Multi-factor Authentication | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

U.S. cybersecurity and intelligence agencies have released a joint advisory about a cybercriminal group known as  Scattered Spider  that's known to employ sophisticated phishing tactics to infiltrate targets. "Scattered Spider threat actors typically engage in data theft for extortion using multiple social engineering techniques and have recently leveraged BlackCat/ALPHV ransomware alongside their usual TTPs," the agencies  said . The threat actor, also tracked under the monikers Muddled Libra, Octo Tempest, 0ktapus, Scatter Swine, Star Fraud, and UNC3944, was the subject of an  extensive profile  from Microsoft last month, with the tech giant calling it "one of the most dangerous financial criminal groups." Considered as experts in social engineering, Scattered Spider is known to rely on phishing, prompt bombing, and SIM swapping attacks to obtain credentials, install remote access tools, and bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA). Scattered Spider, li...

Malaysian law enforcement authorities have  announced  the takedown of a phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) operation called  BulletProofLink . The Royal Malaysia Police said the effort, which was carried out with assistance from the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on November 6, 2023, was based on information that the threat actors behind the platform were based out of the country. To that end, eight individuals aged between 29 and 56, including the syndicate's mastermind, have been arrested across different locations in Sabah, Selangor, Perak, and Kuala Lumpur, New Straits Times  reported . Along with the arrests, authorities confiscated servers, computers, jewelry, vehicles, and cryptocurrency wallets containing approximately $213,000. BulletProofLink , also called BulletProftLink, is known for offering ready-to-use phishing templates on a subscription basis to other actors for conducting credential harvesting ca...

When you roll out a security product, you assume it will fulfill its purpose. Unfortunately, however, this often turns out not to be the case. A new report, produced by Osterman Research and commissioned by Silverfort, reveals that MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) and PAM (Privileged Access Management) solutions are almost never deployed comprehensively enough to provide resilience to identity threats. As well, service accounts – which are typically beyond the scope of protection of these controls – are alarmingly exposed to malicious compromise. These findings and many more can be found in  "The State of the Identity Attack Surface: Insights Into Critical Protection Gaps ,"  the first report that analyzes organizational resilience to identity threats.  What is the "Identity Attack Surface"?  The identity attack surface is any organizational resource that can be accessed via username and password. The main way that attackers target this attack surface is through ...

Just a few short years ago, lateral movement was a tactic confined to top APT cybercrime organizations and nation-state operators. Today, however, it has become a commoditized tool, well within the skillset of any ransomware threat actor. This makes real-time detection and prevention of lateral movement a necessity to organizations of all sizes and across all industries. But the disturbing truth is that there is actually no tool in the current security stack that can provide this real-time protection, creating what is arguably the most critical security weakness in an organization's security architecture.  In this article, we'll walk through the most essentials questions around the challenge of lateral movement protection, understand why multifactor authentication (MFA) and service account protection are the gaps that make it possible, and learn how Silverfort's platform turns the tables on attackers and makes lateral movement protection finally within reach. Upcoming We...

Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) has long ago become a standard security practice. With a wide consensus on its ability to fend off more than 99% percent of account takeover attacks, it's no wonder why security architects regard it as a must-have in their environments. However, what seems to be less known are the inherent coverage limitations of traditional MFA solutions. While compatible with RDP connection and local desktop logins,  they offer no protection to remote command line access tools like PsExec, Remote PowerShell and their likes. In practice, it means that workstations and servers remain as vulnerable to lateral movement, ransomware spread and other identity threats despite having a fully functioning MFA solution on. For the adversary it's just a matter of taking the command line path instead of the RDP to log in as if there was not protection installed at all. In this article we'll explore this blind spot, understand its root cause and implications, and view ...