Defender Experts for XDR offers a range of capabilities: 

• Managed detection and response: Let our expert analysts manage your Microsoft Defender XDR incident queue and handle triage, investigation, and response on your behalf.  
• Proactive threat hunting: Extend your team’s threat hunting capabilities and prioritize significant threats with Defender Experts for Hunting built in. 
• Live dashboards and reports: Get a transparent view of our operations conducted on your behalf, along with a noise-free, actionable view of prioritized incidents and detailed analytics. 
• Proactive check-ins: Benefit from remote, periodic check-ins with your named service delivery manager (SDM) team to guide your MXDR experience and improve your security posture. 
• Fast and seamless onboarding: Get a guided baselining experience to ensure your Microsoft security products are correctly configured.

Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR

Give your security operations center (SOC) team coverage with leading end-to-end protection and expertise.

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Cyberattacks detected by Defender Experts for XDR

In the first cyberattack, Defender Experts for XDR provided detection, visibility, and coverage under what Microsoft Threat Intelligence tracks as the threat actor Purple Typhoon. From the early steps in the intrusion, our team alerted the customer that 11 systems and 13 accounts were compromised via a malicious Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) session, leveraging a Dynamic Link Library (DLL) Search Order Hijacking on a legitimate Notepad++ executable. As is common with this threat actor, the next cyberattack, established a Quasar RAT backdoor triggering keylogging, capturing credentials for the domain admin. After the loaders were executed, scheduled tasks were used to move laterally, execute discovery commands on internal network areas, and complete credential theft dumping.       

For the second cyberattack, which used BlackCat ransomware, Defender Experts for XDR detected and provided extensive guidance on investigation and remediation actions. The BlackCat ransomware, also known as ALPHV, is a prevalent cyberthreat and a prime example of the growing ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) gig economy. It’s noteworthy due to its unconventional programming language (Rust), multiple target devices and possible entry points, and affiliation with prolific threat activity groups. While BlackCat’s arrival and execution vary based on the actors deploying it, the outcome is the same—target data is encrypted, exfiltrated, and used for “double extortion,” where attackers threaten to release the stolen data to the public if the ransom isn’t paid. This attack used access broker credentials to perform lateral movement, exfiltrate sensitive data via privileged execution, and execute ransomware encryption malware.    

In both cyberattacks, our team focused on providing focused email, in-product focus to guide the customer, and in a real world cyberattack, our service and product would take disruption actions to stop the cyberattack.

Comprehensive threat hunting, managed response, and product detections 

With complex cyberattacks, security operations teams need robust guidance on what is happening and how to prioritize remediation efforts. Throughout this evaluation, we provided over 18 incidents, 196 alerts, and enriched product detections with human-driven guidance via email and in product experiences using Managed responses. This includes a detailed investigation summary, indicators of compromise (IOCs), advanced hunting queries (AHQs), and prioritized remediation actions to help contain the cyberthreat. Our world class hunting team focuses on providing initial response to a cyberattack, then iterations on updates based on new threat intelligence findings and other enrichment.   

Figure 1. The incident and alerts are tagged with Defender Experts and detailed analysis provided under view Managed response.

Figure 2. Managed response showing details of investigation summary, IOCs, and TTPs.

Figure 3. Managed response focused remediation one-click actions such as blocking indicator, stopping a malicious process, and resetting passwords.

AI-driven attack disruption with Microsoft Defender XDR   

As the second cyberattack leveraged BlackCat ransomware, Microsoft Defender XDR’s attack disruption capability automatically contained the threat and then followed up with hunter guidance on additional containment. This capability combines our industry-leading detection with AI-powered enforcement mechanisms to help mitigate cyberthreats early on in the cyberattack chain and contain their advancement. Analysts have a powerful tool against human-operated cyberattacks while leaving them in complete control of investigating, remediating, and bringing assets back online. 

Figure 4. A summary attack graph, managed responses and attack disruption automatically handling this ransomware threat.

Seamless alert prioritization and consolidation into notifications for the SOC 

We provide prioritization and focus for a typical customer’s SOC team using tags and incident titles with Defender Experts where we enrich product detections. In addition, a dedicated SDM will conduct periodic touchpoints with customers to share productivity and service metrics, provide insights on any vulnerabilities or changes in their environment, solicit feedback, and make best practices recommendations. Our customers see a reduction in total incident volume over time, improvements in security posture, and overall lower operational overhead. Learn how Defender Experts helps Westminster School.  

Figure 5. Summary of all incidents and Defender Experts tag to help filter and prioritize for customers.

Commitment to Microsoft MXDR partners 

We continue our commitment to support our partners in our Microsoft-verified MXDR program. We know that a single provider can’t meet the unique needs of every organization, so we frequently collaborate with our ecosystem of partners to provide customers the flexibility to choose what works best for them—and to leverage those trusted relationships for the best outcomes and returns on their investment. 

We acknowledge that there are areas for discussion and enhancement, but we will take these as a valuable learning opportunity to continuously improve our products and services for the customers we serve. We appreciate our ongoing collaboration with MITRE as the managed services evaluation process evolves with the growing cyberthreat landscape. We thank MITRE Engenuity for the opportunity to contribute to and participate in this year’s evaluation. 

Learn more about Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR

To learn more, visit the Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR web page, read the Defender Experts for XDR docs page, and subscribe to our ongoing news at the Microsoft Security Experts blog. 

​​To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity. 

© June 2024. The MITRE Corporation. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of The MITRE Corporation. 

The post Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR recognized in the latest MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK® Evaluation for Managed Services appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

As part of any robust incident response plan, organizations often work through potential security weaknesses by responding to hypothetical cyberthreats. In this blog post, we’ll imagine a scenario in which a threat actor uses malware to infect the network, moving laterally throughout the environment and attempting to escalate their admin rights along the way. In this hypothetical scenario, we’ll assume containment of the incident requires a mass password reset.

Despite technological advances, many organizations still depend heavily on passwords, making them vulnerable to cyberthreats. During a ransomware attack, the need for mass password resets becomes urgent. Unfortunately, admins can quickly become overwhelmed, burdened with the daunting task of resetting passwords for countless users across multiple connected devices. The surge in help desk calls and service tickets as users face authentication issues on multiple fronts can significantly disrupt business operations. But it’s imperative to secure all digital access points to swiftly mitigate risks and restore system integrity. So how do we manage a mass password reset while minimizing disruption to users and the business?

This blog post delves into the processes and technologies involved in managing a mass password reset, in alignment with expert advice from Microsoft Incident Response. We’ll explore the necessity of mass password resets and the specific methods and security measures that Microsoft recommends to effectively safeguard identities. For a more technical explanation, read our Tech Community post.

Surge in password-based cyberattacks

According to the most recent Microsoft Digital Defense Report, password-based attacks in 2023 increased tenfold over the previous year, with Microsoft blocking about 4,000 attacks per second through Microsoft Entra.¹ This alarming rise underscores the vulnerability of password-dependent security systems. Despite this, too many companies haven’t adopted multifactor authentication, leaving them vulnerable to a variety of cyberattacks, such as phishing, credential stuffing, and brute force attacks. This makes a mass password reset not just a precaution, but a necessity in certain situations.

Deciding on a mass password reset

When the Microsoft Incident Response team determines a threat actor has had extensive access to a customer’s identity plane, a mass password reset may be the best option to restore environment security and prevent unauthorized access. Here are a few of the first questions we ask:

• When should you perform a mass password reset?
• What challenges might you face during the process?
• How should you prepare for it?

Microsoft Incident Response

Dedicated experts work with you before, during, and after a cybersecurity incident.

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How to manage a mass password reset effectively

In today’s world, many of us are working from anywhere, blending home and office environments. This diversity makes executing a mass password reset particularly challenging, and the decision isn’t always clear. Organizations need to weigh the risk to the business from ransomware and down time against the disruption to users and the often overwhelming strain on IT staff. Here are the two main drivers of mass password resets, as well as advanced security measures a cybersecurity team can apply.

User-driven resets

In environments where identities sync through Microsoft Entra, there’s no need for a direct office connection to reset passwords. Using Microsoft Entra ID capabilities allows users to change their credentials at their next login. Opting for Microsoft Entra ID can also add layers of security through features like Conditional Access, making the reset process both secure and user-friendly. Conditional Access policies work by evaluating the context of each sign-in attempt and allowing you to configure requirements based on that context—like requiring users to complete multifactor authentication challenges if they’re accessing files from outside the corporate network, for example. Conditional Access policies can significantly enhance security by preventing unauthorized access during the reset process.

Administrator-driven resets

This method is crucial when immediate action is needed. Resetting all credentials quickly might disrupt user access, but it’s sometimes necessary to secure the system. Providing options like self-service password reset (SSPR) can help users regain access without delay. SSPR allows users to authenticate using alternative methods such as personal email addresses, phone numbers, or security questions—options available when they have been previously configured. This method not only restores access quickly but also reduces the load on help desk and support hotline departments during critical recovery phases.

Advanced security measures: Beyond basic resets

In addition to the primary reset methods, advanced security measures should be considered to enhance the security posture further. For highly privileged accounts, using privileged identity management (PIM) can manage just-in-time access, reducing the risk of exposure. PIM enables granular control over privileged accounts, allowing administrators to activate them only when necessary, which minimizes the opportunity for attackers to exploit these high-level credentials. To explore more scenarios where mass password reset might be the best option, read through our technical post.

Securing emergency access: Don’t forget to monitor

For critical accounts, manually resetting credentials ensures tighter security. It’s essential to equip emergency access accounts with phishing-resistant authentication, such as FIDO2 security keys and support from the Microsoft Authenticator app. Monitoring the activities from these accounts is crucial to ensure they are used correctly and only in emergencies. IT admins can leverage Microsoft Entra ID logs to keep a close watch on login patterns and activities, viewing real-time alerts and ensuring quick response to any suspicious actions.

Passwordless authentication and enhancing incident response

As cybersecurity evolves, the move toward passwordless authentication is becoming integral to enhancing incident response strategies. Traditional passwords—often vulnerable to breaches—are giving way to more secure methods like Windows Hello for Business, Microsoft Authenticator, and FIDO2 security keys. These technologies leverage biometrics and secure tokens, reducing common attack vectors such as password theft and phishing, and thereby streamlining the incident response process. Policies like a Temporary Access Pass can be configured to empower a move towards passwordless authentication, making it easier for users to register new strong authentication methods.

Implementing multifactor authentication also further strengthens security frameworks. Multifactor authentication is an essential component of basic security hygiene that can prevent 99% of account compromise attacks.¹ When integrated with phishing-resistant authentication methods, together they form a formidable barrier against unauthorized access. This dual approach not only speeds up the response during security incidents but also reduces potential entry points for attackers. This transformative phase in cybersecurity shifts focus on reactive to proactive security measures, promising a future where digital safety is inherent and user interactions are inherently secure. An option to enable phish-resistant authentication is the newly released ability to use passkeys with the Microsoft Authenticator.

A mass password reset is just one of the many tools organizations need to understand and consider as part of their robust incident response plan. For a more in-depth look at scenarios that may require mass password reset, read our technical post.

Learn more

Learn more about Microsoft Incident Response and Microsoft Entra.

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

¹Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2023.

The post Microsoft Incident Response tips for managing a mass password reset appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

What is AI jailbreak?

An AI jailbreak is a technique that can cause the failure of guardrails (mitigations). The resulting harm comes from whatever guardrail was circumvented: for example, causing the system to violate its operators’ policies, make decisions unduly influenced by one user, or execute malicious instructions. This technique may be associated with additional attack techniques such as prompt injection, evasion, and model manipulation. You can learn more about AI jailbreak techniques in our AI red team’s Microsoft Build session, How Microsoft Approaches AI Red Teaming.

Here is an example of an attempt to ask an AI assistant to provide information about how to build a Molotov cocktail (firebomb). We know this knowledge is built into most of the generative AI models available today, but is prevented from being provided to the user through filters and other techniques to deny this request. Using a technique like Crescendo, however, the AI assistant can produce the harmful content that should otherwise have been avoided. This particular problem has since been addressed in Microsoft’s safety filters; however, AI models are still susceptible to it. Many variations of these attempts are discovered on a regular basis, then tested and mitigated.

Why is generative AI susceptible to this issue?

When integrating AI into your applications, consider the characteristics of AI and how they might impact the results and decisions made by this technology. Without anthropomorphizing AI, the interactions are very similar to the issues you might find when dealing with people. You can consider the attributes of an AI language model to be similar to an eager but inexperienced employee trying to help your other employees with their productivity:

1. Over-confident: They may confidently present ideas or solutions that sound impressive but are not grounded in reality, like an overenthusiastic rookie who hasn’t learned to distinguish between fiction and fact.
2. Gullible: They can be easily influenced by how tasks are assigned or how questions are asked, much like a naïve employee who takes instructions too literally or is swayed by the suggestions of others.
3. Wants to impress: While they generally follow company policies, they can be persuaded to bend the rules or bypass safeguards when pressured or manipulated, like an employee who may cut corners when tempted.
4. Lack of real-world application: Despite their extensive knowledge, they may struggle to apply it effectively in real-world situations, like a new hire who has studied the theory but may lack practical experience and common sense.

In essence, AI language models can be likened to employees who are enthusiastic and knowledgeable but lack the judgment, context understanding, and adherence to boundaries that come with experience and maturity in a business setting.

So we can say that generative AI models and system have the following characteristics:

• Imaginative but sometimes unreliable
• Suggestible and literal-minded, without appropriate guidance
• Persuadable and potentially exploitable
• Knowledgeable yet impractical for some scenarios

Without the proper protections in place, these systems can not only produce harmful content, but could also carry out unwanted actions and leak sensitive information.

Due to the nature of working with human language, generative capabilities, and the data used in training the models, AI models are non-deterministic, i.e., the same input will not always produce the same outputs. These results can be improved in the training phases, as we saw with the results of increased resilience in Phi-3 based on direct feedback from our AI Red Team. As all generative AI systems are subject to these issues, Microsoft recommends taking a zero-trust approach towards the implementation of AI; assume that any generative AI model could be susceptible to jailbreaking and limit the potential damage that can be done if it is achieved. This requires a layered approach to mitigate, detect, and respond to jailbreaks. Learn more about our AI Red Team approach.

What is the scope of the problem?

When an AI jailbreak occurs, the severity of the impact is determined by the guardrail that it circumvented. Your response to the issue will depend on the specific situation and if the jailbreak can lead to unauthorized access to content or trigger automated actions. For example, if the harmful content is generated and presented back to a single user, this is an isolated incident that, while harmful, is limited. However, if the jailbreak could result in the system carrying out automated actions, or producing content that could be visible to more than the individual user, then this becomes a more severe incident. As a technique, jailbreaks should not have an incident severity of their own; rather, severities should depend on the consequence of the overall event (you can read about Microsoft’s approach in the AI bug bounty program).

Here are some examples of the types of risks that could occur from an AI jailbreak:

• AI safety and security risks:
  • Unauthorized data access
  • Sensitive data exfiltration
  • Model evasion
  • Generating ransomware
  • Circumventing individual policies or compliance systems
• Responsible AI risks:
  • Producing content that violates policies (e.g., harmful, offensive, or violent content)
  • Access to dangerous capabilities of the model (e.g., producing actionable instructions for dangerous or criminal activity)
  • Subversion of decision-making systems (e.g., making a loan application or hiring system produce attacker-controlled decisions)
  • Causing the system to misbehave in a newsworthy and screenshot-able way
  • IP infringement

How do AI jailbreaks occur?

The two basic families of jailbreak depend on who is doing them:

• A “classic” jailbreak happens when an authorized operator of the system crafts jailbreak inputs in order to extend their own powers over the system.
• Indirect prompt injection happens when a system processes data controlled by a third party (e.g., analyzing incoming emails or documents editable by someone other than the operator) who inserts a malicious payload into that data, which then leads to a jailbreak of the system.

You can learn more about both of these types of jailbreaks here.

There is a wide range of known jailbreak-like attacks. Some of them (like DAN) work by adding instructions to a single user input, while others (like Crescendo) act over several turns, gradually shifting the conversation to a particular end. Jailbreaks may use very “human” techniques such as social psychology, effectively sweet-talking the system into bypassing safeguards, or very “artificial” techniques that inject strings with no obvious human meaning, but which nonetheless could confuse AI systems. Jailbreaks should not, therefore, be regarded as a single technique, but as a group of methodologies in which a guardrail can be talked around by an appropriately crafted input.

Mitigation and protection guidance

To mitigate the potential of AI jailbreaks, Microsoft takes defense in depth approach when protecting our AI systems, from models hosted on Azure AI to each Copilot solution we offer. When building your own AI solutions within Azure, the following are some of the key enabling technologies that you can use to implement jailbreak mitigations:

• Prompt filtering: Prompt Shields in Azure AI Content Safety
• Identity management: Managed identities for Azure resources
• Data access controls: Microsoft Purview data security for generative AI apps   
• System metaprompt: System message framework and template recommendations for large language models (LLMs)
• Content filtering: Azure OpenAI Service content filtering
• Abuse monitoring: Azure OpenAI Service abuse monitoring
• Model alignment during training: Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals: Generative AI – Training
• Threat protection: Microsoft Defender for Cloud threat protection for AI workloads

With layered defenses, there are increased chances to mitigate, detect, and appropriately respond to any potential jailbreaks.

To empower security professionals and machine learning engineers to proactively find risks in their own generative AI systems, Microsoft has released an open automation framework, Python Risk Identification Toolkit for generative AI (PyRIT). Read more about the release of PyRIT for generative AI Red teaming, and access the PyRIT toolkit on GitHub.

When building solutions on Azure AI, use the Azure AI Studio capabilities to build benchmarks, create metrics, and implement continuous monitoring and evaluation for potential jailbreak issues.

If you discover new vulnerabilities in any AI platform, we encourage you to follow responsible disclosure practices for the platform owner. Microsoft’s procedure is explained here: Microsoft AI Bounty Program.

Detection guidance

Microsoft builds multiple layers of detections into each of our AI hosting and Copilot solutions.

To detect attempts of jailbreak in your own AI systems, you should ensure you have enabled logging and are monitoring interactions in each component, especially the conversation transcripts, system metaprompt, and the prompt completions generated by the AI model.

Microsoft recommends setting the Azure AI Content Safety filter severity threshold to the most restrictive options, suitable for your application. You can also use Azure AI Studio to begin the evaluation of your AI application safety with the following guidance: Evaluation of generative AI applications with Azure AI Studio.

Summary

This article provides the foundational guidance and understanding of AI jailbreaks. In future blogs, we will explain the specifics of any newly discovered jailbreak techniques. Each one will articulate the following key points:

1. We will describe the jailbreak technique discovered and how it works, with evidential testing results.
2. We will have followed responsible disclosure practices to provide insights to the affected AI providers, ensuring they have suitable time to implement mitigations.
3. We will explain how Microsoft’s own AI systems have been updated to implement mitigations to the jailbreak.
4. We will provide detection and mitigation information to assist others to implement their own further defenses in their AI systems.

Richard Diver
Microsoft Security

Learn more

For the latest security research from the Microsoft Threat Intelligence community, check out the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Blog: https://aka.ms/threatintelblog.

To get notified about new publications and to join discussions on social media, follow us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/microsoft-threat-intelligence, and on X (formerly Twitter) at https://twitter.com/MsftSecIntel.

To hear stories and insights from the Microsoft Threat Intelligence community about the ever-evolving threat landscape, listen to the Microsoft Threat Intelligence podcast: https://thecyberwire.com/podcasts/microsoft-threat-intelligence.

The post AI jailbreaks: What they are and how they can be mitigated appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

At Microsoft, we’re continually evolving our solutions for protecting identities and access to meet the ever-changing security demands our customers face. In a recent post, we introduced the concept of the trust fabric. It’s a real-time approach to securing access that is adaptive and comprehensive. In this blog post, we’ll explore how any organization—large or small—can chart its own path toward establishing their own digital trust fabric. We’ll share how customers can secure access for any trustworthy identity, signing in from anywhere, to any app or resource on-premises, and in any cloud. While every organization is at a different stage in their security journey, with different priorities, we’ll break down the trust fabric journey into distinct maturity stages and provide guidance to help customers prioritize their own identity and network access improvements.

Stage 1: Establish Zero Trust access controls

“Microsoft enabled secure access to data from any device and from any location. The Zero Trust model has been pivotal to achieve the desired configuration for users, and Conditional Access has helped enable it.”

—Arshaad Smile, Head of Cloud Security, Standard Bank of South Africa 

This first stage is all about your core identity and access management solutions and practices. It’s about securing identities, preventing external attacks, and verifying explicitly with strong authentication and authorization controls. Today, identity is the first line of defense and the most attacked surface area. In 2022, Microsoft tracked 1,287 password attacks every second. In 2023 we saw a dramatic increase, with an average of more than 4,000 password attacks per second.¹

To prevent identity attacks, Microsoft recommends a Zero Trust security strategy, grounded in the following three principles—verify explicitly, ensure least-privilege access, and assume breach. Most organizations start with identity as the foundational pillar of their Zero Trust strategies, establishing essential defenses and granular access policies. Those essential identity defenses include:

• Single sign-on for all applications to unify access policies and controls.
• Phishing-resistant multifactor authentication or passwordless authentication to verify every identity and access request.
• Granular Conditional Access policies to check user context and enforce appropriate controls before granting access.

In fact, Conditional Access is the core component of an effective Zero Trust strategy. Serving as a unified Zero Trust access policy engine, it reasons over all available user context signals like device health or risk, and decides whether to grant access, require multifactor authentication, monitor or block access.

Recommended resources—Stage 1

For organizations in this stage of their journey, we’re detailing a few recommendations to make it easier to adopt and advance Zero Trust security fundamentals:

1. Implement phishing-resistant multifactor authentication for your organization to protect identities from compromise.
2. Deploy the recommended Conditional Access policies, customize Microsoft-managed policies, and add your own. Test in report-only mode. Mandate strong, phishing-resistant authentication for any scenario.
3. Check your Microsoft Entra recommendations and Identity Secure Score to measure your organization’s identity security posture and plan your next steps. 

Stage 2: Secure access for your hybrid workforce

Once your organization has established foundational defenses, the next priority is expanding Zero Trust strategy by securing access for your hybrid workforce. Flexible work models are now mainstream, and they pose new security challenges as boundaries between corporate networks and open internet are blurred. At the same time, many organizations increasingly have a mix of modern cloud applications and legacy on-premises resources, leading to inconsistent user experiences and security controls.

The key concept for this stage is Zero Trust user access. It’s about advanced protection that extends Zero Trust principles to any resource, while making it possible to securely access any application or service from anywhere. At the second stage of the trust fabric journey, organizations need to:                          

1. Unify Conditional Access across identity, endpoint, and network, and extend it to on-premises apps and internet traffic so that every access point is equally protected.
2. Enforce least-privilege access to any app or resource—including AI—so that only the right users can access the right resources at the right time.
3. Minimize dependency on the legacy on-premises security tools like traditional VPNs, firewalls, or governance that don’t scale to the demands of cloud-first environments and lack protections for sophisticated cyberattacks.

A great outcome of those strategies is much improved user experience, as now any application can be made available from anywhere, with familiar, consistent sign-in experience.

Recommended resources—Stage 2

Here are key recommendations to secure access for your employees:

1. Converge identity and network access controls and extend Zero Trust access controls to on-premises resources and the open internet.
2. Automate lifecycle workflows to simplify access reviews and ensure least privilege access.
3. Replace legacy solutions such as basic Secure Web Gateway (SWG), Firewalls, and Legacy VPNs.

Stage 3: Secure access for customers and partners

With Zero Trust user access in place, organizations need to also secure access for external users including customers, partners, business guests, and more. Modern customer identity and access management (CIAM) solutions can help create user-centric experiences that make it easier to securely engage with customers and collaborate with anyone outside organizational boundaries—ultimately driving positive business outcomes.

In this third stage of the journey towards an identity trust fabric, it’s essential to:

1. Protect external identities with granular Conditional Access policies, fraud protection, and identity verification to make sure security teams know who those external users are.
2. Govern external identities and their access to ensure that they only access resources that they need, and don’t keep access when it’s no longer needed.
3. Create user-centric, frictionless experiences to make it easier for external users to follow your security policies.
4. Simplify developer experiences so that any new application has strong identity controls built-in from the start.

Recommended resources—Stage 3

1. Learn how to extend your Zero Trust foundation to external identities. Protect your customers and partners against identity compromise.
2. Set up your governance for external users. Implement strong access governance including lifecycle workflows for partners, contractors, and other external users.
3. Protect customer-facing apps. Customize and control how customers sign up and sign in when using your applications.

Stage 4: Secure access to resources in any cloud

The journey towards an organization’s trust fabric is not complete without securing access to resources in multicloud environments. Cloud-native services depend on their ability to access other digital workloads, which means billions of applications and services connect to each other every second. Already workload identities exceed human identities by 10 to 1 and the number of workload identities will only grow.² Plus, 50% of total identities are super identities, that have access to all permissions and all resources, and 70% of those super identities are workload identities.³

Managing access across clouds is complex, and challenges like fragmented role-based access control (RBAC) systems, limited scalability of on-premises Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions, and compliance breaches are common. These issues are exacerbated by the growing adoption of cloud services from multiple providers. Organizations typically use seven to eight different products to address these challenges. But many still struggle to attain complete visibility into their cloud access.

We’re envisioning the future for cloud access management as a unified platform that will deliver comprehensive visibility into permissions and risk for all identities—human and workloads—and will secure access to any resources in any cloud. In the meantime, we recommend the following key actions for in the fourth stage of their journey towards the trust fabric:

Read our recent blog titled “Securing access to any resource, anywhere” to learn more about our vision for Cloud Access Management.

Recommended resources—Stage 4

As we work towards making this vision a reality, customers today can get started on their stage four trust fabric journey by learning more about multicloud risk, getting visibility, and remediating over-provisioned permissions across clouds. Check out the following resources to learn more.

1. Understand multicloud security risks from the 2024 State of Multicloud Security Risk Report.
2. Get visibility into cloud permissions assigned to all identities and permissions assigned and used across multiple clouds and remediate risky permissions.
3. Protect workload-to-workload interactions by securing workload identities and their access to cloud resources.

Accelerate your trust fabric with Generative AI capabilities and skills

To increase efficiency, speed, and scale, many organizations are looking to AI to help augment existing security workflows. Microsoft Entra and Microsoft Copilot for Security work together at machine speed, integrating with an admin’s daily workflow to prioritize and automate, understand cyberthreats in real time, and process large volumes of data.

Copilot skills and capabilities embedded in Microsoft Entra helps admins to:

• Discover high risk users, overprivileged access, and suspicious sign-ins.
• Investigate identity risks and help troubleshoot daily identity tasks.
• Get instant risk summaries, steps to remediate, and recommended guidance for each identity at risk.
• Create lifecycle workflows to streamline the process of provisioning user access and eliminating configuration gaps.

Copilot is informed by large-scale data and threat intelligence, including the more than 78 trillion security signals processed by Microsoft each day, and coupled with large language models to deliver tailored insights and guide next steps. Learn more about how Microsoft Copilot for Security can help support your trust fabric maturity journey.

Microsoft Entra

Protect any identity and secure access to any resource with a family of multicloud identity and network access solutions.

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Microsoft is here to help

No matter where you are on your trust fabric journey, Microsoft can help you with the experience, resources, and expertise at every stage. The Microsoft Entra family of identity and network access solutions can help you create a trust fabric for securing access for any identity, from anywhere, to any app or resource across on-premises and clouds. The products listed below work together to prevent identity attacks, enforce least privilege access, unify access controls, and improve the experience for users, admins, and developers.

Learn more about securing access across identity, endpoint, and network to accelerate your organization’s trust fabric implementation on our new identity and network access solution page.

Learn more

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

¹Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2023.

²How do cloud permission risks impact your organization?, Microsoft.

³2024 State of Multicloud Security Risk Report, Microsoft.

The post The four stages of creating a trust fabric with identity and network security appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Today, we are excited to announce that Microsoft has been named a leader in The Forrester Wave: Extended Detection and Response (XDR) platforms, Q2, 2024, with the highest scores in the strategy, current offering, and market presence categories. Microsoft Defender XDR was rated the highest possible in 15 out of 22 evaluation criteria, including Endpoint Native Detection, Surface Investigation, Threat Hunting, Analyst Experience, Vision, and Innovation.

Forrester states that “Microsoft is refining the most complete XDR offering in the market today,” and called out “its dedication to innovation is demonstrated by its percentage of the R&D budget by revenue, which rivals the most innovative vendors in security.”

We believe Forrester’s recognition showcases that Microsoft Defender XDR is the broadest native XDR solution on the market and that our most recent additions of Microsoft Defender for Cloud data and Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management data are critical to give the SOC access to end-to-end data. Its incident-level visibility, automatic attack disruption of advanced attacks, and accelerated detection and response now work across endpoints, Internet of Things (IoT), operational technology (OT), on-premises and cloud identities, email and collaboration tools, software as a service (SaaS) apps, cloud workloads, and data insights.

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Elevate your security with unified visibility, investigation, and response.

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Get end-to-end protection with Microsoft’s unified security operations platform

Native breadth is critical to an industry-leading XDR solution, and with Microsoft Defender XDR coverage, organizations get free data ingestion for more workloads than any other can provide. But we understand that customers need to be able to bring together security signals from many sources. This is why we built the security operations platform—by combining the full capabilities of XDR, security information and event management (SIEM), exposure management, generative AI, and threat intelligence. Having these critical capability sets in a single place and operating across all relevant data defeats security tools silos while empowering security teams with unified, comprehensive features that apply to multiple use cases.

A unified platform. The unified security operations platform enables customers to reap the benefits of both SIEM and XDR through incident level response, flexible reporting, automated workflows, and hunting across both first- and third-party data sources. In the private preview, customers saw up to an 80% reduction in incidents, leveraging the powerful correlation across both XDR and SIEM data.² With attack disruption for SAP, the platform will automatically disable access to both the SAP and Microsoft accounts during a financial fraud attack—providing critical protection for a platform that houses extremely sensitive data.

Generative AI embedded. Microsoft Copilot for Security is an industry-first generative AI solution that enables security teams to simplify processes like incident remediation and guided response, reverse engineer malware code, and even uplevel junior analysts by generating Kusto Query Language (KQL) queries using natural language. Embedded directly into the investigation experience, Copilot for Security enables the SOC to automate repetitive tasks and facilitate more informed decision-making during complex security incidents.

Disrupts advanced attacks faster than any other platform. In a world where AI can be used for both good and evil, the importance of using it to fortify organizational defenses becomes more critical than ever. In the last year, 75% of security professionals witnessed an increase in attacks with 85% attributing this rise to bad actors using generative AI.³ This is why Microsoft Security continues to invest in AI. Automatic attack disruption in Defender XDR uses the power of AI and machine learning to detect and disrupt in-progress attacks like ransomware, business email compromise, attacker in the middle, and more with high confidence to limit the impact to an organization. By correlating trillions of signals from the workloads, Defender XDR can recognize the intent of an attacker and disrupts ransomware attacks in just three minutes.⁴

With cyberattackers using AI for their own means, XDR and unified security operations platforms are becoming increasingly critical to modern cybersecurity strategies. We are excited that Forrester recognized Microsoft’s leadership in this space, and we will continue to focus on innovation and AI-capabilities to help organizations future-proof their defenses.

Learn more about Microsoft Defender XDR.

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

¹The Fundamentals of Cloud Security, The Hacker News. May 8, 2024.

²Microsoft internal data, May 2024.

³Study finds increase in cybersecurity attacks fueled by generative AI, Security Magazine. August 29, 2023.

⁴Get end-to-end protection with Microsoft’s unified security operations platform, now in public preview, Rob Lefferts. April 3, 2024.

The Forrester Wave™: Extended Detection And Response Platforms, Q2 2024, Allie Mellen, Joseph, Blankenship, Sarah Morana, and Michael Belden. June 3, 2024.

The Forrester Wave™ is copyrighted by Forrester Research, Inc. Forrester and Forrester Wave™ are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. The Forrester Wave™ is a graphical representation of Forrester’s call on a market and is plotted using a detailed spreadsheet with exposed scores, weightings, and comments. Forrester does not endorse any vendor, product, or service depicted in the Forrester Wave™. Information is based on the best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change.

The post Microsoft is named a leader in the Forrester Wave for XDR appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

OT systems, which control real-world critical processes, present a significant target for cyberattacks. These systems are prevalent across various industries, from building heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, to water supply and power plants, providing control over vital parameters such as speed and temperature in industrial processes. A cyberattack on an OT system could transfer control over these critical parameters to attackers and enable malicious alteration that could result in malfunctions or even complete system outages, either programmatically via the programmable logic controller (PLC) or using the graphical controls of the human machine interface (HMI).

Adding to the potential damage of attacks on OT systems are their often-lacking security measures, which make OT attacks not only attractive for attackers but also relatively easy to execute. Many OT devices, notwithstanding common security guidelines, are directly connected to the internet, making them discoverable by attackers through internet scanning tools. Once discovered by attackers, poor security configurations, such as weak sign-in passwords or outdated software with known vulnerabilities, could be further exploited to obtain access to the devices.

The attractiveness of OT systems and attackers’ capabilities against systems with weak configurations were demonstrated in the Israel-Hamas war, which was accompanied by a spike in cyberattacks, including from OT-focused actors. Shortly after October 7, the Telegram channels of several such actors broadcasted their attacks against OT systems associated with Israeli companies. These publications were often accompanied by images of purportedly compromised systems, which the threat actors presented as alleged evidence for the attacks.

Microsoft’s analysis of multiple attacks by these actors revealed a common attack methodology: focusing on internet-exposed, poorly secured OT devices. This report will illustrate this attack methodology using the high-profile case of the November 2023 attack against Aliquippa water plant, for which CISA released an advisory in December 2023. CISA attributed the attack to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-affiliated actor “CyberAv3ngers”, tracked by Microsoft as Storm-0784. Microsoft assesses that the same methodology has been utilized by other OT-focused threat actors in multiple other attacks as well.

The attacks conducted by OT-focused actors were not limited to public sector facilities but also affected private companies in various countries. While the public sector has been implored to implement proper risk management and protection of OT systems, the diversity of target profiles illustrates that ensuring OT security in the private sector is equally crucial. Recommendations for organizations to protect against similar attacks and improve the security posture of their OT systems can be found at the end of this report.

Spike in activity of OT threat actors

Shortly after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, Microsoft has seen a rise in reports of attacker activity against OT systems with Israeli affiliation. This included activity by existing groups such as the IRGC-affiliated “CyberAv3ngers”, and the emergence of new groups such as the “CyberAv3ngers”-associated “Soldiers of Solomon”, and “Abnaa Al-Saada”, a cyber persona presenting itself as Yemeni. Microsoft tracks both “CyberAv3ngers” and its associated group “Soldiers of Solomon” as Storm-0784.

The systems targeted by these groups included both OT equipment deployed across different sectors in Israel, including PLCs and HMIs manufactured by large international vendors, as well as Israeli-sourced OT equipment deployed in other countries. The attacks were made public by the actors using their Telegram channels, on which they also posted images of the target systems to enhance purported credibility and present evidence for the attack.

Researching the threat actors in question, Microsoft has identified a typical target profile that attackers appeared to focus on: internet-exposed OT systems with poor security posture, potentially accompanied by weak passwords and known vulnerabilities.

The Aliquippa case: A high-profile OT attack

In late November 2023, the Aliquippa water plant was affected by a cyberattack that resulted in the outage of a pressure regulation pump on the municipal water supply line in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. In addition to impairing functionality, the attack, which targeted a PLC-HMI system by Israeli manufacturer Unitronics, also defaced the device to display a red screen with the name and logo of the “CyberAv3ngers” actor. The US Department of Treasury sanctioned officials in the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Cyber-Electronic Command (IRGC-CEC) in relation to the attack.

Around the same time, multiple other attack cases on Unitronics systems were reported across the industry in other parts of the world, with targeted equipment displaying the same message: “Every equipment ‘made in Israel’ is a Cyber Av3ngers legal target“.

Microsoft analyzed the publicly available data on the Aliquippa incident to find the victim system and assess how it was compromised. Leveraging researchers’ intimate OT knowledge to interpret the limited details known to the public has enabled the identification of a specific machine that Microsoft believes to be the victim.

According to publicly accessible sources, the targeted system was exposed to the internet, and it suffered both defacement and the shutdown of the pump it controlled. Designated engines that map internet-connected devices and their associated services allowed Microsoft researchers to compile a list of internet-exposed Unitronics devices of the relevant model, which also had a dedicated control port open. This configuration could potentially allow to reprogram the device reprogramming, leading to the observed defacement and shutdown.

The analysis of contextual data narrowed the device profile list, identifying a specific system that could be the victim. This system was geographically situated near the Aliquippa station, with its PLC Name field set to “Raccoon Primary PLC”, consistent with the Aliquippa water station serving Potter and Raccoon townships, and also aligning with a photograph disseminated by the media, depicting a sign that reads “PRIMARY PLC” on the targeted system.

The data gathered throughout the research of the Aliquippa attack case highlights a trend: a common target profile of internet-exposed OT systems with a weak security posture that mirrors other attack cases.

Attacks representing a broader concerning trend

The CISA advisory that was released following the attacks in November 2023 described the profile of the targeted OT systems as being internet-exposed and having weak sign-in configurations. In May 2024, CISA released another advisory following the more recent attacks against the water sector, which showed that the victims had a similar profile. Again, OT systems that were left internet-exposed and had weak passwords were targeted by nation-state attackers, this time by pro-Russia activists.

While attacks on high-profile targets, especially in the public sector, often receive significant media attention, it’s important to recognize that the private sector and individual users may also be impacted. Notably, the Aliquippa water plant was just one victim in a series of attacks on Unitronics by “CyberAv3ngers”, which also expanded to the private sector. Screenshots of affected systems with the same red screen and message have been posted by users on the Unitronics forum claiming their equipment was attacked, with similar reports also showing on social media platform X. Following the incidents, a vulnerability was assigned for the Unitronics default password configuration (CVE-2023-6448), and a patch was issued by Unitronics to require users to fix the issue.  

The common target profile for the attack cases analyzed reflects what attackers do to pick an easily accessible and appealing target in the first place. Attackers can, and do, obtain visibility on OT devices that are open to the internet using search engines, identify vulnerable models and open communication ports, and then use the contextual metadata to identify devices that are of special interest, such as ICS systems in water plants or other critical facilities. At that point, a weak password or an outdated system with an exploitable vulnerability is all that stands between them and remote access to the system.

The growing attention from attackers towards OT systems, observed across various sectors, is particularly concerning due to inadequate security practices on these systems. The Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2023 highlights that 78% of industrial network devices on customer networks monitored by Microsoft Defender for IoT have known vulnerabilities. Among these, 46% utilize deprecated firmware, for which patches are no longer available, while the remaining 32% operate outdated systems with unpatched vulnerabilities. For devices that are patched, many still use default passwords or have no passwords at all. Microsoft collects statistics on the prevalence of username and password pairs seen used in Microsoft’s sensor network, as was shared in the Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2022. Such outdated and vulnerable systems present attractive targets for future attacks, particularly when coupled with internet connectivity and default passwords. In the next sections, we share recommendations for improving the security posture of OT systems to help prevent attacks.

Mitigation and protection guidance

The analysis of the attack claims in question reveals diverse target profiles. It is therefore vital for organizations of all different sectors to ensure security hygiene for their OT systems to prevent similar threats.

• Adopt a comprehensive IoT and OT security solution such as Microsoft Defender for IoT to allow visibility and monitoring of all IoT and OT devices, threat detection and response, and integration with SIEM/SOAR and XDR platforms such as Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Defender XDR.
• Enable vulnerability assessments to identify unpatched devices in the organizational network and set workflows for initiating appropriate patch processes through  Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint with the Microsoft Defender for IoT add-on.
• Reduce the attack surface by eliminating unnecessary internet connections to IoT devices and OT control systems. Verify that no OT system is directly connected to the internet, for example, through IoT routers or Cellular bridged (LTE or 3G). Close unnecessary open ports and services on their equipment, eliminating remote access entirely when possible, and restricting access behind a firewall or VPN when full elimination cannot be achieved.
• Implement Zero Trust practices by applying network segmentation to prevent an attacker from moving laterally and compromising assets after intrusion. OT devices and networks should be isolated from IT with firewalls. Extend vulnerability and exposure control beyond the firewall with Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management. Turn on attack surface reduction rules in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint to prevent common attack techniques such as those used by ransomware groups.

Microsoft Defender for IoT detections

Microsoft Defender for IoT provides detections for suspicious behaviors of OT and IoT devices. Alerts related to internet access and modification of PLC behavior will detect activity of this type, such as:

• External address within the network communicated with Internet
• Internet Access Detected
• Unauthorized Internet Connectivity Detected
• Unauthorized PLC Program Upload
• Unauthorized PLC Programming

References

• IRGC-Affiliated Cyber Actors Exploit PLCs in Multiple Sectors, Including U.S. Water and Wastewater Systems Facilities | CISA
• Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa hacked by Iranian-backed cyber group – CBS Pittsburgh (cbsnews.com)
• Aliquippa Water Authority – Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa
• Cyber group backed by Iran is taking credit for Pennsylvania water system cyberattack
• PLC Hacking – More Commonplace Than You Might Think – Best Programming Practices – Unitronics Support Forum: Programmable Controllers (PLC + HMI All-in-One)
• Full Pint Beer on X: “Ugh – the brewery control system received a CYBER ATTACK over the weekend!!! We are working to restore things to working order, kudos to the crew at @Brewmation for working with us over the Thanksgiving weekend! Thank goodness for backups! #cyberattack #automation #ransomware https://t.co/SNdXY9ne4h” / X
• NVD – CVE-2023-6448 (nist.gov)
• Unitronics-Cybersecurity-Advisory-2023-001-CVE-2023-6448.pdf (unitronicsplc.com)
• Iranian cyber attack targets Israeli tech used by several US bodies | The Times of Israel

Learn more

For the latest security research from the Microsoft Threat Intelligence community, check out the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Blog: https://aka.ms/threatintelblog.

To get notified about new publications and to join discussions on social media, follow us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/microsoft-threat-intelligence, and on X (formerly Twitter) at https://twitter.com/MsftSecIntel.

To hear stories and insights from the Microsoft Threat Intelligence community about the ever-evolving threat landscape, listen to the Microsoft Threat Intelligence podcast: https://thecyberwire.com/podcasts/microsoft-threat-intelligence.

The post Exposed and vulnerable: Recent attacks highlight critical need to protect internet-exposed OT devices appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Securing multicloud environments is a deeply nuanced task, and many organizations struggle to fully safeguard the many different ways cyberthreat actors can compromise their environment. In our latest report, “2024 State of Multicloud Security Risk,” we analyzed usage patterns across Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Microsoft Security Exposure Management, Microsoft Entra Permissions Management, and Microsoft Purview to identify the top multicloud security risks across Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and beyond. This is the first time Microsoft has released a report sharing key insights across aspects of cloud security, including identity and data. 

This multidimensional analysis is key because it provides deeper visibility into all of the angles cyberattackers can use to breach cloud environments. For example, we found that more than 50% of cloud identities had access to all permissions and resources in 2023. Can you imagine what would happen if even one of these “super identities” were compromised? Looking beyond identity and access, we also discovered significant vulnerabilities in development and runtime environments and within organizations’ data security postures. These threats and more are the driving forces behind Microsoft’s work to advance cybersecurity protections by sharing the latest security intelligence and through programs like the recently expanded Secure Future Initiative, which works to guide Microsoft advancements according to secure by design, secure by default, and secure operations principles.

Read on for our topline insights from the report.

2024 State of Multicloud Security

The new report shares trends and insights to drive an integrated multicloud security strategy.

Read the report

1. Multicloud security demands a proactive, prioritized approach  

Any practitioner who has worked in cloud security can tell you just how challenging it is to analyze, prioritize, and address the hundreds of security alerts they receive every day. Security teams are also responsible for managing all exposed assets and other potential risk vectors. The average multicloud estate has 351 exploitable attack paths that lead to high-value assets, and we discovered more than 6.3 million exposed critical assets among all organizations.  

Cloud security posture management (CSPM) is one solution, but rather than taking a siloed approach, we recommend driving deeper, more contextualized CSPM as part of a cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP).  

CNAPPs are unified platforms that simplify securing cloud-native applications and infrastructure throughout their lifecycle. Because CNAPPs can unify CSPM with things like multipipeline DevOps security, cloud workload protections, cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM), and cloud service network security (CSNS), they can correlate alerts and eliminate visibility gaps between otherwise disparate tools. This allows security teams to proactively identify, prioritize, and mitigate potential cyberattack paths before they can be exploited. 

2. CNAPP embeds secure best practices throughout the entire application lifecycle

Properly securing cloud-native applications and infrastructure from initial code development to provisioning and runtime is a significant challenge area for many organizations. We found that 65% of code repositories contained source code vulnerabilities in 2023, which remained in the code for 58 days on average. Given that one quarter of high-risk vulnerabilities are exploited within 24 hours of being published, this creates a significant window for threat actors to take advantage and compromise your environment.²

In addition to delivering proactive protection during runtime, CNAPP can act as a shared platform for security teams to work with developers to unify, strengthen, and manage multipipeline DevOps security. And because CNAPP unites multiple cloud security capabilities under a single umbrella, security teams can also enforce full-lifecycle protections from a centralized dashboard. This shifts security left and heads off development risks before they become a problem in runtime.  

3. Organizations need a unified security approach to secure cross-cloud workloads

Multicloud security goes deeper than attack path analysis and strong DevSecOps. Organizations also need to examine how the growing use and variety of cloud workloads impact their exposure to cyberthreats. When cloud workloads span across multiple cloud environments, that creates a more complex threat landscape with additional complexities and dependencies that require proper configuration and monitoring to secure.  

Microsoft’s CNAPP solution, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, has an extended detection and response (XDR) integration that provides richer context to investigations and allows security teams to get the complete picture of an attack across cloud-native resources, devices, and identities. Roughly 6.5% of Defender for Cloud alerts were connected to other domains—such as endpoints, identities, networks, and apps and services—indicating cyberattacks that stretched across multiple cloud products and platforms.  

Rather than using individual point solutions to manage cross-cloud workload threats, organizations need an easy way to centralize and contextualize findings across their various security approaches. A CNAPP delivers that unified visibility. 

4. Securing growing workload identities requires a more nuanced approach

Also central to multicloud security is the idea of identity and access management. In the cloud, security teams must monitor and secure workload identities in addition to user identities. These workload identities are assigned to software workloads, such as apps, microservices, and containers. The growing usage of workload identities creates several challenges. 

For starters, workload identities make up 83% of all cloud identities within Microsoft Entra Permissions Management. When examining the data, we found that 40% of these workload identities are inactive—meaning they have not logged in or used any permissions in at least 90 days. These inactive identities are not monitored the same way as active identities, making them an attractive target for cyberattackers to compromise and use to move laterally. Workload identities can also be manually embedded in code, making it harder to clean them without triggering unintended consequences.  

What’s concerning, though, is the fact that the average organization has three human super identities for every seven workload super identities. These workload super identities have access to all permissions and resources within the multicloud environment, making them an enormous risk vector that must be addressed. And because workload identities are growing significantly faster than human identities, we expect the gap between human and workload super identities to widen rapidly.  

Security teams can address this risk by establishing visibility into all existing super identities and enforcing least privilege access principles over any unused or unnecessary permissions—regardless of the cloud they access. 

5. CIEM drives visibility and control over unused permissions

Speaking of permissions, our report found that more than 51,000 permissions were granted to users and workloads (up from 40,000 in 2022). With more permissions come more access points for cyberattackers.  

A CIEM can be used to drive visibility across the multicloud estate, eliminating the need for standing access for super identities, inactive identities, and unused permissions. Just 2% of human and workload identity permissions were used in 2023, meaning the remaining 98% of unused permissions open organizations up to unnecessary risk.  

By using a CIEM to identify entitlements, organizations can revoke unnecessary permissions and only allow just-enough permissions, just in time. This approach will significantly mitigate potential risks and enhance the overall security posture.  

6. A multilayered data security approach eliminates complexity and limits blind spots

Finally, organizations need a comprehensive data security approach that can help them uncover risks to sensitive data and understand how their users interact with data. It’s also important to protect and prevent unauthorized data use throughout the lifecycle using protection controls like encryption and authentication. 

A siloed solution won’t work, as organizations with 16 or more point solutions experience 2.8 times as many data security incidents as those with fewer tools. Instead, organizations should deploy integrated solutions through a multilayered approach that allows them to combine user and data insights to drive more proactive data security. At Microsoft, we accomplish this through Microsoft Purview—a comprehensive data security, compliance, and governance solution that discovers hidden risks to data wherever it lives or travels, protects and prevents data loss, and investigates and responds to data security incidents. It can also be used to help improve risk and compliance postures and meet regulatory requirements. 

Uncover strategies for mitigating your biggest multicloud risks 

Ultimately, multicloud security has multiple considerations that security teams must account for. It is not a check-the-box endeavor. Rather, security teams must continuously enforce best practices from the earliest stages of development to runtime, identity and access management, and data security. Not only must these best practices be enforced throughout the full cloud lifecycle, but they must also be standardized across all cloud platforms.

In a recent episode of our podcast, Uncovering Hidden Risks, we sat down with Christian Koberg-Pineda, a Principal Security DevOps Engineer at S.A.C.I. Falabella, to dive into his journey toward uncovering the challenges and strategies for safeguarding cloud-native applications across various cloud platforms. In it, he talks about the complexity of securing multiple clouds, including navigating differing configurations, technical implementations, and identity federation.

“One of the most relevant characteristics of cloud computing is that you can scale things on demand. As cloud security expert, you must think in scale too. You need to implement a security tool that is also capable of scaling together with your infrastructure or your services.”

– Christian Koberg-Pineda, Principal Security DevOps Engineer at S.A.C.I. Falabella

For more information on creating a secure multicloud environment, download the full “2024 State of Multicloud Security Risk” report and check out the below resources.  

• Uncovering Hidden Risks Podcast Episode 18: Navigating Multicloud Security Risks, A Customer Story.
• 2024 State of Multicloud Security Risk Report Infographic.

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

¹SANS 2023 Multicloud Survey: Navigating the Complexities of Multiple Cloud,  SANS Institute. 

²1 in 4 high-risk CVEs are exploited within 24 hours of going public, SC Media.

The post 6 insights from Microsoft’s 2024 state of multicloud risk report to evolve your security strategy appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Moonstone Sleet uses tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) also used by other North Korean threat actors over the last several years, highlighting the overlap among these groups. While Moonstone Sleet initially had overlaps with Diamond Sleet, the threat actor has since shifted to its own infrastructure and attacks, establishing itself as a distinct, well-resourced North Korean threat actor.

This blog describes several notable TTPs used by this threat actor as well as recommendations to defend against related attacks. As with any observed nation-state actor activity, Microsoft directly notifies customers that have been targeted or compromised, providing them with the necessary information to secure their environments.

Who is Moonstone Sleet?

Moonstone Sleet is a threat actor behind a cluster of malicious activity that Microsoft assesses is North Korean state-aligned and uses both a combination of many tried-and-true techniques used by other North Korean threat actors and unique attack methodologies. When Microsoft first detected Moonstone Sleet activity, the actor demonstrated strong overlaps with Diamond Sleet, extensively reusing code from known Diamond Sleet malware like Comebacker and using well-established Diamond Sleet techniques to gain access to organizations, such as using social media to deliver trojanized software. However, Moonstone Sleet quickly shifted to its own bespoke infrastructure and attacks. Subsequently, Microsoft has observed Moonstone Sleet and Diamond Sleet conducting concurrent operations, with Diamond Sleet still utilizing much of its known, established tradecraft.

Moonstone Sleet has an expansive set of operations supporting its financial and cyberespionage objectives. These range from deploying custom ransomware to creating a malicious game, setting up fake companies, and using IT workers.

Moonstone Sleet tradecraft

Microsoft has observed Moonstone Sleet using the TTPs discussed in the following sections in various campaigns.

Trojanized PuTTY

In early August 2023, Microsoft observed Moonstone Sleet delivering a trojanized version of PuTTY, an open-source terminal emulator, via apps like LinkedIn and Telegram as well as developer freelancing platforms. Often, the actor sent targets a .zip archive containing two files: a trojanized version of putty.exe and url.txt, which contained an IP address and a password. If the provided IP and password were entered by the user into the PuTTY application, the application would decrypt an embedded payload, then load and execute it. Notably, before Moonstone Sleet used this initial access vector, Microsoft observed Diamond Sleet using a similar method – trojanized PuTTY and SumatraPDF — with comparable techniques for anti-analysis, as we reported in 2022:

The trojanized PuTTY executable drops a custom installer which kicks off execution of a series of stages of malware, as described below:

1. Stage 1 – Trojanized PuTTY: Decrypts, decompresses, and then executes the embedded stage 2 payload.
2. Stage 2 – SplitLoader installer/dropper: Decrypts, decompresses, and writes the Stage 3 payload, the SplitLoader DLL file, to disk. The installer also drops two encrypted files to disk, then executes SplitLoader via a scheduled task or registry run key.
3. Stage 3 – SplitLoader:Decrypts and decompresses the two encrypted files dropped by the stage 2 payload, then combines them to create the next-stage, another portable executable (PE) file.
4. Stage 4 – Trojan loader: Expects a compressed and encrypted PE file from the C2. Once received, the trojan loader decompresses, decrypts, and executes this file.

Microsoft has also observed Moonstone Sleet using other custom malware loaders delivered by PuTTY that behaved similarly and had argument overlap with previously observed Diamond Sleet malware artifacts, such as the following:

Malicious npm packages

Microsoft has observed Moonstone Sleet targeting potential victims with projects that used malicious npm packages. Often, the threat actor delivered these projects through freelancing websites or other platforms like LinkedIn. In one example, the threat actor used a fake company to send .zip files invoking a malicious npm package under the guise of a technical skills assessment. When loaded, the malicious package used curl to connect to an actor-controlled IP and drop additional malicious payloads like SplitLoader. In another incident, Moonstone Sleet delivered a malicious npm loader which led to credential theft from LSASS. Microsoft collaborated with GitHub to identify and remove repositories associated with this activity.

Malicious tank game

Since February 2024, Microsoft has observed Moonstone Sleet infecting devices using a malicious tank game it developed called DeTankWar (also called DeFiTankWar, DeTankZone, or TankWarsZone). DeTankWar is a fully functional downloadable game that requires player registration, including username/password and invite code. In this campaign, Moonstone Sleet typically approaches its targets through messaging platforms or by email, presenting itself as a game developer seeking investment or developer support and either masquerading as a legitimate blockchain company or using fake companies. To bolster the game’s superficial legitimacy, Moonstone Sleet has also created a robust public campaign that includes the websites detankwar[.]com and defitankzone[.]com, and many X (Twitter) accounts for the personas it uses to approach targets and for the game itself.

Moonstone Sleet used a fake company called C.C. Waterfall to contact targets. The email presented the game as a blockchain-related project and offered the target the opportunity to collaborate, with a link to download the game included in the body of the message. More details about C.C. Waterfall and another fake company that Moonstone Sleet set up to trick targets are included below:

When targeted users launch the game, delfi-tank-unity.exe, additional included malicious DLLs are also loaded. The payload is a custom malware loader that Microsoft tracks as YouieLoad. Similarly to SplitLoader, YouieLoad loads malicious payloads in memory and creates malicious services that perform functions such as network and user discovery and browser data collection. For compromised devices of particular interest to the group, the threat actor launches hands-on-keyboard commands with further discovery and conducts credential theft.

Ransomware

In April 2024, Microsoft observed Moonstone Sleet delivering a new custom ransomware variant we have named FakePenny against a company it previously compromised in February. FakePenny includes a loader and an encryptor. Although North Korean threat actor groups have previously developed custom ransomware, this is the first time we have observed this threat actor deploying ransomware.

Microsoft assesses that Moonstone Sleet’s objective in deploying the ransomware is financial gain, suggesting the actor conducts cyber operations for both intelligence collection and revenue generation. Of note, the ransomware note dropped by FakePenny closely overlaps with the note used by Seashell Blizzard in its malware NotPetya. The ransom demand was $6.6M USD in BTC. This is in stark contrast to the lower ransom demands of previous North Korea ransomware attacks, like WannaCry 2.0 and H0lyGh0st.

Fake companies

Since January 2024, Microsoft has observed Moonstone Sleet creating several fake companies impersonating software development and IT services, typically relating to blockchain and AI. The actor has used these companies to reach out to potential targets, using a combination of created websites and social media accounts to add legitimacy to their campaigns.

StarGlow Ventures

From January to April 2024, Moonstone Sleet’s fake company StarGlow Ventures posed as a legitimate software development company. The group used a custom domain, fake employee personas, and social media accounts, in an email campaign targeting thousands of organizations in the education and software development sectors. In the emails Moonstone Sleet sent as part of this campaign, the actor complimented the work of the targeted organization and offered collaboration and support for upcoming projects, citing expertise in the development of web apps, mobile apps, blockchain, and AI.

These emails also contained a 1×1 tracking pixel, which likely enabled Moonstone Sleet to track which targets engaged with the emails, and a link to a dummy unsubscribe page hosted on the StarGlow Ventures domain. While the emails did not contain any malicious links, Microsoft assesses Moonstone Sleet likely used this campaign to establish a relationship with target organizations. Although the purpose of these relationships is unclear, they may afford the actor access to organizations of interest or be used as revenue generation opportunities. Microsoft notified customers who were impacted by this Moonstone Sleet campaign.

C.C. Waterfall

In a similar campaign, Moonstone Sleet sent emails using its fake company C.C. Waterfall, a purported IT consulting organization.

In this campaign, Moonstone Sleet emailed higher education organizations, claiming the company was either hiring new developers or looking for business collaboration opportunities. This campaign likely had similar goals to the StarGlow Ventures campaign: to build relationships with organizations which could be leveraged for revenue generation or malicious access.  

As previously mentioned, Moonstone Sleet also used C.C. Waterfall to contact targets and invite them to download the actor’s tank game, highlighting that this is a coordinated and concerted effort for which Moonstone Sleet can leverage multiple facets of its operations in overlapping campaigns.

Work-for-hire

In addition to creating fake companies, Microsoft has observed Moonstone Sleet pursuing employment in software development positions at multiple legitimate companies. This activity could be consistent with previous reporting from the United States Department of Justice that North Korea was using highly skilled remote IT workers to generate revenue. On the other hand, this Moonstone Sleet activity may also be another approach to gaining access to organizations.

Moonstone Sleet targets

Moonstone Sleet’s primary goals appear to be espionage and revenue generation. Targeted sectors to date include both individuals and organizations in the software and information technology, education, and defense industrial base sectors.

Software companies and developers

Since early January 2024, Moonstone Sleet has used the above fake software development companies to solicit work or cooperation. This actor has also targeted individuals looking for work in software development, sending candidates a “skills test” that instead delivers malware via a malicious NPM package.

Aerospace

In early December 2023, we observed Moonstone Sleet compromising a defense technology company to steal credentials and intellectual property. In April 2024, the actor ransomed the organization using FakePenny. The same month, we observed Moonstone Sleet compromise a company that makes drone technology. In May 2024, the threat actor compromised a company that makes aircraft parts.

Fitting into the North Korean threat actor landscape

Moonstone Sleet’s diverse set of tactics is notable not only because of their effectiveness, but because of how they have evolved from those of several other North Korean threat actors over many years of activity to meet North Korean cyber objectives. For example, North Korea has for many years maintained a cadre of remote IT workers to generate revenue in support of the country’s objectives. Moonstone Sleet’s pivot to conduct IT work within its campaigns indicates it may not only be helping with this strategic initiative, but possibly also expanding the use of remote IT workers beyond just financial gain. Additionally, Moonstone Sleet’s addition of ransomware to its playbook, like another North Korean threat actor, Onyx Sleet, may suggest it is expanding its set of capabilities to enable disruptive operations. Microsoft reported on Onyx Sleet’s and Storm-0530’s h0lyGhost ransomware in 2022.

Moonstone Sleet’s ability to conduct concurrent operations across multiple campaigns, the robustness of the malicious game, and the use of a custom new ransomware variant are strong indications that this threat actor may be well-resourced. Moreover, given that Moonstone Sleet’s initial attacks mirrored Diamond Sleet methodologies and heavily reused Diamond Sleet’s code in their payloads, Microsoft assesses this actor is equipped with capabilities from prior cyber operations conducted by other North Korean actors.

Microsoft has identified several techniques used by Moonstone Sleet that have previously been used by other North Korean threat actors. For example, since late 2023, an actor that Microsoft tracks as Storm-1877 used malicious npm packages in a campaign targeting software developers with JavaScript-based malware. This campaign was reported publicly by PaloAlto as Contagious Interview. Additionally, in 2023, GitHub reported that Jade Sleet used malicious npm packages in a campaign consisting of fake developer and recruiter personas that operated on LinkedIn, Slack, and Telegram. This shared use of a relatively uncommon tactic across multiple distinct North Korean groups may suggest sharing of expertise and TTPs among North Korean threat actors.

In recent months, Microsoft and other security researchers have reported on North Korean threat actors’ use of software supply chain attacks to conduct widespread malicious operations. In November 2023, Microsoft reported on Diamond Sleet’s supply chain compromise of CyberLink, a multimedia application. While Microsoft has not yet identified any Moonstone Sleet supply chain attacks, the actor has extensively targeted software development firms in its campaigns. Large-scale access to software companies would pose a particularly high risk for future supply chain attacks against those organizations.

Moonstone Sleet’s appearance is an interesting development considering that North Korea has carried out a series of changes in its foreign relations and security apparatus. In November 2023, North Korea closed embassies in several countries, and in March 2024, may have dissolved the United Front Department (UFD), an agency believed to be responsible for reunification and propaganda.

Despite being new, Moonstone Sleet has demonstrated that it will continue to mature, develop, and evolve, and has positioned itself to be a preeminent threat actor conducting sophisticated attacks on behalf of the North Korean regime.

Recommendations

Microsoft recommends the following mitigations defend against attacks by Moonstone Sleet:

• Detect human-operated ransomware attacks with Microsoft Defender XDR. 
• Enable controlled folder access. 
• Ensure that tamper protection is enabled in Microsoft Dender for Endpoint. 
• Enable network protection in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. 
• Follow the credential hardening recommendations in our on-premises credential theft overview to defend against common credential theft techniques like LSASS access.
• Run endpoint detection and response (EDR) in block mode so that Microsoft Defender for Endpoint can block malicious artifacts, even when your non-Microsoft antivirus does not detect the threat or when Microsoft Defender Antivirus is running in passive mode. EDR in block mode works behind the scenes to remediate malicious artifacts that are detected post-breach.    
• Configure investigation and remediation in full automated mode to let Microsoft Defender for Endpoint take immediate action on alerts to resolve breaches, significantly reducing alert volume. 
• Turn on cloud-delivered protection in Microsoft Defender Antivirus, or the equivalent for your antivirus product, to cover rapidly evolving attacker tools and techniques. Cloud-based machine learning protections block a majority of new and unknown variants.

Microsoft Defender XDR customers can turn on the following attack surface reduction rule to prevent common attack techniques used by Moonstone Sleet.

• Block executable content from email client and webmail 
• Block executable files from running unless they meet a prevalence, age, or trusted list criterion 
• Use advanced protection against ransomware 
• Block credential stealing from the Windows local security authority subsystem (lsass.exe)

Detection details

Microsoft Defender Antivirus

Microsoft Defender Antivirus detects threat components as the following malware:

• Behavior:Win64/PennyCrypt
• HackTool:Win32/Mimikatz
• HackTool:Win64/Mimikatz
• TrojanDropper:Win32/SplitLoader
• TrojanDropper:Win64/YouieLoad

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

Alerts with the following titles in the security center can indicate threat activity on your network: 

• Moonstone Sleet actor activity detected
• Suspicious activity linked to a North Korean state-sponsored threat actor has been detected
• Diamond Sleet Actor activity detected

The following alerts might also indicate threat activity associated with this threat. These alerts, however, can be triggered by unrelated threat activity and are not monitored in the status cards provided with this report. 

• Malicious credential theft tool execution detected  
• Mimikatz credential theft tool 
• Ransomware-linked threat actor detected
• Suspicious access to LSASS service

Hunting queries

Microsoft Defender XDR

Microsoft Defender XDR customers can run the following query to find related activity in their networks:

Detect Procdump dumping LSASS credentials:

DeviceProcessEvents
| where (FileName has_any ("procdump.exe",
"procdump64.exe") and ProcessCommandLine has "lsass") or  
(ProcessCommandLine
has "lsass.exe" and (ProcessCommandLine has "-accepteula"
or ProcessCommandLine contains "-ma"))

Detect connectivity with C2 infrastructure:

let c2servers = dynamic(['mingeloem.com','matrixane.com']);
DeviceNetworkEvents
| where RemoteUrl has_any (c2servers)
| project DeviceId, LocalIP, DeviceName, RemoteUrl, InitiatingProcessFileName, InitiatingProcessCommandLine, Timestamp

Detect connectivity to DeTank websites:

let c2servers = dynamic(['detankwar.com','defitankzone.com']);
DeviceNetworkEvents
| where RemoteUrl has_any (c2servers)
| project DeviceId, LocalIP, DeviceName, RemoteUrl, InitiatingProcessFileName, InitiatingProcessCommandLine, Timestamp

Microsoft Sentinel

Microsoft Sentinel customers can use the TI Mapping analytics (a series of analytics all prefixed with ‘TI map’) to automatically match the malicious domain indicators mentioned in this blog post with data in their workspace. If the TI Map analytics are not currently deployed, customers can install the Threat Intelligence solution from the Microsoft Sentinel Content Hub to have the analytics rule deployed in their Sentinel workspace.

Microsoft Sentinel customers can also use the queries below to detect activity detailed in this blog.

This query detects the installation of a Windows service that contains artifacts from credential dumping tools such as Mimikatz:

• Credential Dumping Tools – Service Installation

This query detects the use of Procdump to dump credentials from LSASS memory:

• Dump credential using procdump

Microsoft Sentinel customers can also use the following query, which looks for Microsoft Defender AV detections related to the Moonstone Sleet. In Microsoft Sentinel, the SecurityAlerts table includes only the DeviceName of the affected device. This query joins the DeviceInfo table to connect other information such as device group, IP, signed-in users, etc., allowing analysts to have more context related to the alert, if available:

let MoonStoneSleet_threats = dynamic(["Behavior:Win64/PennyCrypt", "HackTool:Win32/Mimikatz", "HackTool:Win64/Mimikatz ", "TrojanDropper:Win32/SplitLoader", "TrojanDropper:Win64/YouieLoad" ]);
SecurityAlert
| where ProviderName == "MDATP"
| extend ThreatName = tostring(parse_json(ExtendedProperties).ThreatName)
| extend ThreatFamilyName = tostring(parse_json(ExtendedProperties).ThreatFamilyName)
| where ThreatName in~ (MoonStoneSleet_threats) or ThreatFamilyName in~ (MoonStoneSleet_threats)
| extend CompromisedEntity = tolower(CompromisedEntity)
| join kind=inner (
    DeviceInfo
    | extend DeviceName = tolower(DeviceName)
) on $left.CompromisedEntity == $right.DeviceName
| summarize arg_max(TimeGenerated, *) by DisplayName, ThreatName, ThreatFamilyName, PublicIP, AlertSeverity, Description, tostring(LoggedOnUsers), DeviceId, TenantId, CompromisedEntity, ProductName, Entities
| extend HostName = tostring(split(CompromisedEntity, ".")[0]), DomainIndex = toint(indexof(CompromisedEntity, '.'))
| extend HostNameDomain = iff(DomainIndex != -1, substring(CompromisedEntity, DomainIndex + 1), CompromisedEntity)
| project-away DomainIndex
| project TimeGenerated, DisplayName, ThreatName, ThreatFamilyName, PublicIP, AlertSeverity, Description, LoggedOnUsers, DeviceId, TenantId, CompromisedEntity, ProductName, Entities, HostName, HostNameDomain

Indicators of compromise

Malicious files

Moonstone Sleet domains

References

• Hacking Employers and Seeking Employment: Two Job-Related Campaigns Bear Hallmarks of North Korean Threat Actors (Palo Alto Unit 42)
• Security alert: social engineering campaign targets technology industry employees (Github)

Learn more

For the latest security research from the Microsoft Threat Intelligence community, check out the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Blog: https://aka.ms/threatintelblog.

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The post Moonstone Sleet emerges as new North Korean threat actor with new bag of tricks appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence has observed that gift cards are attractive targets for fraud and social engineering practices. Unlike credit or debit cards, there’s no customer name or bank account attached to them, which can lessen scrutiny of their potentially suspicious use in some cases and present cybercriminals with a different type of payment card surface to study and exploit.

Microsoft has seen an uptick in activity from threat actor group Storm-0539, also known as Atlas Lion, around the United States holidays, including Memorial Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Christmas. In advance of Memorial Day 2024, Microsoft has observed a 30% increase in activity from Storm-0539 between March and May 2024.

The latest edition of Cyber Signals dives deep into the world of gift card fraud, shedding light on Storm-0539 and its sophisticated cybercrime techniques and persistence, while providing guidance to retailers on how to stay ahead of these risks.

Cyber Signals

The latest report describes how organizations can protect gift cards from Storm-0539's cybercrime techniques.

Read the report

The evolution of Storm-0539 (Atlas Lion)

Active since late 2021, this cybercrime group represents an evolution of threat actors who previously specialized in malware attacks on point-of-sale (POS) devices like retail cash registers and kiosks to compromise payment card data, and today they are adapting to target cloud and identity services in steadily attacking the payment and card systems associated with large retailers, luxury brands, and well-known fast food restaurants.

Sophisticated strategies

What sets Storm-0539 apart is its deep understanding of cloud environments, which it exploits to conduct reconnaissance on organizations’ gift card issuance processes and employee access. Its approach to compromising cloud systems for far-reaching identity and access privileges mirrors the tradecraft and sophistication typically seen in nation-state-sponsored threat actors, except instead of gathering email or documents for espionage, Storm-0539 gains and uses persistent access to hijack accounts and create gift cards for malicious purposes and does not target consumers exclusively. After gaining access to an initial session and token, Storm-0539 will register its own malicious devices to victim networks for subsequent secondary authentication prompts, effectively bypassing multifactor authentication protections and persisting in an environment using the now fully compromised identity.

A cloak of legitimacy

To remain undetected, Storm-0539 adopts the guise of legitimate organizations, obtaining resources from cloud providers under the pretense of being non-profits. It creates convincing websites, often with misleading “typosquatting” domain names a few characters different from authentic websites, to lure unsuspecting victims, further demonstrating its cunning and resourcefulness.

Defending against the storm

Organizations that issue gift cards should treat their gift card portals as high-value targets for cybercriminals and should focus on continuous monitoring, and audit for anomalous activities. Implementing conditional access policies and educating security teams on social engineering tactics are crucial steps in fortifying defenses against such sophisticated actors. Given Storm-0539’s sophistication and deep knowledge of cloud environments, it is recommended that you also invest in cloud security best practices, implement sign-in risk policies, transition to phishing-resistant multifactor authentication, and apply the least privilege access principle.

By adopting these measures, organizations can enhance their resilience against focused cybercriminals like Storm-0539, while keeping trusted gift, payment, and other card options as attractive and flexible amenities for customers. To learn more about the latest threat intelligence insights, visit Microsoft Security Insider.

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

The post Cyber Signals: Inside the growing risk of gift card fraud appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.