How does ransomware get into major networks, such as schools or other large public agencies?
I read an article about ransomware affecting the public transportation service in Kansas, and I wanted to ask how this can happen. Wikipedia says these are "are typically carried out using a Trojan, entering a system through, for example, a malicious attachment, embedded link in a phishing email, or a vulnerability in a network service," but how? Wouldn't someone still have to deliberately click a malicious link to install it? Wouldn't anyone working for such an agency be educated enough about these threats not to do so?
I wanted to ask in that community, but I was afraid this is such a basic question that I felt foolish posting it there. Does anyone know the exact process by which this typically can happen? I've seen how scammers can do this to individuals with low tech literacy by watching Kitboga, but what about these big agencies?
Edit: After reading some of the responses, it's made me realize why IT often wants to heavily restrict what you can do on a work PC, which is frustrating from an end user perspective, but if people are just clicking links in emails and not following basic internet safety, then damn.
It doesn't matter how strong your defenses are and how skilled your IT team is, when fucking Linda in accounting opens EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN ATTACHMENT SHE GETS!!!
Then the IT department sends everyone a Honeypot email and schedules more training and a meeting with a manager for anyone who clicks any links in the email.
It is a great step but it's rare to have enough buy in from upper managent to enforce any real consequences for repeat offenders. I've seen good initial results from this kind of phishing testing, but the repeat offenders never seem to change their habits and your click rate quickly plateaus.
When I was in secondary school, I basically did exactly that with a random flash drive I found in the park. I'm blaming my school for never giving us that network security talk lol. Fortunately nothing came of it and it was a pretty boring flash drive but still. Would never ever do that now.
Company I used to work for got hit fairly bad. Am email came in from the contract agency to the accounts payable clerk, personally addressed to her and signed off all informal like, to the effect of “hey Marion, our local bank branch is closing so we’ve had to move our accounts, can you update the IBAN to the following for me?”
€150,000 down a black hole, that wasn’t even noticed until a phone call came in a week later.
My favorite personal anecdote was when one of our security educators send an email explaining how he managed to click a phishing link, log in and then realize it was a fake website login.
Apparently he got an email telling him that the local scanner in the office had send him some material and he needed to authorize the transfer into his inbox by logging in.
Wouldn't anyone working for such an agency be educated enough about these threats not to do so?
Ahahhahhahha. Ahem. Hahahahahaha. Give me a moment to compose myself.
Thank you for that moment.
Anyway, the assumption is very reasonable.
And, oh how I wish it were so.
But the answer is no, they're human, and even high tech organizations need specialists in other subjects (law, finance, book-keeping, etc) who aren't at all technology savy.
To be clear, education is such subjects is often mandatory. It just doesn't always take. Largely because many staff watch the educational video, and think they understood it, but don't really have any context for it. For example, they might learn it and still think, "Well, it clealy doesn't apply to an email from our CEO. He wouldn't send something nasty!"
Edit: The solution I've seen is a lot of education.
It's not enough to say "don't click suspicious links", there's got to be ongoing training on the definition of "suspicious".
The security team at the company I work for sends out test phishing emails and if you fall for it they make you change your password. I think this annoyance helps people learn to pay attention. It doesn't seem like we have had to do as many resets due to these as time goes on.
This works IMO. Our company used to do this. Hell, I even fell for one once, which is some shameful shit considering I work in the tech industry. That shame enough though has kept me more on toes ever since.
I've flagged several suspicious looking but actually legit emails that were originated by internal groups but used very scammy sounding language (warning of dire consequences, extreme urgency, links to external websites as reference to something claimed to be internal process...)
Hopefully those departments sending emails like that get some education too...
Yes, this makes sense. I can also say from observing co-workers at different jobs, any training that's provided virtually (e.g., you just watch a video and answer some questions), is mostly a waste of time. I can say that I and some others took these trainings seriously, but most people did not and would jump through the hoop as mindlessly as possible.
I saw this a lot when I worked as a CNA. People would just answer the questions right, "pass" the training, and then continue doing things in the same wrong way they'd always done things.
Wouldn’t someone still have to deliberately click a malicious link to install it? Wouldn’t anyone working for such an agency be educated enough about these threats not to do so?
lol, lmao even. I worked IT for a hospital network for about 4 years. Doctors aren't any smarter than anyone else when it comes to using a computer, because it's not what they spent all their years studying. People click on dumb shit they shouldn't all the time, doesn't matter how "smart" they're supposed to be.
I once did a Phishing test for a customer during an internship. We had 50% of all employees click the Phishing link, and 30% of all employees input their login info.
What was the form? A new data protection agreement (which was the current one copied from the firm's site) which required a login to accept.
These employees all got regular cybersecurity training, and yet they still fell for such an obvious fake login
When these tests are conducted are they typically sent from an email with a non-company domain? I ask because a few months ago my partner received a test which she failed because it was sent from an email under her company's normal domain name. I'm not in IT but I am in software dev and I thought this was pretty unreasonable, since in that scenario (AFAIK) either the company fucked up their email security or the attacker has control over the Exchange server in which case all bets are off anyway.
Usually a domain gets rented for the test, using the in-house domain isn't normal. But you can change the display name of an email adress to appear as if it was sent from a reputable source
Yep, same here, including colleagues in security. "You haven't claimed your giftcard yet, log in here...". Some were 'smart' enough to forward the link home and open it there (no direct internet access from the desktop) and the organizers of the test canceled the test as it was such a great success. (Almost everybody failed) Alas they killed the test before the email arrived in my mailbox, as I would have loved to see it. ;)
I work in a public school. The older teachers are the ones that don't even look at the sender address. "Oh, this email that sort of looks like its from an employee says to blindly open this file that I would realize is clearly fake if I took more than two seconds to look at it? I'm on it!"
Our union negotiator didn't understand different sheets in Excel files. Had a document he wanted to share out on sheet one. For some reason on sheet two he had every union employee's name, birth date, social security number, address, etc. in plain text. Emailed to the entire school district. I caught it immediately and made them aware. The frantic emails to my friend the IT guy were hilarious. "I NEED YOU TO GO INTO EVERYONE'S EMAIL AND DELETE THE MESSAGE I JUST SENT." Then when it was explained that you can't just take it back, another frantic district email "DO NOT OPEN MY PREVIOUS EMAIL. JUST DELETE." Again, not understanding that unless they empty their trash, its still recoverable for 30 days.
But I've totally noticed the spontaneous mindless clicking among people with low tech literacy. Like, every single time I try to help someone navigate an application or web site, they're fundamentally incapable of following step-by-step instructions and will randomly click on anything they see on screen. It's so weird and frustrating.
I'm in somewhat of a leadership position in an agency. I feel like I should talk to those above me about having more training for my co-workers. This is a nightmare scenario.
the way we deal with this in my org is testing our own staff... we use a service that sends very well faked emails. They can look like they are from our own vendors/staff even.. but they contain invalid links that an end user should know are not valid.. these emails are technically 'compromised'. when an end user clicks a link, they are informed they failed, and automatically enrolled in one of our mandatory security training classes. every time they click a bad link.
the best part is we silently rolled this out and something like 80% of c-levels failed. they were soooo pissed... but what could they do?
Confirm dialogs are a perfect example of UI intertia.
You hit confirm on a close dialog so many times that it doesn’t matter what it says. By the time you’ve registered what it is muscle memory has done it’s thing
A classic is to just drop of 2 or 3 infected USB sticks, maybe with bait labels, on the parking lot before the first employees arrive. repeat a few times and just wait until someone plugs it in to investigate.
Facility management nowadays is outsourced to third party agencies. Usually the pay and working times are shit and they are consistently understaffed. At the same time they usually get access to most regular offices and they work before or after the offices fill.
For a more concerted effort finding out which companies clean at which offices and enrolling there is not much of a thing. And voila you get access to all physical computers, can plant key loggers or other tools, or just malicious USB Sticks or similiar on the site.
Not in the context of IT security, but for instance in Berlin Germany a group of robbers that stole the 100 kg gold maple leaf coin, hired someone a few month earlier with the security guard agency of the museum it was presented at.
An advanced phishing attack can be incredibly hard to detect. Here's an example of a browser vulnerability that allowed malicious sites to spoof legitimate looking domains. It's been fixed since then, but it's a constant battle between fixing exploits and new ones being found. A sophisticated operator can come up with ways to trick even the most tech savvy user, and most users will fall for more obvious tricks than that.
There's a new similar phishing attack thanks to Google and their .zip domain. Web browsers support a feature that lets you use addresses of the form protocol://username:[email protected]{.text}. That feature allows you to log in to domain.tld{.text} with the given credentials. When you combine that with Unicode forward slashes, you can craft addresses that look like https://microsoft.com/files/@windowsupdate.zip{.text}, where the part between https://{.text} and @{.text} is a username and the part after @{.text} is the actual address most likely used for malicious intends. My example uses normal slashes, so will lead to Microsoft's website and page not found error. windowsupdate.zip{.text} is a domain someone has registered, but leads to no-where as of today. PSA: Don't go to random web addresses you find on the Internet or elsewhere.
It is fixed, if you follow one of their example links you should see a warning now. I was using it as an example of how there can be hard to detect exploits.
EDIT: it's fixed in Chrome. Just tried Firefox and they don't have a warning 😕
Through the holy trinity of gaping holes: Windows, Office, and Exchange. And add lazy or stupid sysadmins on top who don't care to update their stuff, they make break-ins even easier.
I remember reading an article by a penetration tester years ago at this point. His company is hired by all sorts of companies to test their network security etc. He described one client that thought it had the best network security money could buy. The pen tester took a novel approach (at that time) and put a benign Trojan on a bunch of random usb sticks then scattered them around the employee parking lot, outdoor smoking areas, etc. sure enough some of them started “phoning home” from inside the clients network fairly quickly.
My own employer has been the target of phishing and other attacks over the years. Our security team now contracts with a company that randomly sends out well crafted phishing emails to employees to see if they can detect it or if they click on a questionable link in the message. If an employee clicks on one of these then they are immediately told that they failed a test and are automatically signed up for a training session on spotting phishing and other scams.
If an employee clicks on one of these then they are immediately told that they failed a test and are automatically signed up for a training session on spotting phishing and other scams
My former employer did this (might have contracted with a similar company). The emails were really convincing, but I don't think most of us ever clicked them, though I remember other staff asking me if I thought it was a phishing email. I'd ask them what made them think that it was phishing so they'd learn. The last thing I wanted on top of everything else was the hassle that would come if our network got compromised, because we worked with so much private and sensitive client data.
But there was one co-worker who I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread who would click on something in the message almost every time. She took the mandatory training so many times, but it never stuck for some reason. I was always amazed she kept her job.
Yeah, I don’t think too many people click on those “educational” phishing emails but it does happen once in a while. We have a slack channel where people can contact the security team and I do regularly see people asking about suspicious emails. They never admit if they’re test emails but always thank folks for reporting them.
At my previous place of employment I would report Phish on any and all spam and get lectures about reporting Phish on all my spam. Like, how am I supposed to know if you initiated the fuckin email or if a bad actor outside did? Can you give me some pointers on how to tell if it's your spam or someone else's? My current employer just adds it to the block list without acting like a douche lol
Spearfishing is probably the lowest risk and easiest way to get access to a specific network. The attacker can get a bunch of info about an organization (technologies used, people employed, physical locations) through LinkedIn or whatever social media website, and then target a specific person.
Once a target is identified, the next step would be getting that person to follow a link to type in a password, or getting them to install malware, or do whatever it is the attacker wants them to do. I read an article about a dude that got fairly big companies to pay him money by just sending fake bills.
Since people are covering the more common options, I'll point out a rarer one. If I remember right, (please correct me if I'm wrong) the Stuxnet virus was able to infiltrate a highly sensitive nuclear enrichment facility because someone planted a zip drive in the parking lot, and some employee went ahead and plugged it in at work to see what it was.
some employee went ahead and plugged it in at work to see what it was
Holy shit lmao. It just amazes me that someone working for such a facility would do this, but I suppose it's the same as people who won't wash their hands after using the toilet or who don't use their blinker when driving.
We're just a bunch of shit-flinging primates, aren't we? We just do thinks without thinking.
And the worst part is, given the right circumstances (lack of sleep, extreme stress, illness), maybe that person could be me.
You already pointed out reasons, why people might lack the necessary judgement in one moment. The issue is that it is enough if one person fails to abide by the security rules once. So for the attacker all that is needed for a large enough organization is persistence.
Also people often need to experience a problem before they realize its a problem. I doubt that specific individual will ever make that specific mistake again.
Can totally tell you, that most people do not care. They do get training and notifications but they don't try to learn. The only people that actually care about it are some techies and the CFO.
With that it also lacks sensibilization, as to why it is such an integral issue.
At my workplace we had it become part of a mandatory once a year presentation on all sorts of security issues. So you get a 3 hour presentation, about how to use a ladder, when not to use electrical appliances, what to do in case of fire, how to behave if the police shows up... and in there is also something about IT security.
The thing is, that it is also important to know what to do if there is a fire, or how not to fall from your turning chair and breaking your neck, because the way to the ladder was too far.
So what we do need, is regular testing and interaction with these issues to build routine. But more importantly we need a work environment, where people have the space and time to think before doing something, if this has any security risks worth paying attention to.
Smart people can still do dumb things. Some are also highly skilled in some areas but terrible in others. My uncle was a heart surgeon, but he was terrible at driving.
There are many ways in. Sometimes no one has to click on or do anything, instead the attacker finds a security vulnerability in e.g. a web application, which gives them access to the server the app is running on. From there the attacker can look for other vulnerabilities to penetrate further into the network. Or if the system/network admin hasn't properly configured/secured the network, then the attacker can easily move into other parts of the network.
It's a different kind of scam from the ones you see on kitboga. Those are generally confidence scams meant to leverage tech illiteracy. Ransomware attacks are more like stepping on a landmine. They are these nasty payloads that are just out there on the internet, usually with some kind of passive social engineering like a website that mimics a familiar site and/or phishing emails to get that payload into the network.
Edit: After reading some of the responses, it's made me realize why IT often wants to heavily restrict what you can do on a work PC, which is frustrating from an end user perspective, but if people are just clicking links in emails and not following basic internet safety, then damn.