Access is everything within a network or system. As organizations race to adopt the cloud, relax rules around permitting workers to use their own devices, and continue to embrace hybrid work models, employees gain unprecedented access to data, allowing them to work from anywhere at any time. But this also creates a vast attack surface that hackers are all too willing to exploit. And helps explain why identity-based attacks are on the rise.

The business world has an identity problem. According to Verizon’s 2023 Data Breach Investigations Report, 74% of all breaches involve the human element, with people involved either through error, privilege misuse, social engineering, or stolen credentials — the latter three of which directly involve the management (and mismanagement) of user identities. Moreover, this percentage stands poised to grow.

On January 31, 2024, Ivanti published an article disclosing two high severity vulnerabilities: CVE-2024-21893: A server-side request forgery flaw present in the SAML component of Ivanti Connect Secure, Ivanti Policy Secure, and Ivanti Neurons. This vulnerability allows an unauthenticated threat actor to access restricted resources. Ivanti reports that a limited number of customers have been affected by this vulnerability.

Microsoft PowerShell is a ubiquitous piece of software. It’s also, unfortunately, a major attack vector for threat actors. Once a threat actor has initial access into a network, they can utilize the commands and scripts components of PowerShell to conduct reconnaissance or inject fileless malware into the network. This activity is so common it’s continually listed as one of the top tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).

On January 22, 2024, Fortra publicly disclosed a critical vulnerability, CVE-2024-0204, in their GoAnywhere MFT product. This vulnerability, which was responsibly disclosed to Fortra by Spark Engineering Consultants, had been patched on December 7, 2023. CVE-2024-0204 is a severe authentication bypass vulnerability with a CVSS score of 9.8.

Through a known vulnerability, a threat actor gains access to an organization, and begins to alter the network activity, running unusual enumeration commands. Then, to make a lateral move, the threat actor uses stolen credentials to log into various applications within said network. The cybersecurity monitoring solution at work, in this case Arctic Wolf® Managed Detection and Response, then picks up an IP address associated with Finland connecting to the network.

Where there is money, there are cybercriminals trying to take it. This is especially true for credit unions, which deal with both financial information and the personal identifying information (PII) of every member and connected institution. They are a digital vault of data and dollars and threat actors are all too ready to crack the safe.

If a malware attack is successful, it can result in lost revenue, unexpected down time, stolen data, and more costly consequences. With over 450,000 new malicious programs registered each day by independent IT security institute AV-Test, malware may be the biggest threat to your organization. There are many different types of malware and attackers are continually innovating more complex, harder-to-detect versions. Now is the time to take proactive steps to protect your organization.

Arctic Wolf Labs has been tracking two recent intrusions where threat actors leveraged a new Go-based malware downloader we are calling “CherryLoader” that allowed them to swap exploits without recompiling code. The loader’s icon and name masqueraded as the legitimate CherryTree note taking application to trick the victims.

On January 10, 2024, Juniper Networks released patches to remediate a critical vulnerability (CVE-2024-21591) in Junos SRX and EX series devices. CVE-2024-21591 could allow a threat actor to cause a denial of service (DoS) or achieve unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE) with root privileges. The vulnerability impacts the J-Web component of Junos OS, the operating system running on the devices. The vulnerability was discovered during external security research.