Research Saturday
Recent Episodes
Credential harvesters in the cloud.
This week we are joined by, Blake Darché, Head of Cloudforce One at Cloudflare, to discuss their work on "Unraveling SloppyLemming’s Operations Across South Asia." Cloudforce One's investigation into the advanced threat actor "SloppyLemming" reveals an extensive espionage campaign targeting South and East Asia, with a focus on Pakistan's government, defense, telecommunications, and energy sectors. Leveraging multiple cloud service providers, SloppyLemming employs tactics like credential harvesting, malware delivery, and command-and-control (C2) operations, often relying on open-source adversary emulation tools like Cobalt Strike. Despite its activities, the actor's poor operational security (OPSEC) has allowed investigators to gain valuable insights into its infrastructure and tooling.
This week, we are joined by, Amnon Kushnir from Sygnia, who is sharing their work on "China-Nexus Threat Group ‘Velvet Ant’ Leverages a Zero-Day to Deploy Malware on Cisco Nexus Switches." In early 2024, Sygnia observed the ‘Velvet Ant’ threat group exploiting a zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2024-20399) to infiltrate Cisco Switch appliances and operate undetected within enterprise networks. This attack enables threat actors to escape Cisco’s command interface and install malware directly on the device’s OS, bypassing standard security tools. The incident underscores the risks posed by third-party appliances and the importance of enhanced monitoring and threat detection to counter advanced persistent threats.
This week, we are pleased to be joined by Mick Baccio, global security advisor for Splunk SURGe, sharing their research on "LLM Security: Splunk & OWASP Top 10 for LLM-based Applications." The research dives into the rapid rise of AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) that initially seem magical, but behind the scenes, they are sophisticated systems built by humans. Despite their impressive capabilities, these systems are vulnerable to numerous cyber threats. Splunk's research explores the OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications, a framework that highlights key vulnerabilities such as prompt injection, training data poisoning, and sensitive information disclosure.
New targets, new tools, same threat.
This week we are joined by Chester Wisniewski, Global Field CTO from Sophos X-Ops team, to discuss their work on "Crimson Palace returns: New Tools, Tactics, and Targets." Sophos X-Ops has observed a resurgence in cyberespionage activity, tracked as Operation Crimson Palace, targeting Southeast Asian government organizations. After a brief lull, Cluster Charlie resumed operations in September 2023, using new tactics such as web shells and open-source tools to bypass detection, re-establish access, and map target network infrastructure, demonstrating ongoing efforts to exfiltrate data and expand their foothold.
In this episode, Trevor Hilligoss, VP of SpyCloud Labs at SpyCloud, discusses the increasing threat of ransomware, emphasizing the role of infostealer malware in facilitating these attacks. He draws from SpyCloud's 2024 Malware and Ransomware Defense Report, highlighting how compromised identity data from infostealers creates opportunities for ransomware operators. With 75% of organizations experiencing multiple ransomware attacks in the past year, Trevor explores findings from over 500 security leaders in the US and UK, discussing the challenges businesses face and how they can use insights from this research to defend against ransomware and other cybercrimes.
