Trellix 2022 Threat Predictions

Ransomware, nation states, social media, and a shifting reliance on a remote workforce made headlines in 2021, proving that bad actors only continue to rise to the challenge. Defiantly, they thwart solution stacks and gain momentum each time they succeed – with this confidence driving them to be bolder and even more proliferate.

We’ve seen the impact of their determination and how it is empowering them to inflict more damage. The average ransomware request grew from $5,000 in 2018 to around $200,000 in 2020. This whopping 3900% increase in just two years proves the power that comes each time a bad actor is successful. It makes sense after all, to want to keep reaping the fruits that determination and willpower can create.

This success has been achieved through adaptability. The notion that if first you do not succeed, try again. They act as a living, breathing entity with this steadfastness, knowing organizations are between a rock and a hard place to maintain business as usual.

“Over this past year, we have seen cybercriminals get smarter and quicker at retooling their tactics to follow new bad actor schemes – from ransomware to nation states – and we don’t anticipate that changing in 2022,” said Raj Samani, fellow and chief scientist at Trellix. “With the evolving threat landscape and continued impact of the global pandemic, it is crucial that enterprises stay aware of cybersecurity trends so that they can be proactive and actionable in protecting their information.”

To outwit and outpace bad actors and stop the year-over-year trend of increasing attacks and breaches, security must adopt their tactics by being always-on and adaptable to stay one step ahead. Below, skilled engineers and security architects from Trellix outline just how crucial this shift in mindset and approach is as we head into 2022.

Lazarus Wants to Add You as a Friend

Nation States will weaponize social media to target more enterprise professionals
By Raj Samani

We love our social media. From beefs between popstars and professional pundits, to an open channel to the best jobs in the industry.

But guess what?

The threat actors know this, and our appetite toward accepting connections from people we have never met are all part of our relentless pursuit of the next 1,000 followers.

A result of this has seen the targeting of executives with promises of job offers from specific threat groups; and why not? After all, it is the most efficient method to bypass traditional security controls and directly communicate with targets at companies that are of interest to threat groups. Equally, direct messages have been used by groups to take control over influencer accounts to promote messaging of their own.

While this approach is not new, it is nearly as ubiquitous as alternate channels. After all, it does demand a level of research to “hook” the target into interactions and establishing fake profiles are more work than simply finding an open relay somewhere on the internet. That being said, targeting individuals has proven a very successful channel, and we predict the use of this vector could grow not only through espionage groups, but other threat actors looking to infiltrate organizations for their own criminal gain.

Help Wanted: Bad Guys with Benefits

Nation states will increase their offensive operations by leveraging cybercriminals
By Christiaan Beek

With a focus on strategic intelligence, our team is not only monitoring activity, but also investigating and monitoring open-source-intelligence from a diversity of sources to gain more insights into threat-activities around the globe – and these include an increase in the blending of cybercrime and nation-state operations.

In many cases, a start-up company is formed, and a web of front companies or existing “technology” companies are involved in operations that are directed and controlled by the countries’ intelligence ministries.

In May 2021 for example, the U.S. government charged four Chinese nationals who were working for state-owned front companies. The front-companies facilitated hackers to create malware, attack targets of interest to gain business intelligence, trade-secrets, and information about sensitive technologies.

Not only China but also other nations such as Russia, North Korea, and Iran have applied these tactics. Hire hackers for operations, do not ask questions about their other operations if they do not harm the interests of their own country.

Where in the past specific malware families were tied to nation-state groups, the blurring starts to happen when hackers are hired to write code and conduct these operations.

The initial breach with tactics and tools could be similar as “regular” cybercrime operations, however it is important to monitor what is happening next and act fast. With the predicted increase of blurring between cybercrime and nation-state actors in 2022, companies should audit their visibility and learn from tactics and operations conducted by actors targeting their sector.

Game of Ransomware Thrones

Self-reliant cybercrime groups will shift the balance of power within the RaaS eco-kingdom
By John Fokker

For several years, ransomware attacks have dominated the headlines as arguably the most impactful cyber threats. The Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) model at the time opened the cybercrime career path to lesser skilled criminals which eventually led to more breaches and higher criminal profits.

For a long time, RaaS admins and developers were prioritized as the top targets, often neglecting the affiliates since they were perceived as less skilled. This, combined with the lack of disruptions in the RaaS ecosystem, created an atmosphere where those lesser-skilled affiliates could thrive and grow into very competent cybercriminals, eventually with a mind of their own.

In a response to the Colonial Pipeline attack, the popular cybercrime forums have banned ransomware actors from advertising. Now, the RaaS groups no longer have a third-party platform on which to actively recruit, show their seniority, offer escrow, have their binaries tested by moderators, or settle disputes. The lack of visibility has made it harder for RaaS groups to establish or maintain credibility and will make it harder for RaaS developers to maintain their current top tier position in the underground.

These events undermine their trusted position. Ransomware has generated billions of dollars in recent years and it’s only a matter of time before some individuals who believe they aren’t getting their fair share become unhappy.

The first signs of this happening are already visible as described in our blog on the Groove Gang, a cyber-criminal gang that branched off from classic RaaS to specialize in computer network exploitation (CNE), exfiltrate sensitive data and, if lucrative, partner with a ransomware team to encrypt the organization’s network.

In 2022, expect more self-reliant cybercrime groups to rise and shift the balance of power within the RaaS eco-climate from those who control the ransomware to those who control the victim’s networks.

Ransomware For Dummies

Less-skilled operators won’t have to bend the knee in RaaS model power shift
By Raj Samani

The Ransomware-as-a-Service eco system has evolved with the use of affiliates, the middlemen and women that work with the developers for a share of the profits. While this structure was honed during the growth of GandCrab, we are witnessing potential chasms in what is becoming a not-so-perfect union.

Historically, the ransomware developers, held the cards, thanks to their ability to selectively determine the affiliates in their operations, even holding “job interviews” to establish technical expertise. As more ransomware players have entered the market, we suspect that the most talented affiliates are now able to auction their services for a bigger part of the profits, and maybe demand a broader say in operations.

For example, the introduction of Active Directory enumeration within DarkSide ransomware could be intended to remove the dependency on the technical expertise of affiliates. These shifts signal a potential migration back to the early days of ransomware, with less-skilled operators increasing in demand using the expertise encoded by the ransomware developers.

Will this work? Frankly, it will be challenging to replicate the technical expertise of a skilled penetration tester, and maybe – just maybe – the impact will not be as severe as recent cases.

Keep A Close Eye on API

5G and IoT traffic between API services and apps will make them increasingly lucrative targets
By Arnab Roy

Threat actors pay attention to enterprise statistics and trends, identifying services and applications offering increased risk potential. Cloud applications, irrespective of their flavor (SaaS, PaaS, or IaaS), have transformed how APIs are designed, consumed, and leveraged by software developers, be it a B2B scenario or B2C scenario. The reach and popularity of some of these cloud applications, as well as the treasure trove of business-critical data and capabilities that typically lie behind these APIs, make them a lucrative target for threat actors. The connected nature of APIs potentially also introduces additional risks to businesses as they become an entry vector for wider supply chain attacks.

The following are some of the key risks that we see evolving in the future: 1. Misconfiguration of APIs 2. Exploitation of modern authentication mechanisms 3. Evolution of traditional malware attacks to use more of the cloud APIs 4. Potential misuse of the APIs to launch attacks on enterprise data 5. The usage of APIs for software-defined infrastructure also means potential misuse.

For developers, developing an effective threat model for their APIs and having a Zero Trust access control mechanism should be a priority alongside effective security logging and telemetry for better incident response and detection of malicious misuse.

Hijackers Will Target Your Application Containers

Expanded exploitation of containers will lead to endpoint resource takeovers
By Mo Cashman

Containers have become the de facto platform of modern cloud applications. Organizations see benefits such as portability, efficiency and speed which can decrease time to deploy and manage applications that power innovation for the business. However, the accelerated use of containers increases the attack surface for an organization. Which techniques should you look out for, and which container risk groups will be targeted? Exploitation of public-facing applications (MITRE T1190) is a technique often used by APT and Ransomware groups. The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) identified multiple container risk groups including Image, Orchestrator, Registry, Container, Host OS and Hardware.

The following are some of the key risks groups we anticipate will be targeted for expanded exploitation in the future: 1. Orchestrator Risks: Increasing attacks on the orchestration layer, such as Kubernetes and associated API mainly driven by misconfigurations. 2. Image or Registry Risk: Increasing use of malicious or backdoored images through insufficient vulnerability checks. 3. Container Risks: Increasing attacks targeting vulnerable applications. Expanded exploitation of the above vulnerabilities in 2022 could lead to endpoint resource hijacking through crypto-mining malware, spinning up other resources, data theft, attacker persistence, and container-escape to host systems.

Zero Cares About Zero-days

The time to repurpose vulnerabilities into working exploits will be measured in hours and there’s nothing you can do about it… except patch
By Fred House

2021 is already being touted as one of the worst years on record with respect to the volume of zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in the wild. The scope of these exploitations, the diversity of targeted applications, and ultimately the consequences to organizations were all notable. As we look to 2022, we expect these factors to drive an increase in the speed at which organizations respond.

When we first learned in 2020 that roughly 17,000 SolarWinds customers were compromised and an estimated 40 were subsequently targeted, many reacted in shock at the pure scope of the compromise. Unfortunately, 2021 brought its own notable increase in volume along with uninspiring response times by organizations. Case in point: two weeks after Microsoft patched ProxyLogon they reported that 30K Exchange servers were still vulnerable (less conservative estimates had the number at 60K).

ProxyShell later arrived as Exchange’s second major event of the year. In August, a Blackhat presentation detailing Exchange Server vulnerabilities was followed the next day by the release of an exploit POC, all of which had been patched by Microsoft months earlier in April/May. This analysis of data captured by Shodan one week after the exploit POC was released concluded that over 30K Exchange servers were still vulnerable, noting that the data may have underrepresented the full scope (i.e., Shodan hadn’t had time to scan the full Internet). In summary: patched in the Spring, exploited in the Fall.

So, what can we take away from all of this? Well, attackers and security researchers alike will continue to hone their craft until weaponized exploits and POCs are expected within hours of vulnerability disclosure. In turn however, and largely driven by the increased consequences of compromise, we can also expect renewed diligence around asset and patch management. From identifying public-facing assets to quickly deploying patches despite potential business disruption, companies will have a renewed focus on reducing their “time to patch.” While we will inevitably continue to see high-impact exploitations, the scope of these exploitations will be reduced as more organizations recognize how better protection can be had with security that is able to learn and adapt faster and more efficiently than the bad actors trying to infiltrate them.