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Technology
Cloud Cloud Data Google Google Cloud Location data Technology

User Tracking: Google to Store User Data for 180 Days

User Tracking: Google Announces to Store User Data for 180 Days

Google has made a major change in its user tracking, a big leap in privacy concerns for users. Google will stop the nosy cloud storage of data it gets from tracking user location in real time. 

The privacy change

Called Google Maps Timeline, from December, Google will save user location data for a maximum of 180 days. After the duration ends, the data will be erased from Google Cloud servers. 

The new policy means Google can only save a user’s movements and whereabouts for 6 months, the user has an option to store the data on a personal device, but the cloud data will be permanently deleted from Google servers.

The new privacy change is welcomed, smartphones can balance privacy and convenience in terms of data storage, but nothing is more important than location data. 

Users can change settings that suit them best, but the majority go with default settings. The problem here arises when Google uses user data for suggesting insights (based on anonymous location data), or improving Google services like ads products.

Why important 

The Google Maps Timeline feature addresses questions about data privacy and security. The good things include:

Better privacy: By restricting the storage timeline of location data on the cloud, Google can reduce data misuse. Limiting the storage duration means less historical data is exposed to threat actors if there's a breach.

More control to users: When users have the option to retain location data on their devices, it gives them ownership over their personal data. Users can choose whether to delete their location history or keep the data.

Accountability from Google: The move is a positive sign toward building transparency and trust, showing a commitment to user privacy. 

How will it impact users?

Services: Google features that use location history data for tailored suggestions might be impacted, and users may observe changes in correct location-based suggestions and targeted ads. 

The problem in data recovery: For users who like to store their data for a longer duration, the new move can be a problem. Users will have to self-back up data if they want to keep it for more than 180 days. 

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Threat Intelligence
2023 Global Threat Report Cloud Data Cyber Security Ransomware Threat Threat Intelligence

Elastic Global Threat Report Discloses Rising Threat of Ransomware

 

The latest study has indicated that ransomware is becoming a more diverse and prevalent threat, making countering it a difficult and time-consuming process. Furthermore, practically every cloud infrastructure attack starts with credential theft.

"Highly prevalent" ransomware 

Having said that, the majority of malware identified is made up of a couple of "highly prevalent" ransomware families linked with off-the-shelf tools. BlackCat, Conti, Hive, Sodinokibi, and Stop have ascended to the top of the list as the most prominent ransomware families, accounting for more than four-fifths (81%) of all ransomware activity.

The majority of threat actors choose Cobalt Strike and Metasploit as off-the-shelf tools (5.7% of all signature events). These families account for over two thirds (68%) of all Windows infection attempts.

91% of malware signature incidents were found on Linux endpoints, with Windows accounting for the remaining 6%. Most threat actors hide in appliances, edge devices, and other extremely low visibility platforms in order to stay undetected. 

Cloud issues 

Elastic discovered that focusing on cloud-based solutions is a completely different beast. Businesses are increasingly moving from on-premises solutions, but they are sloppy, resulting in numerous misconfigurations, inadequate access restrictions, insecure credentials, and no functional principle of least privilege models. Threat actors are taking use of all of this to infiltrate environments and deploy malware. 

Security experts also detected defence evasion (38%), credential access (37%), and execution (21%), as the most common strategies linked to threat detection signals for Amazon Web Services. More than half (53%) of all credential access incidents involved compromised legitimate Microsoft Azure accounts. 

“Today’s threat landscape is truly borderless, as adversaries morph into criminal enterprises focused on monetizing their attack strategies,” stated Jake King, head of security intelligence and director of engineering at Elastic. 

“Open source, commodity malware, and the use of AI have lowered the barrier to entry for attackers, but we’re also seeing the rise of automated detection and response systems that enable all engineers to better defend their infrastructures. It’s a cat-and-mouse game, and our strongest weapons are vigilance and the continued investment in new defence technologies and strategies.”
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Data Theft
Cloud Data CrowdStrike Cyber Frauds. Cyberattacks Cybesecurity Data Theft

Cloud Data Theft is Booming According to CrowdStrike

 

An industry-leading cybersecurity company known as CrowdStrike reported that it had seen the largest increase in adversaries in one year. This was in comparison with what it had observed in the past. There was an increase in cloud attacks by 95% according to the study, which identified 33 re-new threat actors, approximately three times as many cases from 2021 involving cloud-conscious actors as they did in 2022. 

As a result of these trends, CrowdStrike believes that it will become more common for e-currency and nation-state actors to use their tradecraft and knowledge to greatly exploit cloud environments in the future, it stated in its global threat report for 2023. 

There has been a shift among bad actors away from deactivating antivirus and firewall technologies, and away from efforts to tamper with logs. Instead, they have turned toward modifications to authentication processes and attacks on identities, according to the report. 

There has been a dramatic rise in identity theft as a result of a wide range of threats. Identifying and privileged access credentials are among the most common targets targeted by hackers. Why? On the dark web, attackers want to sell compromised information to third parties for high prices to become access brokers and make money off the stolen information. 

As attackers reinvent themselves as access brokers, CrowdStrike's report provides a sobering look at their emergence. There is a 20% increase in adversaries engaging in extortion campaigns and theft of data related to the cloud as per the report. 

A broader analysis revealed an increase of 33 new adversaries in just one year. This was the biggest increase in the number of adversaries ever! Recent telecommunications, BPO, tech, and BPO companies have been the victims of sophisticated attacks carried out by both Scattered Spider and Slippery Spider malware. 

Cloud Security is Hampered by Overcast Skies

In addition to the multitude of new and unknown threat actors that CrowdStrike's report uncovered, CrowdStrike's report also noted a surge in identity-based threats, cloud exploits, national intelligence services, and attacks that re-pointed to previously patched vulnerabilities as weapons of mass destruction.

CrowdStrikeFalcon OverWatch measures the break-through time of adversaries according to the report by determining how far a compromised host is from a second host within the victim environment or how long the adversaries have to move laterally within the victim environment to gain access to the compromised host. This report from the National Institute on Crime and Law Enforcement suggests that for interactive eCrime intrusions, the average breakthrough time has decreased from 98 minutes in 2021 to 84 minutes in 2022. 

To minimize costs and ancillary damages caused by attackers, CISOs and their teams must respond more quickly as the breach window shrinks, and as attack windows become shorter. The 1-10-60 rule is one that CrowdStrikes recommends security teams follow: detect threats within the first minute, understand them within the first 10 minutes, and respond within the first 60 minutes.

It is well known that hackers, nation-states, and cybercriminals are growing at an exponential rate around the world. 

In an announcement made by Meyers, CrowdStrike has added Syria, Turkey, and Columbia to its list of malicious host countries it has already identified. As a result of interactive intrusions, Meyers reported there was a 50% increase compared to last year. Human adversaries try to bypass the computer's and antivirus defenses, contributing to the rise in human-computer crime. 

The Microsoft company published 28 zero days and 1,200 patches; however, only two out of 28 of those patches and zero days were exploited by nation-nexus and cybercriminal adversaries, who circumvented patches and bypassed mitigations, exploiting legacy vulnerabilities such as Log4Shell and keeping up with ProxyNotShell and Follina vulnerabilities. 

Engineers and Cloud Defenders Must be Versatile 

A variety of techniques are used by attackers to inject themselves into cloud environments and move laterally once they have entered them. There’s no doubt that CrowdStrike’s data shows an increase in both the number of valid cloud accounts used for initial cloud access and the number of public-facing applications being deployed. Also, according to the company, there has been an increase in the number of actors who are attempting to discover cloud accounts as opposed to cloud infrastructures and using legitimate higher-privileged accounts when looking for cloud accounts. 

To be successful in the cloud computing field, engineers need to be more versatile than ever before. For a business or enterprise to succeed, they need to be able to manage, plan, architect, monitor, and anticipate issues regarding cloud security and manage them as part of a continuous process.
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Vulnerabilities and Exploits
Cloud Data Cloud Security cloud storage Exploits Oracle Vulnerabilities and Exploits

Vulnerability in OCI Could Have Put the Data of Customers Exposed to the Attacker

 

A vulnerability called 'AttatchMe', discovered by a Wiz engineer could have allowed the attackers to access and steal the OCI storage volumes of any user without their permission. 

During an Oracle cloud infrastructure examination in June, Wiz engineers disclosed a cloud isolation security flaw in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. They found that connecting a disk to a VM in another account can be done without any permissions, which immediately made them realize it could become a path for cyberattacks for threat actors. 

Elad Gabay, the security researcher at Wiz made a public statement regarding the vulnerability on September 20. He mentioned the possible severe outcomes of the exploitation of the vulnerability saying this could have led to “severe sensitive data leakage” for all OCI customers and could even be exploited to gain code execution remotely. 

To exploit this vulnerability, attackers need unique identifiers and the oracle cloud infrastructure's environment ID (OCID) of the victim, which can be obtained either through searching on the web or through low-privileged user permission to get the volume OCID from the victim's environment. 

The vulnerability 'AttachMe' is a critical cloud isolation vulnerability, which affects a specific cloud service. The vulnerability affects user data/files by allowing malicious actors to execute severe threats including removing sensitive data from your volume, searching for cleartext secrets to move toward the victim's environment, and making the volume difficult to access, in addition to partitioning the disk that contains the operating system folder. 

The guidelines of OCI state that volumes are a “virtual disk” that allows enough space for computer instances. They are available in the two following varieties in OCI: 

1. Block volume: it is detachable storage, allowing you to expand the storage capacity if needed. 

2. Boot volume: it is a detachable boot volume device containing the image used to boot a system such as operating systems, and supporting systems. 

As soon as Oracle's partner and customer Wiz announced the vulnerability, Oracle took immediate measures to patch the vulnerability while thanking wiz for disclosing the security flaw and helping them in resolving it in the last update advisory of receiving the patch for the vulnerability.
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Office Docs
Cloud Data malware Netskope Office Docs

Cloud-Delivered Malware Increased 68% in Q2, Netskope Reports

 

Cybersecurity firm Netskope published the fifth edition of its Cloud and Threat Report that covers the cloud data risks, menaces, and trends they see throughout the quarter. According to the security firm report, malware delivered over the cloud increased 68% in the second quarter.

"In Q2 2021, 43% of all malware downloads were malicious Office docs, compared to just 20% at the beginning of 2020. This increase comes even after the Emotet takedown, indicating that other groups observed the success of the Emotet crew and have adopted similar techniques," the report said.

“Collaboration apps and development tools account for the next largest percentage, as attackers abuse popular chat apps and code repositories to deliver malware. In total, Netskope detected and blocked malware downloads originating from 290 distinct cloud apps in the first half of 2021." 

Cybersecurity researchers explained that threat actors deliver malware via cloud applications “to bypass blocklists and take advantage of any app-specific allow lists.” Cloud service providers usually eliminate most malware instantly, but some attackers have discovered methods to do significant damage in the short time they spend in a system without being noticed.

According to the company's researchers, cloud storage apps account for more than 66% of cloud malware distribution. Approximately 35% of all workloads are also susceptible to the public internet within AWS, Azure, and GCP, with public IP addresses that are accessible from anywhere on the internet.

“A popular infiltration vector for attackers” are RDP servers which were exposed in 8.3% of workloads. Today, the average company with 500-2,000 employees uses 805 individual apps and cloud services, 97% of which are “unmanaged and often free by business units and users.”

According to Netskope's findings, employees leaving the organization upload three times more data to their personal apps in the last 30 days of employment. The uploads are leaving company data exposed because much of it is uploaded to personal Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, which are popular targets for cybercriminals. 

As stated by chief security scientist and advisory CISO at ThycoticCentrify Joseph Carson, last year’s change to a hybrid work environment requires cybersecurity to evolve from perimeter and network-based to cloud, identity, and privileged access management. 

“Organizations must continue to adapt and prioritize managing and securing access to the business applications and data, such as that similar to the BYOD types of devices, and that means further segregation networks for untrusted devices but secured with strong privileged access security controls to enable productivity and access,” Carson said.
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