documents shared by the hacker (Screenshot: Hackread.com)

****Data for Sale****

Intel Broker is offering the stolen data for sale in exchange for Monero (XMR), a cryptocurrency known for its privacy features. The hacker indicated that they are open to using a middleman to facilitate the transaction, ensuring **anonymity** for both the buyer and seller. This method is a common practice among cybercriminals to avoid detection and tracking by authorities.

****Unverified but Serious Claims****

At the time of writing, Hackread.com, which first spotted the hacker’s claims, has reached out to Cisco for comment, but no official response has been given. The breach, if confirmed, could have major consequences for Cisco and the affected companies, raising concerns about the extent of the damage and the potential exploitation of the compromised data.

****Intel Broker and Previous Breaches****

Intel Broker is known for high-profile data breaches. **In June 2024**, the hacker claimed to have breached Apple Inc., stealing source code for internal tools. The same hacker boasted about **breaching AMD** (Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.), and stealing employee and product information.

**In May 2024**, Intel Broker hacked Europol, a breach that the agency later confirmed. Some of the hacker’s previous data breaches are listed below:

*   **Tech in Asia**
*   **Space-Eyes**
*   **Home Depot**
*   **Facebook Marketplace**
*   **U.S. contractor Acuity Inc.**
*   **Staffing giant Robert Half**
*   **Los Angeles International Airport**
*   **Alleged breaches of HSBC and Barclays Bank**

Although the hacker’s origins and affiliates are unknown, according to the United States government, IntelBroker is alleged to be the perpetrator behind one of the **T-Mobile data breaches**.

Nevertheless, these claims regarding the Cisco data breach go on to show the cybersecurity risks faced even by large organizations. As more details emerge, the scale of this breach and its potential fallout will be closely watched.

1.  **Akira Ransomware Targets Businesses via Exploited CISCO VPNs**
2.  **Cisco Network Breach as Employee’s Google Account** **was** **Hacked**
3.  **Hackers Claim 10TB Breach at Russian Cybersecurity Firm Dr.Web**
4.  **Hackers leave US flag after targeting Cisco switches in Russia & Iran**
5.  **Ex-worker hacked Cisco AWS Infrastructure; erased virtual machines**

Intel Broker Claims Cisco Breach, Selling Stolen Data from Major Firms

Organizations are grappling with the risks of having outdated hardware handling core workloads, mission-critical applications no one knows how to update or maintain, and systems that IT and security teams don't know about.

Dave Lewis, Global Advisory CISO, 1Password

October 14, 2024

3 Min Read

Source: Aleksey Popov via Alamy Stock Photo

COMMENTARY

When I began my security career, everything was an adventure — new technologies, new opportunities, and new lessons to learn. Some of those lessons have stayed with me over the years. Simple on the surface, these lessons have had a significant impact and proved valuable over time. Yet, when I look at the wider industry, I often find myself vexed at the current state of affairs. 

**The Beige Desktop Is Everywhere**

The best example of this flustered feeling is the pervasive nature of the "beige desktop." We have all seen them in our industry travels — machines that predate many of the technologies we rely on today. Hardware that soldiers on from the dark recesses of a data center's raised floor. 

You can see where this is heading. That system is invariably running code written by a summer student long ago and has now become mission-critical. Code that was not properly commented or documented. An application that has somehow become indispensable to the business. 

How does this keep happening? I've often pondered this question. Whenever I bring it up at conferences, heads always nod in understanding. Those systems that lurk in the shadows of a data center. 

**Hard to Get Rid of Shadows**

We often hear the term "shadow IT." It usually finds its way into conversations with a sense of derision. A few months ago, I was giving a talk at a conference when I asked the audience if they had encountered the beige desktop in their environments. The audience laughed, grimaced, and hung their heads — confirming my thoughts. I paused and asked how many companies present had controls in place in their environments for shadow IT. Every hand went up. 

I let the question hang in the air for a moment. Then I asked the audience a follow-up query: "How many of you here have shadow IT in your environments?" There was some hesitation. Eyes darted around nervously. Slowly but surely, every hand went up again. 

We had an interesting conversational moment. These companies all had controls in place to guard against shadow IT, yet … it still existed. We had discovered Schrödinger's IT security problem. It simultaneously exists and doesn't. 

**Who Owns the Risk?This begs the question: Who truly owns the risk of shadow IT? While the knee-jerk reaction might be to assign this to the chief information security officer, I wonder if that is fair. The CISO puts security controls in place. The CISO ensures that there are policies and procedures around handling the risks presented by shadow IT. But it continues. Is it fair to say the CISO is responsible at that point? Just thinking out loud. Could this risk be more appropriately assigned to the chief financial officer, as it presents a potential material enterprise risk so thereby is this executive's responsibility? I would love to see this develop into a broader conversation because, honestly, I'm unsure of the answer and would love the input from the CISO community. ****How We Wound Up Here**

Shadow IT rarely, if ever, originates from a place of malice. These projects are quite often built to satisfy the need for innovation. Other examples of why this happens could include the perceived inadequacy of the deployed systems that support development in the enterprise. Or it simply occurs out of a need for speed and convenience. 

It's often easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. While the beige desktop may be a tongue-in-cheek story, it serves as an example of what happens in environments across the globe. 

**Top Dead Center**

How do we move toward an enterprise or SMB environment that supports innovation while remaining safe and secure? There is a need to provide visibility and security to deal with tools and projects that may not have been vetted or approved by the IT and security teams. 

It's time to move away from the beige desktops and toward a technological engine that empowers businesses to drive innovation safely and securely. 

**About the Author**

Global Advisory CISO, 1Password, 1Password

Dave is the Global Advisory CISO at 1Password. He brings over 30 years of industry experience, extensively in IT security operations and management, at companies such as Akamai, IBM, Duo Security, Cisco, and AMD. He is also the founder of the security site Liquidmatrix Security Digest as well as host of the Liquidmatrix, Plaintext, and Chasing Entropy podcasts. Dave currently serves on the board of directors for BSides Las Vegas and the advisory board for the Black Hat Sector Security Conference. He co-founded the BSides Toronto conference and was a goon on the speaker operations team for DEF CON for over 13 years. He previously held a board position at (ISC)². For fun, Dave loves playing bass guitar, grilling, and spending quality time with his kids. He’s also a part owner of a whisky distillery and a soccer team.

The Lingering 'Beige Desktop' Paradox

By combining human and nonhuman identity management in one solution, Flock Safety is helping law enforcement solve an impressive number of criminal cases every day.

Source: ArtemisDiana via Alamy Stock Photo

When Jerrid Powell went on a shooting spree in Beverly Hills last year, he had no idea what he was up against. Law enforcement used Flock Safety's evidence-based crime-solving technology to help locate him. Powell was quickly apprehended and is now behind bars.

Flock Safety is a success story. In less than six years, the native-cloud company has become one of the country's largest public safety technology vendors. It plays a part in solving 10% of crimes in the United States, equating to about 2,000 cases per day, according to a report from the company and validated by independent criminology researchers. It does this by analyzing a vehicle's "fingerprint" using object detection and machine learning, focusing on everything from license plates to bumper stickers.

With so many law enforcement agencies relying on its technology, Flock Safety puts security first. That means securing the identity of its user accounts, along with 1,000 employees and a fleet of cameras, video cameras, and audio detection devices.

From the beginning, Flock Safety has been using Okta for human identity management against its corporate systems, like Salesforce, Google, and Amazon Web Services. Using Okta's customer and workforce identity cloud technology, employees, customers, and contractors authenticate themselves by entering their credentials. It also uses Okta subsidiary's Auth0 to authenticate Internet of Things devices, like cameras, to its FlockOS and devices.

"Imagine a network of cameras, drones, and gunshot detection devices across the United States," explains Eric Tan, the company's CIO and chief security officer. "Each one of those devices has a unique ID and secret associated \[with\] the device that's calling home to the mothership to authenticate and pass on images or videos."

Flock Safety's approach is comprehensive. Alfredo Ramirez, a senior director and analyst of security and emerging technology at Gartner, says that while most companies do use some type of modern technology for employee authentication, they are often less successful at handling nonemployee identities or correlating all of them across connected corporate applications.

**Covering All Bases**

While Tan is quite satisfied with the protection Okta and Auth0 are providing, he noticed that as Flock Safety's customer base and reach grew, it needed to expand past authentication into the realm of authorization. Essentially, authentication is the first step in identity management, but higher levels of security require authorization, which moves beyond identity verification to determining users' levels of access and granting access based on those levels.

"When an identity or user account authenticates onto our platform, we know we're covered, but what we don't know is where that identity is going once it's on the platform," Tan explains. "That's what we wanted to address."

With that goal in mind, Tan found Permiso Security, a cloud security company that had recently branched into identity management. With its ability to track both human and nonhuman identities across authentication boundaries, Permiso's Universal Identity Graph seemed like it could bridge the gap between authentication and authorization for Flock Safety.

Tan looks at it this way: "Auth0 and Okta are important preventative solutions, but Permiso is more like a motion detector system in a house. I want to know who or what is coming into all of the different rooms, and if anything looks off, I want it to let me know."

This is the first year where vendors are going to market claiming to be able to discover and secure all nonhuman identity types, but very few claim to be able to handle securing both human and nonhuman identities within the same solution, Gartner's Ramirez says. Most, like Permiso, are using some sort of graph database technology, unlike incumbent identity vendors.

Over the next three to five years, Ramirez expects incumbent identity security vendors to build, buy, or partner for nonhuman identity solutions to complement their human identity solutions. In addition, he expects startups to continue to advance in this area.

**Looking Ahead**

For Flock Safety, the time to get this up and running is now. Through an API, Permiso's solution can see the identities in Auth0 and Okta. Flock Safety also exposes the API to some of its more critical systems, like Google Workspace or GitHub, so it can monitor for suspicious activity.

"If one of our cameras were to call home and eventually grant themselves access to our GitHub source code library, that would be really odd. Permiso would pick that up," Tan explains. "Similarly, if you had an employee who was a field technician, and that person's user account was granted additional permissions or elevated access within our Google Active Directory or Workspace environment, it would alert us and automatically quarantine them."

Tan is considering adding Astrix Security's nonhuman identity security platform for real-time discovery and mitigation of breaches by nonhuman identities. He's currently evaluating the tool.

"For example, if there is a test API account connected to our GitHub instance with elevated privileges that the team isn't tracking, I would have the team either shut it down, reduce the privileges, or make it authenticate through Auth0," Tan says.

While it might seem like Flock Safety is adding a surprising number of identity-related security tools into its stack, it's always better to be as prepared as possible, Tan says.

"The concept of solving for nonhuman identity risks is still in the early innings, similar to LLM risks," he says. "The idea is to pick a handful of early innovators and compare the results. In my experience, they're usually always different, allowing us to think about the various threat vectors."

**About the Author**

Contributing Writer, Dark Reading

Karen D. Schwartz is a technology and business writer with more than 20 years of experience. She has written on a broad range of technology topics for publications including ITProToday, CIO, InformationWeek, GCN, FCW, FedTech, BizTech, eWeek, and Government Executive.

Fighting Crime With Technology: Safety First

The link between detection and response (DR) practices and cloud security has historically been weak. As global organizations increasingly adopt cloud environments, security strategies have largely focused on "shift-left" practices—securing code, ensuring proper cloud posture, and fixing misconfigurations. However, this approach has led to an over-reliance on a multitude of DR tools spanning

The link between detection and response (DR) practices and cloud security has historically been weak. As global organizations increasingly adopt cloud environments, security strategies have largely focused on "shift-left" practices—securing code, ensuring proper cloud posture, and fixing misconfigurations. However, this approach has led to an over-reliance on a multitude of DR tools spanning cloud infrastructure, workloads, and even applications. Despite these advanced tools, organizations often take weeks or even months to identify and resolve incidents.

Add to this the challenges of tool sprawl, soaring cloud security costs, and overwhelming volumes of false positives, and it becomes clear that security teams are stretched thin. Many are forced to make hard decisions about which cloud breaches they can realistically defend against.

By following these five targeted steps, security teams can greatly improve their real-time detection and response capabilities for cloud attacks.

**Step 1: Add Runtime Visibility and Protection**

When security teams lack real-time visibility, they're essentially operating blind, unable to respond effectively to threats. While cloud-native monitoring tools, container security solutions, and EDR systems offer valuable insights, they tend to focus on specific layers of the environment. A more comprehensive approach is achieved by using eBPF (Extended Berkeley Packet Filter) sensors. eBPF enables deep, real-time observability across the entire stack—network, infrastructure, workloads, and applications—without disrupting production environments. By operating at the kernel level, it delivers visibility without adding performance overhead, making it a powerful solution for runtime security.

Here are some key capabilities to leverage for this step:

*   **Topology Graphs:** Displays how hybrid or multi-cloud assets communicate and connect.
*   **Full Asset Visibility:** Showcases every asset in the environment, including clusters, networks, databases, secrets, and operating systems, all in one place.
*   **External Connectivity Insights:** Identifies connections to external entities, including details about the country of origin and DNS information.
*   **Risk Assessments:** Evaluate the risk level of each asset, alongside its impact on the business.

**Step 2: Use a multi-layered detection strategy**

As attackers continue to evolve and evade detection, it becomes harder to find and stop breaches _before_ they unfold. The biggest challenge in doing so lies in detecting cloud attack attempts where adversaries are stealth and exploit multiple attack surfaces— from network exploitation to data injection within a managed service — all while evading detection by cloud detection and response (CDR), cloud workload detection and response (CWPP/EDR), and application detection and response (ADR) solutions. This fragmented strategy has proven inadequate, allowing attackers to exploit gaps between layers to go unnoticed.

Monitoring cloud, workloads and application layers in a single platform provides the widest coverage and protection. It makes it possible to correlate application activity with infrastructure changes in real-time, ensuring attacks no longer slip through the cracks.

Here are some key capabilities to leverage for this step:

*   **Full-Stack Detection**: Detects incidents from multiple sources across the cloud, applications, workloads, networks, and APIs.
*   **Anomaly Detection**: Utilizes machine learning and behavioral analysis to identify deviations from normal activity patterns that may indicate a threat.
*   **Detects Known and Unknown Threats:** Pinpoints events according to signatures, IoCs, TTPs, and MITRE known tactics.
*   **Incident Correlation:** Correlates security events and alerts across different sources to identify patterns and potential threats.

Get started with multi-layered detection and response today.

**Step 3: View vulnerabilities in the same pane as your incidents**

When vulnerabilities are isolated from incident data, the potential for delayed responses and oversight increases. This is because security teams end up lacking the context they need to understand how vulnerabilities are being exploited or the urgency of patching them in relation to ongoing incidents.

In addition, when detection and response efforts leverage runtime monitoring (as explained above), vulnerability management becomes much more effective, focusing on active and critical risks to reduce noise by more than 90%.

Here are some key capabilities to leverage for this step:

*   **Risk Prioritization** \- Evaluates vulnerabilities according to critical criteria—such as whether they are loaded into the applications memory, are executed, public-facing, exploitable, or fixable—to focus on threats that actually matter.
*   **Root Cause Discovery** \- Finds the root cause for each vulnerability (in as deep as the image layer) in order to tackle the root as soon as possible and fix multiple vulnerabilities at once.
*   **Validation of Fixes** - Leverages ad-hoc scanning of images before they are deployed to ensure all vulnerabilities were addressed.
*   **Regulation Adherence** - Lists out all active vulnerabilities as an SBOM to adhere to compliance and regional regulations.

**Step 4: Incorporate identities to understand the "who", "when", and "how"**

Threat actors often leverage compromised credentials to execute their attacks, engaging in credential theft, account takeovers, and more. This allows them to masquerade as legitimate users within the environment and go unnoticed for hours or even days. The key is to be able to detect this impersonation and the most effective way to do so is by establishing a baseline for each identity, human or otherwise. Once the typical access pattern of an identity is understood, detecting unusual behavior is easy.

Here are some key capabilities to leverage for this step:

*   **Baseline Monitoring:** Implements monitoring tools that capture and analyze baseline behavior for both users and applications. These tools should track access patterns, resource usage, and interaction with data.
*   **Human Identities Security:** Integrates with identity providers for visibility into human identity usage, including login times, locations, devices, and behaviors, enabling quick detection of unusual or unauthorized access attempts.
*   **Non-Human Identities Security:** Tracks the usage of non-human identities, providing insights into their interactions with cloud resources and highlighting any anomalies that could signal a security threat.
*   **Secrets Security:** Identifies every secret across your cloud environment, tracks how it's used at runtime, and highlights whether they're securely managed or at risk of exposure.

**Step 5: Have a multitude of response actions available for contextual intervention**

Each breach attempt has its own unique challenges to overcome, which is why it's essential to have a flexible response strategy that adapts to the specific situation. For example, an attacker might deploy a malicious process that requires immediate termination, while a different cloud event might involve a compromised workload that needs to be quarantined to prevent further damage. Once an incident is detected, security teams also need the context in order to investigate fast, such as comprehensive attack stories, damage assessments, and response playbooks.

Here are some key capabilities to leverage for this step:

*   **Playbooks:** Provide play-by-play responses for every incident detected to confidently intervene and terminate the threat.
*   **Tailored Attack Intervention:** Offers the ability to isolate compromised workloads, block unauthorized network traffic, or terminate malicious processes.
*   **Root Cause Analysis:** Determines the underlying cause of the incident to prevent recurrence. This involves analyzing the attack vector, vulnerabilities exploited, and weaknesses in defenses.
*   **Integration with SIEM**: Integrates with Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems to enhance threat detection with contextual data.

By implementing these five steps, security teams can boost their detection and response capabilities and effectively stop cloud breaches in real-time with complete precision. The time to act is now – Get started today with Sweet Security.

Found this article interesting? This article is a contributed piece from one of our valued partners. Follow us on Twitter __ and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.

5 Steps to Boost Detection and Response in a Multi-Layered Cloud

Hey there, it's your weekly dose of "what the heck is going on in cybersecurity land" – and trust me, you NEED to be in the loop this time. We've got everything from zero-day exploits and AI gone rogue to the FBI playing crypto kingpin – it's full of stuff they don't 🤫 want you to know.
So let's jump in before we get FOMO.
⚡ Threat of the Week
GoldenJackal Hacks Air-Gapped Systems: Meet

Hey there, it's your weekly dose of "_what the heck is going on in cybersecurity land_" – and trust me, you NEED to be in the loop this time. We've got everything from zero-day exploits and AI gone rogue to the FBI playing crypto kingpin – it's full of stuff they don't 🤫 want you to know.

So let's jump in before we get FOMO.

****⚡ Threat of the Week****

**GoldenJackal Hacks Air-Gapped Systems:** Meet GoldenJackal, the hacking crew you've probably never heard of – but should definitely know about now. They're busting into super-secure, air-gapped computer systems with sneaky worms spread through infected USB drives (yes, really!), proving that even the most isolated networks aren't safe. ESET researchers caught them red-handed using two different custom-made tools to target high-profile victims, including a South Asian embassy in Belarus and a European Union government organization.

****🔔 Top News****

*   **Mozilla Patches Firefox 0-Day:** Mozilla patched a critical zero-day flaw in its Firefox browser that it said has been actively exploited in the wild to target Tor browser users. While there are currently no details on the attacks, users are advised to update to Firefox 131.0.2, Firefox ESR 128.3.1, and Firefox ESR 115.16.1.
*   **Contagious Interview Remains Lucrative for N. Korea:** Ever since details about a North Korean hacking campaign called Contagious Interview came to light nearly a year ago, it has continued to target the technology sector with no signs of stopping anytime soon. These attacks aim to deliver backdoors and information-stealing malware by deceiving developers into executing malicious code under the pretext of a coding assignment as part of a job interview after approaching them on platforms like LinkedIn.
*   **OpenAI Disrupts Malicious Operations:** OpenAI said it has disrupted over 20 malicious cyber operations since the start of the year that abused its generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, ChatGPT, for debugging and developing malware, spreading misinformation, evading detection, and vulnerability research. One of the activity clusters was observed targeting OpenAI employees via spear-phishing attacks to deploy the SugarGh0st RAT.
*   **FBI Creates Fake Crypto to Disrupt Fraudulent Operation:** The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) took the "unprecedented step" of creating its own cryptocurrency token and a company called NexFundAI to take down a fraud operation that allegedly manipulated digital asset markets by orchestrating an illegal scheme known as wash trading. A total of 18 people and entities have been charged in connection with the pump-and-dump scam, with three arrests reported so far.
*   **Gorilla Botnet Launches 300,000 DDoS Attacks Across 100 Countries:** A botnet malware family called Gorilla issued over 300,000 attack commands in the month of September 2024 alone, targeting universities, government websites, telecoms, banks, gaming, and gambling sectors. China, the U.S., Canada, and Germany. The botnet is based on the leaked Mirai botnet source code.

****📰 Around the Cyber World****

*   **Microsoft Announces Windows 11 Security Baseline:** Microsoft has released the Windows 11, version 24H2 security baseline with added protections to LAN Manager, Kerberos, User Account Control, and Microsoft Defender Antivirus. It also includes Windows Protected Print (WPP), which the company described as the "new, modern and more secure print for Windows built from the ground up with security in mind." In a related development, the tech giant announced a redesigned Windows Hello experience and API support for third-party passkey providers like 1Password and Bitwarden to plug into the Windows 11 platform.
*   **Apple macOS iPhone Mirroring is Broken:** Apple announced a new iPhone mirroring feature with macOS 15.0 Sequoia, but cybersecurity firm Sevco has uncovered a privacy risk that could expose metadata associated with apps on an employee's personal iPhone to their corporate IT department. The issue stems from the fact that the iOS apps mirrored to the Mac populate the same application metadata as native macOS applications, thereby leaking information about the apps that may be installed on their phones. Apple has acknowledged the problem and is said to be working on a fix.
*   **Social Engineering Via Phone Calls:** Threat actors have found an effective social engineering vector in phone calls in order to trick users into performing an unintended action, a technique also called telephone-oriented attack delivery (TOAD), callback phishing, and hybrid vishing (a combination of voice and phishing). Intel 471 said it has observed a "sharp increase in underground offers for illicit call center services that can aid in malware delivery, ransomware-related calls, and other fraud-oriented social-engineering attempts."
*   **Malicious Extensions Can Bypass Manifest V3:** Google has said Manifest V3, its latest version of the extensions platform, avoids the security loopholes of its predecessor, which allowed browser add-ons to have excessive permissions and inject arbitrary JavaScript. However, new research has found that it's still possible for malicious actors to exploit minimal permissions and steal data. The findings were presented by SquareX at the DEF CON conference back in August. The research also coincides with a study that discovered "hundreds of extensions automatically extracting user content from within web pages, impacting millions of users."
*   **What can a USB reveal?:** A new analysis from Group-IB goes into detail about the artifacts generated in the USB device when files are accessed or modified on devices running various operating systems. "USB formatted with NTFS, FAT32, and ExFAT often create temporary files, particularly during file modifications," the company said. "USB formatted with NTFS on Windows provided more information on file system changes from the $Logfile due to its journaling capabilities." USB formatted with HFS+ has been found to store versions of files that have been edited with GUI tools in a versioning database. Likewise, USB formatted with FAT32/ExFAT on macOS generates ". \_filename" files to ensure file system compatibility for storing extended attributes.

**🔥 **Cybersecurity Resources & Insights****

*   **Expert Webinars**
    *   **Building a Successful Data Security Posture Management Program**: Drowning in data security headaches? Hear directly from Global-e's CISO how Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) transformed their data security. Get real-world insights, and practical advice, get your questions answered and actionable strategies in this exclusive webinar, and walk away with a clear roadmap. Reserve your seat today!
    *   **Ex-Mandiant Expert Exposes Identity Theft Tactics**: LUCR-3 is breaching organizations like yours through identity-based attacks. Learn how to protect your cloud and SaaS environments from this advanced threat. Cybersecurity expert Ian Ahl (former Mandiant) reveals the latest tactics and how to defend your organization. Register for this crucial webinar to gain the upper hand.
*   **Ask the Expert**
    *   **Q: With mobile devices increasingly targeted by cybercriminals, how can individuals protect their devices from network-based attacks, especially in unfamiliar or high-risk environments, such as when traveling?**
    *   **A:** When you're traveling, your mobile device can be a target for attacks like rogue base stations—fake cell towers set up to steal data or track your location. To protect yourself, start by enabling Lockdown Mode on iPhones, which blocks vulnerable 2G connections. Always use a VPN to keep your internet traffic encrypted and avoid using public Wi-Fi without it. A great tool to boost your awareness is the CellGuard app for iOS. It scans your network for suspicious activity, like rogue base stations, by analyzing things like signal strength and network anomalies. While it may flag some false alarms, it gives you an extra layer of protection.
*   **Cybersecurity Tools**
    *   **Broken Hill: A New Tool to Test AI Models' Weaknesses** \- It is an advanced tool that makes it easy to trick large AI models into misbehaving by bypassing their restrictions. It uses the Greedy Coordinate Gradient (GCG) attack to craft clever prompts that push popular models, like Llama-2 and Microsoft's Phi, to respond in ways they normally wouldn't. The best part? You can run it on consumer GPUs, like the Nvidia RTX 4090, without needing costly cloud servers. Ideal for researchers and security testers, Broken Hill helps uncover and fix vulnerabilities in AI models, making it a must-have tool in the fight against AI threats.
*   **Tip of the Week**
    *   **Your Browser Extensions Are Spying on You:** Browser extensions can be useful but also risky, with potential access to your data or hidden malware. Protect yourself by removing unused extensions, checking their permissions, and only allowing them to run on specific sites. Enable "Click to activate" for more control, and use tools like Chrome's Extension Source Viewer to spot any suspicious behavior. Keep extensions updated, monitor network traffic for unusual activity, and consider using a separate browser for sensitive tasks. Features like Firefox's Temporary Container Tabs can also help by isolating extension access. These simple steps can keep your browsing safer.

****Conclusion****

And that's how the cybersecurity cookie crumbles this week! But listen, before you log off and chill, remember this: always double-check the sender's email address before clicking any links, even if it looks like it's from your bestie or your bank. Phishing scams are getting sneakier than ever, so stay sharp! Until next time, stay safe and cyber-aware!

Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter __ and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.

THN Cybersecurity Recap: Top Threats, Tools and Trends (Oct 7 - Oct 13)

The Iranian threat actor known as OilRig has been observed exploiting a now-patched privilege escalation flaw impacting the Windows Kernel as part of a cyber espionage campaign targeting the U.A.E. and the broader Gulf region.
"The group utilizes sophisticated tactics that include deploying a backdoor that leverages Microsoft Exchange servers for credentials theft, and exploiting vulnerabilities

The Iranian threat actor known as OilRig has been observed exploiting a now-patched privilege escalation flaw impacting the Windows Kernel as part of a cyber espionage campaign targeting the U.A.E. and the broader Gulf region.

"The group utilizes sophisticated tactics that include deploying a backdoor that leverages Microsoft Exchange servers for credentials theft, and exploiting vulnerabilities like CVE-2024-30088 for privilege escalation," Trend Micro researchers Mohamed Fahmy, Bahaa Yamany, Ahmed Kamal, and Nick Dai said in an analysis published on Friday.

The cybersecurity company is tracking the threat actor under the moniker Earth Simnavaz, which is also referred to as APT34, Crambus, Cobalt Gypsy, GreenBug, Hazel Sandstorm (formerly EUROPIUM), and Helix Kitten.

The attack chains entail the deployment of a previously undocumented implant that comes with capabilities to exfiltrate credentials through on-premises Microsoft Exchange servers, a tried-and-tested tactic adopted by the adversary in the past, while also incorporating recently disclosed vulnerabilities to its exploit arsenal.

CVE-2024-30088, patched by Microsoft in June 2024, concerns a case of privilege escalation in the Windows kernel that could be exploited to gain SYSTEM privileges, assuming the attackers can win a race condition.

Initial access to target networks is facilitated by means of infiltrating a vulnerable web server to drop a web shell, followed by dropping the ngrok remote management tool to maintain persistence and move to other endpoints in the network.

The privilege escalation vulnerability subsequently serves as a conduit to deliver the backdoor, codenamed STEALHOOK, responsible for transmitting harvested data via the Exchange server to an email address controlled by the attacker in the form of attachments.

A notable technique employed by OilRig in the latest set of attacks involves the abuse of the elevated privileges to drop the password filter policy DLL (psgfilter.dll) in order to extract sensitive credentials from domain users via domain controllers or local accounts on local machines.

"The malicious actor took great care in working with the plaintext passwords while implementing the password filter export functions," the researchers said. "The threat actor also utilized plaintext passwords to gain access and deploy tools remotely. The plaintext passwords were first encrypted before being exfiltrated when sent over networks."

It's worth noting that the use of psgfilter.dll was observed back in December 2022 in a connection with a campaign targeting organizations in the Middle East using another backdoor dubbed MrPerfectionManager.

"Their recent activity suggests that Earth Simnavaz is focused on abusing vulnerabilities in key infrastructure of geopolitically sensitive regions," the researchers noted. "They also seek to establish a persistent foothold in compromised entities, so these can be weaponized to launch attacks on additional targets."

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OilRig Exploits Windows Kernel Flaw in Espionage Campaign Targeting UAE and Gulf

Plus: New details emerge in the National Public Data breach, Discord gets blocked in Russia and Turkey over alleged illegal activity on the platform, and more.

The Internet Archive is under attack. On top of multiple extinction-threatening lawsuits against the organization that created and maintains the Wayback Machine, hackers this week breached the Internet Archive, stole 31 million user account details, and defaced its website—all while archive.org struggled to stay online thanks to a barrage of distributed denial-of-service attacks. As of Friday, the site remained “temporarily offline.”

In a dark twist of fate, a judge this week cleared the way for the US Treasury Department to take possession of 69,000 bitcoins stolen from the Silk Road dark web market; meanwhile, the former IRS investigator who personally seized the bitcoins, Tigran Gambaryan, remains in a Nigerian jail cell on charges related to the actions of his current employer, embattled crypto exchange Binance. Members of Congress and other officials have called for the US government to do more to ensure Gambaryan’s release given his direct role in a series of major criminal cases and in pioneering crypto-investigation techniques. As for those seized Silk Road bitcoins, they are now worth $4.4 billion and will likely be auctioned off.

Security researchers this week detailed a pernicious malware that worms its way into Linux machines and uses a variety of techniques to evade detection. Dubbed Perfctl, the malware hides itself by creating files that match those typically found within Linux instances, using tricks to prevent admin tools from recording its activities, and more. All of this is done with the goal of remaining on an infected machine to keep carrying out a variety of malicious activities. Researchers estimate that millions of Linux devices could be vulnerable.

Finally, we dissected the ways in which Google’s decision to _not_ kill third-party tracking cookies in its Chrome browser could continue to impact your privacy.

And that’s not all. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

Police use of honeypots to catch cybercriminals red-handed is nothing new. But creating an entirely new cryptocurrency to catch pump-and-dump schemers? Now that’s something special. The US Department of Justice revealed this week that the FBI made a new Ethereum-based crypto token, NexFundAI, specifically to trick people who manipulate crypto markets and take them down.

While the investigation ultimately resulted in charges against 18 people and other entities for alleged fraud and crypto market manipulation, the blast radius of the scheme also impacted some regular retail investors who are not accused of any crimes, although US officials did not provide details about those investments. A US prosecutor involved in the case told reporters, however, that the investigation netted a total of $25 million in funds, which will be returned to investors. Trading on NexFundAI has since been disabled.

**National Public Data Files for Bankruptcy After Catastrophic Breach**

National Public Data, a data broker based in Florida, is having a bad year. In August, hackers published 2.9 billion records stolen from NPD last December that included names, mailing addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and Social Security numbers—a giant trove the hackers claim impacted “the entire population of USA, CA, and UK.” Then came the inevitable lawsuits against NPD, which is now filing for bankruptcy. Those proceedings have revealed new details, including the fact that NPD is run by a single person, Salvatore Verini, Jr, who operated the business out of his home on around $2,500 worth of equipment. A document filed in a bankruptcy court by one of NPD’s debtors states that the breach may have impacted “hundreds of millions” of people.

**Russia and Turkey Block Discord**

Discord users in Russia and Turkey this week found they were suddenly unable to connect to the online chat application. Authorities in both countries later revealed that Discord had been blocked for allegedly facilitating illegal activity. Russia’s internet regulator, Roskomnadzor, said in a statement the block “is necessary to prevent the use of the messenger for terrorist and extremist purposes, the recruitment of citizens for their commission, the sale of drugs, in connection with the placement of illegal information.” Turkish authorities, meanwhile, banned the messaging app after a court decision involving child abuse material that was allegedly hosted on Discord servers. According to BleepingComputer, some Discord users in those countries were able to access the app using a VPN that routed their connections through foreign IP addresses—potentially good news for Russian troops who were reportedly disrupted by the block.

**Police Secretly Use Face Recognition Tech to Link People to Crimes**

Law enforcement use of face recognition technology to pin crimes on Americans is far more widespread than previously known, according to a newly published investigation by The Washington Post. Records obtained by the Post found that police in 15 states used face recognition tools in “more than 1,000 investigations over the past four years.” Despite its apparent widespread use, police departments frequently seek to hide their use of the technology, which has been found to inaccurately identify people who are then charged with crimes they did not commit. As an assistant public defender in Minnesota told Post reporters, police likely obscure their use of face recognition because they “want to avoid the litigation surrounding reliability of the technology.”

The FBI Made a Crypto Coin Just to Catch Fraudsters

Scammers in Southeast Asia are increasingly turning to AI, deepfakes, and dangerous malware in a way that makes their pig butchering operations even more convincing.

As digital scamming explodes in Southeast Asia, including so called “pig butchering” investment scams, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) issued a comprehensive report this week with a dire warning about the rapid growth of this criminal ecosystem. Many digital scams have traditionally relied on social engineering, or tricking victims into giving away their money willingly, rather than leaning on malware or other highly technical methods. But researchers have increasingly sounded the alarm that scammers are incorporating generative AI content and deepfakes to expand the scale and effectiveness of their operations. And the UN report offers the clearest evidence yet that these high tech tools are turning an already urgent situation into a crisis.

In addition to buying written scripts to use with potential victims or relying on templates for malicious websites, attackers have increasingly been leaning on generative AI platforms to create communication content in multiple languages and deepfake generators that can create photos or even video of nonexistent people to show victims and enhance verisimilitude. Scammers have also been expanding their use of tools that can drain a victim’s cryptocurrency wallets, have been manipulating transaction records to trick targets into sending cryptocurrency to the wrong places, and are compromising smart contracts to steal cryptocurrency. And in some cases, they’ve been purchasing Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet systems to help power their efforts.

“Agile criminal networks are integrating these new technologies faster than anticipated, driven by new online marketplaces and service providers which have supercharged the illicit service economy,” John Wojcik, a UNODC regional analyst, tells WIRED. “These developments have not only expanded the scope and efficiency of cyber-enabled fraud and cybercrime, but they have also lowered the barriers to entry for criminal networks that previously lacked the technical skills to exploit more sophisticated and profitable methods.”

For years, China-linked criminals have trafficked people into gigantic compounds in Southeast Asia, where they are often forced to run scams, held against their will, and beaten if they refuse instructions. Around 200,000 people, from at least 60 countries, have been trafficked to compounds largely in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos over the last five years. However, as WIRED reporting has shown, these operations are spreading globally—with scamming infrastructure emerging in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and West Africa.

Most prominently, these organized crime operations have run pig butchering scams, where they build intimate relationships with victims before introducing an “investment opportunity” and asking for money. Criminal organizations may have conned people out of around $75 billion through pig butchering scams. Aside from pig butchering, according to the UN report, criminals across Southeast Asia are also running job scams, law enforcement impersonation, asset recovery scams, virtual kidnappings, sextortion, loan scams, business email compromise, and other illicit schemes. Criminal networks in the region earned up to $37 billion last year, UN officials estimate. Perhaps unsurprisingly, all of this revenue is allowing scammers to expand their operations and diversify, incorporating new infrastructure and technology into their systems in the hope of making them more efficient and brutally effective.

For example, scammers are often constrained by their language skills and ability to keep up conversations with potentially hundreds of victims at a time in numerous languages and dialects. However, generative AI developments within the last two years—including the launch of writing tools such as ChatGPT—are making it easier for criminals to break down language barriers and create the content needed for scamming.

The UN’s report says AI can be used for automating phishing attacks that ensnare victims, the creation of fake identities and online profiles, and the crafting of personalized scripts to trick victims while messaging them in different languages. “These developments have not only expanded the scope and efficiency of cyber-enabled fraud and cybercrime, but they have also lowered the barriers to entry for criminal networks that previously lacked the technical skills to exploit sophisticated and profitable methods,” the report says.

Stephanie Baroud, a criminal intelligence analyst in Interpol’s human trafficking unit, says the impact of AI needs to be considered as part of a pig butchering scammer’s tactics going forward. Baroud, who spoke with WIRED in an interview before the publication of the UN report, says the criminal’s recruitment ads that lure people into being trafficked to scamming compounds used to be “very generic” and full of grammatical errors. However, AI is now making them appear more polished and compelling, Baroud says. “It is really making it easier to create a very realistic job offer,” she says. “Unfortunately, this will make it much more difficult to identify which is the real and which is the fake ads.”

Perhaps the biggest AI paradigm shift in such digital attacks comes from deepfakes. Scammers are increasingly using machine-learning systems to allow for real-time face-swapping. This technology, which has also been used by romance scammers in West Africa, allows criminals to change their appearance on calls with their victims, making them realistically appear to be a different person. The technology is allowing “one-click” face swaps and high-resolution video feeds, the UN’s report states. Such services are a game changer for scammers, because they allow attackers to “prove” to victims in photos or real-time video calls that they are who they claim to be.

Using these setups, however, can require stable internet connections, which can be harder to maintain within some regions where pig butchering compounds and other scamming have flourished. There has been a “notable” increase in cops seizing Starlink satellite dishes in recent months in Southeast Asia, the UN says—80 units were seized between April and June this year. In one such operation carried out in June, Thai police confiscated 58 Starlink devices. In another instance, law enforcement seized 10 Starlink devices and 4,998 preregistered SIM cards while criminals were in the process of moving their operations from Myanmar to Laos. Starlink did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

“Obviously using real people has been working for them very well, but using the tech could be cheaper after they have the required computers” and connectivity, says Troy Gochenour, a volunteer with the Global Anti-Scam Organization (GASO), a US-based nonprofit that fights human-trafficking and cybercrime operations in Southeast Asia.

Gochenour’s research involves tracking trends on Chinese-language Telegram channels related to carrying out pig butchering scams. And he says that it is increasingly common to see people applying to be AI models for scam content.

In addition to AI services, attackers have increasingly leaned on other technical solutions as well. One tool that has been increasingly common in digital scamming is so-called “crypto drainers,” a type of malware that has particularly been deployed against victims in Southeast Asia. Drainers can be more or less technically sophisticated, but their common goal is to “drain” funds from a target’s cryptocurrency wallets and redirect the currency to wallets controlled by attackers. Rather than stealing the credentials to access the target wallet directly, drainers are typically designed to look like a legitimate service—either by impersonating an actual platform or creating a plausible brand. Once a victim has been tricked into connecting their wallet to the drainer, they are then manipulated into approving one or a few transactions that grant attackers unintended access to all the funds in the wallet.

Drainers can be used in many contexts and with many fronts. They can be a component of pig butchering investment scams, or promoted to potential victims through compromised social media accounts, phishing campaigns, and malvertizing. Researchers from the firm ScamSniffer, for example, published findings in December about sponsored social media and search engine ads linked to malicious websites that contained a cryptocurrency drainer. The campaign, which ran from March to December 2023 reportedly stole about $59 million from more than 63,000 victims around the world.

Far from the low-tech days of doing everything through social engineering by building a rapport with potential victims and crafting tricky emails and text messages, today’s scammers are taking a hybrid approach to make their operations as efficient and lucrative as possible, UN researchers say. And even if they aren’t developing sophisticated malware themselves in most cases, scammers are increasingly in the market to use these malicious tools, prompting malware authors to adapt or create hacking tools for scams like pig butchering.

Researchers say that scammers have been seen using infostealers and even remote access trojans that essentially create a backdoor in a victim’s system that can be utilized in other types of attacks. And scammers are also expanding their use of malicious smart contracts that appear to programmatically establish a certain agreed-upon transaction or set of transactions, but actually does much more. “Infostealer logs and underground data markets have also been critical to ongoing market expansion, with access to unprecedented amounts of sensitive data serving as a major catalyst,” Wojcik, from the UNODC, says.

The changing tactics are significant as global law enforcement scrambles to deter digital scamming. But they are just one piece of the larger picture, which is increasingly urgent and bleak for forced laborers and victims of these crimes.

“It is now increasingly clear that a potentially irreversible displacement and spillover has taken place in which organized crime are able to pick, choose, and move value and jurisdictions as needed, with the resulting situation rapidly outpacing the capacity of governments to contain it,” UN officials wrote in the report. “Failure to address this ecosystem will have consequences for Southeast Asia and other regions.”

Pig Butchering Scams Are Going High Tech

It's hard enough creating one air-gap-jumping tool. Researchers say the group GoldenJackal did it twice in five years.

Researchers have unearthed two sophisticated tool sets that a nation-state hacking group—possibly from Russia—used to steal sensitive data stored on air-gapped devices, meaning those that are deliberately isolated from the internet or other networks to safeguard them from malware.

One of the custom tool collections was used starting in 2019 against a South Asian embassy in Belarus. A largely different tool set created by the same threat group infected a European Union government organization three years later. Researchers from ESET, the security firm that discovered the toolkits, said some of the components in both were identical to those fellow security firm Kaspersky described in research published last year and attributed to an unknown group, tracked as GoldenJackal, working for a nation-state. Based on the overlap, ESET has concluded that the same group is behind all the attacks observed by both firms.

**Quite Unusual**

The practice of air gapping is typically reserved for the most sensitive networks or devices connected to them, such as those used in systems for voting, industrial control, manufacturing, and power generation. A host of malware used in espionage hacking over the past 15 years (for instance, here and here) demonstrate that air gapping isn’t a foolproof protection. It nonetheless forces threat groups to expend significant resources that are likely obtainable only by nation-states with superior technical acumen and unlimited budgets. ESET’s discovery puts GoldenJackal in a highly exclusive collection of threat groups.

“With the level of sophistication required, it is quite unusual that in five years, GoldenJackal managed to build and deploy not one but two separate tool sets designed to compromise air-gapped systems,” ESET researcher Matías Porolli wrote in Tuesday’s report. “This speaks to the resourcefulness of the group.”

The evolution of the kit from 2019 and the one from three years later underscores a growing sophistication by GoldenJackal developers. The first generation provided a full suite of capabilities, including:

*   GoldenDealer, a component that delivers malicious executables to air-gapped systems over USB drives
*   GoldenHowl, a backdoor that contains various modules for a mix of malicious capabilities
*   GoldenRobo, a file collector and exfiltrator

Within a few weeks of deploying the kit in 2019, ESET said, GoldenJackal started using other tools on the same compromised devices. The newer tools, which Kaspersky documented in its 2023 research, included:

*   A backdoor tracked under the name JackalControl
*   JackalSteal, a file collector and exfiltrator
*   JackalWorm, used to propagate other JackalControl and other malicious components over USB drives

GoldenJackal, ESET said, continued using these tools into January of this year. The basic flow of the attack is, first, infecting an internet-connected device through a means ESET and Kaspersky have been unable to determine. Next, the infected computer infects any external drives that get inserted. When the infected drive is plugged into an air-gapped system, it collects and stores data of interest. Last, when the drive is inserted into the internet-connected device, the data is transferred to an attacker-controlled server.

**Building a Better Trap**

In the 2022 attack on the European Union governmental organization, GoldenJackal began using a new custom toolkit. Written in multiple programming languages, including Go and Python, the newer version took a much more specialized approach. It assigned different tasks to different types of infected devices and marshaled a much larger array of modules, which could be mixed and matched based on the attacker objects for different infections.

“In the observed attacks, GoldenJackal started to use a highly modular approach, using various components to perform different tasks,” ESET’s Porolli wrote. “Some hosts were abused to exfiltrate files, others were used as local servers to receive and distribute staged files or configuration files, and others were deemed interesting for file collection, for espionage purposes.”

The figure below classifies some of the components specifically:

*   GoldenUsbCopy, which monitors for the insertion of USB drives on air-gapped devices and, when found, copies them to an encrypted container that is stored on disk
*   GoldenUsbGo, which appears to be an updated version of GoldenUSBCopy
*   GoldenAce, a distribution tool for propagating other malicious executables and retrieving files stored on USB drives
*   HTTP server, an HTTP server whose precise function isn’t well understood
*   ​​GoldenBlacklist, which downloads an encrypted archive from a local server, sifts through received email messages for those of interest, and puts them in an archive for some other component to exfiltrate
*   GoldenPyBlacklist, a Python implementation of GoldenBlacklist
*   GoldenMailer, which, when connected to an internet device, exfiltrates files of interest previously stolen from an air-gapped device. The exfiltration occurs by attaching them to emails sent to an attacker-controlled email address
*   GoldenDrive, a separate exfiltration tool that, in contrast to GoldenMailer, uploads files of interest to Google Drive.

The newly discovered toolkit is composed of many different building blocks, written in multiple languages and capabilities. The overall goal appears to be increased flexibility and resiliency in the event one module is detected by the target.

“Their goal is to get hard to obtain data from air-gapped systems and stay under the radar as much as possible,” Costin Raiu, a researcher who worked at Kaspersky at the time it was researching GoldenJackal, wrote in an interview. “Multiple exfiltration mechanisms indicate a very flexible tool kit that can accommodate all sorts of situations. These many tools indicate it’s a highly customizable framework where they deploy exactly what they need as opposed to a multi purpose malware that can do anything.”

Other new insights offered by the ESET research is GoldenJackal’s interest in targets located in Europe. Kaspersky researchers detected the group targeting Middle Eastern countries.

Based on the information that was available to Kaspersky, company researchers couldn’t attribute GoldenJackal to any specific country. ESET has also been unable to definitively identify the country, but it did find one hint that the threat group may have a tie to Turla, a potent hacking group working on behalf of Russia’s FSB intelligence agency. The tie comes in the form of command-and-control protocol in GoldenHowl referred to as transport\_http. The same expression is found in malware known to originate with Turla.

Raiu said the highly modular approach is also reminiscent of Red October, an elaborate espionage platform discovered in 2013 targeting hundreds of diplomatic, governmental, and scientific organizations in at least 39 countries, including the Russian Federation, Iran, and the United States.

While much of Tuesday’s report contains technical analysis that is likely to be too advanced for many people to understand, it provides important new information that furthers insights into malware designed to jump air gaps and the tactics, techniques, and procedures of those who use it. The report will also be useful to people responsible for safeguarding the types of organizations most frequently targeted by nation-state groups.

“I’d say this is mostly interesting for security people working in embassies and government CERTs,” Raiu said. “They need to check for these TTPs and keep an eye on them in the future. If you were previously a victim of Turla or Red October I’d keep an eye on this.”

_This story originally appeared on_ _Ars Technica._

A Mysterious Hacking Group Has 2 New Tools to Steal Data From Air-Gapped Machines

Companies are putting "AI" in just about all of their products, which opens up new security holes. LLM SecOps and ML SecOps are becoming must-have skills.

Source: Designer491 via Alamy Stock Photo

In a sign of the growing importance of assessing the risks of artificial language to corporate assets, organizations are increasingly looking for job candidates with skills in machine learning and large language models to fill cybersecurity jobs. In ISACA's 2024 State of Cybersecurity report, just under a quarter of respondents (24%) named LLM SecOps and ML SecOps as the biggest skill gaps they see in cybersecurity. Soft skills — communication, flexibility, and leadership — continue to be the biggest category of skills that cybersecurity professionals are missing, according to 51% of respondents.

**Wanted: LLM, ML Skills**

Both LLM SecOps and ML SecOps are fairly new skill sets, but, like the technologies they secure, they now seem to be everywhere.

MLSecOps is the discipline of integrating security into the development and deployment of machine learning systems. It covers ML-specific processes like securing the data used to train a model and preventing bias through transparency, as well as applying standard security operations tasks such as secure coding, threat modeling, security audits, and incident response to ML systems.

LLM SecOps refers to securing the entire lifecycle of LLMs, from data preparation to incident response. LLM SecOps covers concerns as varied as ethics reviews in the design phase, data sanitization of training data, analyzing why the system made the decisions it did during training, blocking the generation of harmful content, and monitoring the model once it is deployed.

There is a growing list of resources for security professionals to build up their skills. For ML SecOps, Benjamin Kereopa-Yorke, a a senior information security specialist and AI security researcher at telecommunications provider Telstra maintains a GitHub repository of resources and trainings, with courses categorized by prior ML knowledge required and classified as vendor-agnostic or vendor-centric. Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) has a draft Machine Learning Security Top Ten list describing how ML attacks such as data poisoning or member inference work and how to counter them. OWASP also maintains the OWASP Top Ten for LLMs, which covers topics relevant to LLM SecOps such as prompt injection, sensitive information disclosure, and model theft.

Organizations are looking for specific skills to fill open cybersecurity positions. After soft skills, cloud computing was the second biggest skill gap (42%), followed by security controls implementation (35%), and software development (28%).

With so much of the organization's workload now residing in the cloud, it makes sense that organizations need cybersecurity professionals with cloud computing skills. Securing cloud assets require a different mindset and technical skillset than traditional networking, and cloud providers handle certain tasks differently, requiring specialized knowledge.

Security controls implementation refers to protecting endpoints, networks, and applications. The skills gap in software development was not coding related, but rather things such as testing and deployment. Again, this highlights the challenges organizations are having securing their software development pipelines and integrations.

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