Cyber Defense eMagazine February Edition for 2023

MSPs are enticing targets for ransomware gangs since they have access to the data of numerous
organisations and so offer a variety of potential extortion sources. The renowned REvil organisation has
previously targeted MSPs.
7. Uber's internal systems compromised.
In September 2021, a teenager completely infiltrated the internal systems of the ride-sharing business
Uber. It appears that he employed a technique known as an MFA Fatigue attack, in which, if the
organisation uses MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication), the attacker floods the employee with
authentication requests on their mobile phone after obtaining their credentials.
In this case, the attacker eventually contacted the employee via WhatsApp and pretended to be from
Uber IT, warning him that he needed to accept the auth request or they would keep coming if he didn't.
At first, the employee will refuse them because they aren't logging in, but initially they will be refused
because they are not logging in. The worker gave in after becoming sufficiently weary of the constant
solicitations. The attacker then could add his own device to the MFA to change it.
The attacker then got in via the company VPN and started digging around. He quickly discovered a
Powershell script with administrator login information for the Thycotic privileged access management
(PAM) platform used by the business. All necessary credentials were accessible from this point. Given
that the attacker appears to have done it out of curiosity rather than for financial gain or other more
harmful mischief, Uber may be regarded as fortunate in this case.
So what's in store for 2023?
This is unfortunately just some of the largest attacks that hit organisations throughout 2022, there were
many more reported and many that are yet to be uncovered. Although analysis of trends for 2022 is still
ongoing, it appears that many of the common suspicious groups are still active. Even if ransomware isn't
garnering as much attention as it did a year ago, it still poses a serious threat to many businesses. The
majority of businesses could perform significantly better with just the most fundamental security best
practices such as the protection of mobile devices and the security behind them, according to surveys
like the IBM Security Cost of Data Breaches 2022.
As we move towards 2023, cybersecurity and threat detection remain important priorities. For both large
and small firms, data breaches and the theft of sensitive information continue to be a concern.
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Cyber Defense eMagazine – February 2023 Edition 64
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