Cybersecurity Weekly Report: What’s Really Changing in Today’s Threat Landscape?

This week was overall a quiet week in regards to major breaches or any wild publicity-grabbing ransomware attacks. This week was characterized by a subtler but much more significant change: how attacks are being designed and executed. Unlike recent years when attacks focused on disrupting a network or resource, attackers today have clearly begun developing methods that allow them to remain persistent on the system, blend in with it, and ultimately extract value from it without being detected.

The reason for this is that attackers now have a better understanding of how today’s networks operate than they did two to four years ago. In fact, today’s organizations typically have stronger perimeter controls compared to their internal environment. Therefore, the complexity of today’s networks provides many more opportunities for an attacker to exploit those complexities.

The attack is now possible because attackers focus on areas that have lower visibility, avoiding obvious areas that would generate alarms. Therefore, the landscape of threats exists in a continually changing environment where there are no obvious indicators of breach or compromise but yet continue to have an increasing level of risk existing in the network environment.

Furthermore, this is the main reason that the demand for good cybersecurity training courses is surging, since cyber security professionals are trying to gain an understanding of the various types of attack methods and implement the necessary updated skill set to successfully defend against legitimate security threats.

Why Are Identity-Based Attacks Becoming More Dangerous?

The continued development of identity-based attacks is among the biggest trends from this week. Attackers are changing their tactics from brute-force attempts to be patient by using compromised accounts and stolen sessions to log into systems and act as authentic users.

Detection of this activity is very challenging because it will show up within acceptable behaviour.

Another disturbing trend is the way attackers are taking advantage of access once they have obtained it. They do not have any reason to rush to exploit access; rather, they will take time to watch and understand the behaviour of a given system, and gradually build greater control. This creates a long-term risk and is not something that many traditional security systems are designed to deal with.

• Session hijacking has become increasingly prevalent compared to traditional password theft.
• Indirect methods have been employed to bypass multi-factor authentication.
• To avoid triggering alerts, access to systems is occurring in a gradual manner.
• Movement of data within systems also occurs in small increments.

Are APIs the Most Overlooked Security Risk Right Now?

APIs have become central components of today’s digital ecosystem by connecting various applications, services, and platforms. However, this week has been a reminder of how APIs may also be some of the least monitored areas within an organization. While the actual vulnerability of an API might not always be apparent, the way an API has been configured, as well as the amount of data that it is exposing may constitute an attack.

In many cases, an attacker may not need to “break” anything in order to exploit APIs. Instead, an attacker may exploit an API by simply interacting with it in a manner that causes them to extract more data than was intended.

Because these interactions appear to be legitimate, they can remain undetected for long periods of time, creating a slow but steady data exposure risk that is often difficult to correlate back to a particular event.

Why Are Attackers Choosing to Stay Invisible?

Over recent years, the way attackers act will often include a strong focus on avoiding being detected or carrying out “silent” attack activities. Their primary objective will not be to achieve an immediate impact anymore, but instead they will seek to go undetected for as long as they can. By remaining undetected, the attacker can gather more detail about their target environment; therefore, increasing the overall value of their attack.

The biggest problem that security organizations now face when responding to “silent” type assaults is that they know nothing is wrong until they are attacked. Systems will continue to act as they always have; users will not notice that any thing is occurring that is unusual, nor will they observe any type of irregular activity through traditional means. All of these factors create an illusion of security while the attack is ongoing in the background.

• Data is collected gradually rather than all at once
• Systems remain fully operational without disruption
• No immediate alerts or warnings are triggered
• Activity closely resembles legitimate user behavior

Are SaaS Tools Creating Hidden Security Gaps?

Despite having increased the speed and flexibility of business operations like never before, SaaS platforms have also added lots of complexity into business processes. Organizations commonly use several tools connected together. Each connection represents another area of risk.

Interestingly enough, vulnerabilities are frequently not found in the primary SaaS (Software as a Service) application itself, but instead are found in the integrations, permissions, or dead/obsolete connections that are no longer managed. These blind spots are the result of having connection points that provide access to an organization’s system but lack any level of ongoing monitoring.

Most organizations do not know exactly how many companies are connected to their environments. This lack of awareness has created a greater opportunity for attackers to successfully exploit these connections with little to no resistance.

Why Are Browsers Becoming a Cybersecurity Concern?

The web browser has become one of the most important tools used in the day-to-day execution of modern businesses. Communication and accessing files occur in the web browser, thus it is a target for attackers who look to exploit access points in trusted networks.

Ultimately, it is often too easy for users to experience a browser-based threat as part of their “normal” experience. A pop-up message, an extension, or a redirect appears to be a normal operational request, thus users do not immediately have a heightened level of suspicion. Thus, attackers are able to utilize this “normal feel” to their advantage; guiding users into performing actions that would not appear to be risky, but ultimately put the user at risk.

Examples of this would include:

• Extensions that are malicious in nature and can collect user data without the user’s knowledge.
• Fake prompts that encourage users to download or provide permission to items that are not legitimate.
• Session-based attacks that occur while the user is in an active session.
• Redirecting users to phony pages that appear trustworthy.

How Real Is the Threat of Deepfake Attacks?

Currently, deepfake technologies are being used increasingly in practical scenarios from experimentation and developing these technologies into practice form. Though there are not significant numbers at this point, enough evidence has emerged to show concern over such technologies having the ability to emulate human speech or voice, and create realistic forms of communication represents an entirely new type of threat which cannot be determined through conventional measures of detection.

In the past week, we have witnessed how through using communication itself as a means to identify a possible vulnerability. A message that may appear authentic and a person’s voice that sounds similar to someone we trust could produce cognitive biases that circumvent rational and functional systems of verification in high-stress contexts. This places a portion of the cybersecurity risk associated with these types of threats into the hands of decision-makers.

Unlike technical vulnerabilities, threats created by way of perception (rather than true system vulnerabilities) are likely to be difficult to manage or control.

Are Development Pipelines Now a Target?

The other big change was the increased interest in the development environment; attackers no longer wait for a system to go live before they start trying to alter it during the development process. By doing this, the attacker can embed changes directly into the system from its inception.

The issue here is that these changes may not be detectable right away as a result of their being hidden within a code or configuration, making it difficult to identify them after they have been introduced.

• Unauthorized access to repositories
• Small modifications introduced during build phases
• Poor permission management controls in CI/CD pipelines
• Compromised developer accounts

Is Cybercrime Becoming More Organized?

Increased organization and structure of cyber activity has been observed recently. Cyber attacks are not stemming from an isolated or random source any longer; attacks appear to be coordinated by multiple groups working together to carry out an attack in multiple stages.

The division of responsibility among these multiple groups helps to improve efficiency. One group may be focused on access to a target, another on exploiting the access, and thirdly, another will be focused on monetizing the results. The increased level of organization of the groups involved will increase the speed and effectiveness of the attack.

For organizations to respond effectively to cyber attacks, they must deal with a system that has been designed for distribution globally, that can change to meet any need, and that can improve or grow as a result of experience with continued use.

Can Trusted Tools Become a Security Risk?

This week, we have encountered a very understated challenge, that of properly utilizing safe tools in your organization. Rather than introducing new tools, attackers are finding ways to manipulate existing tools that have been established as “trusted” in your organization.

Since many of these tools have become commonplace in people’s daily lives at work or at home, when they are used incorrectly, it doesn’t draw any immediate attention, which allows them to blend into the “business as usual” category of activity.

Examples would be:

•  admin tools used differently than they were designed for;
•  monitoring systems being queried with much more volume than is normal;
•  scripts being executed at odd times.

The tool itself is not the problem; rather, it is how the tool is utilized in certain places.

Why Is Cybersecurity Becoming a Must-Have Career Skill?

As the threats facing the world continue to change, there is a rapidly increasing need for trained cybersecurity experts with a comprehensive understanding of how many areas connect to provide protection against potential breaches in security. Current companies are searching for employees with expertise in numerous areas of the cybersecurity field.

A properly designed cybersecurity training program will assist individuals to transition from theory to practice and equip them with practical skills that can be put into use in the field. At the Boston Institute, we are seeing an increase in the number of employees being trained on the latest trends and challenges faced by the industry.

The training of today’s cybersecurity professionals includes not only a body of knowledge based on technical expertise but also critical thinking abilities, proficiency with behavioral analysis tools, and an effective response method to an ongoing and constantly evolving threat.

This growing demand for practical skills is also reflected in real success stories. For example, a learner from Boston Institute of Analytics transitioned into a Cybersecurity Specialist role after completing hands-on training in ethical hacking, network security, and threat analysis. Experiences like this show how a strong foundation from a cyber security course institute can help professionals move from learning concepts to solving real-world security challenges.

How Are Companies Adapting to These Changes?

Organizations have begun to leave behind the traditional method of using only one security layer by selecting other methods that contain various layers. Their focus is now on prevention but have also been investing in ways to identify and respond to events in addition to preventing the event from happening in the first place.

For example, an organization with repeated logins from suspicious locations now utilizes a layered approach consisting of monitoring their entire network infrastructure rather than a single location. Key components of their monitoring approach include:

• Monitoring login activity across all applications to monitor for abnormal logins.
• Monitoring application programming interfaces (APIs) for abnormal access to data.
• Monitoring device behavior for unusual activity on the endpoints.

By implementing this method to monitor their entire network infrastructure, they are able to monitor for threats sooner than through the use of traditional security methods, as well as reduce the time it takes to respond to potential threats.

Conclusion: What Does This Mean Going Forward?

What we’re seeing from attacks this week isn’t just the sheer volume of them; we’re witnessing a transformation in the nature of these attacks. Cyber threats are becoming more strategic and therefore much quieter. They are being developed and executed by attackers in alignment with real-world systems and user behavior.

Consequently, organizations must not only change their tools but will also need to change their mindset. Understanding one’s own behavior as well as gaining better visibility into one’s environment and investing in the right skillset will all become necessary elements of successful 21st-century cybersecurity.

This situation is also an opportunity for professionals in this field. Obtaining expertise by completing a cybersecurity course is a great first step; however, pairing that with some education from anethical hacking training institute will help build out an understanding of how attacks are actually done and how they could be prevented or mitigated in real life.

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