Vulnerabilities and exploits

The first half of 2017 began with two intriguing ransomware events, both partly enabled by wormable exploit technology dumped by a group calling themselves “The ShadowBrokers”. These WannaCry and ExPetr ransomware events are the biggest in the sense that they spread the quickest and most effectively of known ransomware to date.

Earlier today (June 27th), we received reports about a new wave of ransomware attacks spreading around the world, primarily targeting businesses in Ukraine, Russia and Western Europe. Our investigation is ongoing and our findings are far from final at this time. Despite rampant public speculation, the following is what we can confirm from our independent analysis.

In late 2016, the Kaspersky Lab ICS CERT reported on phishing attacks that were primarily targeting industrial companies from the metallurgy, electric power, construction, engineering and other sectors. As further research demonstrated, this was just part of a bigger story that began much earlier and is unlikely to end any time soon.

Not long ago, news appeared online of a younger sibling for the sensational vulnerability EternalBlue. The story was about a new vulnerability for *nix-based systems – EternalRed (aka SambaCry). On May 30th our honeypots captured the first attack to make use of this particular vulnerability, but the payload in this exploit had nothing in common with the Trojan-Crypt that was EternalBlue and WannaCry.

According to KSN data, Kaspersky Lab solutions detected and repelled 479,528,279 malicious attacks from online resources located in 190 countries all over the world. File antivirus detected a total of 174,989,956 unique malicious and potentially unwanted objects.

We’ve become accustomed to seeing a steady stream of security breaches month after month; and this quarter has been no exception, including attacks on Barts Health Trust, Sports Direct, Intercontinental Hotels Group and ABTA.

Friday May 12th marked the start of the dizzying madness that has been ‘WannaCry’, the largest ransomware infection in history. We figured it’s time to sit down and set the record straight on what we know, what we wish we knew, and what the near future might hold for us going forward.

Earlier today, our products detected and successfully blocked a large number of ransomware attacks around the world. In these attacks, data is encrypted with the extension “.WCRY” added to the filenames. Our analysis indicates the attack, dubbed “WannaCry”, is initiated through an SMBv2 remote code execution in Microsoft Windows.

How serious, really, is the danger presented by exploits? The recent leak of an exploit toolset allegedly used by the infamous Equation Group suggests it’s time to revisit that question. Using our own telemetry data and intelligence reports as well as publicly available information, we’ve looked at the top vulnerabilities and applications exploited by attackers.

Recently WikiLeaks published a report that, among other things, claims to disclose tools and tactics employed by a state-sponsored organization to break into users’ computers and circumvent installed security solutions. The list of compromised security products includes dozens of vendors and relates to the whole cybersecurity industry.

The Lamberts is a family of sophisticated attack tools that has been used by one or multiple threat actors against high-profile victims since at least 2008. The arsenal includes network-driven backdoors, several generations of modular backdoors, harvesting tools, and wipers.

On average, in the second half of 2016 Kaspersky Lab products across the globe blocked attempted attacks on 39.2% of protected computers that Kaspersky Lab ICS CERT classifies as being part of industrial enterprise technology infrastructure.

The concept of a connected car, or a car equipped with Internet access, has been gaining popularity for the last several years. By using proprietary mobile apps, it is possible to get some useful features, but if a car thief were to gain access to the mobile device that belongs to a victim that has the app installed, then would car theft not become a mere trifle?

In addition to the basic methods and technologies developed to protect corporate networks, there are interactive methods of protection that not only detect an intruder in the infrastructure but also, under certain conditions, receive real-time information about their activities in the corporate network.

While intercepting traffic from a number of infected machines that showed signs of Remote Admin Tool malware known as HawkEye, we stumbled upon an interesting domain. It was registered to a command and control server (C2) which held stolen keylog data from HawkEye RAT victims, but was also being used as a one-stop-shop for purchasing hacking goods.