Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

This week it was revealed that a huge credential stuffing attack had cost sports betting organization DraftKings $300,000. More specifically, cyber-crooks had used credential stuffing to gain access to many DraftKings customer accounts via a large-scale account takeover (ATO) attack and withdrawn funds. DraftKings has subsequently reimbursed the affected accounts, leaving the business out of pocket rather than its customers.

Supply Chain attacks are not new, but this past year they received much more attention due to high profile vulnerabilities in popular dependencies. Generally, the focus has been on the dependency attack vector. This is when source code of a dependency or product is modified by a malicious actor in order to compromise anyone who uses it in their own software.

Pro-Russian threat actor group Killnet claims to have launched DDoS attacks against Starlink and the United States’ government website whitehouse.gov. Starlink is a satellite internet service company operated by SpaceX. In 2019, SpaceX began launching Starlink satellites, and as of September 2022 is reported to have launched more than 3,000 satellites into low-Earth orbit (LEO).

Vice Society, the cybercriminal gang responsible for the attack, is believed to have used internal login credentials leaked on the dark web to access LAUSD’s network and launch the ransomware attack. Twenty-three internal LAUSD credentials were leaked on the dark web leading up to the attack, with at least one set granting access to LAUSD’s Virtual Private Network (VPN).

Cryptomining attacks are becoming more notable in-line with the rise of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, so detecting cryptomining has become a high priority. Security researchers have found data breaches related to various cryptominer binaries running within victims’ infrastructures. The default openness of Kubernetes clusters and the availability of the extensive compute power required for mining makes Kubernetes clusters a perfect target for cryptomining attacks.

Internal reconnaissance is one of the first steps an attacker will take once they have compromised a user or computer account in your network. Using various tools or scripts, they enumerate and collect information that will help them identify what assets they should try to compromise next to get what they want. For example, BloodHound will map out attack paths that can enable an adversary to escalate their privileges from ordinary user to admin.

Citing senior Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) officials, journalistsreported on November 8 that DDoS attacks had temporarily disabled the website of a state government. A group claiming to be pro-Russian hacktivists, CyberArmyofRussia_Reborn, claimed responsibility for that attack and another on the website of a U.S. political party’s governing body on the same day, specifying one target IP address for each organization.

Account takeover is an attack where cybercriminals take ownership of user accounts using stolen credentials. It is essentially an identity theft fraud where the hacker, who now has full control over the user’s account, performs malicious activities posing as the real user. These malicious activities might include sending out phishing emails or messages, stealing and misusing sensitive financial or personal information, or using stolen information to takeover more user accounts.