Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

No matter your organization’s maturity, industry, or business goals, cybersecurity should always be top of mind. Considering the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) recorded a staggering 76,000 cybercrime reports in the 2022 financial year, it’s safe to say that all organizations are at risk for an incident or breach.

As more employees move to remote work, more of today’s business environment is shifting towards the cloud. Indeed, approximately 90% of companies use at least one cloud-based service. While it brings great benefits, the cloud also brings challenges, including properly securing cloud-based assets. Cybercriminals are well-versed in corporate cloud usage and are successfully exploiting that knowledge. In the past year and a half, nearly 80% of companies suffered a cloud-based data breach.

The past 18 months have shown that cybersecurity is an essential part of a successful and resilient business model, regardless of whether an organization has 50 or 5,000 employees. With half of all organizations surveyed in the 2023 Arctic Wolf “State of Cybersecurity” Trends Report noting they experienced a breach within the last year, it’s clear that cyber attacks and data breaches continue to keep security professionals up at night.

On July 24th, 2023, Ivanti released a security advisory detailing a remote authentication bypass vulnerability (CVE-2023-35078) affecting Ivanti Endpoint Manager Mobile. This vulnerability, with a CVSS score of 10, allows unauthenticated access to specific API paths, which could allow a threat actor to obtain personal identifiable information (PII) such as names, phone numbers, and other mobile device details.

Since the fallout of Conti ransomware in mid-2022, Conti-affiliated threat actors have splintered off and developed or joined other ransomware groups to continue extorting victim organizations. Due to Conti’s source code being leaked, attribution back to the Conti ransomware group via code overlap is much more difficult. However, leveraging blockchain analysis, we can begin to discern what ransomware groups Conti-affiliated threat actors have worked with; one such group is Akira.

In recent years, cyber attacks have been on the rise around the globe. In 2022, the median initial ransom amount rose to $500,000 as more public sectors fell victim to malicious attacks. In Australia, climbing cyber attacks have damaged the country’s vital infrastructure, with lasting and costly consequences. Major industries in Australia — including manufacturing, finance, foreign communications, and the healthcare sector — have been targets of cyber attacks.

In today’s interconnected world, the reliance on secure file transfer software is paramount for businesses dealing with sensitive data. Among these tools, MOVEit Transfer software has been a popular choice worldwide, especially in the US, to ensure secure file transfers. However, recent events have exposed its vulnerabilities, leading to the active exploitation by the CI0p ransomware group.

On July 18th, 2023, Citrix disclosed a critical authentication bypass vulnerability affecting several versions of Citrix ADC and Citrix Gateway (CVE-2023-3519). The vulnerability was identified by independent security researchers, and was responsibly disclosed to Citrix. This vulnerability could allow a threat actor to execute arbitrary code on affected appliances and may also serve as an initial access vector for ransomware and other types of malicious campaigns.