New analysis shows attackers for the most part are continuing to rely on the same techniques and tactics they have been using for years.
The post Top 5 Attack Techniques May Be Easier to Detect Than You Think appeared first on Malware Devil.
Despite the intimidating nature of the threat landscape, organizations can achieve considerable defense in depth by monitoring a relatively small number of data sources and keeping an eye out for a handful of malicious patterns in the data.
In fact, much of the information required to detect most commonly encountered threats and malicious techniques can be drawn right from Windows event logs and systems monitoring, according to a new report by security vendor Red Canary.
Researchers from the company analyzed data related to 20,000 confirmed threats detected across Red Canary customer networks last year and mapped the data to the different attack techniques and sub-techniques described in MITRE’s widely used ATT&CK framework. The report offers a comprehensive overview of each of the most widely used techniques and threats, with guidance on how attackers are using them and how to spot the activity.
The analysis shows attackers for the most part are continuing to rely on the same techniques and tactics they have been using for years. And, despite all the concern about sophisticated advanced persistent threat (APT) actors and related threats, the most common threats that organizations encountered last year are what some would classify as commodity malware.
“Although the threat landscape can be overwhelming, there are many opportunities we have as defenders to catch threats in [our] networks,” says Katie Nickels, director of intelligence at Red Canary. “The challenge for defenders is to balance the ‘tried and true’ detection opportunities that adversaries reuse with keeping an eye on new techniques and threats.”
Red Canary’s analysis shows attackers most commonly abused command and script interpreters like PowerShell and Windows Command Shell to execute commands, scripts, and binaries. Nearly half (48.7%) of the organizations in the dataset encountered threats involving the use of PowerShell, and 38.4% had to deal with threats involving the abuse of Windows Command Shell. Attackers most commonly took advantage of PowerShell’s interactive command-line interface and scripting features to execute malicious commands, obfuscate malware, and malicious activity to download additional payloads and spawn additional processes. Logs such as Anti-Malware Scan Interface (AMSI), scriptblock, or Sysmon can be especially helpful in detecting PowerShell abuse, Red Canary says in its report.
The second mostly commonly detected attack technique was signed binary process execution, an attack method where digitally signed, trusted binaries such as Rundll32 and Mshta are used to bypass signature and behavior-based detection tools. Rundll32, an essential native Windows process installed by default on Windows systems since Windows 95, was most commonly abused to execute malicious code as a Dynamic Link Library. Cybercriminals also used it to carry out other activities, such as dumping the memory of certain processes and retrieving cached credentials, Red Canary says.
Meanwhile, attackers primarily used the Mshta binary to execute arbitrary VBScript and JScript files. Monitoring process command-line parameters and process monitoring are both useful for detecting malicious execution of Rundll32, Red Canary said.
Rounding out the list of top five techniques that Red Canary detected last year were creating and modifying system processes, scheduling tasks/jobs, and credential dumping.
Red Canary researchers observed attackers typically creating and modifying system processes such as Windows services to achieve persistence on a compromised system and to leverage elevated privileges. They also frequently used the “Scheduled Task” task-scheduling feature in Windows to maintain access and execute processes typically in the context of a privileged user. Credential dumping was a favored tactic for privilege escalation, data theft, and lateral movement.
Consistent Techniques
“The top techniques have been pretty consistently prevalent over the years,” Nickels says. “While they aren’t always in top five techniques, things like PowerShell, Scheduled Tasks, and Credential Dumping have been and remain very common.”
For organizations, one of the biggest challenges in detecting the use of these techniques is the fact that most can be used in legitimate and malicious ways.
“Techniques that tend to be ‘dual purpose’ in nature can be initially challenging to detect because each organization has to determine what is normal for them,” she says.
She advises organizations work to understand their available data sources so they can baseline what is normal in their environment and set malicious activity detection trigger accordingly.
But it is not just the techniques and tactics that are relatively easily detectable in many cases, Red Canary found. Many of the most frequently detected malware and dual-purpose tools the company observed last year were tools that organizations likely underestimate because they are considered commodity malware. Among them were Cobalt Strike, Qbot, IcedID, Mimikatz and Emotet.
One surprise entry in Red Canary’s top 10 last was USB worm Gamarue. Though the malware tool’s command-and-control infrastructure was disrupted in 2017, it still surfaces regularly on compromised environments, Nickels says.
“This highlights the importance of defenders not dismissing any threats as ‘too old’ or ‘simple,'” she notes. “We’ve seen that many ‘old’ threats have a significant impact on many organizations.”
Jai Vijayan is a seasoned technology reporter with over 20 years of experience in IT trade journalism. He was most recently a Senior Editor at Computerworld, where he covered information security and data privacy issues for the publication. Over the course of his 20-year … View Full Bio
Recommended Reading:
Comment |
Print |
More Insights
The post Top 5 Attack Techniques May Be Easier to Detect Than You Think appeared first on Malware Devil.
Despite the intimidating nature of the threat landscape, organizations can achieve considerable defense in depth by monitoring a relatively small number of data sources and keeping an eye out for a handful of malicious patterns in the data.
In fact, much of the information required to detect most commonly encountered threats and malicious techniques can be drawn right from Windows event logs and systems monitoring, according to a new report by security vendor Red Canary.
Researchers from the company analyzed data related to 20,000 confirmed threats detected across Red Canary customer networks last year and mapped the data to the different attack techniques and sub-techniques described in MITRE’s widely used ATT&CK framework. The report offers a comprehensive overview of each of the most widely used techniques and threats, with guidance on how attackers are using them and how to spot the activity.
The analysis shows attackers for the most part are continuing to rely on the same techniques and tactics they have been using for years. And, despite all the concern about sophisticated advanced persistent threat (APT) actors and related threats, the most common threats that organizations encountered last year are what some would classify as commodity malware.
“Although the threat landscape can be overwhelming, there are many opportunities we have as defenders to catch threats in [our] networks,” says Katie Nickels, director of intelligence at Red Canary. “The challenge for defenders is to balance the ‘tried and true’ detection opportunities that adversaries reuse with keeping an eye on new techniques and threats.”
Red Canary’s analysis shows attackers most commonly abused command and script interpreters like PowerShell and Windows Command Shell to execute commands, scripts, and binaries. Nearly half (48.7%) of the organizations in the dataset encountered threats involving the use of PowerShell, and 38.4% had to deal with threats involving the abuse of Windows Command Shell. Attackers most commonly took advantage of PowerShell’s interactive command-line interface and scripting features to execute malicious commands, obfuscate malware, and malicious activity to download additional payloads and spawn additional processes. Logs such as Anti-Malware Scan Interface (AMSI), scriptblock, or Sysmon can be especially helpful in detecting PowerShell abuse, Red Canary says in its report.
The second mostly commonly detected attack technique was signed binary process execution, an attack method where digitally signed, trusted binaries such as Rundll32 and Mshta are used to bypass signature and behavior-based detection tools. Rundll32, an essential native Windows process installed by default on Windows systems since Windows 95, was most commonly abused to execute malicious code as a Dynamic Link Library. Cybercriminals also used it to carry out other activities, such as dumping the memory of certain processes and retrieving cached credentials, Red Canary says.
Meanwhile, attackers primarily used the Mshta binary to execute arbitrary VBScript and JScript files. Monitoring process command-line parameters and process monitoring are both useful for detecting malicious execution of Rundll32, Red Canary said.
Rounding out the list of top five techniques that Red Canary detected last year were creating and modifying system processes, scheduling tasks/jobs, and credential dumping.
Red Canary researchers observed attackers typically creating and modifying system processes such as Windows services to achieve persistence on a compromised system and to leverage elevated privileges. They also frequently used the “Scheduled Task” task-scheduling feature in Windows to maintain access and execute processes typically in the context of a privileged user. Credential dumping was a favored tactic for privilege escalation, data theft, and lateral movement.
Consistent Techniques
“The top techniques have been pretty consistently prevalent over the years,” Nickels says. “While they aren’t always in top five techniques, things like PowerShell, Scheduled Tasks, and Credential Dumping have been and remain very common.”
For organizations, one of the biggest challenges in detecting the use of these techniques is the fact that most can be used in legitimate and malicious ways.
“Techniques that tend to be ‘dual purpose’ in nature can be initially challenging to detect because each organization has to determine what is normal for them,” she says.
She advises organizations work to understand their available data sources so they can baseline what is normal in their environment and set malicious activity detection trigger accordingly.
But it is not just the techniques and tactics that are relatively easily detectable in many cases, Red Canary found. Many of the most frequently detected malware and dual-purpose tools the company observed last year were tools that organizations likely underestimate because they are considered commodity malware. Among them were Cobalt Strike, Qbot, IcedID, Mimikatz and Emotet.
One surprise entry in Red Canary’s top 10 last was USB worm Gamarue. Though the malware tool’s command-and-control infrastructure was disrupted in 2017, it still surfaces regularly on compromised environments, Nickels says.
“This highlights the importance of defenders not dismissing any threats as ‘too old’ or ‘simple,'” she notes. “We’ve seen that many ‘old’ threats have a significant impact on many organizations.”
Jai Vijayan is a seasoned technology reporter with over 20 years of experience in IT trade journalism. He was most recently a Senior Editor at Computerworld, where he covered information security and data privacy issues for the publication. Over the course of his 20-year … View Full Bio
Recommended Reading:
Comment |
Print |
More Insights
The post Top 5 Attack Techniques May Be Easier to Detect Than You Think appeared first on Malware Devil.
Attackers linked to North Korea began to target security researchers on social media earlier this year.
The post Google Updates on Campaign Targeting Security Researchers appeared first on Malware Devil.
The post Intelligent Reflecting Surface for Wireless Communication Security and Privacy appeared first on Malware Devil.
Two mega-breaches caused by third parties have occurred over the last month, adding to the recent Solarwinds epic supply chain hack, to create a growing tsunami of third party risk for enterprises and government organizations. Security software provider Accellion suffered a breach in their FTA tool which caused many of their clients to have their […]
The post Accellion data breach highlights third party cyber risk appeared first on SecureLink.
The post Accellion data breach highlights third party cyber risk appeared first on Security Boulevard.
The post Accellion data breach highlights third party cyber risk appeared first on Malware Devil.
White Papers
Video
Current Issue
2021 Top Enterprise IT TrendsWe’ve identified the key trends that are poised to impact the IT landscape in 2021. Find out why they’re important and how they will affect you today!Flash Poll
Twitter Feed
Bug Report
kopano-ical (formerly zarafa-ical) in Kopano Groupware Core through 8.7.16, 9.x through 9.1.0, 10.x through 10.0.7, and 11.x through 11.0.1 and Zarafa 6.30.x through 7.2.x allows memory exhaustion via long HTTP headers.
CVE-2021-29349
PUBLISHED: 2021-03-31
Mahara 20.10 is affected by Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF) that allows a remote attacker to remove inbox-mail on the server. The application fails to validate the CSRF token for a POST request. An attacker can craft a module/multirecipientnotification/inbox.php pieform_delete_all_notifications re…
CVE-2020-24550
PUBLISHED: 2021-03-31
An Open Redirect vulnerability in EpiServer Find before 13.2.7 allows an attacker to redirect users to untrusted websites via the _t_redirect parameter in a crafted URL, such as a /find_v2/_click URL.
CVE-2021-27220
PUBLISHED: 2021-03-31
An issue was discovered in PRTG Network Monitor before 21.1.66.1623. By invoking the screenshot functionality with prepared context paths, an attacker is able to verify the existence of certain files on the filesystem of the PRTG’s Web server.
CVE-2021-27349
PUBLISHED: 2021-03-31
Advanced Order Export before 3.1.8 for WooCommerce allows XSS, a different vulnerability than CVE-2020-11727.
The post Google Updates on Campaign Targeting Security Researchers appeared first on Malware Devil.
White Papers
Video
Current Issue
2021 Top Enterprise IT TrendsWe’ve identified the key trends that are poised to impact the IT landscape in 2021. Find out why they’re important and how they will affect you today!Flash Poll
Twitter Feed
Bug Report
A privilege escalation vulnerability impacting the Google Exposure Notification Verification Server (versions prior to 0.23.1), allows an attacker who (1) has UserWrite permissions and (2) is using a carefully crafted request or malicious proxy, to create another user with higher privileges than the…
CVE-2021-26943
PUBLISHED: 2021-03-31
The UX360CA BIOS through 303 on ASUS laptops allow an attacker (with the ring 0 privilege) to overwrite nearly arbitrary physical memory locations, including SMRAM, and execute arbitrary code in the SMM (issue 3 of 3).
CVE-2021-29663
PUBLISHED: 2021-03-31
CourseMS (aka Course Registration Management System) 2.1 is affected by cross-site scripting (XSS). When an attacker with access to an Admin account creates a Job Title in the Site area (aka the admin/add_jobs.php name parameter), they can insert an XSS payload. This payload will execute whenever an…
CVE-2020-35308
PUBLISHED: 2021-03-31
CONQUEST DICOM SERVER before 1.5.0 has a code execution vulnerability which can be exploited by attackers to execute malicious code.
CVE-2021-29662
PUBLISHED: 2021-03-31
The Data::Validate::IP module through 0.29 for Perl does not properly consider extraneous zero characters at the beginning of an IP address string, which (in some situations) allows attackers to bypass access control that is based on IP addresses.
The post Google Updates on Campaign Targeting Security Researchers appeared first on Malware Devil.
Zettaset today added a management console to its portfolio that promises to simplify managing encryption on an end-to-end basis via integrations with third-party key managers that comply with the key management interoperability protocol (KMIP). KMIP defines a set of message formats for the manipulation of cryptographic keys on a key management server that was first..
The post Zettaset Unveils Encryption Management Console appeared first on Security Boulevard.
The post Zettaset Unveils Encryption Management Console appeared first on Malware Devil.
In 1801, the United States had a small Navy. Thomas Jefferson deployed almost half that Navy—three frigates and a schooner—to the Barbary C...
