Is Your Threat Intelligence Certified Organic?

7 questions to ask before choosing a web-based threat intelligence feed.

It should come as no surprise that CISOs are under ever-increasing pressure, with many facing the prospect of losing their jobs if they cannot improve the strength of the enterprise security posture before breaches occur. And, occur they will. Consider these figures—recent studies report that web-based attacks are one of the most common types of digital attacks experienced by the average enterprise, costing $96,000 and requiring 27 days to resolve a single incident. Furthermore, there is a definite positive correlation between both the size of the organization and the cost of the cyber attack and additional correlation between the number of days taken to resolve an attack and the cost of the attack—the larger the organization or days required to remediate, the higher the cost.

Enter, Threat Intelligence

CISOs increasingly embrace threat intelligence as a means to enhance their digital security posture. In the past three years, organizations have significantly raised their spending on threat intelligence, allocating almost 10% of their IT security budget to it, and this number is expected to grow rapidly through 2018. And, this budget allocation appears to be well spent as organizations report enhanced detection of cyber attacks—catching an average 35 cyber attacks previously eluding traditional defenses.

Not all threat intel feeds are created equal

Sure, threat intelligence feeds are increasingly accepted and adopted as an essential element in the enterprise security strategy. In fact, 80 percent of breached companies wish they had invested in threat intelligence. But even as the use of third-party threat intelligence feeds increase, IT/security teams are realizing that not all threat intelligence feeds are created equal.

To begin with, there are several types of threat intelligence feeds based on web-based threats or email threats, and feeds that scan the dark web, among others. While not discounting the value of the various types of feeds, CISOs need to understand why web-based threat intelligence is the first among equals. Web-based malware target the enterprise network and the endpoints through day-to-day internet use by employees–internet critical to their day-to-day office functions. A truly valuable threat intelligence feed will help CISOs achieve their end goal of keeping their organization safe and blocking confirmed bad actors.

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Checklist for Choosing the Right Threat Intelligence

Ask these seven questions to determine if the web-based threat intelligence feed(s) you choose are “certified organic” enough to provide tangible goodness and value to the health of your enterprise security posture:

1.    Is the data original source?

Our previous post, Your Threat Intelligence Isn’t Working, discussed the pitfalls of using compiled third-party sources in a threat intel feed—more data isn’t necessarily good data! The time-consuming process of managing duplicates and false positives cripples the performance of most information security teams to the point that many alerts are ignored. Protect cherished resources—budget and time—by choosing an original source threat intelligence feed.

2.    How is the data collected?

While original source threat intelligence minimizes false positives and duplicates, how the data is collected maximizes the tangible value of the feed. Web-based malware is typically delivered through mainstream, heavily-trafficked websites, either via ads or third-party code such as data management platforms, content management systems, customer identification engines, video players and more. Hence, the threat intelligence feed needs to source the data by replicating typical website visitors. This means continuously (24*7*365) scanning the digital ecosystem across multiple geography, browser, devices, operating system and consumer behavior, using REAL user profiles. Unless the engine that gathers the threat intelligence behaves like real internet users (who are the targets of web-based malware), the quality of the “internet threat” data is questionable at best.

3.     Is the threat intelligence dynamic?

Threat intelligence should be a living (frequently updated), constantly active data source. The data in the threat intelligence feed needs to adapt to reflect the rapidly transforming malware landscape. The engine behind the feed should both track and detect malware in real-time, while also accounting for the changing patterns of attack. Even the algorithms driving the machine learning needs to be dynamic and continuously reviewed.

4.     Does it prevent AND detect threats?

As the adage goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and this holds true in the cyber security space. However, reliance on prevention isn’t practical or realistic. Prevention boils down to deployed policies, products, and processes which help curtail the odds of an attack based on known and confirmed threats. What about unknown or yet to be confirmed threats?

Threat hunting is becoming a crucial element in the security posture. It refers to the detection capabilities stemming from a combination of machine generated intel and human analysis to actively mine for suspicious threat vectors. Does your threat intelligence account for both indicators of compromise (IOC) and patterns of attack (POA)? The goal of threat hunting is to reduce the dwell time of threats and the intensity of potential damage. The threat intelligence feed should allow you to act on threats patterns before they become overt.

5.     How is the data verified?

Just as the automation or machine learning behind the threat intelligence feed should simulate a real user for data collection, human intervention is important for data verification. Without the element of human analysis, data accuracy should be questioned. Otherwise, you run the risk of experiencing increased false positives.

6.     Is the information actionable?

Malware is malware, and by its definition it is “bad”. You do not need an extensive payload analysis of threat data. You do, however, need information about the offending hosts and domains, so that compromised content can be blocked, either manually or via Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP). The granularity of the data can also save CISOs from the politics of whitelisting and blacklisting websites. As a bonus, real-time intelligence will enable you to unblock content when it is no longer compromised.

7.     Does it offer network-level protection?

While CISOs still debate over an optimal endpoint security solution, web-based threats attack at the enterprise network. Frankly, stopping malware at the endpoint is too late! The threat intelligence you choose must offer network-level protection and deter web-based threats from propagating to endpoints in the first place.

Your Threat Intelligence Isn’t Working

False positives undermine your security investments. 

The rapid adoption of threat intelligence data by enterprises signals an increased emphasis on preventing targeted malware attacks. While few question the strategy fueling this boom, it is the quality of this intelligence that is debatable. Recent news of organizations suffering brand damage due to false positives in their “compiled” threat feed, puts the quality of numerous threat intelligence feeds under scrutiny.

In simple terms, a compiled threat intelligence feed aggregates data from various open sources and may also include observed data from the security vendor. The pitfalls of these multiple dependencies are many, the most debilitating of which is the quality of this so-called “intelligence.” In most cases, a compiled threat intelligence feed is a minefield of false positives, false negatives and unverified data.

To make your digital threat intelligence work for you, consider these factors:

Go for original source

Compiled isn’t conclusive

Many vendors use the euphemisms like “comprehensive” or “crowdsourced” threat intelligence to characterize the value of their data. These euphemisms typically describe data compiled from multiple sources. Very few (most likely none) reveal the fact that this aggregated data hasn’t been thoroughly vetted for accuracy – a process that requires significant manpower hours for the volume of data within the feed. In fact, the time needed to properly assess the data would delay an enterprise’s receipt of and action on the intelligence. Needless to say, this time lag is all it takes for serious damage to be done by cyber criminals.

Avoid Costly Cleanups
False positives can be damning

The inherent inaccuracies in a compiled threat intelligence feed can lead to false positives and duplicate threat alerts. It is a well-established fact that malware alerts generate around 81% false positives and average 395 hours a week of wasted resources chasing false negatives and/or false positives.

A critical by-product of false positives is alert fatigue, which induces enterprise security professionals to not react in a timely manner – fatal behavior when an actual breach or violation does occur. In this “boy who cried wolf” scenario, the enterprise is vulnerable from two perspectives. Failure to react to a “positive” alert could expose the entity to malware. On the flip side, reaction to a “false positive” expends countless resources. Whatever the situation, the consequences could damage careers, cripple the security posture, and tarnish the enterprise’s image. By using an original source digital threat intelligence feed vendor, you maximize the level of intel accuracy and minimize the margin for false positives to occur.

Focus on patterns, not just appearances
Both IOCs and POAs are important

Another aspect to deciphering the value of  threat intelligence is what actually goes on behind the scenes. Most threat intelligence feeds factor in indicators of compromise (IOCs) to describe a malware alert is valid  or is marked with “high confidence” in its accuracy. However, what is harder to determine is the actual behavioral pattern of a threat or the method of malware delivery, which is what patterns of attack (POAs) depict. By understanding the POAs, high-quality threat intelligence can also detect new threat vectors, hence allowing enterprises to block suspicious malware before it becomes overt.

The key determining characteristic between IOCs and POAs is that IOCs contain  superfluous, easy-to-alter data points that are not individual or specific to the bad actor, whereas POA data points are difficult to mask. To put it in simpler terms, think of a bank robbery. Information describing the appearance of the robber, such as a shirt or hair color, could be easily changed for the robber to evade detection and be free to commit additional heists. However, more specific, innate information regarding the robber’s gait or voice, would make the individual easier to detect and block their ability to commit the same crime again. These inherent factors or POAs are difficult and expensive to alter. Therefore, threat intelligence data should factor in both IOCs and POAs in order to provide a more conclusive picture of a threat and minimize false positives.

Security Buyer Beware

Yes, factors such as real-time data, number of data points on threat vectors, easy access, and seamless integration with TIP/SIEM are important in determining the overall quality of a threat data feed. However, inaccurate data and false positives are fundamental flaws in many market solutions for threat intelligence. By using an original source digital threat intelligence feed vendor, you maximize the level of intel accuracy and minimize the margin for false positives to occur. Choose wisely.

Ecommerce can be bad for your financial health

Compromised landing page allows unauthorized collection of credit card information. 

A holiday weekend will prove more memorial for some visitors to several ecommerce sites. Customers wishing to purchase athletic gear or sign up for a competition risked having their credit card information collected by an unauthorized third party.

Detecting the infection

In the United States, Memorial Day signals the start of summer and the three-day holiday weekend kicks off with numerous large-scale promotions and sales campaigns pitching outdoor-related goods and services. Consequently, the digital advertising ecosystem usually experiences a jump in campaigns to drive traffic to ecommerce sites—a ripe opportunity to leverage.

The Media Trust team detected extraneous JavaScript code executing on the payment landing page for several medium-sized, sports-oriented ecommerce websites.

First detected in the early afternoon of Saturday, May 28, legitimate advertising creative directed users to legitimate ecommerce sites which happened to be compromised. The “angular” domain (angular.club) injected superfluous JavaScript throughout the sites to collect information input by a user, such as race registration or financial details associated with a purchase.

Diagnosing the financial headache

The angular domain injected UTF-8 encoded script throughout the entire ecommerce site and obfuscated itself by adopting the name of the site into its script, i.e., angular.club/js/site-name.js. Searching on the root domain “angular.club” redirects to “AngularJS.org”, a valid Google JavaScript framework and another attempt at misdirection to hide the true intention.

It’s likely the bad actor penetrated the content management system (CMS) or website theme template in order to ensure the code executed on all pages, especially the payment landing page.

Example of JavaScript

This code collects a range of financial and personally identifiable information (PII) including billing name, address, email, telephone number, credit card number, expiration date, and CVV.

The information is then sent to another server unassociated with the ecommerce site owner. The host of the angular domain and the web service that collects the credit card information are owned by the same entity, whose host server is in Germany and registered to someone in Florida.

Per The Media Trust team, there is no valid coding reason for this JavaScript to be on the website. The script’s sole purpose is to inject a block of code into the web page to collect credit card information and send it to another server where it can be used for future use—purchase online goods, sold on the dark web, used to buy domains to launch additional attacks, etc.

Assessing the health of the ecommerce site

The ecommerce site operators removed the code from there sites late on Tuesday, May 31. Frankly, the damage was already done.

During a strong promotional period, several small- to medium- sized ecommerce sites did not realize their expected traffic. Due to the malicious nature of the landing page associated with these campaigns, The Media Trust alerted our ad tech clients to block the serving of the ads. In one instance, seven different creative supporting more than 200 ad impressions did not execute. In addition, one of the campaigns promoted an event with an expiration date of Wednesday, June 1.

Prescribing the cure

The Internet can be a scary place, full of bad actors looking to make a quick buck by preying on the good nature of others—consumers and website properties alike. Holiday periods are when the online ecosystem experiences a surge in attacks, and no business or organization is immune.

The lesson learned is that brand and corporate websites are just as vulnerable to attack as ad content. And, ecommerce is especially vulnerable due to the direct impact to revenue.

The best defense is to be on constant alert, a security posture that is difficult for most to assume. That’s why many firms leave it up to the experts to continually scan their online and mobile ecosystem. Continuous website monitoring will alert you to an anomalous or unexpected behavior of third-party vendors and first-party, website operator code. Upon detection, these issues can be immediately resolved thereby keeping your ecommerce operation alive and kicking.

What’s on your website? And what’s it doing there?

Recognizing the risks of third-party code on brand and ecommerce websites.

That’s a simple question, right? You’d think that IT, infosec and ecommerce/digital operations would know—that they would want to know—which third-party domains execute code on their company’s website. The reality is they don’t know, exposing their site and their site’s visitors to the constant threat of cyber attacks in the form of malware drops or domain redirects.

Today, most organizations recognize that online and mobile ads serve as major conduits for malware, but they remain ignorant to the risks associated with third-party code executed on their website. They fail to understand the value of knowing how many third-party vendors and domains access their site each day, week or month. Failure to track third-party code activity or the length of time the domain remains on a site opens the door to malware, site performance issues and data leakage, which can lead to lost revenue and privacy violations.

And don’t forget that many of these vendors may require a fourth-party to enable their functionality, which means the average website can have hundreds of domains accessing the site at any one time. In fact, the preponderance of source code executing on Fortune 1,000 websites is third-party code—just think of the latency challenges!

That figure sounds high until you take into account the third-party services required to render a single URL: blogging, video, data analytics, comments, chat, product reviews, marketing automation, etc. These various services provide for a more interactive and engaging website, as well as enable the site to be optimally monetized.

While third-party vendors provide value, they must also be closely monitored, lest they unknowingly serve as an entry point for malware, as evidenced with the Syrian Electronic Army’s (SEA) Thanksgiving Day attack on more than 100 media sites. The SEA attacked these various websites by first infiltrating an unsuspecting third-party used by media outlets, and a few name-brand companies, whose ecommerce sites were unavailable for hours resulting in millions of lost revenue. In the grand scheme of things, this recent compromise was relatively harmless—the SEA redirected the Gigya domain to a promotional message—and did not penetrate internal systems, infiltrate firewalls or pilfer sensitive corporate or customer data. Yet.

While third-party vendors provide value, they must also be closely monitored, lest they unknowingly serve as an entry point for malware, as evidenced with the Syrian Electronic Army’s (SEA) Thanksgiving Day attack on more than 100 media sites. The SEA attacked these various websites by first infiltrating an unsuspecting third-party used by media outlets, and a few name-brand companies, whose ecommerce sites were unavailable for hours resulting in millions of lost revenue. In the grand scheme of things, this recent compromise was relatively harmless—the SEA redirected the Gigya domain to a promotional message—and did not penetrate internal systems, infiltrate firewalls or pilfer sensitive corporate or customer data. Yet.

Purveyors of malware attack for two primary reasons: simple profit or publicity, with the Sony Pictures Entertainment breach being the most recent high-profile example. Due to the heavy reliance on marketing analytics, plug-ins and third-party content, brand and ecommerce sites are prime targets for a large-scale attack orchestrated through an unknowing accomplice: a third-party executing code on an ecommerce site. And it won’t be for harmless fun. These cyber criminals leverage corporate websites to drop malware on site visitors, which typically includes employees, that mines for system vulnerabilities, syphon valuable customer data or redirect consumers to alternative and possibly competitive sites.

When this happens, what will you do? Instinct is to shut down the entire property until you can locate the malicious code—a process that can take hours of searching. This is an expensive solution, because not only do you spend resources pinpointing the problem but you also won’t be able to deliver promised ads or process customer transactions, and your brand will be forever tarnished.

The best defense is continuous monitoring of third-party vendors to catch the moment they are compromised and before significant harm is unleashed. Through constant scanning of these website partners you will know the instant an anomalous activity is detected, whether it be suspicious code or a domain redirect.

Think about it the next time you visit your company’s website to read product reviews, catch up on the latest blog post, chat with the help desk or watch an entertaining video. Do you really know which vendors enable these activities? Have you authorized their presence and activity? Once you have a handle on this information, securing your business’s online presence becomes easier.