BlueVoyant shines light on latest cyber criminal techniques

BlueVoyant has released the findings of a new report, Emerging External Cyber Defence Trends, which highlights the risks organisations face from outside the traditional IT perimeters.

Joel Molinoff, BlueVoyant's Global Head of Supply Chain Defence, says, "As enterprises' internal cybersecurity has become better defended and better monitored, cyber threat actors have evolved their tactics to focus on new methods of compromise, targeting a wider attack surface than ever before.

"This report shines a spotlight on the latest cyber criminal techniques BlueVoyant's threat intelligence has observed, plus recommended actions organisations can take to help prevent these threats."

The reports key findings focus on:

• Dynamic phishing tactics: Attackers increasingly evade detection by directing consumers to spoofed domains and presumed threat hunters to an error page. BlueVoyant found that redirections increased 240% in 2022.
• Leveraging dynamic DNS infrastructure: Cyber criminals more and more use a new type of hosting provider to create and set up short-lived websites. This vector provides an opportunity for a low-cost, high-volume campaign that can be duplicated in future attacks all without having to register a domain.
• Smishing: The use of SMS text messages to distribute phishing messages is on the rise as cyber attackers are increasingly abusing legitimate text messaging services to deliver phishing messages.
• Open ports: With the rise of remote work from the COVID-19 pandemic, more employees need remote network access. Cyber criminals are increasingly scanning for the ports that allow this to gain a foothold into organisations networks. These ports, if misconfigured, are a common ransomware delivery method.
• The need to patch quicker: Every week new vulnerabilities are discovered across multiple industries, and these vulnerabilities can quickly become a critical attack vector. Despite this, many organisations are slow to patch.
• Financial fraud campaigns: Cyber criminals are finding new ways to carry out financial fraud, such as using instant messaging to plan campaigns and sell stolen data, instead of dark web forums, which are known to be more easily accessible by law enforcement agencies, and therefore are considered less secure by many criminals.

Ron Feler, BlueVoyant's Global Head of Threat Intelligence, says, "It has become harder for organisations to identify basic externally facing vulnerabilities and threats due to sheer volume, and threat actors are increasingly taking advantage of these exposures, pivoting and evolving their tactics to achieve their goals.

"On top of this, organisations must now respond to potential threats much quicker as attackers have gotten quicker to exploit vulnerabilities."

BlueVoyant undertook this research to raise awareness of cyber defence challenges organisations are facing and to help them better defend against attacks.

The research was completed using trend data queries from BlueVoyant's Supply Chain Defence and Digital Risk Protection solutions.

Supply Chain Defence continuously monitors clients vendors, suppliers, and other third parties for any vulnerabilities, and then works with those third parties to quickly resolve issues.

The platform identifies enterprises internet-facing software vulnerabilities and other exploitable opportunities with techniques similar to those used by external cyber attackers while profiling prospective targets.

Digital Risk Protection goes outside the wire to find threats against clients on the clear, deep, and dark web, plus instant messaging applications. The platform has access to DNS data sets and cyber crime channels to find the latest cyber attacker techniques, tactics, and procedures, and to provide unlimited external remediation requests in order to help prevent financial loss and reputation damage.