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Web Apps
API API security Cyber Attacks Cyber Criminals money theft Web Apps

Financial Service API and Web Application Attacks are up by 257%

 



Various cyber security networks are publishing reports and providing data on various ongoing issues and every day there is a new addition of cyber threat and consequently to the security arsenal. However, managing the attack surface (vulnerabilities, attack vectors, etc) is the biggest challenge that modern society is witnessing. 

In today’s hybrid and multi-cloud environments, apps and APIs are potential targets that cyberhackers can and will exploit. Recently, CDN provider Akamai Technologies, Inc., has released new research in which they have disclosed that year-over-year 257% growth has been seen in web application and API attacks on financial service institutions. 

The report indicates a growing risk to the financial services sector and a shift to more advanced and sophisticated cyberattacks. The report also revealed that DDoS attacks on financial services institutions have grown by 22%. 

Furthermore, the study shows that cybercriminals are using techniques in their phishing campaigns to bypass two-factor authentication solutions. 

It is alarming that various institutions are collecting data on recent cybercrime, as we mentioned in the beginning. In this regard, Enemy at the Gates, published a report that revealed that roughly 80 percent of threat attackers aim their efforts at customers of financial services in an attempt to find paths of least resistance for monetary gain. 

“Companies have moved key infrastructure over to APIs, so the criminals are following the revenue. But on top of that, APIs are newer and, in many cases, don’t have the same level of maturity in security processes and controls, so are more vulnerable,” Steve Winterfeld, advisory CISO at Akamai said. 

Along with this, the company recommended a number of steps that enterprises can take to prevent API-driven threats. 
  • Institutions should invest in technologies to automatically discover, validate and catalog APIs, at the same time developing a security strategy that incorporates API security testing and API access control. 
  • Increasing transparency over what internal and third-party APIs are used for as it ensures that enterprises are in a position to start mitigating potential threats across the attack surface. 
  • Updating phishing defenses to counter the latest MFA attacks with FIDO2-compliant capabilities should be the priority for the institutions. 
“Finally, they are easier to automate attacks against as they are designed for automation. These factors combine to make APIs a smart place for attackers to focus. This is also why CISOs need to focus on them,” Winterfeld added.
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Web Apps
API Cyber Attacks Hackers RCE Security Researchers Web Apps

Web Applications Attacks are on the Rise

 

Imperva Research Labs discovered that attacks are increasing by 22% per quarter in a survey of approximately 4.7 million web application-related cyber security incidents. Worryingly, the pace of increase in such attacks has continued to rise, with a 67.9% increase from Q2 2021 to Q3. One of the most noticeable rises was in Remote Code Execution (RCE) / Remote File Inclusion (RFI) assaults, which increased by 271%. RCE / RFI attacks are used by hackers to steal information, compromise servers, or even take over websites and manipulate their content. 

“Application security was traditionally very low on CISOs’ priority list but, as the attacks targeting applications increase in frequency, it’s getting more attention,” said Eugene Dzihanau, Senior Director of Technology Solutions at EPAM Systems. “The application layer is quickly becoming more exposed to the outside world, drastically increasing the attack surface. Applications are deployed on the public cloud, mobile phones, and IoT devices. Also, applications process a lot more data than before, making them a more frequent target of an attack.” 

As a result of the growth in web app attacks, there has been a significant increase in data breaches. Imperva Research Labs discovered earlier this year that online applications are the source of 50% of all data breaches. With the frequency of breaches increasing by 30% each year and the number of records stolen increasing by an astounding 224%, it is anticipated that 40 billion records will be compromised by the end of 2021, with web application vulnerabilities expected to be responsible for roughly 20 billion. 

“The pandemic placed immense urgency on businesses to get all kinds of digital transformation projects live as quickly as possible, and that is almost certainly a driving factor behind this surge in attacks,” says Peter Klimek, Director of Technology at Imperva. 

The changing nature of application development is also extremely important. Developments such as the rapid growth of APIs and the shift to cloud-native computing are advantageous to DevOps, but these changes in application architecture and the accompanying increased attack surface are making security teams' tasks much harder, according to Peter. 

During the pandemic, losses from fraud and cybercrime have spiraled out of control, with the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau estimating that over £1.3 billion was lost in the first half of 2021 alone, more than three times the amount lost in the same period in 2020. These estimates indicate that the problem will increase during 2022.

The usual approach of the security team identifying vulnerabilities and the development team correcting them will not work; Dzihanau said that the feedback cycle must be swift and collaborative.
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Web Apps
cryptocurrency mining Monero Vulnerability and Exploits Web Apps

Blue Mockingbird , a cryptocurrancy mining campaign exploits web applications


Analysts at Red Canary, a cybersecurity firm have discovered a Monero cryptocurrency-mining campaign that exploits a deserialization vulnerability, CVE-2019-18935 in public-facing web applications built on ASP.NET web framework.


They named it "Blue Mockingbird", it uses the decentralized vulnerability found in Progress Telerik UI front-end offering for ASP.NET AJAX for remote code execution. AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is a tool used for adding the script to a webpage to be processed and executed by the browser.

This particular vulnerability CVE-2019-18935 is found in the RadAsyncUpload function, as stated by National Vulnerability Database. It is exploited by knowing the encryption key (by means of another attack or method).

The analyst traced backed the campaign to December and till April. The cybercriminals are using the unpatched versions of Telerik UI for ASP.NET, where the vulnerability has not been fixed and injecting the XMRig Monero-mining payload through the vulnerability and spreading it through the network.

XMRig is open-source and can be accumulated into custom tooling, as per the investigation by the analyst. Red Canary has discovered three unmistakable execution ways: Execution with rundll32.exe expressly calling the DLL trade fackaaxv; execution utilizing regsvr32.exe utilizing the/s command line choice, and execution with the payload arranged as a Windows Service DLL.

"Each payload comes compiled with a standard list of commonly used Monero-mining domains alongside a Monero wallet address,” state researchers at Red Canary, in a writeup. “So far, we’ve identified two wallet addresses used by Blue Mockingbird that are inactive circulation. Due to the private nature of Monero, we cannot see the balance of these wallets to estimate their success.”

To set up persistence, Blue Mockingbird hackers should initially first gain login and hoist their privileges, which they do utilize different strategies; for example, utilizing a JuicyPotato exploit to raise benefits from an IIS Application Pool Personality virtual account to the NT Authority\SYSTEM account. In another case, the Mimikatz apparatus (the authority marked version) was utilized to get login credentials.

After getting these logins and privileges, the Blue Mockingbird used multiple techniques like COR_PROFILER COM to execute DLL.

“To use COR_PROFILER, they used wmic.exe and Windows Registry modifications to set environment variables and specify a DLL payload,” the writeup briefed.

In preventing threats like these that exploit vulnerabilities, patches for web servers, web applications, and dependencies of the applications are the best firewall.
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Web Apps
Cyber Attacks IOT Security Web Apps

Attacks on IoT devices and WebApps on an extreme rise for the Q3

Ransomware threats and Malware numbers have fallen but are presently more active and dangerous. More than 7.2 Billion virus attacks originated from January to September in the year 2019. Also, 151.9 million ransomware crimes were found.

Important conclusions cover:

  • IoT malware mounted to 25M, a tremendous 33% rise 
  • Encrypted attacks rose to 58% 
  • Web application threats are on the increase, revealing a 37% rise during the same time for last year Malware threats reached 7.2 Billion 
  • Ransomware threats hit 151.9 million 
  • 14% of the malware threats were received from non-standard gates


"The attacks may be dropping down for the moment but the truth is the figures of threats are still extremely high and more dangerous in history. We have reported a rise in geographical threats in America and involving the UK and Germany. The researchers at our lab are also investigating distinct and increasing threat vectors, like surface channel threats and tricks," says The SonicWall Capture Threat Network. “While observing the ransomware range, we also recognize that ransomware attacks tricks have evolved,” says SonicWall CEO and President Bill Conner.

“Earlier, the hackers aimed at the number of viruses but today we are witnessing that hackers concentrate on less more eminent victims for expanding sideways. This change in tricks also witnessed a similar increase in the payment demands through ransomware attacks, as the criminals try to steal high payment from the few, but profitable victims such as hospitals and regional districts." “The evidence reveals that cyber-criminals are becoming better at attacks, more specific and more careful. Companies should be careful and make more stringent safety laws in their institutions to overcome the menaces that our experts have found,” says Conner.

He further adds “we suggest that organizations should adopt a combined and multilayered safety program that gives solid security beyond all systems to avoid being the cover story for cyber attack news”. Phishing threats are matching series with malware and ransomware attacks. However, the attacks are also going down at a rate of 32% each year, a figure that has been the same for most of the time this year.
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