All posts by Rapid7

PenTales: “User enumeration is not a vulnerability” – I beg to differ

Post Syndicated from Rapid7 original https://blog.rapid7.com/2023/07/06/user-enumeration-is-not-a-vulnerability-i-beg-to-differ/

PenTales: “User enumeration is not a vulnerability” – I beg to differ

At Rapid7 we love a good pentest story. So often they show the cleverness, skill, resilience, and dedication to our customer’s security that can only come from actively trying to break it! In this series, we’re going to share some of our favorite tales from the pen test desk and hopefully highlight some ways you can improve your own organization’s security.

This is a story of how a well defended network was compromised through user enumeration; a vulnerability which many organizations do not consider to be a “real” vulnerability. For the uninitiated, user enumeration vulnerabilities are application behaviors that could allow a malicious actor to determine valid usernames on a service. They are commonly exploited to set up follow-on attempts to guess users’ passwords.

I was tasked with performing an external penetration test for a midsize company. I began the engagement by performing port scanning and service enumeration, and discovered a small number of accessible web services. This led to a wonderful discovery: Outlook Web Access (OWA) was exposed! OWA suffers from a user enumeration vulnerability in which authentication requests involving valid usernames produce different responses than authentication requests involving invalid usernames. This could allow a malicious actor to submit unlimited authentication requests with different usernames, and use the responses to determine whether a given user exists in Exchange or not. We believe that Microsoft has been aware of this problem since 2014 but has not yet patched it. Some security professionals speculate that this may be because Microsoft (like many other companies) does not consider user enumeration to be a vulnerability.

I quickly began user enumeration against this service. After harvesting employee names from LinkedIn, marketing databases, and password breach databases, I coerced the employee names into a username format and verified them against OWA. Once done, I pulled popular names from US Census data and found additional valid usernames. When all was finished I was in possession of hundreds of usernames I could employ for password spray attacks set up through Metasploit. It took just one attempt to find success: a support engineer was using a classic weak password which is compliant with most password policies, [season][year][special character]!

I logged into this user’s email, enumerated their inbox, and found users sending support requests that contained passwords and sensitive information over plaintext! If a malicious actor were to obtain these, they could potentially log into other accounts owned by this company’s clients or employees given the prevalence of password reuse. I also extracted the Exchange Global Address List that contained every email address in the company which would prove incredibly useful for further password spray attacks (or in the hands of a malicious actor, for a business email compromise attack).

Finally, I observed that VMware Horizon, a system used to provide remote access to employee workstations, was accessible to the public internet. When attempting to log in using the compromised credentials it was discovered that multifactor authentication was not being employed. I identified an active Windows virtual machine and logged in over RDP, giving me a foothold in the client’s internal network. This entire attack chain took less than an hour and the ingress into internal systems went undetected by my client.

My client was stunned to say the least, but through our partnership we identified a set of controls which would mitigate all of the identified vulnerabilities. Our subsequent conversations also were able to surface other issues outside of the pentest scope which we helped address, and together we were able to dramatically reduce their organization’s attack surface.

We believe this assessment demonstrates the value of a penetration test: vulnerability scans will not flag findings such as OWA user enumeration, users employing weak passwords that still comply with password policies, and a lack of MFA. Through our penetration testing assessments, we can also demonstrate a more holistic picture of the risks that our clients face by identifying and chaining disparate vulnerabilities together in the way that only a skilled human can. We can then partner with them to ensure swift mitigation using a strategy that is tailor made for the client’s individual environment.

Showcasing SecOps Metrics That Matter

Post Syndicated from Rapid7 original https://blog.rapid7.com/2023/07/06/showcasing-secops-metrics-that-matter/

Showcasing SecOps Metrics That Matter

This year, new rules from the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) about board-level expertise, risk management, and public disclosures will take effect. The European Union is updating its regulations, as well. To meet these new requirements, organizations will need to explain to shareholders exactly how they assess cyber risk, describe security policies, and prove a significant level of board oversight.

In this climate, security leaders will be expected to advise the C-suite on SecOps activities. As a security professional, this can be a challenge. It’s also an opportunity to shape the structure and execution of business and go-to-market decisions.

Our latest ebook, Presenting Upward: How to Showcase SecOps Metrics That Matter offers practical and actionable advice on how to present security metrics in a language execs understand.

About those metrics

Cybersecurity metrics are essential to understand where you’re succeeding and where you may need to make changes.

Some examples include:

Number and disposition of security incidents: You have no control of this, but it gives execs insight into the risk they face. There’s an attack every 39 seconds somewhere. What’s life like in your security operation?

Mean time-to-detection (MTTD): This metric gives insight into both efficacy of tools and coverage of data (is the detection coming from a reported incident vs. a tool, etc.).

Mean time-to-respond (MTTR): This also gives insight into your ability to respond and whether your tools and processes meet your threats and use cases.

Cost-per-incident: This gives you insight into efficiency of process, tooling, and also potential staffing shortcomings (like the number of people or specific skills).

There are many other metrics you may need to track to understand your cybersecurity readiness. Good metrics will differ for every organization, depending on your risks, needs, compliance requirements, desired business outcomes, security maturity, and more.

Stories + metrics = success

Generally speaking, executives don’t usually want to get too deep in the weeds. So, your ability to present metrics in a way they understand is critical to achieve cybersecurity goals.

Execs typically want answers to questions like:

  • What are our risks, and how are we addressing them?
  • How secure are we compared to similar organizations?
  • Are we budgeting the right amount for cybersecurity?
  • Where do we have opportunities for efficiencies or consolidation?
  • How are we addressing that thing in the news?

So, when presenting to execs it’s essential to put metrics into context. One way to do this is to craft a narrative that brings metrics to life. Stories often have more of an impact than facts and figures alone. This isn’t anecdotal; neuroscience has shown that when we are presented with a story, we understand the information more deeply, remember longer, and are more likely to factor what it taught us into future decisions.
For more tips on crafting an effective narrative, and much more, download Presenting Upward: How to Showcase SecOps Metrics That Matter now.

Alerting Rules!: InsightIDR Raises the Bar for Visibility and Coverage

Post Syndicated from Rapid7 original https://blog.rapid7.com/2023/07/06/alerting-rules-insightidr-raises-the-bar-for-visibility-and-coverage/

Alerting Rules!: InsightIDR Raises the Bar for Visibility and Coverage

By George Schneider, Information Security Manager at Listrak

I’ve worked in cybersecurity for over two decades, so I’ve seen plenty of platforms come and go—some even crash and burn. But Rapid7, specifically InsightIDR, has consistently performed above expectations. In fact, InsightIDR has become an essential resource for maintaining my company’s cybersecurity posture.

Alerting Rules!

Back in the early days, a SIEM didn’t come with a bunch of standardized alerting rules. We had to write all of our own rules to actually find what we were looking for. Today, instead of spending six hours a day hunting for threats, InsightIDR does a lot of the work for the practitioner. Now, we spend a maximum of one hour a day responding to alerts.

In addition to saving time, the out-of-the-box rules are very effective; they find things that our other security products can’t detect. This is a key reason I’ve been 100% happy with Rapid7. As a user, I just know it’s functional. It’s clear that InsightIDR is designed by and for users—there’s no fluff, and the kinks are already ironed out. Not only am I saving time and company resources, the solution is a joy to use.

Source Coverage

When scouting SIEM options, we wanted a platform that could ingest a lot of different log sources. Rapid7 covered all of the elements we use in the big platforms and various security appliances we have—and some in the cloud too. InsightIDR can ingest logs from all sources and correlate them (a key to any high-functioning SIEM) on day one.

Trust the Process

I can honestly say this is the first time I’ve ever used a product that adds new features and functionality every single quarter. It’s not just a new pretty interface either, Rapid7 consistently adds capabilities that move the product forward.

What’s also wonderful is that Rapid7 listens to customers, especially their feedback. Not to toot my own horn, but they’ve even released a handful of feature requests that I submitted over the years. So I can say with absolute sincerity that these improvements actually benefit SOC teams. They make us better at detecting the stuff that we’re most concerned about.

Visibility and Coverage, Thanks, Insight Agent!

If you’re not familiar with Insight Agent, it’s time to get acquainted. Insight Agent is critical for running forensics on a machine. If I have a machine that gets flagged for something through an automated alert, I can quickly jump in without delay because of the Insight Agent. I get lots of worthwhile information that helps me consistently finish investigations in a timely manner. I know in pretty short order whether an alert is nefarious or just a false positive.

And this is all built into the Rapid7 platform—it doesn’t require customization or installations to get up and running. You truly have a single pane of glass to do all of this, and it’s somehow super intuitive as well. Using the endpoint agent, I don’t have to switch over to something else to do additional work. It’s all right there.

“Customer support at Rapid7 is outstanding. It’s the gold standard that I now use to evaluate all other customer support.”

Thinking Outside the Pane

I also have to give a shout out to the Rapid7 community. The community at discuss.rapid7.com/ and the support I get from our Rapid7 account team cannot be overlooked. When I have a question about how to use something, my first step is to visit Discuss to see if somebody else has already posted some information about it—often saving me valuable time. If that doesn’t answer my question, the customer support at Rapid7 is outstanding. It’s the gold standard that I now use to evaluate all other customer support.

The Bottom Line

My bottom line? I love this product (and the people). To say it’s useful is an understatement. I would never recommend a product that I didn’t think was outstanding. I firmly believe in the Rapid7InsightIDR and experience how useful it is every day. So does my team.

To learn more about InsightIDR, our industry-leading cloud-native SIEM solution, watch this on-demand demo.

Four Signs You Need to Consolidate Your Tech Stack

Post Syndicated from Rapid7 original https://blog.rapid7.com/2023/06/29/four-signs-you-need-to-consolidate-your-tech-stack/

Four Signs You Need to Consolidate Your Tech Stack

Recently, Gartner surveyed security professionals and found that over 50% of the respondents were looking to consolidate their security tech stack. Why? These professionals recognized that consolidation is key to achieving their goals of improving productivity, visibility, and reporting as well as bridging staff resourcing gaps.

Additionally, threat actors are leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning tools to launch more sophisticated, high-impact attacks. Defending against AI-assisted attacks requires greater network visibility and operational efficiency—not to mention the automated detection and response capabilities in most consolidation offerings. As the threat landscape evolves, streamlining your tech stack can also improve your organization’s security posture and protect against financial losses. This is an important consideration, as the cost of the average data breach has reached $9.44 million in the U.S.  

While the benefits of consolidation are clear, organizations often miss the tell-tale signs that it is time to consolidate their tech stack. Recognizing these signs can help your organization identify the areas where it’s most needed and develop a seamless implementation strategy that minimizes disruption.

Four tell-tale signs it’s time to consolidate your security tools

Sign #1: You can’t track (or visualize) your tech stack

When was the last time you cataloged your resources? This may seem a little on the nose, but one of the best ways to tell if your organization is in need of consolidation is that you’re unable to track or visualize your tech stack.

In 2021, IBM found that 45% of security teams used more than 20 tools when investigating and responding to a cybersecurity incident. These tools are a drain on your budget and can even present security risks. Excess tech is less likely to be monitored for compliance and needlessly broadens your network’s attack surface.

Visibility into your tech stack is just as important as visibility across your network. The inability to track and visualize your tech stack can indicate that your organization is working with tools that are obsolete, underutilized, or ignored.

Sign #2: Your mean time to resolve (MTTR) is high

Did you know it takes the average company a staggering 277 days to identify and contain a breach? Finding and resolving breaches quickly is key to protecting your systems and data. When your MTTR is high, it’s indicative of operational inefficiencies in your security responses.

Working with too many vendors and tools can make it difficult to prioritize and respond to threats. For example, if you’re working with redundant tools, event data from one tool may conflict with another, and your team is forced to spend precious time confirming which dataset is correct before it can respond to the security incident.

Siloed tools from a variety of vendors are another common pain point. Even if you’re using “best of breed” tools, a cobbled together security solution of multiple vendors can create issues. Tools from different vendors may not integrate well (if at all). Consequently, your team may be missing crucial alerts and experiencing a breakdown in workflows as data is transferred from one tool to another.

Sign #3: Your processes are manual

If your team is wasting valuable time manually investigating false positives, prioritizing risks, and drawing context from massive datasets, consolidation could be the solution. Manual investigation is also error-prone, and teams often find that important security events are missed entirely or slip through the cracks until they become pervasive, system-wide concerns. As a result, you may be able to track your team’s elevated MTTR rate back to manual resolution workflows.

Consolidated security platforms offer the crucial automation features that companies need to close skill and staffing resource gaps, as well. Consolidating with automation in mind can simplify and improve your team’s workflows, ensuring that your team is able to respond to threats faster and reduce overall risk across your infrastructure—even if your organization is understaffed. Finally, removing the burden of manual investigation can increase your team’s productivity, free up resources, and create space for senior staff to work on other projects.

Sign #4: Compliance is a struggle

If you’re working with a variety of vendors and security tools, compliance can be problematic. You may find that each vendor’s approach to compliance varies widely, and it’s nearly impossible to impose a consistent standard of compliance across your entire network.

Network applications are difficult to update and secure if your organization struggles to maintain visibility in its tech stack. Also, gathering data across your infrastructure for compliance audits is complicated when you have redundant tools, disagreement between the datasets, and no single source of truth.

Whether your organization is in a highly regulated industry or not, maintaining a compliant network is important. Organizations that maintain compliant networks can resolve configuration-related vulnerabilities faster, creating a baseline for security practices and IT operations.

Following governmental compliance regulations can help your organization enhance its data management capabilities. There are also serious drawbacks to a non-compliant network. Depending on your industry, if your network is non-compliant, you may be required to pay hefty fines. Additionally, non-compliant networks are less secure; they’re prone to configuration vulnerabilities and a host of other issues.

When it comes to consolidation, don’t ignore the signs

Knowing the signs of a tech stack in need of consolidation can save your organization a considerable amount of time, money, and frustration. Some companies worry about giving up “best of breed” security options. However, consolidation is increasingly considered more secure than “best of breed.”

For many organizations, the security advantage of narrowing your attack surface, automating processes, and streamlining data far outweighs the individual benefits of separate solutions and multiple vendors. As the threat landscape evolves, it’s increasingly important to have a streamlined tech stack that can deliver the security support needed to effectively mitigate risk.

Want to learn more about consolidation and where to get started? Check out our eBook,The Case for Security Vendor Consolidation.”

Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management 101

Post Syndicated from Rapid7 original https://blog.rapid7.com/2023/06/21/cyber-asset-attack-surface-management-101/

Understanding CAASM

Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management 101

This article was written by Ethan Smart, Co-Founder and Chief Solution Architect, appNovi (a Rapid7 integration partner).

It’s essential for security and IT teams to have a comprehensive view and control of their cyber assets. This is why Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management (CAASM) has received so much attention from security practitioners and leaders.

According to Gartner, “CAASM tools use API integrations to connect with existing data sources of the organization. These tools then continuously monitor and analyze detected vulnerabilities to drill down the most critical threats to the business and prioritize necessary remediation and mitigation actions for improved cyber security.”

CAASM provides a unified view of all cyber assets to identify exposed assets and potential security gaps through data integration, conversion, and analytics. It is intended to be authoritative source of asset information complete with ownership, network, and business context for IT and security teams.

Security teams integrate CAASM with existing workflows to automate security control gap analysis, prioritization, and remediation processes. These integration outcomes boost efficiency and break down operational silos between teams and their tools. Common key performance indicators of CAASM are asset visibility, endpoint agent coverage, SLAs, and MTTR.

It’s important to understand assets are more than devices and infrastructure. In a Security Operations Center (SOC), assets include users, applications, and application code. Recognizing the interconnectedness of these assets is key to enhancing the SOC’s capabilities. For example, consider a scenario where 1,000 servers have the same vulnerability. Assessing each one individually would be incredibly time-consuming. CAASM enriches cyber asset data to automate the majority of analysis.

For example, when you understand only eight of the 1,000 servers are internet-facing, and of those only two are exposed through the necessary port and protocol for exploitation of the vulnerability, you know which assets have the highest contextual exposure, which are exploitable, and which should be addressed first.

In this blog, we’ll cover how security teams can leverage their existing tech stack for Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management.

Understanding the Attack Surface

Comprehensive attack surface management hinges on a comprehensive understanding of everything that is a target for attackers. In a sprawling enterprise environment, there’s an abundance of assets distributed across different networks (e.g. cloud, SDN, on-prem), each with its own set of monitoring and alerting tools. When these security tools don’t interoperate or mesh with one another, security teams lack a complete picture of the attack surface. This fragmented understanding results in the continued siloing of teams and tools and inhibits effective data sharing.

One of the oldest adages in cybersecurity is complexity is the enemy of security—and complexity increases when teams recognize assets as more than devices. Assets are more than just computers and servers connecting on the network, as those assets are used to support applications to drive revenue. Applications also use code, which can be used by multiple applications. Users are assets that operate the business using technology. This complex asset tracking and relationship mapping spans network connections, application and code ownership, and the dependencies and indirect dependencies between applications.

CAASM emerged to address this complexity. CAASM is founded through the consolidation of existing data from all the different network and security tools. For example, by integrating Rapid7’s portfolio of products with a security data integration and visualization solution like appNovi, organizations can achieve and maintain full visibility across their entire connected network—including on-prem, Software Defined Network (SDN), and hybrid cloud.

Using CAASM, organizations can leverage analytics to refine search results, identify trends, or disseminate specific information to defined groups or individuals. One common use case with appNovi is identifying vulnerable application servers contextually exposed for exploitation and identifying owners based on login telemetry and notifying the server owner and security. This integrated approach delivers comprehensive attack surface visibility and mapping to enable organizations to address risks and manage vulnerabilities more efficiently. When analytics are coupled with automation tools, such as orchestrators, the SOC is able to focus on threat hunting and less on data analysis. Common examples include asset inventory management and security control gap analysis.

Cyber Asset Inventory and Mapping

To manage the attack surface proficiently, it’s essential to discover and map an organization’s assets accurately and with the greatest level of detail. Organizations that use Rapid7’s Insight Platform already identify network infrastructure to pinpoint active devices, open ports, and running services. When combined with your other tools’ data through the enrichment capabilities of appNovi, Rapid7’s InsightVM integrates with the entire network and security tech stack to reveal overlooked assets, those that were inadvertently deployed without endpoint detection and response (EDR) agents, and those that require a prioritized response.

Telemetry data can also be leveraged from Rapid7’s InsightIDR to enrich asset data to understand network connections, ownership, and user activity. This relationship and connection mapping supports establishing the relationships between assets and their relevance to applications. With an automated and continuously updated asset inventory enriched by telemetry, IT and security teams not only gain visibility but also develop a comprehensive understanding of each asset’s dependencies and business significance.

Risk Assessment and Prioritization Based on Exposure

Vulnerability scanners and agents help you understand what devices and their software are vulnerable. For teams today to understand the exposure of their vulnerable devices requires sifting through large amounts of network log data. This time-consuming process often inhibits the ability to prioritize devices based on their network contextual exposure. But when telemetry sources are abstracted and converged with cyber asset data, contextual exposure analysis becomes a simple and automated analysis. That’s why data convergence in appNovi with Rapid7’s platform compiles network, asset, and vulnerability data into a comprehensive and easily accessible format.

This powerful data management capability means teams efficiently and accurately identify the devices that are the most vulnerable and exposed to both external threats and lateral movement from within the network. With this level of enrichment, security teams can quickly identify the handful of assets that require immediate prioritization to support an effective remediation strategy.

Identifying and Managing New Assets

Monitoring the attack surface involves leveraging a diverse set of tools to identify new assets within an organization’s digital ecosystem. It is vital to utilize comprehensive asset discovery tools, vulnerability scanners, and other solutions to gain a holistic view of the digital infrastructure.

However, some infrastructure is ephemeral or may be inaccessible to all monitoring tools, in which case telemetry data sources and other SIEM data can be used to identify new assets. This aggregation, enrichment, and analysis can feed into other actions whether it be as simple as email notifications of results or triggering specific automated actions.

Creating Closed-Loop Remediation

When an authoritative source of detailed asset data is established standard searches can be run to provide consistent results and define specific outcomes. As an example, many organizations want to prioritize appropriate EDR agent and Rapid7 IDR agent installations across their application infrastructure.

To achieve this functionality, security teams define what constitutes appropriate security controls and search for all assets that do not meet the criteria. The results can trigger playbooks or workflows to create automated remediation notifications. In instances where orchestrators can install agents, those assets without agents can be automatically remediated in a self-healing loop.

By integrating Rapid7’s platform with appNovi, businesses gain actionable insights into the changes that occur across their attack surface with the ability to implement streamlined remediation.

Best Practices for Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management

Maintaining a robust attack surface management initiative is essential—automating as much of it as possible is what will result in efficiencies for the SOC. There are several best practices for organizations that want to undertake the initiative to uplevel security operations with Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management.

Different data, same problem
Rarely is all data in the same format. Even more rarely does all data provide the same match values of assets. For CAASM to be effective, ingestion and data convergence must facilitate data normalization through abstraction. This needs to be done through unique identifiers. Without integrated data feeds that support the wide variety of data structures and vendor nuances, you’ll end up back in an Excel spreadsheet that effectively only saves you a SIEM query.

Less is hard
There are many different data points about assets. All the asset attributes must converge into a single asset profile. Without this capability, security teams will be sifting through duplicate records providing two different perspectives on the same asset which often leads to partial resolution or inaction. To be effective, the SOC needs a high-fidelity source of data and not several incomplete profiles of the same asset.

Where is it?
Complete asset inventories are helpful to satiate compliance requirements, but without context, all assets will be viewed based on an objective data point. Because you have network data, you should be able to apply your network context to it and make the asset subjective. An external-facing asset with a medium risk is more important than a high risk asset buried behind several network security controls. Your tools already monitor and have network and business context—that telemetry and enrichment need to extend to assets.

What is it?
Every enterprise has applications. Few know how many they have deployed in their network. Using application data sources can help delineate and track application servers and what they are direct and indirect dependencies of. The business importance of an asset helps not only in prioritization, but telemetry such as logins can expedite ownership identification.

Conclusion

By leveraging the power of CAASM, organizations can overcome the complexity of asset tracking and relationship mapping, optimize their security workflows, and effectively manage the evolving threat landscape. The tooling already exists, all that’s required is the integration and data convergence capabilities for you to uplevel the SOC.

Watch appNovi’s video on CAASM capabilities with Rapid7 today to understand this comprehensive and proactive approach to cybersecurity.

CVE-2023-34362: MOVEit Vulnerability Timeline of Events

Post Syndicated from Rapid7 original https://blog.rapid7.com/2023/06/14/etr-cve-2023-34362-moveit-vulnerability-timeline-of-events/

CVE-2023-34362: MOVEit Vulnerability Timeline of Events

The following article was written by Drew Burton and Cynthia Wyre.

Rapid7 continues to track the impact of CVE-2023-34362, a critical zero-day vulnerability in Progress Software’s MOVEit Transfer solution. CVE-2023-34362 allows for SQL injection, which can result in unauthorized access to sensitive data, such as passwords, credit card details, or personal user information.

Rapid7 is not currently seeing evidence that commodity or low-skill attackers are exploiting the vulnerability. However, the exploitation of available high-value targets globally across a wide range of org sizes, verticals, and geo-locations indicates that this is a widespread threat. We expect to see a longer list of victims come out as time goes on.

We’ve put together a timeline of events to date for your reference.

MOVEit Timeline

May 27-28: Rapid7 services teams have so far confirmed indicators of compromise and data exfiltration dating back to at least May 27 and May 28, 2023 (respectively).

May 31: Progress Software publishes an advisory on a critical SQL injection vulnerability in their MOVEit Transfer solution.

May 31: Rapid7 begins investigating exploitation of MOVEit Transfer.

June 1: Rapid7 publishes initial analysis of MOVEit Transfer attacks after responding to incidents across multiple customer environments.

June 1: The security community publishes technical details and indicators of compromise.

June 1: Compromises continue; Rapid7 responds to alerts.

June 1: CISA publishes Security Advisory.

June 2: CVE-2023-34362 is assigned to the zero-day vulnerability.

June 2: Mandiant attributes the attack to a threat cluster with unknown motives.

June 2: Velociraptor releases an artifact to detect exploitation of MOVEit File Transfer critical vulnerability.

June 4: Rapid7 publishes a method to identify which data was stolen.

June 4: Nova Scotian government discloses it is investigating privacy breach.

June 5: Microsoft attributes the attack to Lace Tempest, a Cl0p ransomware affiliate that has previously exploited vulnerabilities in other file transfer solutions (e.g., Accellion FTA, Fortra GoAnywhere MFT).

June 5: UK companies BA, BBC, and Boots disclose breaches as victims in MOVEit File Transfer.

June 5: Cl0p ransomware group claims responsibility for the zero-day attack.

June 6: Security firm Huntress releases a video allegedly reproducing the exploit chain.

June 6: The Cl0p ransomware group posts a communication on their leak site demanding that victim organizations contact them by June 14 to negotiate extortion fees in exchange for the deletion of stolen data.

June 7: CISA publishes #StopRansomware Cybersecurity Advisory regarding MOVEit File Transfer Vulnerability CVE-2023-34362.

June 9: Progress Software updates advisory to include a patch for a second MOVEit Transfer Vulnerability, which was uncovered by Huntress during a third-party code review. The vulnerability is later assigned CVE-2023-35036.

June 12: Rapid7 releases a full exploit chain for MOVEit Transfer Vulnerability CVE-2023-34362.

Mitigation

All MOVEit Transfer versions before May 31, 2023 are vulnerable to CVE-2023-34362, and all MOVEit Transfer versions before June 9, 2023 are vulnerable to CVE-2023-35036. As noted above, fixed versions of the software are available, and patches should be applied on an emergency basis.

Patches are available via Progress Software’s CVE-2023-34362 advisory. Additionally, because CVE-2023-34362 is a zero-day vulnerability, Progress Software is advising MOVEit Transfer and MOVEit Cloud customers to check for indicators of unauthorized access over “at least the past 30 days.”

According to the company’s status page, Progress also took the following steps aimed at increasing security monitoring and defending against further exploitation or attack:

  • Developed specific monitoring signatures on Progress’ endpoint protection system.
  • Validated that the newly developed patch corrected the vulnerability.
  • Tested detection rules before finalizing to ensure that notifications are working properly.
  • Engaged outside cybersecurity experts and other incident response professionals to conduct a forensic investigation and assess the extent and scope of the incident.

As noted in the timeline above, Rapid7 has added capabilities across our portfolio that can help users identify and resolve risk from CVE-2023-34362. We have also identified a method to identify exfiltrated data from compromised MOVEit customer environments.

To learn more, check out: Rapid7 Observed Exploitation of Critical MOVEit Transfer Vulnerability

Rapid7 Sales Director Devin Poulter On Building a Career as an Account Executive

Post Syndicated from Rapid7 original https://blog.rapid7.com/2023/06/01/rapid7-sales-director-devin-poulter-on-building-a-career-as-an-account-executive/

Rapid7 Sales Director Devin Poulter On Building a Career as an Account Executive

Devin Poulter is a Sales Director with over 20 years of experience in the tech industry. Recently, we asked him a few questions to learn more about how he built his career, what it’s like to lead a team at Rapid7, and more.

You’ve been in software sales for most of your career, what can you tell us about being successful as an Account Executive?

I’d say building your personal brand is really important for success as an Account Executive. Being able to have open and honest conversations with customers and really focus on where you can (or sometimes, where you can not) add value is something people will remember you by.

Years down the line, when you are either introducing a new product, or representing a different company, that decision maker you are reaching out to will probably remember how you treated them previously. If you took the time to create a positive relationship, they are more likely to take your call and listen because you’ve built that foundation of trust. I’ve seen that play out time and time again, and I think it’s important for people building their career to equally focus on their personal brand as well as the product or company brand you’re representing.

What stands out to you about Rapid7 when it comes to building a sales career?

Well, the cybersecurity market is white hot as threats and bad actors continue to find new ways of exposing vulnerable organizations. It’s a market that is attracting a lot of competition as new companies and startups emerge—but where I see the most value and sustainability is with organizations like Rapid7 that can meet customers where they are—and grow with them.

When we think about our customers, particularly the CISO, their role has become increasingly challenging, and will continue to be so. Between an evolving threat landscape, a struggle to find talent for in-house security teams, and a volatile economic landscape that puts pressure on budgets—they need partners who can help them do more with less resources. At Rapid7, we’re making it everyone’s mission to think about these customer challenges and ensure we’re bringing the best and most impactful solutions to the table so we can help customers build a more secure digital future.

Additionally, Rapid7 isn’t a one trick pony for a CISO. Our Account Executives can sell across the full platform of our offerings, enabling them to be a true partner to customers and add value based on their unique needs and challenges. When it comes to building a successful career in sales (and especially in building your personal brand), this is something that helps our reps deliver the utmost value to customers with solutions that can grow and scale with them.

Finally, Rapid7’s mission is inspiring. The need for our products is something that is never going to go away. All around the world, there are bad actors who are constantly trying to take advantage of individuals and businesses to make a quick profit. When you think of the impact a hacker or vulnerability can have, it’s everything from financial losses to entire infrastructure systems and communities getting disrupted. We’re giving organizations the tools and resources to protect themselves from the bad guys, and helping their security teams work more efficiently and keep their data—and more importantly, people, safe from harm.

What’s it like to lead a team at Rapid7?

As a leader, I’m excited for the opportunity to help mature my team and see them succeed. That’s always been a big motivator for me—and it still is today. As I’ve progressed through my career, I’d say it’s equally rewarding to see the growth and success of the business, and the impact we’re making on our customers.

Today, my motivation goes far beyond hitting our numbers and going to Club. Being part of a company that’s creating real impact every day, whether it’s through our products, our open source communities, or our work in public policy and governance, it’s fulfilling to be part of a journey that’s being recognized and giving us a reputation in the market for being really innovative.

When people are proactively approaching you at a conference or a show, and commenting on the work Rapid7 is doing, it instills a lot of pride in your work and reminds you of how important our mission is. A company that gives you that kind of fulfillment, along with opportunities to grow, is the real difference between finding your next job and finding a career home.

What do you look for in an Account Executive?

What I look for is genuine curiosity, and the ability to critically think about challenges. I don’t need someone to tell me what they think I want to hear or give a generic answer. In order to uncover this in an interview, I’ll often share a real world situation and ask their opinion on how they would approach it. This gives me an opportunity to see what kind of follow up questions they have, how they think, and how they might approach challenges on the job. As far as their answer, I’m not looking for a right or wrong response, it’s more about learning how they think. Sometimes, I’ll even help coach or give the person feedback to help them understand the context or maybe frame it in a way they weren’t thinking about originally. The candidates that stand out the most are the ones who are able to ask the right questions, can articulate their opinion, and who are also coachable and open to feedback. Knowledge of our products and industry can always be taught, but having the right mindset is critical to be able to help them grow and be successful in the role.

At Rapid7, when we say we are open to ideas and encourage people to challenge convention—we really do mean it, and we respect the different perspectives that are brought to the table. This kind of culture is what helps sustain the business and enables you to do some really cool things in your field.

Looking to find your career home as an Account Executive?

Explore what it’s like to work as part of our sales team here: https://careers.rapid7.com/sales

Rapid7 Data Engineers Inspire Future Tech Talent at Summer Search Career Fest

Post Syndicated from Rapid7 original https://blog.rapid7.com/2023/05/31/rapid7-data-engineers-inspire-future-tech-talent-at-summer-search-career-fest/

Rapid7 Data Engineers Inspire Future Tech Talent at Summer Search Career Fest

We are thrilled to share some exciting news from our data engineering team at Rapid7. Earlier this month, our very own data engineers had the honor of being panelists at the technology panel organized by Summer Search, a fantastic organization that our CEO, Corey Thomas, is on the Leadership Council for.

The event, known as the Summer Search Career Fest, aimed to empower and support 100-150 high school and college students from low-income backgrounds. It provided them with invaluable opportunities such as professional mentoring, summer experiences, and post-secondary support. Our team was elated to contribute to this inspiring initiative and connect with these talented young minds.

Rapid7 Data Engineers Inspire Future Tech Talent at Summer Search Career Fest

As panelists, we had the privilege of sharing our experiences, insights, and expertise in the field of data engineering. We discussed various topics related to technology, career paths, and the impact of data-driven decision-making. Our goal was to inspire these aspiring individuals and showcase the incredible possibilities that lie within the tech industry.

Being able to guide and mentor young talent aligns perfectly with our company values and our commitment to fostering growth within the community. We firmly believe that by investing in the next generation of professionals, we can collectively shape a brighter future.

We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to Summer Search for organizing this remarkable event and for providing us with the opportunity to contribute. We would also like to extend our appreciation to Corey Thomas for his involvement in the Leadership Council, which made our participation possible.

We encourage all of you to join us in celebrating this achievement and the positive impact we are making together. Stay tuned for future updates on our community engagement initiatives and ways you can get involved.

Once again, thank you to everyone involved in making this event a success, and we look forward to continuing to make a difference in the lives of young talent within our community.

Rapid7 Data Engineers Inspire Future Tech Talent at Summer Search Career Fest

Healthcare Orgs: Do You Need an Outsourced SOC?

Post Syndicated from Rapid7 original https://blog.rapid7.com/2023/05/24/healthcare-orgs-do-you-need-an-outsourced-soc/

Healthcare Orgs: Do You Need an Outsourced SOC?

Gartner predicts that 50% of organizations will partner with an external MDR (Managed Detection and Response) service by 2025 for around-the-clock monitoring. What determines where healthcare organizations fall on that 50/50 split over using an outsourced SOC? It usually comes down to their ability to adapt to the current needs of the healthcare industry.

A growing demand for improved healthcare services means more healthcare providers are turning to the cloud. But for a world built on strict regulations and literal life-or-death situations, migrating too quickly to the cloud can be a serious challenge. When healthcare teams take on cloud adoption too fast, then run the risk of:

  • Accumulating cloud services that fall through security cracks—AKA shadow IT
  • Expanding their organization’s attack surface without a means of defense, opening up more opportunities for breaches and leaks

That’s where the help of an outsourced SOC comes in. With an extra team of experts on board, healthcare organizations can secure new ephemeral environments—without putting their security teams through resource strain or burnout.

Still, it can be tough for healthcare organizations to identify when it’s time to outsource, if ever at all. Here are some tell-tale signs that outsourcing a SOC and investing in managed services is the right call.

Your Teams Are Already Overwhelmed

While most healthcare organizations have a trusted team of a few security experts, they’re usually smaller than most security teams in tech enterprises, snappy startups, or other more cyber-savvy industries. That leads to a tricky cycle of needing to do more with fewer resources.

A day in the life of a security engineer in healthcare is marked by a seemingly endless game of catchup—one that doesn’t support speed, efficiency, or a successful migration to the cloud.

If your organization’s security teams are:

  • Struggling to find qualified talent
  • Overwhelmed by firefighting every single incident on their plate
  • Tired of combing through seas of alerts—some of which are false positives
  • Burned out by carrying out repetitive and mundane tasks that could be automated

You’re Super New to the Cloud

Healthcare security teams are typically IT or network pros who are well-acquainted and well-trained to defend traditional environments. However, there may be knowledge gaps when it comes to healthcare’s approach to cloud security. But with global cyber attacks on healthcare organizations rising 74% per week in 2022, security teams have no time to waste learning how to protect cloud environments.

Investing in the right education and training for healthcare’s traditional security pros simply takes time and effort that many organizations can’t afford to waste. But with an external SOC, security teams can:

  • Rely on cloud security experts to handle the trickiest parts of the process
  • Learn as they go with the guidance of seasoned professionals
  • Gain strategic guidance and insights to help take their security program to the next level

You’d Benefit From Automated Processes but Struggle To Implement Them

Automation is the key to boosting your cloud security program and iterating it at scale. For healthcare, automation provides the biggest benefit in ensuring that strict compliance regulations—like HIPAA—are met. That spells good news for stakeholders, who are typically most concerned with meeting standards and maintaining compliance.

With automation, security teams in healthcare can:

  • Configure guardrails ensuring new assets and environments adhere to regulations and compliance standards
  • Set up automated alerts that indicate when standards are not met

However, implementing automation, especially if your organization’s new at it, can seem like a hefty investment and a daunting task to accomplish. It’s time to enlist the help of an outsourced SOC if your security teams:

  • Have limited or no experience with automation
  • Are still manually handling a lot of rote but necessary tasks
  • Know where duties get repetitive but don’t know what to do about it

That way, external cyber experts can set up automated guardrails, teach your teams how they work, and eliminate tedious, manual work.

Next Steps With Outsourced SOCs

Organizations with limited resources and novice knowledge of the cloud can significantly benefit from teaming up with managed services. But in a sea of possible partners, knowing which experts to go with can be tough—especially when healthcare organizations have various security needs.

That’s why we built Managed Threat Complete, an always-on MDR with vulnerability management in a single subscription. Consolidate your investment in external SOCs by teaming up with our seasoned security pros today.

Learn More

For more information about healthcare cybersecurity, download our new ebook: In Healthcare (and Security) Early Detection is Key

In this eBook, you’ll learn:

  • The current state of threats in the healthcare industry
  • The top challenges in addressing those threats
  • How to overcome those challenges and implement defense strategies

Download it now!

The Velociraptor 2023 Annual Community Survey

Post Syndicated from Rapid7 original https://blog.rapid7.com/2023/05/10/the-velociraptor-2023-annual-community-survey/

The Velociraptor 2023 Annual Community Survey

By Dr. Mike Cohen & Carlos Canto

Velociraptor is an open-source project led and shaped by the community. Over the years, Velociraptor has become a real force in the field of DFIR, making it an obvious choice for many operational situations. Rapid7 is committed to continue making Velociraptor the premier open-source DFIR and security tool.

To learn more about how the tool is used in the community and what the community expectations are with regard to capabilities, features, and use cases the Velociraptor team distributed our first community survey in early 2023. We are using this information in order to shape future development direction, set priorities and develop our road map. We are grateful to the community members who took the time to respond.

As an open-source project, we depend on our community to contribute. There are many ways contributors can help the project, from developing code, to filing bugs, to improving documentation. One of the most important ways users can contribute is by providing valuable feedback through channels such as this survey, which helps to shape the future road map and new features.

We’re excited to share some of the responses we received in this blog post.

Who is the Velociraptor community?

Of the 213 survey respondents, the majority were analysts (57%) and managers (26%), indicating that most of the respondents are people who know and use Velociraptor frequently.

We also wanted to get a feel for the type of companies using Velociraptor. Users fell pretty evenly into company sizes, with about 30% of responses from small companies (less than 100 employees) and 20% of responses from very large companies of 10,000 employees or more.

These companies also came from a wide range of industries. While many were primarily in the information security fields such as managed security service providers (MSSPs), consultants, and cybersecurity businesses, we also saw a large number of responses from the government sector, the aerospace industries, education, banking/finance, healthcare, etc.

With such a wide range of users, we were interested in how often they use Velociraptor. About a third said they use Velociraptor frequently, another third use it occasionally, and the final third are in the process of evaluating and learning about the tool.

Velociraptor use cases

Velociraptor is a powerful tool with a wide feature set. We wanted to glimpse an idea of what features were most popular and how users prioritize these features. Specifically, we asked about the following main use cases:

Client monitoring and alerts (detection)
Velociraptor can collect client event queries focused on detection. This allows the client to autonomously monitor the endpoint and send back prioritized alerts when certain conditions are met.

→ 12% of users were actively using this feature to monitor endpoints.

Proactively hunting for indicators (threat intelligence)
Velociraptor’s unique ability to collect artifacts at scale from many systems can be combined with threat-intelligence information (such as hashes, etc.) to proactively hunt for compromises by known actors. This question was specifically related to hunting for threat-feed indicators, such as hashes, IP addresses, etc.

→ 16% of users were utilizing this feature.

Ongoing forwarding of events to another system
Velociraptor’s client monitoring queries can be used to simply forward events (such as ETW feeds).

→ 6% of users were utilizing this feature.

Collecting bulk files for analysis on another system (digital forensics)
Velociraptor can be used to collect bulk files from the endpoint for later analysis by other tools (for example, using the Windows.Collection.KapeFiles artifact).

→ 20% of users were using this feature regularly.

Parsing for indicators on the endpoint (digital forensics)
Velociraptor’s artifacts are used to directly parse files on the endpoint, quickly returning actionable high-value information without the need for lengthy post processing.

→ 21% of users use these types of queries.

Proactive hunting for indicators across many systems (incident response)
Velociraptor can hunt for artifacts from many endpoints at once.

→ 21% of users benefit from this capability.

We further asked for the relative importance of these features. Users most valued the ability to collect bulk files and hunt for artifacts across many systems, followed by the ability to directly parse artifacts on the endpoints.

Backwards compatibility

Some users deployed Velociraptor for limited-time engagements so they did not need backwards compatibility for stored data, as they wouldn’t be upgrading to major versions within the same deployment.

Other users required more stable data migration but were generally happy with removing backwards data compatibility, if necessary. For example, one response stated “I would rather you prioritize improvements over compatibility even if it breaks things.”

Another user explained: “In a typical Incident Response scenario, Digital Forensics data has a shelf life of a few weeks or months at best and I am comfortable with the convertibility and portability of much of the data that Velociraptor collects such that archival data can still be worked with even if newer versions of the server no longer support a deprecated format/archive. I think there will be workarounds if this becomes an issue for folks with mountains of legacy data that hasn’t been exported somewhere more meaningful for longer term storage and historical data analytic/intelligence purposes.”

Generally, most users indicated they rarely or never needed to go back to archived data and reanalyze.

Version compatibility

The Velociraptor support policy officially only supports clients and servers on the same release version. However, in reality it usually takes longer to upgrade clients than servers. While some users are able to upgrade clients promptly, many users estimate between 10-50% of deployed clients are a version (or more) older than the server. Therefore, the Velociraptor team needs to maintain some compatibility with older clients to allow time for users to upgrade their endpoints.

The offline collector

The offline collector gives users a way to use Velociraptor’s artifacts without needing to deploy a server. This feature is used exclusively by about 10% of users, while a further 30% of users employ it frequently.

Most users of the offline collection deploy it manually (50%). Deploying via another EDR tool or via Group Policy are also robust options. Some users have created custom wrappers to deploy the offline collector in the field. The offline collection supports directly uploading the collection to a cloud server using a number of methods.

The most popular upload method is to an AWS S3 bucket (30%) while the SFTP connector in the cloud or a custom SFTP server on a VM are also popular options (20% and 23%, respectively). Uploading directly to Google Cloud Storage is the least popular option at about 5%.

Manual copy methods were also popular, ranging from EDR-based copying to Zoom file copy.

Azure blob storage was a common request that Velociraptor currently does not support. Many responses indicate that SFTP is currently a workaround to the lack of direct Azure support. The Velociraptor team should prioritize supporting Azure blob storage.

Data analysis

Velociraptor supports collecting raw files (e.g. Event log files, $MFT etc.) for analysis in other tools. Alternatively, Velociraptor already contains extensive parsers for most forensic artifacts that can be used directly on the endpoint.

Most users do use the built-in forensic parsing and analysis artifacts (55%) but many users also collect raw files (e.g. via the Windows.Collection.KapeFiles artifact).

VQL artifacts

Velociraptor uses the Velociraptor Query Language to perform collections and analysis. The VQL is usually shared with the community via an artifact. Most users utilize the built-in artifacts as well as the artifact exchange. However, over 60% of users report they develop their own artifacts, as well. For those users who develop their own artifacts, we asked about limitations and difficulties in this process.

A common theme that arose was around debugging artifacts and the lack of a VQL debugger and better error reporting. Training and documentation were also pointed out as needing improvement. A suggestion was made to enhance documentation with more examples of how each VQL plugin can be used in practice.

In a related note, the Velociraptor team is running a training course at BlackHat 2023. Developers will impart detailed information on how to deploy Velociraptor and write effective custom VQL.

Role-based access controls

Velociraptor has a role-based access control (RBAC) mechanism where users can be assigned roles from administrator, to investigator, to read-only access provided by the reader role. Users generally found this feature useful—40% found it “moderately useful,” 20% “very useful” and 15% “extremely useful”.The main suggestions for improvements include:

  • Easier management through the GUI (as of version 0.6.8 all user ACLs are managed through the GUI)
  • Custom roles with more granular permissions
  • Better logging and auditing
  • The ability to allow a specific role to only run a pre-approved subset of artifacts
  • A way to only run signed/hashed VQL / prevent a malicious artifact being dropped on the server
  • Making it clearer what each permission grants the user

Multi-tenant support

Velociraptor offers a fully multi-tenanted mode, where organizations can be created or decommissioned quickly with minimal resource overhead. This feature is used by 25% of respondents, who are mainly consultants and service providers using it to support multiple customers. Some companies use multi-tenancy to separate different divisions or subsidiaries of the business.

Client monitoring and alerting

Velociraptor can run event queries on a client. These VQL queries run continuously and stream results to the server when certain conditions are met. Common use cases for these are to generate alerts and enhanced detection.

Some users deploy client monitoring artifacts frequently while others see it as an alternative to EDR tools, when these are available. The primary use-case breakdown was:

  • Detection (e.g. alert when an anomalous event occurs): 27% of users
  • Collection of client events (e.g. forward process event logs to an external system): 18% of users
  • Remediation (e.g. quarantine or remove files automatically): 15% of users

→ 30% of users do not use client monitoring at all.

The most common pain point with client monitoring is the lack of integrated alerting capability (an issue currently being worked on). Some useful feedback on this feature included:

  • Better support for integration with business tools (e.g., Teams, Slack, etc.)
  • Easier to manage event data
  • Not having to build a server side artifact for each client_event artifact
  • A dashboard that lists all alerts
  • An easier way to forward alerts based on severity
  • Lack of pre-built detection rules/packs—in other words, it would be easier to tune down, than to build up

The Quarantine feature

Velociraptor can quarantine an endpoint by collecting the Windows.Remediation.Quarantine artifact. This artifact tunes the firewall rules on the endpoint to block all external network communication while maintaining connectivity to the Velociraptor host. This allows for an endpoint to be isolated during investigation.

The feature is fairly popular—it was “sometimes used” by about 30% of users and “always used” by another 12%.

How is Velociraptor deployed?

Velociraptor is a very lightweight solution, typically taking a few minutes to provision a new deployment. For many of our users, Velociraptor is used in an incident response context on an as-needed basis (46%). Other users prefer a more permanent deployment (25%).

For larger environments, Velociraptor also supports multi-server configuration (13% of users), as well as the more traditional single-server deployment option (70% of users). While some users leverage very short-lived deployments of several days or less (13%), most users keep their deployment for several weeks (27%) to months or permanently (44%).

Velociraptor is designed to work efficiently with many endpoints. We recommend a maximum of 15-20k endpoints on a single server before switching to a multi-server architecture (although users reported success with larger deployment sizes on a single server). This level of performance is adequate in practice for the majority of users.

Many users run deployments of less than 250 endpoints (44%) while a further 40% of users deploy to less than 5,000 endpoints.

Approximately 10% of users have deployment sizes larger than 25,000 endpoints, with 2% of users over 100,000 endpoints.

Popular operating systems

Among Velociraptor’s supported operating systems, Windows 64-bit is the most popular (with 82% of users ranking it the most-deployed OS type), while Linux is the next most popular deployed endpoint OS. Mac is the third popular choice for Velociraptor’s users. Finally, 32-bit Windows systems are still prevalent, as well.

Resources and references

Velociraptor’s website at https://docs.velociraptor.app/ contains a wealth of reference material, training courses, and presentations. We also have an active YouTube channel with many instructional videos.

While some users ranked the website as “extremely useful” (25%), there is clearly room for improvement. 42% of users rated it as only “very useful” or “moderately useful” (28%).Suggestions for improvements included:

  • More in-depth YouTube videos breaking down the tool’s features with workflows
  • More detailed “how to” with practical examples
  • Improved documentation about functions and plugins, with a slightly more detailed explanation and a small example
  • Updates to the documentation to reflect the new versions and features

Testimonials

Finally, I wanted to share with you some of the testimonials that users wrote in the survey. We are humbled with the encouraging and positive words we read, and are excited to be making an impact on the DFIR field:

  • "I have to congratulate you and thank you for developing such an amazing tool. It’s the future of DFIR."
  • "Awesome product, can’t wait to use it in prod!"
  • "This is a game-changer for the DFIR industry. Keep up the great work."
  • "Keep the file system based backend, its simplicity makes chain of custody/court submissions possible."
  • "I thoroughly love Velociraptor. The team and community are absolutely fantastic. I would go as far as to say that Mike and Matthew Green are my favorite infosec gentlemen in the industry."
  • "Y’all are awesome. I feel like I was pretty critical, but that’s because this is an amazing software, and I want to see it continue to grow and improve."
  • "We have been deploying Velociraptor to client environments almost since it was released. Our DFIR business model is entirely centered around it and it works very well for us. It is a great solution that just keeps getting better and better."

Conclusions

This is our first Velociraptor community survey, and it has proven to be extremely useful. Since Velociraptor is a community-led, open-source project, we need an open feedback loop to our users. This helps us understand where things need improvement and which features should be prioritized.

At the same time, since Velociraptor is an open-source project, I hope this survey will inspire contributions from the community. We value all contributions, from code to documentation, testing, and bug reports.

Finally, for all of our US-based users, we hope to see you all in person this year at BlackHat 2023! Join us for an in-depth Velociraptor training and to geek out with VQL for 4 days, learning practical, actionable skills and supporting this open-source project.

Keep Digging!

Cloud Security Strategies for Manufacturing

Post Syndicated from Rapid7 original https://blog.rapid7.com/2023/05/03/cloud-security-strategies-for-manufacturing/

Protecting production while supporting growing cloud initiatives

Cloud Security Strategies for Manufacturing

The manufacturing industry is in limbo as organizations shift to cloud services. Many organizations are transitioning services to the cloud, but the vast majority maintain hybrid network environments that lean heavily on on-prem elements. During the pandemic, some companies were forced to expand their cloud services quickly to keep up with an influx of end users accessing network services remotely. However, few manufacturers are really pursuing a cloud-first approach.

This leaves most manufacturing organizations struggling to address issues of visibility in their hybrid cloud environments. There’s also a growing concern about compliance in the industry, with manufacturers setting internal standards to provide crucial oversight for themselves and their third-party partners. All of this is occurring during an industry-wide push to implement smart factory initiatives and a persistent IT/OT skills gap in manufacturing organizations.

An effective cloud security strategy is key for manufacturing companies. As they transition their services, implementing cloud security will ensure they’re able to monitor their growing attack surfaces, establish the necessary auditing processes and assessments for compliance, and support smart factory initiatives.

Major challenges of cloud security in manufacturing

Ensuring consistent production is paramount for manufacturing organizations. Cloud security strategy for this industry enables hybrid networks to function without disruption, while still supporting developing compliance regulations and smart factory initiatives. Without an effective cloud security strategy, manufacturers jeopardize their entire hybrid network as well as the operational elements and software integral to their manufacturing processes. Let’s look at a few of the obstacles keeping manufacturers from implementing an effective cloud security strategy.

Lack of visibility into the cloud

The manufacturing industry is unique in that organizations are not only monitoring an environment populated with their own cloud and on-prem elements, but they’re also tasked with tracking the elements of the third-party vendors that they partner with. These additional endpoints increase the overall attack surface and can be tricky to secure.

Lack of visibility into the cloud applications and elements in a manufacturing company’s network impacts root-cause analysis, anomaly detection, and the other processes that affect availability, performance, and security across the entire network.

Network disruptions often translate to supply chain issues that can affect production and availability. This ultimately translates to lost revenue and negatively impacts a manufacturer’s brand reputation. In fact, in a Supply Chain Resilience Report, 16.7% of business owners reported a “severe loss of income” due to a supply chain disruption. The report also revealed that the average cost of a disruption was around $610,000 dollars. Cloud security strategy, then, should include visibility across the entire infrastructure as well as third-party dependencies and the necessary context to bring clarity to third-party risk.

Failure to achieve and maintain cloud compliance

Unlike other highly regulated industries like healthcare and financial services, manufacturing organizations don’t have much external guidance when it comes to cloud compliance. In the absence of government regulation, manufacturing companies need a way to validate network configurations and changes in their cloud applications and infrastructure.

The lack of compliance standards for cloud applications prevents many manufacturers from properly deploying cloud-controlled elements, as well as detecting and remediating issues. This leads to system-wide vulnerabilities and greater exposure in the threat landscape. For example, without proper compliance standards in place, an organization may fail to update their service-level agreements (SLAs) or security patches in their cloud environments, which can be exploited by malicious threat actors.

Manufacturing organizations require a cloud security strategy that includes automated detection and remediation assistance, as well as support in adopting and implementing the few regulatory recommendations available, such as those set forth by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Inability to bridge the IT/OT knowledge gap

According to a Gartner survey, 64% of IT executives view talent shortages as the most significant barrier to adoption of emerging technologies. In the manufacturing industry, this translates specifically to a lack of IT/OT specialist knowledge on network teams.

IT/OT refers to the integration of information technology (IT) systems with operational technology (OT) systems. This particular combination of systems is used by manufacturing organizations to balance cloud network infrastructure that controls information and data with industrial equipment, assets, and processes.

Without specialist knowledge of these systems and how they interact, manufacturers struggle with IT and OT silos that lead to system disruption, downtime, and increased vulnerability. Manufacturers often misunderstand that OT systems are critical to their production process, but not necessarily the source of risk in their infrastructure. IT systems, however, may represent a smaller point of entry to their system, but pose a much larger risk as they connect to the larger OT systems. To combat this, manufacturers need a toolkit that will fill this skill gap on their teams, automate processes for increased efficiency, and consolidate data to break down silos between teams.

Where to start with a cloud security strategy in manufacturing

When looking to build a strong cloud security strategy, manufacturers should focus their efforts in the following areas:

  • Visibility
  • Compliance
  • Managed Services

Prioritize cloud visibility

Though the transition to cloud services is slower in the manufacturing industry, it is still an inevitability. Consequently, the best way for manufacturing organizations to adequately protect their cloud infrastructure, and by extension their overall environment, is to focus on visibility.

Visibility reduces risk and allows companies to effectively monitor their attack surfaces. This begins with manufacturers collecting monitoring data from across their cloud infrastructure. Drawing connections between the data, end-user experiences, and supply chain interaction can help manufacturers find weak or vulnerable points in their cloud infrastructure.

The right cloud security tools will help teams continuously monitor both public cloud and container environments. Manufacturers also need real-time visibility and context to find and fix issues quickly. InsightCloudSec offers all of these features and more to manufacturing companies—effectively eliminating network blind spots and giving teams the confidence they need to move forward with their cloud initiatives.

Consider cloud compliance solutions

Many manufacturers struggle with finding and adopting regulatory best practices in their cloud environments. While NIST offers guidance on network security, and the Center for Internet Security (CIS) offers frameworks and CIS Benchmarks, many manufacturers are unsure of which guidelines make the most sense for their organization’s needs. Moreover, manufacturers need guidance on how to implement compliance monitoring, which ensures that their cloud elements are operating securely.

Without compliance, manufacturers are essentially managing their cloud environments in the dark, with little governance on how to deploy applications, configure their cloud environments, and update their elements. This can lead to lapsed security updates and serious vulnerabilities that increase risk across the entire infrastructure.

Enter cloud compliance solutions. These tools can enable manufacturing organizations to automate compliance monitoring and management. For example, InsightCloudSec checks an organization’s multi-cloud environments against dozens of industry and regulatory best practices. Moreover, cloud compliance solutions enable manufacturers to customize external compliance checks to sync with internal compliance regulations. This eliminates frustration and false alarms.

Teams can also take advantage of InsightCloudSec’s embedded automation, which automatically detects compliance drift and returns cloud environments to a secure state within 60 seconds.

Outsource with managed services

Manufacturing teams struggling to hire and retain skilled IT workers often find themselves with a gap in IT/OT oversight. This gap can result in greater silos between IT and OT teams, which can disrupt smart factory initiatives and the adoption of cloud services, and lead to increased unchecked system vulnerabilities.

After all, it’s hard to contextualize risk without a complete understanding of IT/OT cloud elements and how risk in one arena affects the other. Instead of an organization redoubling their hiring efforts or overwhelming their existing team members, managed services allow manufacturers to effectively outsource this role and add a virtual IT/OT specialist to their team.

Rapid7’s managed services team offers regular assessments, handles the operational requirements of incident detection and response, and performs vulnerability scanning. This frees up crucial time for IT/OT teams and streamlines the scanning and reporting process, which encourages greater collaboration. Contextualization, or the process of analyzing threats and gathering relevant supplemental information, is simple with Rapid7’s InsightVM. InsightVM works in partnership with SCADAfence to assess vulnerabilities and leverage insight into OT networks to accurately prioritize risk.

The bottom line

Establishing cloud security strategies in manufacturing organizations often seems like an insurmountable task. Common struggles of visibility, compliance, and IT/OT knowledge gaps plague manufacturing companies who are transitioning to cloud services. This can lead to network blind spots, slowdowns, and increased risk.

Building a toolkit of cloud security solutions can help manufacturers reduce their overall risk in the cloud and optimize their performance by improving internal compliance. Making the most of this toolkit requires specialized knowledge, but leveraging managed services enables manufacturing organizations to streamline reporting and assessments without hiring additional in-house staff.

Manufacturing organizations are evolving to keep up with production demands, changing technology, and an ever-broadening threat landscape. By strengthening cloud security, manufacturing companies can focus on providing a superb product, assured that their cloud environment is secure. Get in touch with us to learn more about how Rapid7 is helping manufacturing companies navigate security during every phase of the cloud transition process.

Starting a Career in Tech? Learn How Rapid7’s Emerging Talent Programmes Foster Long-Term Success

Post Syndicated from Rapid7 original https://blog.rapid7.com/2023/04/25/starting-a-career-in-tech-learn-how-rapid7s-emerging-talent-programmes-foster-long-term-success/

Starting a Career in Tech? Learn How Rapid7’s Emerging Talent Programmes Foster Long-Term Success

Rapid7’s Emerging Talent Programmes pave the way for early career professionals to have a successful career in tech. In Belfast, we offer both an Apprentice Programme and a Placement Programme to support new talent coming into the tech field.

The Apprentice Programme is designed for individuals with established careers that want to pivot into the cybersecurity field. In our Placement Programme, students spend a full year working as a member of one of our teams while enrolled in university, gaining valuable experience working on real projects.

Cybersecurity is constantly evolving, and we work diligently to stay ahead of attackers and create a more secure digital future for all. Emerging Talent Programme participants bring fresh and valuable perspectives to our business and are equipped with the resources and opportunities to develop valuable industry knowledge and experience.

We spoke with several team members who went through these programmes and went on to pursue full time roles at Rapid7, and invited them to share their experiences.

What was the biggest hurdle you have had to overcome when starting your career?

When I joined Rapid7, I had no prior IT experience. My background was in mechanics. I was initially very nervous that my lack of IT experience would put me at a disadvantage. However, I was fortunate to be offered an opportunity with Rapid7 and Belfast Met. Rapid7 provided me with exceptional training and a support programme with ongoing mentoring. This ensured that I never felt left behind.

In the last 2 years working with Rapid7, my knowledge and skills have grown far beyond what I had ever hoped for. This is a testament to the talented individuals I work with and their willingness to share their expertise and help others.

Mark Gottschalk, Technical Support Engineer II

Coming from university and other experiences where I would have completed projects in smaller groups, understanding how information is stored and communicated across a large company and stakeholders took some time. I look at it as a valuable learning opportunity as you gain insight into how decisions are made in software companies and how stakeholders in all areas of Rapid7’s business interact with each other.

Christopher Jennings, Assistant Product Manager, Platform

How did you know you wanted to work at Rapid7?

I was interested in the culture at Rapid7 when looking for placement opportunities. The effort by the company to look after employee welfare was very attractive, and quite unique compared to other companies.

Kate Wilson, User Experience Designer I

My software engineering placement at Rapid7 was a pivotal experience in my career journey, as it helped me to determine my desired career path and confirm my interest in the company. Rapid7 impressed me with its position as a leader in the cybersecurity industry, as well as its ownership of the highly regarded tool, Metasploit.

The company’s focus on culture and values during the hiring process, and the positive experience I had with the people I met made a strong impression on me. These factors, combined with my passion for software engineering, led me to conclude that Rapid7 would be an ideal place for me to continue my professional development and pursue my career goals.

Jonathan Hume, Software Engineer I

How has this programme helped you determine your career path?

This placement programme has been instrumental in helping me determine my career path. I now have a better understanding of what product managers do and how different stakeholders within a software business interact to progress Rapid7 forward.

Christopher Jennings, Assistant Product Manager, Platform

The apprenticeship programme at Rapid7 has been a transformative experience for me. I have a strong interest in technology and a drive to learn and grow. I am surrounded by colleagues who are supportive and inclusive, and I have the opportunity to work on real-world projects that are challenging and rewarding. The programme provides a perfect balance between work and education, allowing me to complete my degree while gaining valuable experience.

Toni Ashe, Technical Support Engineer I

What has been your proudest accomplishment at Rapid7 so far?

My proudest accomplishment within Rapid7 has been the success of the Apprentice team I started with. At the end of our first year working within the Support team, we received the top three highest average customer survey ratings globally, as well as the top team globally. This was a moment of immense pride for all of us and serves as a testament to the effectiveness of the training and development programme for Support Engineers and the Apprenticeship programme!

Mark Gottschalk, Technical Support Engineer II, Support Coordinator Apprentice

My proudest accomplishment so far has been successfully completing my first coding project, which was a command palette modal that utilized hotkeys and other actions. Despite the challenges, I have worked hard and pushed myself to learn, and the reward of completing the project was worth all the effort.

Toni Ashe, Technical Support Engineer I

What piece of advice would you give someone entering a similar position?

I would advise anyone who is thinking about applying for an internship to be confident in their ability, ask lots of questions, and build a good knowledge base on the work and environment of the company and role you are applying to.

Kate Wilson, User Experience Designer I

For anyone considering a career move, my advice is: Take advantage of the opportunities for learning and growth, be open to feedback, and don’t be afraid to ask questions. Pursuing a career in this field can be challenging, but the results are rewarding if you are passionate about technology and have a drive to constantly learn and grow.

Toni Ashe, Technical Support Engineer I

Looking for a place where you can gain hands-on experience and drive real impact? Explore all our Emerging Talent programmes and opportunities here.

Secrets of a cybersecurity employer-of-choice

Post Syndicated from Rapid7 original https://blog.rapid7.com/2023/04/19/secrets-of-a-cybersecurity-employer-of-choice/

Secrets of a cybersecurity employer-of-choice

By Jay Prescott, Director, Global SOC Operations

While the staffing crisis is real, our global MDR SOCs are thriving with top-notch analysts, DFIR talent, and no revolving doors (they like it here). In a high-pressure, high-stakes business, these are our lessons learned.

Measure your staffing performance meticulously and publicly

In an industry plagued by burnout, churn, and open jobs everywhere, be obsessed with your metrics to retain top talent. We do.

  • Last year, we grew our global Managed Detection and Response (MDR) teams by 68%
  • Our voluntary attrition for SOC analysts is under 5%
  • Since the start of Rapid7 MDR seven years ago, we’ve only lost about one to two analysts per year (as competition for cybersecurity talent went white-hot)

Rapid7 recruits talent from all over the world to join us in our state-of-the-art SOC locations. Each SOC has incredibly high retention rates.

We prioritize investments in training, competitive pay, project work and extracurricular activities, and ensuring analysts are doing the work they enjoy. The leadership team is in tune with job satisfaction and directly attacks any aspect of the analyst duties that causes friction.

Peter Drucker said it best:  “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

According to a survey by Mimecast, 84% of security professionals are experiencing burnout due to the constant barrage of threats, the  talent shortage, and other employees’ mistakes (as a result of burnout).  And, while everyone battles “The Great Resignation” and our collective 5-year skills crisis, ZDNet reports it’s going to get worse. Nearly a third of the global cybersecurity workforce plans to leave the industry—not their jobs, but the entire industry—within two years.

To prevent burnout, we encourage a culture of friendship and after-hours socialization. People who work alongside friends help more and perform better. They trust one another.  Like just about anyone in our line of work, Rapid7 MDR employees know they can go anywhere and do what they do. They also know we greatly appreciate the fact they choose to do it here.

A member of one of our SOC had his car in the shop for far too long due to a supply chain shortage of the missing part.  There was only one thing to do for April Fool’s day:

Secrets of a cybersecurity employer-of-choice

As one member of the team stated, “we work at a place that crowdsourced a $700 prank!”

You don’t need budget for team-building consultants and “trust exercises.”  Camaraderie is created in Slack channels and karaoke nights at the bar on the first floor of the Rapid7 Arlington , VA office.

Create a learning organization

We’ve heard it called “alphabet soup after your name.” While certifications are important, real-world experience and constant learning trumps a course any day of the week. And the best way for the SOC to learn? By doing first-hand and sharing those learnings with everyone. Here’s some of the lessons learned:

First, eliminate silos. Each of our MDR SOCs are  composed of three tiers of analysts, working together on customer environments. There’s complete threat detection coverage, multiple layers of escalation and validation, and redundant knowledge. Additionally, the technology used by the SOC captures relevant details of the environment, detected threats, and analysis notes which are available to all analysts.

Second, train constantly. Rapid7 has a robust training program: a combination of external live training (SANS, Chris Sanders courses), self-paced learning (TCM malware analysis & forensics courses), as well as a robust internal security training program (modeled after specific incidents Rapid7 MDR has handled) to train our analysts quickly and effectively. All training is heavily focused on endpoint forensics, incident response, threat hunting, coding/scripting, and foundational security concepts. All analysts have the chance to attend external training every year. Internally, analysts learn from each other with weekly “lunch n’ learns” to level up their stills by learning from others around them and show off the latest threat they were able to thwart for our customers.

Third, we organized around learning in new ways. Over a year ago, Rapid7 merged our Incident Response Consulting Team with our MDR SOC to create an integrated team of Detection and Response experts. If an incident investigation appears to be major, analysts simply (and literally) swivel their chairs and tap Senior IR consultants and DFIR practitioners on the shoulder.

For major incidents, Rapid7’s TIDE Team (Threat Intelligence and Detections Engineering) is right there too. “We ride along with them and are watching what they’re discovering and we develop new detections,” says Eoin Miller, Manager of Detection and Response Services. “It helps not only that customer but any other customer that may be a current or future victim of that same attacker.”

Rapid7 MDR  also created a “Tactical Operations” (TacOps) team, which is primarily used as a “farm system” for analyst development. Typically, Associate Analysts at other Security Operation Centers are relegated to Tier 1 roles, focusing on low severity alert triage with little exposure to actual malicious activity or complex investigations. Rapid7 takes a different approach by throwing these Associate Analysts into the deep end to deal with real, high priority threats (the things we know are evil), which accelerates their learning curve. They’re actually looking at malicious activity all day, not just hundreds of benign alerts.

Our Associate level analysts have even gone on to publish their work and were tapped to lead a technical malware deep dive on one of the most popular security webinars in the world (Ultimate IT Security). Not too shabby for “entry level” folks to be presenting to a broad audience after only a year working in our SOC. Not surprisingly, we focus on promoting from within, with many analysts taking on advanced roles in forensic analysis and IR.

Finally, we’ve reorganized our services organization to bring our penetration testing team SOC analysts under one roof. We feel the best way to learn (and improve our ability to detect and respond effectively) is to encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing between both our offensive-minded and defensive-minded security practitioners. Iron sharpens iron.

Never compromise your standards

MDR analyst candidates go through an initial technical assessment (live on phone responses) with our Talent Acquisition partners in order to pre-screen candidates before the live technical interview panel.

During the interview Technical Panel, our interviewers’ goal is to push the candidate to the edge of their knowledge. We ask a series of questions which are progressively more difficult using real-world scenarios: “If you see XYZ behavior, walk me through the process from start to finish:

  • What technology and methodology would you use?
  • What data are you looking for?
  • Deep dive into why and how you’re looking at it?
  • How do you come to the determination that the behavior is malicious or benign?

This allows us to question various tools and techniques used in the course of an investigation. We then hire based on the candidate’s knowledge, skill set, and culture fit.

More questions like these and other best practices we use can be found in our guide, the 13 Tips for Overcoming the Cybersecurity Talent Shortage.

Say what your values are

Rapid7 has company core values. We’ve added to it with our “Culture Code for the MDR SOC.” Every organization and each SOC’s values are different. These are ours:

  • Ownership: Know what you’re responsible for and own it. We expect you to own your mission fully. Don’t make excuses, and don’t point fingers at others.
  • Customer-Centric: We are here for one reason—to deliver the managed security services our customers expect and deserve.
  • Passion and Purpose: Love what you do. While not everything you do every day is exciting, our team members genuinely enjoy their work and understand the importance of it.
  • Don’t Just ‘Turn The Wheel’: We’re not here just to handle alerts, run scans, perform hunts, or throw alerts over the fence for our customers to handle. We’re here to bring our security expertise to bear in the most effective way to better protect our customers at scale.
  • Risk Taking: Choosing not to take a risk is often the biggest risk. We will never fault someone for taking a well informed risk in order to better serve our customers.
  • Integrity: We never mislead customers or prospects or act against their best interests, and we are open and honest with our fellow Moose.
  • Never Done: This is not a clock-in / clock-out kind of job. While many days are predictable, others are not. Our North Star is customer outcomes, not time-based.
  • Glass Half Full: Security operations can be unforgiving—but we will remain positive and optimistic.
  • Have Fun: Get your job done, but have fun doing it.

We’re always looking for great security professionals to join our team. If the above piques your interest and you’re looking to join a part of something special, come check out our open Career opportunities.

Automating Qakbot Detection at Scale With Velociraptor

Post Syndicated from Rapid7 original https://blog.rapid7.com/2023/04/18/automating-qakbot-detection-at-scale-with/

Automating Qakbot Detection at Scale With Velociraptor

By Matt Green, Principal Software Engineer

In this blog, you will learn a practical methodology to extract configuration data from recent Qakbot samples. I will provide some background on Qakbot, then walk through decode themes in an easy to visualize manner. Additionally, I’ll share a Velociraptor artifact to detect and automate the decode process at scale.

QakBot or QBot, is a modular malware first observed in 2007 that has been historically known as a banking Trojan. Qakbot is used to steal credentials, financial, or other endpoint data, and in recent years, regularly a loader for other malware leading to hands-on-keyboard ransomware.

Malicious emails typically include a zipped attachment, LNK, Javascript, Documents, or an embedded executable. The example shown in this post was delivered by an email with an attached pdf file:

Automating Qakbot Detection at Scale With Velociraptor
An example Qakbot infection chain

Qakbot has some notable defense evasion capabilities including:

  1. Checking for Windows Defender sandbox and terminating on discovery.
  2. Checking for the presence of running anti-virus or analysis tools, then modifying its later stage behavior for evasion.
  3. Dynamic corruption of payload on startup and rewrite on system shutdown.

Due to the commodity nature of Qakbot delivery, capabilities, and end game,  it is worth extracting configuration from observed samples to scope impact from a given campaign. Hunting enterprise-wide and finding a previously missed machine or discovering an ineffective control can prevent a domain-wide ransomware event or similar cyber attacks.

Configuration

Qakbot has an RC4 encoded configuration, located inside two resources of the unpacked payload binary. The decryption process has not changed significantly in recent times, but for some minor key changes. It uses a SHA1 of a hard coded key that can typically be extracted as an encoded string in the .data section of the payload binary. This key often remains static across campaigns, which can speed up analysis if we maintain a recent key list.

Current samples undergo two rounds of RC4 decryption with validation built in. The validation bytes dropped from the data for the second round.

After the first round:

  • The first 20 bytes in hex is for validation and is compared with the SHA1 of the remaining decoded data
  • Bytes [20:40] is the key used for the second round of decoding.
  • The Data to decode is byte [40:] onwards
  • The same validation process occurs for the second round decoded data
  • Verification = data[:20]
  • DecodedData = data[20:]
Automating Qakbot Detection at Scale With Velociraptor
First round of Qakbot decode and verification

Campaign information is located inside the smaller resource where, after this decoding and verification process, data is clear text.

Automating Qakbot Detection at Scale With Velociraptor

The larger resource stores Command and Control configuration. This is typically stored in netaddress format with varying separators. A common technique for finding the correct method is searching for common ports and separator patterns in the decoded data.

Automating Qakbot Detection at Scale With Velociraptor
Easy to spot C2 patterns: port 443

Encoded strings

Qakbot stores blobs of xor encoded strings inside the .data section of its payload binary. The current methodology is to extract blobs of key and data from the referenced key offset which similarly is reused across samples.

Current samples start at offset 0x50, with an xor key, followed by a separator of 0x0000 before encoded data. In recent samples, we have observed more than one string blob and these have occurred in the same format after the separator.

Automating Qakbot Detection at Scale With Velociraptor
Encoded strings .data

Next steps are splitting on separators, decode expected blob pairs and drop any non printable. Results are fairly obvious when decoding is successful as Qakbot produces clean strings. I typically have seen two well defined groups with strings aligning to Qakbot capabilities.

Automating Qakbot Detection at Scale With Velociraptor
Decoded strings: RC4 key highlighted‌‌

Payload

Qakbot samples are typically packed and need execution or manual unpacking to retrieve the payload for analysis. It’s very difficult to obtain this payload remotely at scale, in practice the easiest way is to execute the sample in a VM or sandbox that enables extracting the payload with correct PE offsets.

When executing locally Qakbot typically injects its payload into a Windows process, and can be detected with yara targeting the process for an unbacked section with `PAGE_EXECUTE_READWRITE` protections.

Below, we have an example of running PE-Sieve / Hollows Hunter tool from Hasherezade. This helpful tool enables detection of several types of process injection, and the dumping of injected sections with appropriately aligned headers. In this case, the injected process is `wermgr.exe` but it’s worth to note, depending on variant and process footprint, your injected process may vary.

Automating Qakbot Detection at Scale With Velociraptor
Automating Qakbot Detection at Scale With Velociraptor
Dumping Qakbot payload using pe-sieve

Automation at scale

Now I have explained the decode process, time to enable both detection and decode automation in Velociraptor.

I have recently released Windows.Carving.Qakbot which leverages a PE dump capability in Velociraptor 0.6.8 to enable live memory analysis. The goal of the artifact was to automate my decoding workflow for a generic Qakbot parser and save time for a common analysis. I also wanted an easy to update parser to add additional keys or decode nuances when changes are discovered.

Automating Qakbot Detection at Scale With Velociraptor
Windows.Carving.Qakbot: parameters

This artifact uses Yara to detect an injected Qakbot payload, then attempts to parse the payload configuration and strings. Some of the features in the artifact cover changes observed in the past in the decryption process to allow a simplified extraction workflow:

  • Automatic PE extraction and offset alignment for memory detections.
  • StringOffset: the offset of the string xor key and encoded strings is reused regularly.
  • PE resource type: the RC4 encoded configuration is typically inside 2 resources, I’ve observed BITMAP and RCDATA
  • Unescaped key string: this field is typically reused over samples.
  • Type of encoding: single or double, double being the more recent.
  • Hidden TargetBytes parameter to enable piping payload in for analysis.
  • Worker threads: for bulk analysis / research use cases.
Automating Qakbot Detection at Scale With Velociraptor
Windows.Carving.Qakbot: live decode 

Research

The Qakbot parser can also be leveraged for research and run bulk analysis. One caveat is the content requires payload files that have been dumped with offsets intact. This typically requires some post collection filtering or PE offset realignment but enables Velociraptor notebook to manipulate post processed data.

Some techniques I have used to bulk collect samples:

  • Sandbox with PE dumping features: api based collection
  • Virustotal search: crowdsourced_yara_rule:0083a00b09|win_qakbot_auto AND tag:pedll AND NOT tag:corrupt (not this will collect some broken payloads)
Automating Qakbot Detection at Scale With Velociraptor
Bulk collection: IPs seen across multiple campaign names and ports

Some findings from a small data set ~60 samples:

  • Named campaigns are typically short and not longer than a few samples over a few days.
  • IP addresses are regularly reused and shared across campaigns
  • Most prevalent campaigns are “BB” and  “obama” prefixed
  • Minor campaigns observed: “azd”, “tok”  and “rds” with only one or two observed payload samples each.

Strings analysis can also provide insights to sample behavior over time to assist analysis. A great example is the adding to process name list for anti-analysis checks.

Automating Qakbot Detection at Scale With Velociraptor
Bulk collection: Strings highlighting anti-analysis check additions over time

Conclusion

PE dumping, which is not available in expensive paid tools, is a useful capability and enables advanced capability at enterprise scale. For widespread threats like Qakbot, this kind of content can significantly improve response for blue teams, or even provide insights into threats when analyzed in bulk. In the coming months, we will be publishing a series of similar blog posts, offering a sneak peek at some of the types of memory analysis enabled by Velociraptor and incorporated into our training courses.

I also would like to thank Jakob Denlinger and James Dunne for their assistance in writing this post.

References

  1. Malpedia, QakBot
  2. Elastic, QBOT Malware Analysis
  3. @hasherezade.  Hollows Hunter, https://github.com/hasherezade/hollows_hunter

Anarchy in the UK? Not Quite: A look at the cyber health of the FTSE 350

Post Syndicated from Rapid7 original https://blog.rapid7.com/2023/04/13/anarchy-in-the-uk-not-quite-a-look-at-the-cyber-health-of-the-ftse-350/

Anarchy in the UK? Not Quite: A look at the cyber health of the FTSE 350

The attack surface of the United Kingdom’s 350 largest publicly traded companies has—drum roll, please—improved. But it could be better. Those are the high level findings of the latest in Rapid7’s looks at the cybersecurity health of companies tied to some of the globe’s largest stock indices. This is the second time in more than two years that we looked at the FTSE 350 to gauge how well the entire UK’s business arena is faring against cyber threats. Turns out, they’ve improved in that time, and are on par with the other big indices we’ve looked at, though in some specific places, there is definitely room for improvement.

We chose the FTSE 350 as a benchmark in determining the cyber health of UK businesses because they are by and large some of the largest companies in the country and are not as resource constrained as some other, smaller, companies might be. This gives us a pretty even playing field on which to analyze their health and extrapolate out to the overall health of the region. We’ve done this with several other indices (most recently the ASX 200) and find it works well to provide a snapshot of what’s going on in the region.

In this report, we looked first at the overall attack surface of the FTSE 350 companies, broken down by industry. We also looked at the overall health of their email and web server security. All three areas showed improvement, as well as points for concern.

Attack Surface

By and large, the attack surfaces of the companies that make up the FTSE 350 was quite limited and in line with other major indices around the world. But, when you look at the individual industries that make up the FTSE you start to see some red flags.

For instance, financial and technology companies have by far the largest vulnerability through high risk ports exposed to the internet. Technology companies averaged well over 1000 ports with internet exposure and financial companies averaged nearly 800. That is 4 and 5 times the next highest industry (respectively). When it comes to particularly high risk ports, the financial sector is the biggest offender with an average of 12 high risk ports. For comparison, the technology sector had three.

Email Security

Email security is one area where we’ve seen some laudable improvement over the last time we looked at the FTSE 350. For instance, use of Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) policy is up 29%. However, the implementation of Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) is at just 4% of the 350 companies that make up the index. Sadly, this too is on par with other indices. They should all seek improvements (alright, we’ll get off our soapbox).

Web Server Security

Going after vulnerable web servers is a favorite vector for attackers. When looking at the status of FTSE 350 company web servers we found that of the three most common types (NGinx, Apache, and IIS), not all were running high enough percentages of supported or fully patched versions. For instance, some 40% of NGinx servers were supported or fully patched, whereas 89% of Apache and 80% of IIS servers were. That’s a pretty big discrepancy. Thankfully, Apache and IIS are the dominant servers in this region, minimizing the overall risk.

If you want to take a look at our report you can read it here. If you’d like to check out the report we conducted for Australia’s ASX 200 it is available here.

7 Rapid Questions: Lindsey Searle

Post Syndicated from Rapid7 original https://blog.rapid7.com/2023/04/11/7-rapid-questions-lindsey-searle/

7 Rapid Questions: Lindsey Searle

Welcome back to 7 Rapid Questions, our blog series where we ask passionate leaders at Rapid7 to give us an inside look at what it’s like to work on their team, and how they’re creating an impact every day.

In this installment, we talk to Lindsey Searle, Senior Manager, Customer Advisors on how her team helps solve customer challenges, and how candidates can stand out in the interview process.

What kind of challenges are you/your team responsible for solving for customers?

The security space is evolving every day as hackers continue to advance. Many customer teams find themselves overwhelmed and in need of more customized services to stay ahead, and that’s where we can help support.

Our team is the face of Rapid7 for Managed Services customers. We provide advisory services for clients of all shapes and sizes and at all levels of their security maturity journeys. The Customer Advisor team works closely with the Security Operations Center (SOC) to monitor customers’ in-scope environments and provide custom tailored guidance to enhance their security posture. Many of our customers consider us an extension of their in-house security team, and we strive to build close knit working relationships and trust with each and every one of them.

In addition to day to day monitoring, our Customer Advisors work with our clients to understand their security goals, make recommendations to achieve those goals, and are personally invested in seeing those initiatives through to completion.

What does your team look like (team size, types of teams etc.), what growth has there been?

The Customer Advisor organization at Rapid7 grew by 30% last year—we added 35 new people to the team in 2022, including Advisors at all levels, four new managers, and a Vice President.

Our team is composed of all levels of security professionals, from associate CAs at the start of their career to tenured Lead and Principal Advisors. We have CAs supporting all three branches of Managed Services, and our teams are blended across Managed Detection and Response (MDR), Managed Vulnerability Management (MVM), and Managed Application Security (MAS) to allow for cross functional collaboration and learning.

We are fortunately in a position where as our Managed Services business grows, our Customer Advisor team has continued to expand, as it is a standard part of the service offering.

What makes the culture at R7 different from other tech / cyber security companies?

I always find it difficult to describe the Rapid7 culture when I interview candidates because it’s something that you really have to see to understand and believe. The underlying fact is that all Rapid7 employees are passionate about security—we are here because we want to help our customers succeed, and we truly enjoy working together for that common goal.

At the same time, every single person is unapologetically unique and does not hesitate to bring their own perspective to the table. We have a great balance of external hires bringing in fresh ideas, as well as internal hires that provide a different approach to a situation when you’ve worked on the other side of the curtain.

What 3 biggest things have you learned in your time at Rapid7?

One: Take the time to thank people for helping you out! We do ‘guitar picks’ at Rapid7—it’s an internal website where you can give fellow moose a virtual kudos and recognition, whether it be for a great presentation they gave, or for filling in for you on an assignment, or for just being awesome. Everyone in the company can see it, and the recipient gets a notification that they’ve received one. Sending a pick takes minutes but can make someone’s day! Our Chief People Officer selects a guitar pick submission and sends it out to the whole company every morning. It’s a quick and meaningful way to thank those around us.

Two: Don’t be afraid to ask questions—we are all constantly learning and there is definitely someone out there who can help.

Three: There is a Slack emoji for just about every situation, and if it doesn’t exist—make one! In fact, our recent Slack migration took longer than expected due to the 10,000+ custom emojis that Rapid7 employees have created. One of our core values is ‘Bring You’ so this is just one example of how people are getting creative to express themselves in different ways and build camaraderie in a globally distributed organization.

How does Rapid7 set you up for success in your role?

I was incredibly impressed with the corporate onboarding provided by Rapid7 when I went through it myself in late 2021. You attend your onboarding sessions with all new hires starting at the company that week and already start to build a network within your first few hours here.

Rapid7 is big on encouraging Insight Coffees—an informal 30 minute meeting with another Rapid7 employee to get to know them on a personal and professional level. Those connections stick with you throughout your time here and only strengthen your ability to work together down the road.

Our company culture is built around helping each other and working together as a team, which puts you in a great spot to be successful in your role.

What can a candidate do to stand out in the interview process?

Honestly, just be yourself—Bring You is a core value at Rapid7 and something that truly sets us apart from other companies. Finding people who embrace our collaborative culture and partner well to share ideas is a major piece of the Rapid7 interview process. These soft skills weigh as heavily as prior work experience and technical competency. Your individuality will set you apart from other candidates—so let your true self shine!

What advice would you give someone thinking about coming to work here?

Bring energy and enthusiasm, and take the time to build meaningful relationships with the people you work with. It is much easier to wake up and log on for the day when you are looking forward to interacting with your team members and your customers. At Rapid7 we live by the core value of ‘Impact Together’—teamwork makes the dream work! We have a far greater chance at success when working together than we do when trying to climb the ladder individually.

To learn more about Rapid7 Managed Services:

CLICK HERE

Raptor Technologies Volunteer Management Client-Side Security Controls (FIXED)

Post Syndicated from Rapid7 original https://blog.rapid7.com/2023/04/11/raptor-technologies-volunteer-management-client-side-security-controls-fixed/

Raptor Technologies Volunteer Management Client-Side Security Controls (FIXED)

Prior to Mar 18, 2023, due to a reliance on client-side controls, authorized users of Raptor Technologies Volunteer Management SaaS products could effectively enumerate authorized users, and could modify restricted and unrestricted fields in the accounts of other users associated with the same Raptor Technologies customer.  

Product description

Raptor Technologies Volunteer Management for Schools product is used by school districts to authenticate pre-approved volunteers, and print badges for the volunteers to use for entry to the school.  

Each volunteer has an account in the Raptor Technologies system, and the account contains information about the volunteer, a photo which matches the volunteer’s photo ID,  details of what buildings access is allowed to, and for what activities.  This account is set up and populated by school officials after a potential volunteer submits an online application for access.

Credit

This issue was discovered by Tony Porterfield, Principal Cloud Solutions Architect at Rapid7, while using the application as an end-user.  It is being disclosed in accordance with Rapid7’s vulnerability disclosure policy.

Exploitation

Prior to the fix deployed by Raptor Technologies on March 18, 2023,  lack of server-side authorization checks allowed an authenticated user to edit restricted fields in the user’s own account and other users’ accounts.  There are client-side controls in place to prevent these accesses, but there were gaps in the server-side checking that allowed crafted API requests to make these changes to user records.

There is a PersonID field in the profile update request payload, and it was possible to modify another user’s account by using a PersonID field that did not match that of the authenticated user.   The PersonID is observed to be a relatively short decimal number that may have been prone to enumeration.  The Community feature provides a list of all users with access to the same schools who have agreed to have their contact information shared.  The user list returned by the server contains the PersonID for each user listed, which would have allowed an adversary to make targeted changes to specific user accounts within the community.  

An example of a user’s profile page is shown below. The areas highlighted in yellow contain identity and access information sourced from the application submitted by the user. Controls in the browser client prevent a user from editing these fields when updating the profile.

Raptor Technologies Volunteer Management Client-Side Security Controls (FIXED)

When the Save button is clicked, a POST to
apps.raptortech.com/Portal/Profile/Save

Is initiated, with a payload of content type:
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

The payload includes all of the fields visible on the page (along with some that are not). The fields in this POST request’s payload are listed below, with personal information redacted.

Person.ImageName=<redacted>&
Person.PersonId=<redacted>&
Person.PersonaType=<redacted>&
Person.RequireDateOfBirth=True&
Person.RequireIdNumber=False&
Person.IdNumber_Short=<redacted>&
Scope=Client&
Person.IsOfficial=True&
Person.FirstName=<redacted>
Person.MiddleName=<redacted>&
Person.LastName=<redacted>&
Person.DateOfBirth=<redacted>&
Person.IdType=<redacted>DLID
&Person.IdNumber=<redacted>&
MaidenName=&
Gender=Male
Race=Unspecified&
ExpirationDate=<redacted>&
HoursResetDate=<redacted>&
ModifyBuildingsEnabled=False&
Email=<redacted>&
Buildings[0]=<redacted>
Functions[0]=<redacted>&
AffiliationId=<redacted>&
ProfileId=<redacted>&
Person.RequireIdType=False&
Address.Id=<redacted>
&Address.IsRequired=False&
Address.IsInternationalCountry=False&
Address.IsRequiredAndIsNotInternationalCountry=False&
Address.Line1=<redacted>&
Address.Line2=&
Address.Line3=&
Address.City=<redacted>&
Address.State=<redacted>&
Address.ZipCode=<redacted>&
Address.Country=US&
PrimaryPhone=<redacted>&
SecondPhone=&
ThirdPhone=&
PreferredLanguage=0

Impact

Updating Restricted Fields: Fields that the client prevents from modifying could be changed in the apps.raptortech.com/Portal/Profile/Save body, with the results persisting in the user’s profile. Thus, it was possible to modify restricted fields related to the user’s identity by manipulating this request’s payload.

Updating other users’ information: The payload of the Portal/Profile/Save request includes a field for the Person.PersonID. It was possible to modify the profile of another user associated with the same Raptor Technologies customer by entering the other user’s Person.PersonID in the payload of the request.

Community feature discloses PersonIDs: The ‘Community’ feature presents a list of other members of the user’s community, who have opted in to sharing their information. The browser interface only displays the users’ names and contact information. However, the list of information returned by the server for the
apps.raptortech.com/Portal/Community/gvVolunteerContactInformation_Read
endpoint includes each community member’s PersonID. Prior to the fix, this information disclosure could be combined with the lack of server-side authorization checks to make targeted changes to the accounts of other community members.

The fields included for each user in the response are listed below for reference:

{
    "$id": "2",
    "PersonId": <6 or 7 digits>,
    "ProfileId": <5 digits>,
    "FirstName": "<redacted>",
    "LastName": "<redacted>",
    "PrimaryPhone": "<redacted>",
    "SecondPhone": "",
    "Email": "<redacted>",
    "AllowToContact": true,
    "PreventFromBeingContacted": false,
    "PrimaryPhoneDisplay": "<redacted>",
    "SecondPhoneDisplay": ""
}

Remediation

On March 18, 2023, Raptor Technologies deployed an update to its Volunteer Management application to address this issue.

Since this is a SaaS / cloud-hosted solution, end users, implementers and integrators should not need to do anything to update or patch to address the issue.

Disclosure Timeline

January, 2023: Issues discovered by Tony Porterfield of Rapid7
Tue, Jan 10, 2023: First contact to the vendor, opened ticket #00711217
Mon, Jan 30, 2023: Case opened with CERT/CC, VRF#23-01-NGZBZ
Fri, Feb 17, 2023: CERT/CC VINCE case VU#679276 opened
Fri, Mar 3, 2023: Report acknowledged by the vendor, clarifications provided
Wed, Mar 8, 2023: Details discussed with the vendor, extended disclosure time by approximately 30 days
Sat, Mar 18, 2023: Fixes deployed
Tue, Apr 11, 2023: This disclosure

Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners

Post Syndicated from Rapid7 original https://blog.rapid7.com/2023/03/30/rapid7-announces-partner-of-the-year-awards-2023-winners/

Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners

It’s with immense pleasure that we announce today the winners of the Rapid7 Partner of the Year Awards 2023. All our category winners have achieved exceptional growth—demonstrating their dedication to, and collaboration with, the Rapid7 Partner Program throughout the year.

“We are incredibly honoured to accept the Rapid7 Partner of the Year Award. This recognition is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our entire team, as well as the strong partnership we have built with Rapid7,” said Tim Sank, Co-Founder of Cythera. “This award is not only a validation of our collective efforts but also a motivation to continue delivering best-in-class security solutions to help protect businesses across the APAC region. We are proud to be a Rapid7 partner and we look forward to many more years of success together.”

We’re very proud to share our complete list of winners. Please join us in congratulating them all.

APAC

Rapid7 APAC Partner of the Year: Cythera Pty Ltd Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners
APAC Highest Customer Retention of the Year: The Missing Link Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners
APAC Cloud Security Partner of the Year: DGplex Pty Ltd Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners
APAC Detection & Response Partner of the Year: Blue Apache Pty Ltd Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners
APAC Emerging Partner of the Year: Cyber Risk Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners
APAC Vulnerability Management Partner of the Year: Datacom Group Ltd Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners
APAC Managed Services Partner of the Year: Triskele Labs Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners

EMEA

Rapid7 EMEA Partner of the Year: Softcat PLC Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners
EMEA Best Customer Retention: Saepio Solutions Ltd Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners
EMEA Cloud Security Partner of the Year: AllCloud Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners
EMEA Detection & Response Partner of the Year: Switchpoint Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners
EMEA Distributor of the Year: Infinigate Deutschland GmbH Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners
EMEA Emerging Partner of the Year: Communication Systems GmbH Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners
EMEA Fastest Growth Partner of the Year: Bytes Technology Group Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners
EMEA Vulnerability Management Partner of the Year: Davinsi Labs Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners
EMEA MSSP Partner of the Year: Integrity360 Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners

North America

Rapid7 North America Partner of the Year: CDW Corporation Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners
North America Best Customer Retention: Insight Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners
North America Cloud Security Partner of the Year: SHI International Corp. Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners
North America Detection & Response Partner of the Year: Cyber Watch Systems Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners
North America Distribution Partner of the Year: Liquid PC Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners
North America Emerging Partner of the Year: Alchemy Technology Group, LLC Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners
North America Fastest Growth Partner of the Year: Bird Rock Systems, Inc Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners
North America Vulnerability Management Partner of the Year: Optiv Security Inc. Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners
North America MSSP Partner of the Year: Acrisure Cyber Services Rapid7 Announces Partner of the Year Awards 2023 Winners

More about our partner program

The Rapid7 PACT Program is built to inspire our partners to grow with us and achieve mutual success through accountability, consistency, and transparency. By participating in the program, partners can offer powerful, industry-leading solutions to our joint customers, resulting in mutual success for all.

If you’re interested in becoming a Rapid7 partner, you can learn more here.

Congratulations again to all our winners!

Backdoored 3CXDesktopApp Installer Used in Active Threat Campaign

Post Syndicated from Rapid7 original https://blog.rapid7.com/2023/03/30/backdoored-3cxdesktopapp-installer-used-in-active-threat-campaign/

Backdoored 3CXDesktopApp Installer Used in Active Threat Campaign

Emergent threats evolve quickly. We will update this blog with new information as it comes to light and we are able to verify it. Erick Galinkin, Ted Samuels, Zach Dayton, Caitlin Condon, Stephen Fewer, and Christiaan Beek all contributed to this blog.

On Wednesday, March 29, 2023, multiple security firms issued warnings about malicious activity coming from a legitimate, signed binary from communications technology company 3CX. The binary, 3CXDesktopApp, is popular video-conferencing software available for download on all major platforms. Several analyses have attributed the threat campaign to state-sponsored threat actors.

Rapid7’s threat research teams analyzed the 3CXDesktopApp Windows binary and confirmed that the 3CX MSI installer drops the following files: 3CXDesktopApp.exe, a benign file that loads the backdoored ffmpeg.dll, which reads an RC4-encrypted blob after the hexadecimal demarcation of fe ed fa ce in d3dcompiler.dll. The RC4-encrypted blob in d3dcompiler.dll is executable code that is reflectively loaded and retrieves .ico files with appended Base64-encoded strings from GitHub. The encoded strings appear to be command-and-control (C2) communications. There is a non-exhaustive list of indicators of compromise (IOCs) at the end of this blog.

Rapid7 reached out to GitHub’s security team the evening of March 29 about the GitHub repository being used as adversary infrastructure in this campaign. As of 9:40 PM ET, the malicious user has been suspended and the repository is no longer available.

Rapid7 Managed Detection and Response (MDR) has observed the backdoored 3CX installer and components in several customer environments as of March 29, 2023. Rapid7 MDR is in contact with customers that we believe may be impacted.

Mitigation Guidance

Official guidance from 3CX confirms that the Windows Electron client running update 7 is affected. However, security firm CrowdStrike indicated in a Reddit thread on March 29 that malicious activity has been observed on both Windows and Mac. Out of an abundance of caution, a conservative mitigation strategy would be to uninstall 3CXDesktopApp on all platforms and remove any artifacts left behind. Users should retroactively hunt for indicators of compromise and block known-bad domains. There is a non-exhaustive list of known-bad domains and malicious file hashes at the end of this blog.

3CX has a browser-based Progressive Web App (PWA) that does not require the user to download an executable file. Their CEO has suggested users leverage this PWA for the time being instead of downloadable clients.

Rapid7 customers

The following new rules have been added for Rapid7 InsightIDR and Managed Detection & Response (MDR) customers and will alert on known-bad hashes and file versions of the backdoored executable, as well as known-bad domains in WEB_PROXY and DNS logs:

  • Suspicious Web Request – 3CX Desktop Supply Chain Compromise
  • Suspicious DNS Request – 3CX Desktop Supply Chain Compromise
  • Suspicious Process – 3CX Desktop Supply Chain Compromise

InsightVM and Nexpose customers can use Query Builder or a Filtered Asset Search to find assets in their environment with 3CX installed using Software Name contains 3CX Desktop App.

A Velociraptor artifact is available here.

Indicators of compromise

A non-exhaustive list of known-bad domains is below. We advise blocking these immediately:

akamaicontainer[.]com
akamaitechcloudservices[.]com
azuredeploystore[.]com
azureonlinecloud[.]com
azureonlinestorage[.]com
convieneonline[.]com
dunamistrd[.]com
glcloudservice.[.]
journalide[.]org
msedgepackageinfo[.]com
msstorageazure[.]com
msstorageboxes[.]com
officeaddons[.]com
officestoragebox[.]com
pbxcloudeservices[.]com
pbxphonenetwork[.]com
pbxsources[.]com
qwepoi123098[.]com
sbmsa[.]wiki
sourceslabs[.]com
Soyoungjun[.]com
visualstudiofactory[.]com
zacharryblogs[.]com

More granular URLs our team has decrypted from C2 communications include:

hxxps[://]akamaitechcloudservices[.]com/v2/storage
hxxps[://]azuredeploystore[.]com/cloud/services
hxxps[://]azureonlinestorage[.]com/azure/storage
hxxps[://]glcloudservice[.]com/v1/console
hxxps[://]msedgepackageinfo[.]com/microsoft-edge
hxxps[://]msedgeupdate[.]net/Windows
hxxps[://]msstorageazure[.]com/window
hxxps[://]msstorageboxes[.]com/office
hxxps[://]officeaddons[.]com/technologies
hxxps[://]officestoragebox[.]com/api/session
hxxps[://]pbxcloudeservices[.]com/phonesystem
hxxps[://]pbxphonenetwork[.]com/voip
hxxps[://]pbxsources[.]com/exchange
hxxps[://]sourceslabs[.]com/downloads
hxxps[://]visualstudiofactory[.]com/workload
hxxps[://]www[.]3cx[.]com/blog/event-trainings/
hxxps[://]zacharryblogs[.]com/feed

File hashes:

Compromised MSI: aa124a4b4df12b34e74ee7f6c683b2ebec4ce9a8edcf9be345823b4fdcf5d868 

3CXDesktopApp.exe: fad482ded2e25ce9e1dd3d3ecc3227af714bdfbbde04347dbc1b21d6a3670405
ffmpeg.dll: 7986bbaee8940da11ce089383521ab420c443ab7b15ed42aed91fd31ce833896
d3dcompiler_47.dll: 11be1803e2e307b647a8a7e02d128335c448ff741bf06bf52b332e0bbf423b03

The following file hashes have been reported as related and malicious by the community but not independently verified by Rapid7 analysts:

dde03348075512796241389dfea5560c20a3d2a2eac95c894e7bbed5e85a0acc
92005051ae314d61074ed94a52e76b1c3e21e7f0e8c1d1fdd497a006ce45fa61
b86c695822013483fa4e2dfdf712c5ee777d7b99cbad8c2fa2274b133481eadb