I read an article about ransomware affecting the public transportation service in Kansas, and I wanted to ask how this can happen. Wikipedia says these are “are typically carried out using a Trojan, entering a system through, for example, a malicious attachment, embedded link in a phishing email, or a vulnerability in a network service,” but how? Wouldn’t someone still have to deliberately click a malicious link to install it? Wouldn’t anyone working for such an agency be educated enough about these threats not to do so?
I wanted to ask in that community, but I was afraid this is such a basic question that I felt foolish posting it there. Does anyone know the exact process by which this typically can happen? I’ve seen how scammers can do this to individuals with low tech literacy by watching Kitboga, but what about these big agencies?
Edit: After reading some of the responses, it’s made me realize why IT often wants to heavily restrict what you can do on a work PC, which is frustrating from an end user perspective, but if people are just clicking links in emails and not following basic internet safety, then damn.
Since people are covering the more common options, I’ll point out a rarer one. If I remember right, (please correct me if I’m wrong) the Stuxnet virus was able to infiltrate a highly sensitive nuclear enrichment facility because someone planted a zip drive in the parking lot, and some employee went ahead and plugged it in at work to see what it was.
some employee went ahead and plugged it in at work to see what it was
Holy shit lmao. It just amazes me that someone working for such a facility would do this, but I suppose it’s the same as people who won’t wash their hands after using the toilet or who don’t use their blinker when driving.
We’re just a bunch of shit-flinging primates, aren’t we? We just do thinks without thinking.
And the worst part is, given the right circumstances (lack of sleep, extreme stress, illness), maybe that person could be me.
You already pointed out reasons, why people might lack the necessary judgement in one moment. The issue is that it is enough if one person fails to abide by the security rules once. So for the attacker all that is needed for a large enough organization is persistence.
A classic is to just drop of 2 or 3 infected USB sticks, maybe with bait labels, on the parking lot before the first employees arrive. repeat a few times and just wait until someone plugs it in to investigate.
another good trick is to infiltrate the cleaners.
the cleaners
What do you mean by “the cleaners”?
Facility management nowadays is outsourced to third party agencies. Usually the pay and working times are shit and they are consistently understaffed. At the same time they usually get access to most regular offices and they work before or after the offices fill.
For a more concerted effort finding out which companies clean at which offices and enrolling there is not much of a thing. And voila you get access to all physical computers, can plant key loggers or other tools, or just malicious USB Sticks or similiar on the site.
Not in the context of IT security, but for instance in Berlin Germany a group of robbers that stole the 100 kg gold maple leaf coin, hired someone a few month earlier with the security guard agency of the museum it was presented at.
It’s a different kind of scam from the ones you see on kitboga. Those are generally confidence scams meant to leverage tech illiteracy. Ransomware attacks are more like stepping on a landmine. They are these nasty payloads that are just out there on the internet, usually with some kind of passive social engineering like a website that mimics a familiar site and/or phishing emails to get that payload into the network.
So just clicking the link unleashes the beast, so to speak? It would install itself without any further action from the user?
Generally you have to download and run an executable file. So they will try to make it look like the installer for some software you might need.
Also, infected office documents - spreadsheets being the most common. Get the user to download it, open it, and enable macros and you’re in. Microsoft has kinda done what they can to prevent end user idiocy, but you can’t stop a determined moron.
I mean they could end VBA support and disable makros alltogether. Problem is that many companies have a bunch of excel sheets, with poorly crafted VBA code from 20 years ago, that runs crucial company functions. So they probably have to announce it ten years before and make very big, very loud, very strong marketing, so all the execs in the world realise that yes they need to migrate to dedicated software instead.
I once did a Phishing test for a customer during an internship. We had 50% of all employees click the Phishing link, and 30% of all employees input their login info.
What was the form? A new data protection agreement (which was the current one copied from the firm’s site) which required a login to accept.
These employees all got regular cybersecurity training, and yet they still fell for such an obvious fake login
Yep, same here, including colleagues in security. “You haven’t claimed your giftcard yet, log in here…”. Some were ‘smart’ enough to forward the link home and open it there (no direct internet access from the desktop) and the organizers of the test canceled the test as it was such a great success. (Almost everybody failed) Alas they killed the test before the email arrived in my mailbox, as I would have loved to see it. ;)
In my case the employer got so angry that he personally delivered invitations to a “Cybersecurity in the workplace”-course
They just clicked it from within the email? Damn.
Do you have any insight into how to make people more informed? I feel like everyone sees the average training as just a hoop to jump through.
Regular Phishing tests is the only way I know how. GoPhish is an open source tool to automate them, and I have had great experiences with it.
When these tests are conducted are they typically sent from an email with a non-company domain? I ask because a few months ago my partner received a test which she failed because it was sent from an email under her company’s normal domain name. I’m not in IT but I am in software dev and I thought this was pretty unreasonable, since in that scenario (AFAIK) either the company fucked up their email security or the attacker has control over the Exchange server in which case all bets are off anyway.
Usually a domain gets rented for the test, using the in-house domain isn’t normal. But you can change the display name of an email adress to appear as if it was sent from a reputable source
Can totally tell you, that most people do not care. They do get training and notifications but they don’t try to learn. The only people that actually care about it are some techies and the CFO.
With that it also lacks sensibilization, as to why it is such an integral issue.
At my workplace we had it become part of a mandatory once a year presentation on all sorts of security issues. So you get a 3 hour presentation, about how to use a ladder, when not to use electrical appliances, what to do in case of fire, how to behave if the police shows up… and in there is also something about IT security.
The thing is, that it is also important to know what to do if there is a fire, or how not to fall from your turning chair and breaking your neck, because the way to the ladder was too far.
So what we do need, is regular testing and interaction with these issues to build routine. But more importantly we need a work environment, where people have the space and time to think before doing something, if this has any security risks worth paying attention to.
