With companies in virtually every industry facing persistent and increasing cyber security threats, federal regulators are taking steps to protect customers and investors. In March, the SEC proposed new cyber security transparency rules that would require publicly traded companies to disclose, among other things, the cyber security expertise—or lack thereof—among their board members. This is despite the evidence that it is a recognized risk within businesses.

Kroll has observed an increase in two social engineering tactics known as “vishing” and “smishing.” These tactics use phone calls, voice altering software, text messages and other tools to try to defraud unsuspecting people of valuable personal information such as passwords and bank account details for financial gain. These types of attacks use similar techniques to the common infection vector, phishing.

mr.d0x, a security researcher who previously released phishing tactics such as browser-in-the-browser (BitB) and utilized NoVNC to circumvent two-factor authentication (2FA), has released a new phishing attack method that exploits WebView2 applications to steal cookies and credentials. The code base utilizes a modified version of Microsoft’s WebView2 Samples repository. Microsoft has developed a new module called “Microsoft Edge WebView2 control”.

Companies are introducing new apps and services to enable remote work, improve supply chains and handle disruptions caused by the pandemic. Our digital-first world thrives on speed and efficiency, and containers play a huge part in getting applications up and running quickly. Though containers offer many advantages over traditional virtualization, they also introduce significant security risks.

Like their larger counterparts, small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are moving swiftly to migrate IT workloads to the cloud, hoping to slash operating costs, eliminate technical debt, and accelerate digital transformation projects. However, cloud migration security risks are often poorly understood at the outset or overlooked entirely.

While studying for my master's degree in cyber security, I co-authored a paper regarding the rollout of IoT devices and the security considerations that businesses need to address to ensure these devices are secure. The paper underscored how a large majority of IoT devices used vulnerable components and did not follow basic secure programming principles.

Earlier this month, the United Nations (U.N.) released its latest Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR2022). For those of us who assess risk for a living, it is a sobering read.

Kroll has recently observed a new malware strain called “Bumblebee” operating as a loader, delivered via phishing email, in order to deploy additional payloads for use in ransomware operations. The malware takes its name from the unique user-agent (since changed), which it used to connect to command and control (C2) servers. It was first reported by Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) in March 2022, with the first sample submitted to VirusTotal on March 1.

Kroll’s incident responders have seen threat actor groups becoming increasingly sophisticated and elusive in the tactics, techniques and procedures they employ to steal payment card data. One common method is to “scrape” the Track 1 or Track 2 data stored on the card’s magnetic stripe, which provides the cardholder account and personal information criminals need to make fraudulent “card-not-present” (CNP) transactions.

Kroll has been tracking Emotet since it was first identified in 2014, especially during its transition from a banking Trojan designed to primarily steal credentials and sensitive information to a multi-threat polymorphic downloader for more destructive malware. Today, Emotet operators stand as one of the most prominent initial access brokers, providing cybercriminals with access to organizations for a fee.