Tag Archives: APT

The Original APT: Advanced Persistent Teenagers

April 6, 2022

Many organizations are already struggling to combat cybersecurity threats from ransomware purveyors and state-sponsored hacking groups, both of which tend to take days or weeks to pivot from an opportunistic malware infection to a full blown data breach. But few organizations have a playbook for responding to the kinds of virtual “smash and grab” attacks we’ve seen recently from LAPSUS$, a juvenile data extortion group whose short-lived, low-tech and remarkably effective tactics are putting some of the world’s biggest corporations on edge.

At the Crossroads of eThieves and Cyberspies

May 8, 2012

Lost in the annals of campy commercials from the 1980s is a series of ads that featured improbable scenes between two young people (usually of the opposite sex) who somehow caused the inadvertent collision of peanut butter and chocolate. After the mishap, one would complain, “Hey you got your chocolate in my peanut butter!,” and the other would retort, “You got your peanut butter in my chocolate!” The youngsters then sample the product of their happy accident and are amazed to find someone has already combined the two flavors into a sweet and salty treat that is commercially available.

It may be that the Internet security industry is long overdue for its own “Reese’s moment.” Many security experts who got their start analyzing malware and tracking traditional cybercrime recently have transitioned to investigating malware and attacks associated with so-called advanced persistent threat (APT) incidents. The former centers on the theft of financial data that can be used to quickly extract cash from victims; the latter refers to often prolonged attacks involving a hunt for more strategic information, such as intellectual property, trade secrets and data related to national security and defense.

Chasing APT: Persistence Pays Off

October 27, 2011

The IT director for an international hedge fund received the bad news in a phone call from a stranger: Chinese hackers were running amok on the fund’s network. Not seeing evidence of the claimed intrusion, and unsure of the credibility of the caller, the IT director fired off an email to a reporter.

“So do you think this is legit, or is the guy trying to scare us?” the IT director asked in an email to KrebsOnSecurity.com, agreeing to discuss the incident if he and his company were not named. “He has sent me the logs for the connections to the infected server. I checked the firewall and am not seeing any active connections.”

Who Else Was Hit by the RSA Attackers?

October 24, 2011

The data breach disclosed in March by security firm RSA received worldwide attention because it highlighted the challenges that organizations face in detecting and blocking intrusions from targeted cyber attacks. What’s more, the subtext of the intrusion was that if this could happen to one of the largest security firms, what hope was there for organizations that aren’t focused on security?

Security experts have said that RSA wasn’t the only corporation victimized in the attack, and that dozens of other multinational companies were infiltrated using many of the same tools and Internet infrastructure. But so far, no one has been willing to say publicly which additional companies may have been hit. Today’s post features a never-before-published list of those victim organizations. The information suggests that more than 760 other organizations had networks that were compromised with some of the same resources used to hit RSA. Almost 20 percent of the current Fortune 100 companies are on this list.

RSA Among Dozens of Firms Breached by Zero-Day Attacks

May 4, 2011

The recent data breach at security industry giant RSA was disconcerting news to the security community: RSA claims to be “the premier provider of security, risk, and compliance solutions for business acceleration” and the “chosen security partner of more than 90 percent of the Fortune 500.”

The hackers who broke into RSA appear to have leveraged some of the very same Web sites, tools and services used in that attack to infiltrate dozens of other companies during the past year, including some of the Fortune 500 companies protected by RSA, new information suggests. What’s more, the assailants moved their operations from those sites very recently, after their locations were revealed in a report published online by the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Advanced Persistent Tweets: Zero-Day in 140 Characters

May 3, 2011

The unceasing barrage of targeted email attacks that leverage zero-day software flaws to steal sensitive information from companies and the U.S. government often are characterized as ultra-sophisticated, almost ninja-like in their stealth and anonymity. But according to expert analysis of several recent zero-day attacks – including the much publicized break-in at security giant RSA — the apparent Chinese developers of those attack tools left clues aplenty about their identities and locations, with one actor even Tweeting about his newly discovered vulnerability days in advance of its use in the wild.

RSA and others have labeled recent zero-day attacks as the epitome of an “advanced persistent threat” (APT), a controversial term describing the daily onslaught of digital assaults launched by attackers that are considered to be highly-skilled, determined and have a long-term perspective on their mission. Because these attacks often result in the theft of sensitive and proprietary information from the government and private industry, the details surrounding them usually become shrouded in secrecy as law enforcement and national security officials swoop in to investigate.

But an investigation of some of the open source information available on the tools used in recent attacks labeled APT indicates that some of the actors involved are doing little to cover their tracks, and that not only are they identifiable, but that they’re not particularly concerned about suffering any consequences from their actions.

Are Megabreaches Out? E-Thefts Downsized in 2010

April 19, 2011

The number of consumer and financial records compromised as a result of data breaches in 2010 fell dramatically compared to previous years, a shift that cybercrime investigators attribute to a sea-change in the motives and tactics used by criminals to steal information. At the same time, organizations are dealing with more breaches than ever before, and most data thefts continue to result from security weaknesses that are relatively unsophisticated and easy to prevent.

Hacked Companies Hit by the Obvious in 2009

July 28, 2010

As a rule, I tend to avoid writing about reports and studies unless they offer truly valuable and actionable insights: Too often, reports have preconceived findings and that merely serve to increase hype and drum up business for the companies that commission them. But I always make an exception for the annual data breach report issued by the Verizon Business RISK team, which is so chock full of hype-slaying useful data and conclusions that it is often hard to know what not to write about from the report.