Cisco Brings Out Midyear Security Report

The Cisco 2014 Midyear Security Report was released at Black Hat U.S.

According to a company release, the Cisco 2014 Midyear Security Report examines threat intelligence and cybersecurity trends for the first half of 2014.

John Stewart, senior vice president, chief security officer, Cisco, said: "Many companies are innovating their future using the Internet. To succeed in this rapidly emerging environment, executive leadership needs to embrace and manage, in business terms, the associated cyber risks. Analyzing and understanding weaknesses within the security chain rests largely upon the ability of individual organizations, and industry, to create awareness about cyber risk at the most senior levels, including Boards -- making cybersecurity a business process, not about technology. To cover the entire attack continuum -- before, during, and after an attack -- organizations today must operate security solutions that operate everywhere a threat can manifest itself."

Findings:

-"Man-in-the-Browser" attacks pose a risk for enterprises: Nearly 94 percent of customer networks observed in 2014 have been identified as having traffic going to websites that host malware. Specifically, issuing DNS requests for hostnames where the IP address to which the hostname resolves is reported to be associated with the distribution of Palevo, SpyEye, and Zeus malware families that incorporate man-in-the-browser functionality.

-Botnet hide and seek: Nearly 70 percent of networks were identified as issuing DNS queries for Dynamic DNS Domains. This shows evidence of networks misused or compromised with botnets using DDNS to alter their IP address to avoid detection/blacklist. Few legitimate outbound connection attempts from enterprises would seek dynamic DNS domains apart from outbound C&C callbacks looking to disguise the location of their botnet.

-Encrypting stolen data: Nearly 44 percent of customer networks observed in 2014 have been identified as issuing DNS requests for sites and domains with devices that provide encrypted channel services, used by malicious actors to cover their tracks by exfiltrating data using encrypted channels to avoid detection like VPN, SSH, SFTP, FTP, and FTPS.

-The number of exploit kits has dropped by 87 percent since the alleged creator of the widely popular Blackhole exploit kit was arrested last year, according to Cisco security researchers. Several exploit kits observed in the first half of 2014 were trying to move in on territory once dominated by the Blackhole exploit kit, but a clear leader has yet to emerge.

-Java continues its dubious distinction as the programming language most exploited by malicious actors. Cisco security researchers found that Java exploits rose to 93 percent of all indicators of compromise as of May 2014, following a high point of 91 percent of IOCs in November 2013 as reported in the Cisco 2014 Annual Security Report.

-Unusual upticks in malware within vertical markets. For the first half of 2014, the pharmaceutical and chemical industry, a high- profit vertical, once again placed in the top three high-risk verticals for Web malware encounters. Media and publishing led the industry verticals posting nearly four times the median Web malware encounters, and aviation slid into third place with over twice the median Web malware encounters globally. The top most affected verticals by region were media and publishing in the Americas; food and beverage in Africa, Europe and the Middle East and insurance in Asia-Pacific, China, Japan and India.

The Cisco CSI ecosystem includes the newly combined Talos Threat Intelligence and Research Group, which is a combined team from the previous Cisco Threat Research and Communications team, the Sourcefire Vulnerability Research Team and Cisco Security Applications group.

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