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The Rise of Malvertising

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LAS VEGAS—One of the hottest topics in cyberthreat detection right now is the rise of malvertising, online advertising with hidden malware that is distributed through legitimate ad networks and websites. On Monday, Yahoo! acknowledged that one of these attacks had been abusing their ad network since July 28—potentially the biggest single attacks, given the site’s 6.9 billion monthly visits, security software firm Malwarebytes reported.

In the first half of this year the number of malvertisements has jumped 260% compared to the same period in 2014, according a new study released at the Black Hat USA conference here today by enterprise digital footprint security company RiskIQ. The sheer number of unique malvertisements has climbed 60% year over year.

“The major increase we have seen in the number of malvertisements over the past 48 months confirms that digital ads have become the preferred method for distributing malware,” said James Pleger, RiskIQ’s director of research. “There are a number of reasons for this development, including the fact that malvertisements are difficult to detect and take down since they are delivered through ad networks and are not resident on websites. They also allow attackers to exploit the powerful profiling capabilities of these networks to precisely target specific populations of users.”

How does malvertising work—and why is it taking off right now? “The rise of programmatic advertising, which relies on software instead of humans to purchase digital ads, has generated unprecedented growth and introduced sophisticated targeting into digital ad networks,” the company explained. “This machine-to-machine ecosystem has also created opportunities for cyber criminals to exploit display advertising to distribute malware. For example, malicious code can be hidden within an ad, executables can be embedded on a webpage, or bundled within software downloads.”

The study also noted that, in 2014, there was significantly more exploit kit activity (which silently installs malware without end user intervention) than fake software updates that require user consent. In 2015, however, fake software updates have surpassed exploit kits as the most common technique for installing malware. Fake Flash updates have replaced fake antivirus and fake Java updates as the most common method used to lure victims into installing various forms of malware including ransomware, spyware and adware.

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Last week, enterprise security firm Bromium also released a new study focused on the rising threat of malvertising, finding that these Flash exploits have increased 60% in the past six months and the growth of ransomware families has doubled every year since 2013.

“For the last couple of years, Internet Explorer was the source of the most exploits, but before that it was Java, and now it is Flash; what we are witnessing is that security risk is a constant, but it is only the name that changes,” said Rahul Kashyup, senior vice president and chief security architect at Bromium. “Hackers continue to innovate new exploits, new evasion techniques and even new forms of malware—recently ransomware—preying on the most popular websites and commonly used software.”

One of the riskiest aspects of these exploits is that users do not have to be accessing sites that seem remotely suspect to be exposed. According to Bromium’s research, more than 58% of malvertisments were delivered through news websites (32%) and entertainment websites (26%). Notable websites unknowingly hosting malvertising included cbsnews.com, nbcsports.com, weather.com, boston.com and viralnova.com, the firm reported.

With that in mind, IT and cybersecurity teams have to adapt to meet these new threats, which are evolving far faster than detection tools, including antivirus, behavioral analysis, network intrusion detection, and the basic safe browsing guidelines issued to employees regarding their use of work devices.

“The key takeaway from this report is that, at large, the Internet is increasingly becoming ‘untrustworthy.’ Attackers are now using popular websites to launch malware via online ads, which makes things difficult for IT security teams,” explained Rahul Kashyup, SVP and chief security architect at Bromium. “This risk should be well understood and factored in for any organization while building a ‘defense-in-depth’ security stack. Regular patching and updates definitely help to limit the exposure to potential attacks, but that might not be feasible for large organizations.

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It is advisable to evaluate non-signature based technologies that can thwart such attacks in a reliable way and prevent infections on end-user devices.

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”

According to Bromium, the websites that most frequently serve as malvertising attack sources are:

malvertising attack sources

After 3 Years of Increases, Total Cost of Risk Down 1%

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Buyers of commercial insurance, who have seen relatively stable to slightly increasing rates over the past three years, reported paying 1% less to cover their total cost of risk than in 2013, according to the 2015 RIMS Benchmark Survey.

“The 2014 survey results reflect the overall stability of the U.

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S. property/casualty market. One notable driver is the increasing role of alternative capital in assisting reinsurers to deal with economic uncertainties. A related factor is the rising importance of predictive models among insurers, not only in the area of property, but also for cyber and casualty,” Jim Blinn, executive vice president and global product manager at Advisen, said in a statement.

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Looking ahead to the second half of 2015, Blinn said commercial property/casualty insurers are beginning to see a softening market. “We are looking at a period of rate decreases in insurance premiums owing to rising competition in the market and more than enough available capacity.”

The survey, which encompasses industry data for more than 52,000 insurance programs from over 1,400 organizations, found that risk managers and underwriters have identified climate change as one of this decade’s defining issues. “It continues to be a cause of concern among companies and organizations as evidence linking it to flood and other natural disasters continue to mount. Already, regulators such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are sounding the alarm for the high economic cost of climate change,” according to the study.

Key findings in 2015 include:

  • Slight decrease in TCOR following three years of increases.
  • Average TCOR fell 1% from $10.90 per $1,000 of revenue in 2013 to $10.80 in 2014.
  • Management liability, workers compensation, liability, and property costs declined.
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  • Risk management administration costs dropped 5% as costs for both outside services and risk management departments declined.

Should You Track Down Your Cyberattacker?

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By and large, organizations tend to invest in preventative cybersecurity measures and they also concentrate their resources on detecting and stopping cyberattacks, rather than on painstaking “who did it?” investigations. They want to close the gap, manage the public opinion fallout, learn from the episode and move on.

From an enterprise perspective, this makes sense, as resources dealing with cybersecurity are usually overstretched and the organization does not stand to gain much from determining, with a certain degree of certainty, who was behind a cyberattack. The incentive equation, of course, is different if the target of the attack is a government or a large organization that is part of a country’s critical national infrastructure.

Attack attribution has traditionally been approached from the perspective of enabling the target or victim entity to pursue the attacker either for damages in a court of law; or from a national, military or intelligence “strike back” perspective.

While dishing out some form of retribution has always been instinctual, however, only governments and very large corporations have historically had the technical toolbox, the economical means and the long-term view to pursue a cyber retribution strategy.

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But should commercial and non-commercial organizations also care about cyberattack attribution?

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Yes, within measure.

The first question ought to be: why? What does the target organization stand to gain from investing in cyber-attack attribution? The answer is that, the better it understands the attackers tools and techniques, the more likely the organization is to direct its limited resources to the right areas of defense.

As we know, each attacker or attacker group has certain preferred tooling and attacking methods. Also, they have their own motivation, speed, operational capability and discipline.

Assuming that an organization can safely concentrate only on patching, employee awareness programs, scanning, pen testing, log monitoring and other traditional defensive security measures, would be a mistake. These measures are, of course, necessary but they can no longer be the entire apparatus of cyber defense. Organizations need to invest a certain proportion of their resources in understanding their cyber adversaries, and their motivations, modus-operandi, credibility and capabilities, in order to better tailor their defensive resources.

What would be the “adequate” amount of time and effort for an organization to spend on seeking to attribute a cyberattack, successful or not, to a malicious actor or group? The effort should be proportionate with what is at risk and what resources the company has, either in house or via its suppliers and industry. Knowing at least how some of their enemies attack, however, can help companies to better leverage their resources when defending.

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Morpho Hacker Group Targets Intellectual Property

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With the highly-publicized rise in cyberbreaches, we have seen hackers break into systems for a variety of reasons: criminal enterprises simply stealing money, thieves gathering Social Security or credit card numbers to sell on the black market, state-sponsored groups taking confidential information, and malicious actors taking passwords or personal data to use to hit more valuable targets. Now, another group of financially-motivated hackers has emerged with a different agenda that may have even riskier implications for businesses.

According to a new report from computer security company Symantec, a group it calls Morpho has attacked multiple multibillion-dollar companies across an array of industries in pursuit of one thing: intellectual property. While it is not entirely clear what they do with this information, they may aim to sell it to competitors or nation states, the firm reports. “The group may be operating as ‘hackers for hire,’ targeting corporations on request,” Symantec reported. “Alternatively, it may select its own targets and either sell stolen information to the highest bidder or use it for insider trading purposes.”

Victimized businesses have spanned the Internet, software, pharmaceutical, legal and commodities fields, and the researchers believe the Morpho group is the same one that breached Facebook, Twitter, Apple and Microsoft in 2013.

Symantec does not believe the group is affiliated with or acting on behalf of any particular country as they have attacked businesses without regard for the nationality of its targets. But, as the New York Times reported, ” the researchers said there were clues that the hackers might be English speakers — their malicious code is written in fluent English — and they named their encryption keys after memes in American pop culture and gaming. Researchers also said the attackers worked during United States working hours, though they conceded that might just be because that is when their targets are most active.”

The researchers have tied Morpho to attacks against 49 different organizations in more than 20 countries, deploying custom hacking tools that are able to break into both Windows and Apple computers, suggesting it has plenty of resources and expertise. The group has been active since at least March 2012, the report said, and their attacks have not only continued to the present day, but have increased in number. “Over time, a picture has emerged of a cybercrime gang systematically targeting large corporations in order to steal confidential data,” Symantec said.

Morpho hacking victims by industry

Morpho hackers have also been exceptionally careful, from preliminary reconnaissance to cleaning up evidence.

In some cases, to help best determine the valuable trade secrets they would steal, the group intercepted company emails as well as business databases containing legal and policy documents, financial records, product descriptions and training documents. In one case, they were able to compromise a physical security system that monitors employee and visitor movements in corporate buildings. After getting the data they wanted, they scrubbed their tracks, even making sure the servers they used to orchestrate the attacks were rented using the anonymous digital currency Bitcoin.

In short, the hackers are really good, according to Vikram Thakur, a senior manager of the attack investigations team at Symantec. “Who they are? We don’t know. They are virtually impossible to track,” he said.