And the industry sector most vulnerable to cyber attacks goes to... Finance

guest · Jan 12, 2023

Microsoft Exchange Vulnerabilities Most Exploited by Hackers Targeting Financial Sector
By Guru Baran - January 12, 2023

During the month of November, researchers at the cybersecurity firm LookingGlass examined the most significant vulnerabilities in the financial services industry in the United States.

The company looked at assets with public internet-facing assets from more than 7 million IP addresses in the industry and discovered that a seven-year-old Remote Code Execution vulnerability affecting Microsoft Windows was at the top of the list.
According to CISA, the “Financial Services Sector includes thousands of depository institutions, providers of investment products, insurance companies, other credit and financing organizations, and the providers of the critical financial utilities and services that support these functions.”
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Microsoft Exchange Vulnerabilities
Over 900 times in the financial sector have been affected by a critical remote code execution vulnerability identified as (CVE-2015-1635), affecting Microsoft Windows and it has been around for seven years.
The next most often exploited vulnerability was (CVE-2021-31206), which affects Microsoft Exchange Servers.

“Our data holdings attribute roughly 7 million of these to the U.S. financial services sector, which includes insurance companies, rental & leasing companies, and creditors, among other subsectors”, explains LookingGlass researchers.
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According to recent reports from the U.S. Department of Treasury, ransomware attacks alone cost U.S. financial institutions close to $1.2 billion in 2021, a nearly 200% increase from the year before.
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LookingGlass: Top KEVs in the U.S. Financial Services Sector

By Meredith Wallace - January 10, 2023

This report examines the top vulnerabilities present in the United States financial services sector over the month of November. The analysis draws heavily from the LookingGlass platform, which seeks to detect all Internet-facing devices, their exposures, and vulnerabilities. The findings from this report will be of most interest to the federal agency responsible for the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog – the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Sector Risk Management Agencies like Department of Treasury, CIOs and CISOs in the financial sector, and threat researchers. This reporting is the second (the first focused on the Chemical Sector) in a series of papers that will address the cybersecurity risks to critical infrastructure sectors across the U.S.
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guest · Jan 27, 2023

New 'Pig Butchering' Scam in West Africa Impersonates US Financial Advisors
By Alessandro Mascellino @a_mascellino - January 27, 2023

A malicious campaign impersonating American financial advisors has been spotted targeting several hundred individuals in West Africa.
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Recently discovered by cybersecurity experts at DomainTools, the 'pig butchering' operation uses a complex network of social engineering techniques to defraud victims.

Describing the activity in an advisory shared with Infosecurity, DomainTools said most attacks from the unnamed threat actor used professional network services such as LinkedIn to identify, research and contact potential victims.

“Notably, fraud actors associated with this campaign frequent social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram,” the advisory adds.
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Further, DomainTools explained that due to the complexity of manipulating a target when impersonating a financial advisor, scam websites relating to these operations must remain accessible for as long as possible.

“Therefore, the selection of a hosting provider is critical to the success of this scam,” the company wrote. “Many of these impersonation websites have live chat widgets, allowing potential victims to interact with the impersonated financial advisor immediately.”
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DomainTools: No Blocking, No Issue: The Curious Ecosystem of Financial Advisor Impersonation Scams

January 26, 2023
An increasingly common and highly effective fraud technique known as “pig butchering” uses a complex web of social engineering techniques to defraud victims. These scams rely on slowly building trust with a target–often under the guise of a financial advisor or successful investor–in order to convince targets to invest in a scam, such as a cryptocurrency “investment,” in which their funds are promptly stolen and rendered nearly impossible to recover.

This piece explores a specific advisor impersonation campaign, both through the lens of tactics as well as the technical infrastructure providers that enable these scams to flourish.
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guest · Jan 31, 2023

Financial Services Targeted in 28% of UK Cyber-Attacks Last Year
By Alessandro Mascellino @a_mascellino - January 31, 2023

Security researchers have suggested that over a quarter of all cyber-attacks (28%) in the UK have hit the financial services and insurance (FSI) industry in the last 12 months.
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The data comes from the Imperva cybersecurity team via email, who also said that application programming interface (API) attacks, bad bots and DDoS attacks were the industry's three most significant security challenges over the last year.

"The scale of the shadow API problem should be a concern for every business," commented Andy Zollo, regional vice president for EMEA at Imperva.
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The claims come almost four years after Open Banking started requiring banks and other FSI businesses to enable third-party providers to access customers' banking data via APIs.

According to Imperva, this has not only dramatically increased the amount of sensitive financial data these entities exchange but also significantly increased the number of APIs in use in the FSI industry.

"The scale of unmonitored API traffic is substantially higher than in other industries, suggesting that FSI companies' implementation of Open Banking standards may have inadvertently created a serious, industry-wide security threat," reads the report.
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As for figures concerning "bad bots," Imperva explained that these automated, malicious software applications were responsible for more than a quarter (27%) of all traffic to financial businesses last year.
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guest · Feb 1, 2023

‘Global markets’ impacted by ransomware attack on financial software company
By Alexander Martin @AlexMartin - February 1, 2023

A ransomware attack on Dublin-based software company ION Group has impacted the trading of financial derivatives on international markets.
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ION Group describes itself as enabling “financial institutions, central banks and corporations to digitize and automate their most business critical processes.”

A pop-up notice on its site on Wednesday warned that “a cybersecurity event” that struck on Tuesday has affected its cleared derivatives unit.
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The ransomware attack was caused by the prolific Russia-based LockBit gang, according to ION correspondence cited by Bloomberg.

“The incident is contained to a specific environment, all the affected servers are disconnected, and remediation of services is ongoing. Further updates will be posted when available,” ION’s statement said.
The attack is “impacting the trading and clearing of exchange traded derivatives by ION customers across global markets,” according to the Futures Industry Association (FIA).
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guest · Feb 2, 2023

mood said: ↑

‘Global markets’ impacted by ransomware attack on financial software company
By Alexander Martin @AlexMartin - February 1, 2023
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City of London on High Alert After Ransomware Attack
Phil Muncaster UK / EMEA News Reporter, Infosecurity Magazine - February 2, 2023

A suspected ransomware attack on a key supplier of trading software to the City of London this week appears to have disrupted activity in the derivatives market.
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Ion Cleared Derivatives released a brief statement on Tuesday saying that it experienced a “cybersecurity event” that day which affected some of its services.

“The incident is contained to a specific environment, all the affected servers are disconnected and remediation of services is ongoing. Further updates will be posted when available,” it added.
Reports suggest 42 clients have been impacted by the attack on the provider, whose software plays a key role in derivatives trading around the world. It has been linked to the prolific Lockbit group which recently caused major disruption to the Royal Mail.
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Tim West, head of cyber-threat intelligence at WithSecure, said supply chain attacks like this can have major repercussions for critical sectors such as finance.

“The financial system has a terrible number of interdependencies, and a major incident at a single big enough institution can amplify and result in a pretty impactful butterfly effect across the sector,” he argued.
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