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Top cybersecurity threats for November 2023
Author: Phil Muncaster
On the third Wednesday of every month, the VTRAC holds a Monthly Intelligence Briefing (MIB) to discuss the current security threat landscape, latest cybersecurity trends, news and threat intelligence. Below is the summary of their most recent briefing and here is the November recording of the briefing.
November 2023 cyber threat intelligence briefing
At a glance, this MIB covered:
1. Crypto trading platform Poloniex loses $114M to suspected North Korean attackers
2. LockBit affiliate exploits Citrix flaw to devastating effect
3. Software vendor Atlassian forced to upgrade the severity of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) after widespread exploitation
Top cybersecurity news
November 2023 cybersecurity and threat intelligence news you should know about.
- A security breach at identity specialist Okta impacted all of its customers, some of which suffered follow-on session hijacking attacks
- Verizon analysis has revealed 4,000 known ransomware victims so far this year, already 1,000+ more than 2022
- Former Lizard Squad member "Nopaoh" was placed on the NSA's most wanted list in connection with money laundering for the 2016 Bitfinex heist
- The New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) updated its Cybersecurity Regulation applicable to covered financial institutions to report ransom payments
- Law enforcers delivered a blow to the Ragnar Locker ransomware group in an operation coordinated across 11 countries
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Crypto trading platform Poloniex loses $114m to suspected North Korean attackers
Top takeaways:
- Threat actors stole over $114m from a cryptocurrency trading platform
- A breached hot wallet could be to blame, most likely due to a leaked private key
- North Korean (Lazarus group) threat actors are suspected
Threat actors have stolen over $114m in digital currency from cryptocurrency trading company Poloniex. Although precise details are still unknown at the time of writing, the attackers are believed to have targeted the firm's hot wallets. That fits with Poloniex's decision to disable the wallet system "for maintenance" following the incident. A leaked private key could be to blame. Poloniex and Tron founder, Justin Sun, has claimed that a "portion" of the stolen assets have been frozen and that losses are "within manageable limits"—in other words, no customers should lose funds.
The firm is offering a 5% "white hat bounty" to its attackers in exchange for the return of the funds to the affected wallets. However, that offer has so far been ignored by the threat actors. That could be because sources suspect that the hackers could be the North Korean group Lazarus. Researchers claim to have observed similar behavior to the heist at Stake.com earlier this year, with attackers saving different stolen tokens at different addresses. If true, this would be the latest in a long line of North Korean cryptocurrency thefts this year, including Stake.com ($41m), CoinEx ($70m), Atomic Wallet ($35m), Alphapo ($60m) and CoinsPaid ($37m).
LockBit changes tack after affiliate exploits Citrix flaw to devastating effect
Top takeaways:
- A LockBit affiliate has exploited a critical Citrix vulnerability to compromise several big-name firms
- Allen & Overy, Boeing, ICBC and DP World are among the known victims
- Over 10,000 Citrix servers are still thought to be exposed
An affiliate of the prolific ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) outfit LockBit has been linked to a series of breaches at several major global organizations—all within the space of a few days. These include London-headquartered law firm Allen & Overy, Boeing, the U.S. arm of Chinese banking giant ICBC, and Australian port operator DP World. It's unclear what impact the compromises may have on victim organizations, although experts suggested it could be weeks before affected ports in Australia will be able to accept export cargo, as a result of the DP World breach.
The common thread appears to be the exploitation of a critical Citrix vulnerability named "Bleed" (CVE-2023-4966) for which fixes were made available more than a month ago. As the MOVEit campaign highlighted, a single flaw in a widely used product can have a devastating downstream impact on corporate customers. Researchers claimed that, as of November 14, over 10,000 Citrix servers were still vulnerable to the flaw.
Atlassian forced to upgrade severity of CVE to 10.0 after widespread exploitation
Top takeaways:
- Atlassian reported widespread exploitation of a vulnerability in its Confluence product
- The vendor upgraded the severity of the vulnerability to CVSS 10.0
- Ransomware actors were quick to exploit the bug to compromise victims
Software vendor Atlassian upgraded the severity of a critical vulnerability in its Confluence product after widespread attacks exploited the bug. The firm originally posted a cybersecurity advisory about the improper authorization vulnerability on October 31. The bug (CVE-2023-22518) affects all versions of its Confluence Data Center and Server product (although not Atlassian Cloud sites accessed via atlassian.net). It was originally given a CVSS score of 9.1. Atlassian urged sysadmins to patch, warning that organizations are "vulnerable to significant data loss if exploited by an unauthenticated attacker."
However, the firm updated its guidance on November 2, claiming that it had found "publicly posted critical information about the vulnerability which increases risk of exploitation." Just a day later, it revealed active exploitation. Three days after that, on November 6, the firm upgraded its CVSS score to the maximum, 10.0, due to the "change in the scope of the attack." Widespread exploitation was observed, including attempts to deploy the Cerber ransomware. The incident highlights the speed with which threat actors can pounce on newly published vulnerabilities/exploits, and the need for rapid incident response and risk-based patch management.
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The author of this content is a paid contributor for Verizon.
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