Threat Intelligence | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Threat hunting is the process of looking for malicious activity and its artifacts in a computer system or network. Threat hunting is carried out intermittently in an environment regardless of whether or not threats have been discovered by automated security solutions. Some threat actors may stay dormant in an organization's infrastructure, extending their access while waiting for the right opportunity to exploit discovered weaknesses. Therefore it is important to perform threat hunting to identify malicious actors in an environment and stop them before they achieve their ultimate goal.  To effectively perform threat hunting, the threat hunter must have a systematic approach to emulating possible adversary behavior. This adversarial behavior determines what artifacts can be searched for that indicate ongoing or past malicious activity. MITRE ATT&CK Over the years, the security community has observed that threat actors have commonly used many tactics, techniques, and procedu

Microsoft on Thursday attributed the recent spate of ransomware incidents targeting transportation and logistics sectors in Ukraine and Poland to a threat cluster that shares overlaps with the Russian state-sponsored  Sandworm group . The attacks, which were disclosed by the tech giant last month, involved a strain of previously undocumented malware called  Prestige  and is said to have taken place within an hour of each other across all victims. The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) is now tracking the threat actor under its element-themed moniker Iridium (née DEV-0960), a Russia-based group that's publicly tracked by the name Sandworm (aka Iron Viking, TeleBots, and Voodoo Bear). "This attribution assessment is based on forensic artifacts, as well as overlaps in victimology, tradecraft, capabilities, and infrastructure, with known Iridium activity," MSTIC  said  in an update. The company also further assessed the group to have orchestrated compromise act

As a vCISO, you are responsible for your client's cybersecurity strategy and risk governance. This incorporates multiple disciplines, from research to execution to reporting. Recently, we published a comprehensive playbook for vCISOs, "Your First 100 Days as a vCISO – 5 Steps to Success" , which covers all the phases entailed in launching a successful vCISO engagement, along with recommended actions to take, and step-by-step examples.  Following the success of the playbook and the requests that have come in from the MSP/MSSP community, we decided to drill down into specific parts of vCISO reporting and provide more color and examples. In this article, we focus on how to create compelling narratives within a report, which has a significant impact on the overall MSP/MSSP value proposition.  This article brings the highlights of a recent guided workshop we held, covering what makes a successful report and how it can be used to enhance engagement with your cyber security clients.

Many endpoint security vendors are beginning to offer their applications only in the cloud, sunsetting their on-premise offerings. This approach may be beneficial to the vendor, but many clients continue to need on-premise solutions. Vendors that sunset on-premise solutions force clients that prefer on-premise solutions to either change their operating environment and approach or change vendors. Fortunately, some vendors continue to provide their offerings in both cloud and on-premise versions. One such company is Cynet , which allows clients to deploy their EDR and XDR (Extended Detection and Response) solutions in on-premise, cloud, and hybrid cloud delivery models. Clients can access the solution in any way they see fit now and into the future. This provides an alternative for organizations that do not want to be forced to move into the cloud. Cloud vs. On-Premise The cloud vs. on-premise argument continues to rage. Recently, however, it seems that everyone is jumpin

VirusTotal, the famous multi-antivirus scanning service owned by Google, recently announced new threat detection capabilities it added with the help of an Israeli cybersecurity firm. VirusTotal provides a free online service that analyzes suspicious files and URLs to detect malware and automatically shares them with the security community. With the onslaught of new malware types and samples, researchers rely on the rapid discovery and sharing provided by VirusTotal to keep their companies safe from attacks. VirusTotal relies on a continuous stream of new malware discoveries to protect its members from significant damage. Cynet , the creator of the autonomous breach protection platform, has now integrated its Cynet Detection Engine into VirusTotal. The benefits of this partnership are twofold. First, Cynet provides the VirusTotal partner network cutting-edge threat intelligence from its ML-based detection engine (CyAI) that actively protects the company's clients around th

It's no secret that expecting security controls to block every infection vector is unrealistic. For most organizations, the chances are very high that threats have already penetrated their defenses and are lurking in their network. Pinpointing such threats quickly is essential, but traditional approaches to finding these needles in the haystack often fall short. Now there is a unique opportunity for more feasible, more effective threat hunting capabilities, and it stems from a most unusual effort: rethinking the approach to wide area networking. When we look at the cyber kill-chain today, there are two major phases—infection and post-infection. Security experts acknowledge that organizations can get infected no matter how good their security controls are. The simple fact is, infection vectors change rapidly and continuously. Attackers use new delivery methods – everything from social engineering to zero-day exploits – and they often are effective. In most cases, an infecti

Cyber security is a major challenge in today's world, as cyber attacks have become more automated and difficult to detect, where traditional cyber security practices and systems are no longer sufficient to protect businesses, governments, and other organizations. In past few years, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning had made a name for itself in the field of cyber security, helping IT and security professionals more efficiently and quickly identify risks and anticipate problems before they occur. The good news is that if you are a Windows 10 user, Microsoft will now offer you a machine learning based threat intelligence feature via its inbuilt Windows security service, which will improve the security capabilities available on Windows 10 devices. But, the bad news is that it is not free. The company is offering this "differentiated intelligence" feature on its newly added service to Windows 10, dubbed Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (WDAT

Simply put, threat intelligence is knowledge that helps you identify security threats and make informed decisions. Threat intelligence can help you solve the following problems: How do I keep up to date on the overwhelming amount of information on security threats…including bad actors, methods, vulnerabilities, targets, etc.? How do I get more proactive about future security threats? How do I inform my leaders about the dangers and repercussions of specific security threats? Threat Intelligence: What is it? Threat intelligence has received a lot of attention lately. While there are many different definitions, here are a few that get quoted often: Threat intelligence is evidence-based knowledge, including context, mechanisms, indicators, implications and actionable advice, about an existing or emerging menace or hazard to assets that can be used to inform decisions regarding the subject's response to that menace or hazard. – Gartner   The set of data collected, assessed and app

For years, the systems and networks that run our businesses have been secured by the efforts of IT and security practitioners acting on their own. We continue to deploy the latest countermeasures, always trying to keep up with adversaries. Criminal attackers, on the other hand, have shared information quite successfully to facilitate their exploits. Couple this with the "attacker's advantage" of choosing where, when and how to launch attacks, and it is no surprise that collaborative hackers appear to be winning against even the largest companies, despite generous spending on security tools. As an industry, we need a threat-sharing solution that is open and available to everyone for the mutual benefit of all who contribute. With this goal in mind, AlienVault created the Open Threat Exchange™ (OTX) . What is the Open Threat Exchange (OTX)? OTX is an open information sharing and analysis network that provides real-time, actionable threat information submitted by over 8,

Security firm FireEye has released a new report  detailing cyber espionage attacks on European Ministries of Foreign Affairs (MFA) during recent G20 meetings by Chinese Hackers . According to FireEye's researcher Nart Villeneuve , hackers infiltrated the computer networks of five European foreign ministries by sending emails containing malware files to staff and gained access to their systems to steal credentials and high-value information. "We believe that the Ke3chang attackers are operating out of China and have been active since at least 2010," The cyber espionage campaign named as " Operation Ke3chang " and if the victim will download & open the malware file which disguised itself as files detailing a possible intervention in Syria ( US_military_options_in_Syria . pdf . zip ), it gets installed on the victim's computer with a backdoor. " They have also leveraged a Java zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2012-4681), as well as older, reliable exploits for Mi

Last week Council on Foreign Relations website was compromised and recently hit by a drive-by attack using a zero day Internet Explorer 6 vulnerability for Cyber Espionage attack, suspected by Chinese Hackers. Later Microsoft confirmed that  Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 are vulnerable to remote code execution hacks. According to researcher  Eric Romang , CFR watering hole attack (CVE-2012-4969 and CVE-2012-4792) has also target Capstone Turbine Corporation website since mid-September. He was able to find a cached version of the first JavaScript that starts the drive-by attack. Then on further search finds that by doing a Google dork search site:capstoneturbine.com "_include"  we can see something strangely like CFR.org "news_14242aa.html" file. Capstone Turbine Corporation is the world's leading producer of low-emission microturbine systems, and was first to market with commercially viable microturbine energy products. Capstone Turbine has shipped thousands of Capstone MicroTurbi

Iran's Intelligence Minister, Heydar Moslehi, has publicly admitted to hacking the emails of opposition members. Iranian news agencies, including ILNA, quoted Moslehi stating that emails were the primary communication tool for opposition members during last year's postelection protests. The Intelligence Ministry was able to break into these emails and defeat "the enemy." "One of the officials, in his speech, carelessly announced that we have access to the emails. Within 24 hours, they coded and password-protected their emails," Moslehi said. "Of course, we in the Intelligence Ministry broke those passwords within 48 hours." Moslehi mentioned that emails were exchanged between "foreigners and their elements inside Iran." Speaking at a December 25 conference on the achievements of Iranian expatriates at Tehran's Shahid Beheshti University, he said Iran controlled "many dimensions" of the postelection protests by monitoring email. He accused the United States of