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Dangerous malware in Greece

The last report from Check Point Research, in August 2024, reveals the most recent data on the most prevalent cyberthreats in a global scale but also in Greece. Qbot software was the main threat in Greece, affecting 12.77% of the organisations. FakeUpdates was second, which affected 10.21% of the Greek organisations, while Androgyh0st reached 3.62%. A number of other significant threats include Tofsee (3.19%), Njrat (2,34%), Joker (1,91%), SnakeKeylogger (1,70%) and AsyncRat, which recorded a percentage of 1,70% both in Greece and globally.

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The Crowdstrike Falcon outage

A faulty update was distributed to a cybersecurity software called The Falcon Sensor, provided by the company Crowdstrike. The botched update to the configuration files of the kernel-level vulnerability scanner caused an out-of-bounds memory read operation that resulted in affected machines booting over and over again. The fault was found and a fix was distributed within 12 hours, but damage had already been caused. Manually fixing the affected machines would take a lot longer. A total of over 8.5 million Windows systems had crashed, causing a multitude of different businesses to have their services to be hindered or even completely halted, including airlines, banks, different government agencies, railway traffic, and media companies.

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Information Society is leading the battle for Cybersecurity

The Ministry of Digital Governance (MDG) in Greece is implementing a set of projects through Information Society for the protection of public bodies against cyberattacks.

Cybersecurity in the public sector is crucial for safeguarding sensitive information, ensuring the integrity of essential services, and maintaining public trust. Government agencies handle vast amounts of personal data and critical infrastructure, making them prime targets for cyberattacks. Effective cybersecurity measures prevent data breaches, protect national security, and ensure the continuity of public services. By investing in robust cybersecurity frameworks, the public sector can mitigate risks, respond effectively to incidents, and uphold the privacy and safety of citizens.

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The importance of user role definition and access restrictions

Many of us have seen the cinematic masterpiece called The Lord of the Rings and can recall the scene where Pippin Took touches The Palantír (the glass orb looking thing with the eye of Sauron in it) and thus gave said villain an insight to his mind.

The bad news: Sauron knows everything Pippin knows. The good news: Pippin doesn’t know anything!

At first there is the panic when Gandalf thinks Sauron now knows everything, then there is the calmness of realising the ‘fool of a Took’ knows nothing that Sauron can use. If we compare that to real life: The panic of knowing your systems have been infiltrated, then the calmness of realising that the access is very limited and doesn’t cover any of the important parts of the IT system.

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New investigation by Kaspersky on Cyber Attacks

Kaspersky has recently concluded an investigation into cyber-attacks targeting the industrial sector in Eastern Europe. The investigation has revealed the employment of advanced tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) by threat actors to compromise industrial organizations in the region. Industries such as manufacturing, industrial control system (ICS) engineering and integration have been particularly affected, emphasizing the urgent need for enhanced cybersecurity preparedness.

According to the research a series of targeted attacks was revealed, aiming at data -breach through the creation of a channel with similarities to cases previously reported, such as ExCone, and DexCone, a fact that clearly manifests the participation of APT31 (also known as Judgement Panda and Zirconium).

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The Fileless present of Malware and its evolving ML based detection, classification and prevention

The main approach for detection and prevention of malware is based upon the concept of file signatures. More specifically, the AV solutions are scanning the system’s storage devices and hash files at process/creation time. Then they compare each of these hashes with their respective curated database which contains signatures of known malware samples. If there is a match then the file is flagged as malicious and subsequent actions take place to contain it. But what could happen if there was some kind of malware that did not rely on a file to accomplish its mission?

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The Risk of Misinformation and Disinformation in Cyber Threat Intelligence Communities

The ever-growing digital landscape presents organisations with a double-edged sword: vast amounts of data on cyber threats and the challenge of sifting through it all. Here’s where Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) comes in. By analysing attacker behaviour and uncovering early signs of attacks, CTI empowers organisations to proactively defend themselves. However, a significant hurdle exists: misinformation.

This misinformation comes in two forms: accidental mistakes (misinformation) and deliberate deception (disinformation). Both pose serious threats to CTI’s effectiveness, eroding trust in shared intelligence and weakening cybersecurity defences.

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How Local and Regional Authorities can improve their ransomware defenses

A recent study done by the National Association of State CIOs (NASCiO) and Deloitte found in the US 75% of state CISOs view ransomware as a threat. As this Govloop report reported “…there’s good reason for that. A number of factos, the report notes that combine to make local and regional governments particularly vulnerable to this attack”.

• High impact: Ransomeware is capable of causing an organization’s operations to a halt. As an attack it is one of the most likely facing local and regional organizations.
• Easy entry: With commercialization of attacks using “Ransomware-as-a-Service”, even non-technical threat actors are able to profit easily from ransomware operations
• Emergence of distributors: Malware families tend to be, the Govloop article points out, prolific information stealers are linked to various ransomware operators.

Clearly local and regional organizations need to revamp their strategies to deal with these challenges:

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CriM 2023

The Cyber Security Seminar and Workshops (CriM) has been running for 24 years. We are glad to host for three days experts on this year’s topic: Supply Chain and Cyber Security.

The mornings are filled with lectures and the afternoon workshops give practical expereince. The attendence is free of charge and 5 ECTS are available for completing the course. Please join us between 14th and 16th of November 2023 here in Oulu.

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Lessons learnt from cyber-attacks on Greek municipalities

Just how hard is to describe the importance of a service whose value the customers cannot quite comprehend or quantify in order to invest in it in the Greek public sector?

If one had to answer this question, he would have to give many answers, depending on various factors. It is incredibly difficult for an organisation to fully comprehend the need and the importance of cybersecurity service or product when he hasn’t been exposed or harmed by a cyber-attack. It is even harder, when the organisation lacks the necessary funds, or has other priorities to address. In some cases, one needs to give specific examples of the danger and the prevention procedure or restoring. An issue that has arisen and has been widely discussed lately is a cyber-attack in the City Hall infrastructure of Thessaloniki, Greece. That has been a wake-up call for many Municipalities, but majorly the big ones.

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