Introducing Credential Stuffing Detection
Introducing Credential Stuffing Detection
Introducing Credential Stuffing Detection
Introducing Credential Stuffing Detection
Introducing Credential Stuffing Detection
Introducing Credential Stuffing Detection
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Vulnerabilities

What is Advanced Persistent Threat (APT)?

Advanced persistent threat is a targeted attack against a specific entity, usually a corporation or government agency, that has the goal of obtaining information or access to computer systems.

APTs rely on targeted attacks to achieve success. While malware and phishing attacks are not new, the APT is a new way to commit these types of attacks. The APT attacks are generally targeted towards specific organizations, often including high-level executives, to gain access to proprietary information or trade secrets.

What is Advanced Persistent Threat (APT)?

A key characteristic of an APT attack is the use of both human and automated software interaction to achieve their goals. This may include phishing, malware, or other social engineering methods. With the increased use of mobile devices, it is not uncommon for APTs to include attacks against mobile devices.

APTs are generally associated with state-sponsored attacks, but they also are used by criminal organizations and individuals.

The term APT is sometimes also used to refer to malware which uses these tactics and is not necessarily state-sponsored, but the most common usage refers to state-sponsored attacks.

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What are APT Attacks?

The outcomes of an APT assault are huge and include:

  • Loss of information and licensed innovation.
  • System damage.
  • Administration blackout.
  • Absolute site takeovers.

APTs are multi-stage assaults that require a long time to set up and keep going for quite a long time or even years. An APT is not the same as basic cyberattacks in four basic manners:

  • An APT is more perplexing than a typical online danger. Assaults require full-time groups to keep a secret presence in the objective organization.
  • APTs are not quick in and out assaults. When programmers access an organization, they will probably stay inside for as far as might be feasible.
  • An APT is generally a manual assault that doesn't depend on robotization.
  • APTs are not a danger to an enormous pool of targets. Assaults pursue a particular organization, so each break has a custom arrangement that fits just the objective's safeguards.

An APT assault requires a lot of exertion and assets. Programmers commonly follow high-esteem targets, like ventures and enterprises. Notwithstanding, APT aggressors oftentimes target little firms in the inventory network of bigger associations.

Programmers utilize less safeguarded organizations as a passage point, so organizations, all things considered, should realize how to perceive an APT assault.

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Objective of APT Attacks

The objective of an APT assault is to break into the organization without disturbing the framework and invest sufficient energy inside to take information. All significant information is an expected objective for an APT, including:

  • Licensed innovation.
  • Client PII.
  • Confidential information.
  • Foundation information.
  • Access accreditations.
  • Delicate correspondences.

Other than taking information, an APT's target can likewise incorporate subverting foundation, obliterating singular frameworks, or finishing site takeovers. Each assault has a novel reason, however the objective is consistently a blend of information penetrates, surveillance, and damage.

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Most common tactics used by APTs

  1. Spear phishing

This is the use of emails that impersonate legitimate sources in order to trick the victim into clicking on a malicious link or attachment.

APTs usually start their assaults with spearphishing messages, so an uptick of these messages might be a sign. In the event that the spearphishing messages target workers with undeniable level admittance to your association's frameworks, it could be a considerably more grounded pointer. 

More nonexclusive phishing messages aren't really a decent indication of a high level industrious danger. On the off chance that the email simply says "Hello, watch this cool video!" and connections you to a pernicious site, your association presumably doesn't have an excessive amount to stress over. Messages like this are excessively self-evident and have a slim likelihood of accomplishment, which is a major danger for an aggressor that is attempting to keep their infiltration endeavors prudent. 

All things being equal, you ought to be watching out for more complex messages. Give additional consideration to those that are individualized to the focused on beneficiary. In the event that they contain inward organization data that isn't accessible to the general population, it demonstrates that whoever is sending them has put critical time and cash into researching your association and its shortcomings. This can be an indication that an APT might be attempting to infiltrate your organization. 

You ought to be particularly attentive at whatever point you go over spearphishing messages routed to frameworks directors, CEOs, CISOs and other key people. On the off chance that your association sees messages this way, you ought to be keeping watch for different indications of an APT either effectively inside or endeavoring to break your organization.

  1. Watering hole attack

The attacker infects a website which the victim is known to visit. The assaults have been embraced by hoodlums, APT gatherings and country states the same and we see the sums rising. The objective is to contaminate a casualty's PC and access the organization inside the casualties' work environment. Many reason that these assaults are a choice to Spear Phishing yet are very unique. Watering Hole assaults are as yet focused on assaults, however they cast a more extensive net and trap a greater number of casualties than the aggressor's unique target. In spite of this, Cyber security experts don't consider this to be the finish of Spear Phishing. 

The purposes for playing out this attack include taking financial information, individual data or licensed innovation, yet additionally to access delicate PC frameworks. As assailants bargain authentic sites that can't be boycotted and utilize zero-day abuses which have no antivirus marks, the assault achievement rate stays high. 

Despite the fact that Watering Hole assaults are as yet not as basic as others, they represent an extensive danger since they are hard to identify. These assaults commonly target high-security associations through their representatives, colleagues, associated sellers and surprisingly unstable remote organizations at shows. 

Popular survivors of this assault strategy include mobile engineers from Facebook, Apple and Twitter which were hit by a malware facilitated on a well known iOS versatile designer discussion. They are by all account not the only ones; territorial banks, extremist gatherings, government international strategy asset destinations, makers, protection associations, and numerous different organizations from various industries.The Watering Hole assault technique has been utilized here and there as of late and it traces all the way back to 2009.

  1. Privilege escalation:

The attacker takes advantage of poor security controls to escalate his or her privileges within the organization. Privilege escalation is a typical route for hackers to acquire unapproved admittance to frameworks inside a security edge. 

Hackers start by discovering flimsy spots in an association's safeguards and accessing a framework. By and large that first mark of infiltration won't allow hackers with the degree of access or information they need. They will at that point endeavor advantage acceleration to acquire authorizations or get admittance to extra, more delicate frameworks. 

Now and again, assailants trying privilege escalation find the "entryways are totally open" – deficient security controls, or inability to follow the guideline of least advantage, with clients having a bigger number of advantages than they really need. In different cases, assailants abuse programming weaknesses, or utilize explicit strategies to defeat a working framework's authorizations component.

  1. Credential harvesting:

This is the stealing of credentials, often through phishing. While credential harvesting is regularly seen as comparable to phishing, it utilizes various strategies. 

Digital aggressors quite a while in the past sorted out that the most effortless route for them to access delicate information is by trading off an end client's personality and qualifications. Wagering on the human factor and assaulting the most vulnerable connection in the digital safeguard chain, credential harvesting has become the establishment of most digital assaults. 

While credential harvesting is generally utilized by assailants – how they manage the taken data can shift enormously. Sometimes, the accreditations will be utilized for resulting assaults where the objective is to access frameworks or organization assets, or they can be adapted by assuming control over financial balances or just selling the data on the Darknet. 

Business owners and clients need to comprehend that credential harvesting comes in various flavors and blends and isn't in every case exclusively attached to email phishing. As a rule, digital enemies influence either friendly designing methods, malware, advanced tricksters, or any mix thereof to take data. Most clients know about phishing messages that contain connections to cloned sites, or weaponized connections that introduce malware on the casualty's PC.

  1. Data exfiltration:

This is the stealing of data out of the organization. Data exfiltration is a procedure utilized by fraudulent hackers to target, duplicate, and move touchy information. Data exfiltration should be possible distantly or physically and can be amazingly hard to distinguish given it frequently looks like business-supported (or "ordinary") network traffic. Data exfiltration targets are often; monetary records, client data, and protected innovation/proprietary advantages.

Tragically, an assailant doesn't have to utilize especially advanced devices to penetrate an organization, exfiltrate information, and not get captured; this is valid for both progressed persevering danger (APT) bunches just as less modern danger attackers, and particularly valid for fraudulent insiders.

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Examples Of Advanced Persistent Threats

While we’re surrounded by cyber threats, it’s not easy or uncommon to find yourself in the nippers of APT. In fact, APTs are so common that you can find them behind almost every cyber danger. They are complex and have multiple faces. The great customization ability of this threat makes it hassle-free for integration. Hackers even don’t have to make much effort to be a part of the huge attack.

Have a look at some of the most customary APT examples from the real world.

  • Phishing & whaling

Both belong to the social engineering attack category and involve luring the target to fall into the trap. They aimed at higher-level professionals so that hackers could have a hold over sensitive details. They are APTs because the installed malware can stay in stealth mode for years.

In 2009, more than 100 hackers joined hands to carry out the Phish Phry attack. It was so big that the FBI declared it the most notorious phishing attack that ever happened.

GhostNet was a mass spear phishing attack that took the entire Russia by storm as it aimed at the government ministries and embassies network.

  • The Sykipot attack 

Happened in 2006, the attack took advantage of existing loopholes in Acrobat and Adobe Reader. With the help of multiple Sykipot malware, hackers continue a series of attacks in the UK and US.

  • Use of benevolent software or files

At times, APTs are delivered with the help of in-use or dependable software, file, or USB. A real-world example of this APT attack is the Stuxnet worm that was first spotted in 2010. It was delivered by a corrupted USB.

  • APT28

APT28 or Fancy Bear is a very notorious Russia-based APT group that was accused of conducting multiple attacks against official/national agencies and military agencies across Eastern Europe.  

  • APT37

The roots of this APT group are spread in North Korea. It came into being in 2012 and has been linked to multiple spear-phishing attacks.

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The main characteristics of APT

  1. They are advanced:

The attacks are of a high level of sophistication which is difficult to achieve with automated tools. There's nothing shallow about the abilities and approaches utilized during any phase of an APT assault. These dangers are normally characterized by profoundly refined social designing, discovery counteraction, and ingenuity subsequent to acquiring section.

  1. They are persistent:

The attacks use a wide variety of techniques to hide and they are often targeted to specific individuals within the organization. Most of the time, advanced persistent threat will contain various specialized "activities" that different them from different types of cybercrime. Much of the time, these activities are profoundly determined and zeroed in on keeping a presence inside an objective organization for quite a long time, months, or even a long time at a time.

  1. They are stealthy:

The attacks use a variety of techniques to try to remain undetected. Most times, antivirus programming, spam channels, and other normal security devices depend on signature-based discovery to battle infections. By perceiving designs in malware against a current data set of dangers, they're ready to battle code with beforehand known qualities. 

APTs are firmly connected with zero-day exploits, which envelop malware that has at no other time been conveyed or is created in view of fix or channel weaknesses explicitly. This permits APTs to sidestep your email spam channel, antivirus programming, firewall, and patches to acquire hold inside your organization.

  1. They are non-obvious:

The attacks are not obvious to the victim and often do not affect the victims computer. Advanced persistent threat programmers normally have a lower hazard resistance than "script youngsters" or different sorts of programmers who will project a wide net for tricking a solitary objective.

These assaults are painstakingly arranged and planned with information on an objective's weaknesses to stay away from discovery for an amazingly extensive stretch.

  1. They are tailored:

The attacks are targeted to specific individuals within the organization. Advanced persistent threats are uncommon acquired code run by semi-specialized content youngsters.

They're exceptionally focused towards your association, and created considering your weaknesses. Thousands, or even millions might be put into the advancement of a solitary zero-day malware assault that falls inside the APT class.

  1. They have a specific purpose:

The attacks are not random but are aimed at specific targets.

Organizations are increasingly recognizing the need for security staff to be trained to deal with APTs. Since these attacks are more advanced, security staff need to be aware of the latest tactics and techniques used by APTs in order to detect and prevent them. 

It is important to have security staff that is trained and certified in the latest cybersecurity threats and techniques.

  1. They establish multiple through multiple weak points:

Immediately after acquiring passage to an organization, an APT will normally build up correspondence with home workers with the conceivable aim of downloading extra noxious code. An early advance in the APT cycle is setting up various places of passage through the home worker to hold access on the off chance that one mark of weakness is found and shut by the organization executives.

  1. They occur in multiple stages:

Perhaps the most binding together qualities of an APT is the reality they're multi-stage. Notwithstanding the strategy for section, they will regularly follow in any event a large portion of the stages underneath: 

  • Observation/Social Engineering: Research and data gathering on the assault subject.
  • Section: Targeted malware is conveyed through phishing, abuse packs, or different strategies for assault.
  • Discovery: After acquiring access, attackers will make a quick move to keep away from recognition. This stage likewise incorporates the planning of an association's organization to build up an exact methodology.
  • Catch and Exfiltration: Protected data is gathered and sent back to the host worker. In numerous APT contextual investigations, this stage can a months ago or even a very long time as it rehashes the exfiltration interaction a most extreme number of times.
  1. They have particular signs of detection:

While APTs are consistently exceptionally hard to identify, associations may see at least one of the accompanying indications post-bargain: 

  • Odd client account exercises
  • Inescapable secondary passage trojans, a strategy for looking after access
  • Strange data set action like an unexpected expansion in data set activities, which regularly includes colossal amounts of information
  • Uncommon information records; gathered information might be packaged into documents to help the exfiltration cycle
  1. They have knowledge source:

ATPs may share qualities practically speaking with different assaults in a similar class, yet they may not fit the example of other effectively recognizable kinds of cybercrime. APTs seldom take after ransomware. While they may begin from a phishing assault, they're likewise unmistakable from this type of cybercrime because of constancy and intricacy. 

At the hour of advancement, these nine unique standards kicked things off in characterizing the contrast among APTs and different types of cybercrime. Since the hour of composing, extra subtleties on APTs have arisen.

APT lifecycle


Three stages of an APT attack

An effective APT assault can be separated into three phases:

  1. Network invasion
  2. The extension of the assailant's quality
  3. The extraction of amassed information—all without being distinguished.

First stage – Infiltration

Businesses are normally penetrated through the bargaining of one of three assault surfaces: web resources, network assets or approved human clients.

This is accomplished either through vindictive transfers (e.g., RFI, SQL infusion) or social designing assaults (e.g., stick phishing) — dangers looked by enormous associations consistently.

Moreover, infiltrators may all the while execute a DDoS assault against their objective. This serves both as a distraction to occupy network faculty and as a methods for debilitating a security border, making it simpler to penetrate.

When introductory access has been accomplished, assailants rapidly introduce a secondary passage shell—malware that awards network access and takes into consideration distant, covertness tasks. Secondary passages can likewise come as Trojans veiled as authentic bits of programming.

Second stage – Expansion

After the traction is set up, assailants move to expand their quality inside the organization. 

This includes climbing an association's pecking order, trading off staff individuals with admittance to the most touchy information. In doing as such, they're ready to accumulate basic business data, including product offering data, worker information and monetary records. 

Contingent upon a definitive assault objective, the aggregated information can be offered to a contending undertaking, changed to attack an organization's product offering or used to bring down a whole association. On the off chance that harm is the rationale, this stage is utilized to unobtrusively deal with numerous basic capacities and control them in a particular grouping to cause most extreme harm. For instance, assailants could erase whole data sets inside an organization and afterward upset organization interchanges to draw out the recuperation cycle.

Third stage – Extraction

While an APT occasion is in progress, taken data is commonly put away in a safe area inside the organization being attacked. When enough information has been gathered, the criminals need to extricate it without being recognized.

Commonly, repetitive sound are utilized to divert your security group so the data can be moved out. This may appear as a DDoS assault, again tying up network staff or potentially debilitating site safeguards to work with extraction.

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Detecting Advanced Persistent Threats

Unnoticed APTs can cause serious damage to the concerned system and device. Hence, it’s very important for organizations to early detection of advanced persistent threats and reduce the risks that follow afterward.

When a system is hit by an APT, it tends to behave abnormally. These unusual behaviors are of great help in APT detection. So, knowing them will certainly bring desirable outcomes.  

  • Abnormal Activities

An infected system will have abnormal user account activities like multiple logins, frequent password changes, and random posts or emails. This is because the threat will try to reach out to the crucial database and will try everything possible.

  • Trojans in Abundance

It is common to find infected components in your system when APT is trying to make its way. If you find your systems to be using Trojan horses (or remote access Trojan) excessively, be assured that APT is there. APTs have to use backdoor Trojan malware to continue the gained access.

  • Database Defects

The prime aim of a threat is to access the database only. If APT is present in the system, there will be sudden changes in the data access activities. For instance, more failed attempts to access databases, trying to access the large quality of data that were not accessed before, or making changes in sensitive data.

  • Suspicious Data

Keep an eye on the data files that your system stores. If you find anything unusual in your system that you don’t remember downloading or creating, consider it a sign of an APT attack. APTs will require bundled that for exfiltration. This data will be available in the form of suspicious files in the system.

These abnormalities are signs of APT presence. Keep track of how your system is behaving and become altered as soon as you find anything unusual.

You can also use a technical approach to deal with this danger. For instance, try using threat and vulnerability management tools that are great for assessing the system’s health and notifying when any danger is present. This resource can assess and analyze the activities of a system and help in early threat detection.

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APT security measures

Good APT recognition and security requires a complex methodology with respect to organize managers, security suppliers and individual clients.

APT security measures
  1. ‍First Approach – Traffic monitoring

Checking ingress and egress traffic are viewed as the best practice for forestalling the establishment of indirect accesses and obstructing taken information extraction. Investigating traffic inside your organization edge can likewise help ready security work force to any uncommon conduct that may highlight noxious movement. 

A web application firewall (WAF) conveyed on the edge of your organization channels traffic to your web application workers, along these lines securing one of your most weak assault surfaces. Among different capacities, a WAF can help get rid of use layer assaults, for example, RFI and SQL infusion assaults, ordinarily utilized during the APT penetration stage. 

Interior traffic checking administrations, like an organization firewalls, are the opposite side of this condition. They can give a granular view showing how clients are collaborating inside your organization, while assisting with recognizing inner traffic anomalies, (e.g., unpredictable logins or curiously enormous information moves). The last could flag an APT assault is occurring. You can likewise screen admittance to document offers or framework honeypots. 

At long last, approaching traffic observing administrations could be valuable for distinguishing and eliminating secondary passage shells. These can be distinguished by capturing far off demands from the administrators.

  1. ‍Second Approach – Application and domain whitelisting

Whitelisting is a method of controlling spaces that can be gotten to from your network, also as applications that can be introduced by your clients. This is another valuable strategy for diminishing the achievement pace of APT assaults by limiting accessible assault surfaces. 

This safety effort is a long way from secure, nonetheless, as even the most believed spaces can be undermined. It's additionally realized that noxious records ordinarily show up under the appearance of real programming. Also, more established programming item forms are inclined to being undermined and misused. 

For compelling whitelisting, severe update arrangements ought to be upheld to guarantee your clients are continually running the most recent rendition of any application showing up on the rundown.

  1. ‍Third Approach – Access control

For attackers, your workers ordinarily are the biggest and most weak parts in your security edge. As a general rule, this is the reason your organization clients are seen by gatecrashers as a simple passage to invade your protections, while growing their hold inside your security border. 

Here, likely targets can be categorized as one of the accompanying three classifications: 

  • Thoughtless clients who overlook network security approaches and accidentally award admittance to likely dangers. 
  • Fraudulent insiders who purposefully misuse their client certifications to allow culprit access. 
  • Influenced clients whose organization access advantages are undermined and utilized by assailants. 

Creating viable controls requires an exhaustive survey of everybody in your association—particularly the data to which they approach. For instance, arranging information on a restricted information diet helps block a gatecrasher's capacity to seize login certifications from a low-level staff part, utilizing it to get to touchy materials. 

Key organization passageways ought to be gotten with two-factor authentication (2FA). It expects clients to utilize a second type of check while getting to touchy zones (commonly a password shipped off the client's cell phone). This forestalls unapproved entertainers camouflaged as authentic clients from moving around your organization.

  1. ‍Fourth Approach – Keeping Security Patches Updated

Staying up with the latest is imperative to forestalling an APT assault. Guaranteeing network programming has the most recent security refreshes decreases the opportunity of flimsy parts and similarity issues.

  1. ‍Fifth Approach – Avoid Phishing Attempts 

Phishing fakes are a typical section point for an APT assault. Train workers to perceive phishing endeavors and show them what to do when they experience one. 

Email separating forestalls the achievement pace of phishing assaults. Sifting and obstructing malevolent connections or connections inside messages stops infiltration endeavors.

  1. ‍Six Approach – Perform Regular Scans for Backdoors 

Well-suited programmers leave secondary passages across the organization after they acquire unlawful access. Checking for and eliminating indirect accesses is a successful technique for halting current and forestalling future APT endeavors. 

Specialists propose searching for: 

  • Order shells (WMI, CMD, and PowerShell) that set up network associations. 
  • Far off worker or organization devices on non-director frameworks. 
  • Microsoft Office records, Flash, or Java episodes that summon new cycles or produce order shells. 

Make sure to filter endpoint gadgets for secondary passages and other malware. Well-suited assaults regularly include a takeover of an endpoint gadget, so recognizing and reacting to a trade off is a need.

Conclusion

The results of an advanced persistent threat assault can be outrageous. Loss of information and notoriety are just about an assurance, so do everything possible to forestall an assault. Fortunately, presently you understand what an APT is and how to remember one, so you are prepared to build up and ensure your responsibilities.

Find out about digital murder chain which can assist you with comprehension and foresee various phases of a cyber attack. Knowing how programmers work empowers an organization to choose the correct apparatuses and systems to restrict penetrates, react to in-progress assaults, and limit chances.

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Updated:
February 26, 2024
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