Operation Cleaver #opcleaver


In this blog I wanted to take a quick look at how we should consider our adversaries today, and kudo's to a great report. The operation Cleaver report  put out by Cylance outlines how Iran has been actively targeting the world market and the Internet as a whole. 

If you don't have time to read the entire report I'd recommend you review pages  32- 35 that discusses the initial methods of compromise. It's a good practice to understand how adversaries get into your network to know how to protect yourself. Here's a quick look at defenses you need to consider:

Compromise 1 - SQL injection attacks -  
This attack counts on administrators not setting up a SQL server with security in mind.
Resolving this can be done by patching and maintaining SQL servers that are on your perimeter network. Make sure that you configure your edge with security in mind. Consider this guidance as a good practice:
A quick Technet article on protecting against SQL injections

Compromise 2 - (spear) Phising attack -
As often times seen, attacking the user as one of the easiest methods to compromise a network. Here we see that cleaver uses this method to fool users to click and activate a malware to take over a client machine.



Protection follows a simple guidance model. Don't click unless you know what you are receiving. This can be important with unsolicited, as well as mail from sources you trust. It's worth double checking, or type the URL manually.
Here's some good guidance to consider, how to recognize phishing email


Bottom line
These attacks are old school, but they work. Always consider how attackers might get into your network.  And if you are interested in the details, read the report http://www.cylance.com/assets/Cleaver/Cylance_Operation_Cleaver_Report.pdf



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Protecting sensitive data

Image
Last month I wrote an article on key things to consider when protecting high valued assets or sensitive data. The article called Security Tip of the Month: Protecting Highly Sensitive Information addressed some of the key items that organizations should consider when protecting data that has the possible impact on an organization that is irreparable. As my article stated the cost of protecting this data tends to be higher than most data. Fact is that this data is not traditionally just sensitive such as credit card data, or HR data. Key indicators of what is High Value Data can be summed up like this. Assets that are considered to be of high value will frequently have the potential to cause the following conditions if they are lost or divulged: •        Loss of life - such as an informant list •        Regulatory fines - such as financial performance data •        Significant damage to the business - such as code signing and encryption keys (private) or trade secrets
Read more

Secure workstation - Root of trust to manage the cloud

Image
Two months ago I introduced the Azure secure workstation, and I’ve had the privilege to present the ideal to some great audiences. From the discussions, a common question I’ve been asked is a pattern that would provide the Secured PAW model lock down scenario to exclusively manage an Azure Portal (EG how to I assure only secured workstation, and users assigned to the program can manage my cloud services)? In this article I’ll provide the NEXT step to accomplish exactly that outcome. This includes additional configurations that I only lightly covered, or net new technology to apply since the publishing of the doc. Proposed outcome “ How do I” Use a Secured workstation (that I can trust) to manage my Azure cloud. Here’s how I would deploy the solution. First I will start by deploying the Secured Workstation model this using the secured profile. New technology, and capabilities to add: Hardware root of trust – in our solution we post the idea that you can
Read more

Why is privileged access important?

Image
Last year about this time I had published updates to the Azure Secure Workstation that was originally released two years ago. And This month the solution has been considerably rewritten and revised to provide a better more complete management for privileged access!  Collaborating with two great security experts James Noyce, and Mark Simos The content got a massive overhaul, and a broad perspective on what it takes to build and manage a comprehensive privileged access solution, including account management, device management, intermediaries such as VPN's and interfaces such as Web and Cloud services. Additionally, the solution was uniformly designed with three distinct security levels that anyone reading the article can deploy from a more flexible Enterprise security, to a comprehensive isolated PAW or privileged Access Management. Over the past two years I've been working to explain and illustrate how you can use a cloud-based solution to build an effective Zero tr
Read more