Research Saturday
Recent Episodes
Fake job ads and how to spot them.
Ashley Taylor from SANS.edu, joins Dave to discuss fake job ads and methods to proactively detect these scams. The research shares how job seekers are under attack, with scammers posing as fake job recruiters to steal information from people who are interested in the job posting. The brands being impersonated as are at risk of losing credibility to their brand identity. The research shares exactly how these doppelgängers are posing a threat to job seekers and the best practices to detect these scams. It also shares how one company that works in medical device manufacturing industry has been a target for these scams. It concludes with sharing some of the ways to proactively spot these scams before they happen.
TranscriptIran-linked Lyceum Group adds a new weapon to its arsenal.
Deepen Desai from Zscaler's ThreatLabz joins Dave to discuss how APTs, like Lyceum Group, create tactics and malware to carry out attacks against their targets. The Lyceum group has been active since 2017 and is a state-sponsored Iranian APT group. This group targets Middle Eastern organizations most notably in the energy and telecommunication sectors, and they rely heavily on .NET based malwares. Zscaler said in their research they "recently observed a new campaign where the Lyceum Group was utilizing a newly developed and customized .NET based malware targeting the Middle East by copying the underlying code from an open source tool." They go on to give an analysis explaining why the .NET based DNS backdoor is causing problems.
TranscriptWhat malicious campaign is lurking under the surface?
Israel Barak, CISO from Cybereason, sits down with Dave to discuss their research, "Operation CuckooBees: Cybereason Uncovers Massive Chinese Intellectual Property Theft Operation." Cybereason researchers recently found an attack lurking beneath the surface which was assessed to be the work of Chinese APT Winnti. Cybereason briefed the FBI and the DOJ on the investigation into the malicious campaign. The research states, "For years, the campaign had operated undetected, siphoning intellectual property and sensitive data." The team quickly made two reports on the campaign, one sharing an examination on the tactics and techniques. The second gives a detailed analysis of the malware and exploits used.
TranscriptHas GOLD SOUTHFIELD resumed operations?
Rob Pantazopoulos from Secureworks, joins Dave to discuss their work on "REvil Development Adds Confidence About GOLD SOUTHFIELD Reemergence." Secureworks researchers published a new analysis on what can be considered the ‘first’ set of ransomware samples associated with the reemergence. These updated samples indicate that GOLD SOUTHFIELD has resumed operations. The research states "The identification of multiple samples containing different modifications and the lack of an official new version indicate that REvil is under active development." Researchers identified two samples, one in October of 2021, and the other in March of 2022. The March sample has modifications that lead researchers to distinguish the two samples from one another.
TranscriptA record breaking DDoS attack.
Chad Seaman, Team Lead at Akamai SIRT joins Dave to discuss their research about a record-breaking DDoS Attack. The research says "A new reflection/amplification distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) vector with a record-breaking potential amplification ratio of 4,294,967,296:1 has been abused by attackers in the wild to launch multiple high-impact DDoS attacks." Starting in mid-February 2022, security researchers, network operators, and security vendors noticed a spike in DDoS attacks. Researchers started to investigate the spike and determined that the devices that were being abused to launch these attacks are MiCollab and MiVoice Business Express collaboration systems. The research goes into how you can help mitigate the attacks and how Mitel has now released patched software.
Transcript
