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クラウドの安全性はクラウドを理解することから始まる

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01
Nov 2023
01
Nov 2023
多くのクラウドセキュリティベンダーは「レスポンス」を提供すると称していますが、その本当の意味は何でしょうか。クラウド関連のサイバー脅威に対する意味のある「対応」とはどのようなもので、どのように実現されるのでしょうか。このブログでは、そのすべてを明らかにします。

クラウドの広範な利用がビジネスを変革し続ける一方で、サイバーセキュリティソリューションもそれに追いつこうと競争しています。今日のマルチクラウド環境は、複雑さと可視性のギャップをもたらし、攻撃者に門戸を開いています。クラウドは動的な性質を持っているため、これらの盲点は常に変化しています。また、クラウドの拡張性を考えると、ちょっとした設定ミスなどの単純なミスが、不釣り合いなほど大規模なセキュリティインシデントにつながる可能性もあります。

企業はもはや、バラバラのツールや静的でポイント・イン・タイムのリスクビューに頼る余裕はありません。クラウドは本質的に複雑であり、セキュリティツールはその複雑さを単純化することを目的とするのではなく、そのスケールと複雑さを利用することで、そのメリットを活かすべきです。

クラウドが高度にカスタマイズ可能で、クラウドごとに異なる世界では、クラウドセキュリティに対する画一的なアプローチでは、個々の環境のニュアンスに対応できません。このブログでは、独自の組織を機械学習・理解するAIを活用することで、セキュリティチームがクラウドにおけるセキュリティ確保に必要な可視性、理解、リアルタイムの検知と対応をどのように実現できるかを探ります。

セキュリティは行動にかかっている

一般的に、クラウドのセキュリティは2つの陣営のどちらかに分類される傾向があります:

  • ほとんどのクラウドセキュリティポスチャ管理(CSPM)ベンダーが採用しているエージェントレスのアプローチは、運用の中断を最小限に抑え、迅速かつ容易なインストールを約束する
  • エージェントベースのアプローチは、より細かい粒度を提供するが、セットアップに時間がかかり、コストがかかる可能性がある

どちらのアプローチにも固有の欠点があります。エージェントレスのソリューションは通常、悪意のあるインサイダーやゼロデイエクスプロイトなど、新たな脅威を検知するために必要なリアルタイムの認識をセキュリティチームに提供しません。一方、エージェントベースのソリューションでは、到達範囲と拡張性に限界があり、通常、セキュリティチームがすでにリスクがあることを知っているクラウドの領域に導入されるため、新たな洞察が得られず、死角がそのまま残ってしまいます。

そのため、今日のクラウドセキュリティはジレンマに陥っているようです。そして、どちらの方法にも共通するもう1つの問題は、これらの製品では、何か問題が発生したときにアナリストに警告を発することはできても、本格的な対応を行う能力がないということです。自動対処を謳う新しいソリューションでさえ、通常はアラートの送信やチケットの開設のプロセスを自動化することを指していることが多いのです。

迅速な対処は見果てぬ夢

組織にとってクラウドが非常に便利で魅力的なのは、スピード、敏捷性、可用性、スケールといった同じ属性が、攻撃者にとっても対称的に魅力的だからです。クラウド上でサイバー攻撃が急速に展開される場合、単にチケットを発行し、相手側の誰かが対応してくれるのを待つだけでは不十分です(むしろ、あまりに多くのチケットに対応することは、トリアージや調査をかえって停滞させ、対応を早めるどころか遅らせることになりかねません)。有用なレスポンスの最終的なテストは、セキュリティチームがそのレスポンス機能を使いたがるかどうかに帰着します。セキュリティチームが中断を恐れて、一向にオンにならないレスポンス機能は、まったく的外れなのです。

効果的な対処には、いつ、どのように対応すべきかを理解することと、対応を実行するためのクラウドネイティブなメカニズムが必要です。これは3つのステップに分けることができます:

ステップ1:可視性を超える:リアルタイム理解

今日の静的なクラウドセキュリティソリューションは、統合やインストールの前に環境のスナップショットを提供します。静的な洞察は、導入前のコントロールの検証と設定に役立ちますが、クラウド移行に関連する真のリスクは後から現れるのです。

適切な対処を推進するためには、セキュリティソリューションが、組織のクラウド環境について一般的な感覚ではなく、リアルタイムで全体的なビューを提供する必要があります。

クラウドに関連するリスクを理解するには、単に可視化するだけでは不十分です。環境全体の様々な行動パターンを理解し、アプリケーションやワークロードのアーキテクチャのニュアンスを知る必要があります。誰が何にアクセスできるのか?通常、どの仮想マシンが互いに接続しているのか?このコンテナは期待通りに動作しているか?この新しいLambda関数は期待通りか?などです。

Darktrace/Cloudは、自己学習型AIを使用して、クラウドネットワーク、アーキテクチャ、管理の各レイヤーでお客様独自の組織を学習し、理解します。膨大な量のデータからパターンを認識するAIの能力は、セキュリティチームにクラウド環境で今何が起きているのかについての真の洞察を与えるユニークな立場にあります。

AIの導入や具体的な使用方法は(個々の組織の環境に基づいて)それぞれ異なりますが、導入ライフサイクル全体を通じてセキュリティチームとDevOpsチームを連携させるクラウドフットプリントのアーキテクチャビューが常に含まれます。  

あるベータ版の顧客は、Darktrace/Cloudを導入した際の感想として、次のように述べています:

暗い部屋で電気のスイッチを入れるような感覚です。

ステップ2:検知はコンテキストを適用する必要がある

どのユーザーがどのリソースに接続しているのか、誰が特定のワークロードにアクセスできるのか、グループ、重複、権限など、クラウドにおける「正常」を正確に理解することで、ソリューションは、普通でないことを発見するよう自らに教え込むことで、対処に向けて前進します。

クラウドセキュリティ体制の静的なスナップショットでは、パッチが適用されていない脆弱性や問題のある誤設定が表示されますが、洞察はそこで終わってしまいます。静的なビューとポイントインタイムの可視性に基づくクラウドセキュリティソリューションでは、最終目標であるリアルタイムの脅威を発見する能力を提供するために、点と点をつなぐことはできません。

Darktrace/Cloudは、脆弱性や設定ミスに対する有意義な洞察を提供するだけでなく、そのリアルタイムの理解により、新たな脅威の検知も可能にします。また、Darktrace/Network や Darktrace/Email のような他の Darktrace モジュールと組み合わせることで、これらの調査結果をビジネスコンテキストで充実させ、新たな脅威を数秒で検知してシャットダウンします。それは、クラウドのフットプリントと、それがオンプレミスのインフラ、エンドポイント、アプリケーションとどのように相互作用するかを理解するためのビジネス全体のコンテキストです。

ステップ3:対処は真に自律的でなければならない

Darktrace/Cloudは、貴社独自のクラウドフットプリントを貴社ビジネスの文脈で理解することで、今すぐ対処が必要な異常事態が発生したことを独自に検知します。

お客様の環境を理解するためにAIを使用することで、真に自律的で正確なクラウドネイティブの対処が可能になります。プラットフォームは、通常の業務を中断することなく、脅威となる行動のみを停止させるため、ピンポイントかつ的を絞った行動を取ることができます。

プラットフォームはクラウドアーキテクチャを完全に理解しているため、どのようなクラウドネイティブのメカニズムが実際の対処を開始するために自由に使えるかも把握しています。自動化されたリアルタイムのレスポンスには、EC2インスタンスのデタッチや、リスクの高い資産を封じ込めるためのセキュリティグループの適用など、クラウドネイティブなアクションが含まれます。

実際に体験する

Darktrace は、Darktrace/Cloudの30日間無償トライアルを提供しています。このトライアルは、簡単なインストールとマルチクラウド環境に関するこれまでにない理解を組み合わせたものです。ご興味のある方はこちらをクリックしてご登録ください。

INSIDE THE SOC
Darktrace cyber analysts are world-class experts in threat intelligence, threat hunting and incident response, and provide 24/7 SOC support to thousands of Darktrace customers around the globe. Inside the SOC is exclusively authored by these experts, providing analysis of cyber incidents and threat trends, based on real-world experience in the field.
AUTHOR
ABOUT ThE AUTHOR
Nabil Zoldjalali
VP, Technology Innovation

Based in Toronto, Nabil develops innovative ways to continuously realize the Darktrace technology vision, working closely with Darktrace’s Research & Development team. He advises strategic Fortune 500 customers across North America on advanced threat detection, Self-Learning AI, and Autonomous Response. Nabil is a frequent speaker at leading industry conferences across North America, including Microsoft Ignite, Black Hat, and the World AI Forum. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from McGill University and is an advisory board member of the EC Council.

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Lost in Translation: Darktrace Blocks Non-English Phishing Campaign Concealing Hidden Payloads

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15
May 2024

Email – the vector of choice for threat actors

In times of unprecedented globalization and internationalization, the enormous number of emails sent and received by organizations every day has opened the door for threat actors looking to gain unauthorized access to target networks.

Now, increasingly global organizations not only need to safeguard their email environments against phishing campaigns targeting their employees in their own language, but they also need to be able to detect malicious emails sent in foreign languages too [1].

Why are non-English language phishing emails more popular?

Many traditional email security vendors rely on pre-trained English language models which, while function adequately against malicious emails composed in English, would struggle in the face of emails composed in other languages. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that this limitation is becoming increasingly taken advantage of by attackers.  

Darktrace/Email™, on the other hand, focuses on behavioral analysis and its Self-Learning AI understands what is considered ‘normal’ for every user within an organization’s email environment, bypassing any limitations that would come from relying on language-trained models [1].

In March 2024, Darktrace observed anomalous emails on a customer’s network that were sent from email addresses belonging to an international fast-food chain. Despite this seeming legitimacy, Darktrace promptly identified them as phishing emails that contained malicious payloads, preventing a potentially disruptive network compromise.

Attack Overview and Darktrace Coverage

On March 3, 2024, Darktrace observed one of the customer’s employees receiving an email which would turn out to be the first of more than 50 malicious emails sent by attackers over the course of three days.

The Sender

Darktrace/Email immediately understood that the sender never had any previous correspondence with the organization or its employees, and therefore treated the emails with caution from the onset. Not only was Darktrace able to detect this new sender, but it also identified that the emails had been sent from a domain located in China and contained an attachment with a Chinese file name.

The phishing emails detected by Darktrace sent from a domain in China and containing an attachment with a Chinese file name.
Figure 1: The phishing emails detected by Darktrace sent from a domain in China and containing an attachment with a Chinese file name.

Darktrace further detected that the phishing emails had been sent in a synchronized fashion between March 3 and March 5. Eight unique senders were observed sending a total of 55 emails to 55 separate recipients within the customer’s email environment. The format of the addresses used to send these suspicious emails was “12345@fastflavor-shack[.]cn”*. The domain “fastflavor-shack[.]cn” is the legitimate domain of the Chinese division of an international fast-food company, and the numerical username contained five numbers, with the final three digits changing which likely represented different stores.

*(To maintain anonymity, the pseudonym “Fast Flavor Shack” and its fictitious domain, “fastflavor-shack[.]cn”, have been used in this blog to represent the actual fast-food company and the domains identified by Darktrace throughout this incident.)

The use of legitimate domains for malicious activities become commonplace in recent years, with attackers attempting to leverage the trust endpoint users have for reputable organizations or services, in order to achieve their nefarious goals. One similar example was observed when Darktrace detected an attacker attempting to carry out a phishing attack using the cloud storage service Dropbox.

As these emails were sent from a legitimate domain associated with a trusted organization and seemed to be coming from the correct connection source, they were verified by Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and were able to evade the customer’s native email security measures. Darktrace/Email; however, recognized that these emails were actually sent from a user located in Singapore, not China.

Darktrace/Email identified that the email had been sent by a user who had logged in from Singapore, despite the connection source being in China.
Figure 2: Darktrace/Email identified that the email had been sent by a user who had logged in from Singapore, despite the connection source being in China.

The Emails

Darktrace/Email autonomously analyzed the suspicious emails and identified that they were likely phishing emails containing a malicious multistage payload.

Darktrace/Email identifying the presence of a malicious phishing link and a multistage payload.
Figure 3: Darktrace/Email identifying the presence of a malicious phishing link and a multistage payload.

There has been a significant increase in multistage payload attacks in recent years, whereby a malicious email attempts to elicit recipients to follow a series of steps, such as clicking a link or scanning a QR code, before delivering a malicious payload or attempting to harvest credentials [2].

In this case, the malicious actor had embedded a suspicious link into a QR code inside a Microsoft Word document which was then attached to the email in order to direct targets to a malicious domain. While this attempt to utilize a malicious QR code may have bypassed traditional email security tools that do not scan for QR codes, Darktrace was able to identify the presence of the QR code and scan its destination, revealing it to be a suspicious domain that had never previously been seen on the network, “sssafjeuihiolsw[.]bond”.

Suspicious link embedded in QR Code, which was detected and extracted by Darktrace.
Figure 4: Suspicious link embedded in QR Code, which was detected and extracted by Darktrace.

At the time of the attack, there was no open-source intelligence (OSINT) on the domain in question as it had only been registered earlier the same day. This is significant as newly registered domains are typically much more likely to bypass gateways until traditional security tools have enough intelligence to determine that these domains are malicious, by which point a malicious actor may likely have already gained access to internal systems [4]. Despite this, Darktrace’s Self-Learning AI enabled it to recognize the activity surrounding these unusual emails as suspicious and indicative of a malicious phishing campaign, without needing to rely on existing threat intelligence.

The most commonly used sender name line for the observed phishing emails was “财务部”, meaning “finance department”, and Darktrace observed subject lines including “The document has been delivered”, “Income Tax Return Notice” and “The file has been released”, all written in Chinese.  The emails also contained an attachment named “通知文件.docx” (“Notification document”), further indicating that they had been crafted to pass for emails related to financial transaction documents.

 Darktrace/Email took autonomous mitigative action against the suspicious emails by holding the message from recipient inboxes.
Figure 5: Darktrace/Email took autonomous mitigative action against the suspicious emails by holding the message from recipient inboxes.

結論

Although this phishing attack was ultimately thwarted by Darktrace/Email, it serves to demonstrate the potential risks of relying on solely language-trained models to detect suspicious email activity. Darktrace’s behavioral and contextual learning-based detection ensures that any deviations in expected email activity, be that a new sender, unusual locations or unexpected attachments or link, are promptly identified and actioned to disrupt the attacks at the earliest opportunity.

In this example, attackers attempted to use non-English language phishing emails containing a multistage payload hidden behind a QR code. As traditional email security measures typically rely on pre-trained language models or the signature-based detection of blacklisted senders or known malicious endpoints, this multistage approach would likely bypass native protection.  

Darktrace/Email, meanwhile, is able to autonomously scan attachments and detect QR codes within them, whilst also identifying the embedded links. This ensured that the customer’s email environment was protected against this phishing threat, preventing potential financial and reputation damage.

Credit to: Rajendra Rushanth, Cyber Analyst, Steven Haworth, Head of Threat Modelling, Email

付録  

侵害指標(IoC)一覧  

IoC – Type – Description

sssafjeuihiolsw[.]bond – Domain Name – Suspicious Link Domain

通知文件.docx – File - Payload  

参考文献

[1] https://darktrace.com/blog/stopping-phishing-attacks-in-enter-language  

[2] https://darktrace.com/blog/attacks-are-getting-personal

[3] https://darktrace.com/blog/phishing-with-qr-codes-how-darktrace-detected-and-blocked-the-bait

[4] https://darktrace.com/blog/the-domain-game-how-email-attackers-are-buying-their-way-into-inboxes

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Rajendra Rushanth
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The State of AI in Cybersecurity: The Impact of AI on Cybersecurity Solutions

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13
May 2024

About the AI Cybersecurity Report

Darktrace surveyed 1,800 CISOs, security leaders, administrators, and practitioners from industries around the globe. Our research was conducted to understand how the adoption of new AI-powered offensive and defensive cybersecurity technologies are being managed by organizations.

This blog continues the conversation from “The State of AI in Cybersecurity: Unveiling Global Insights from 1,800 Security Practitioners” which was an overview of the entire report. This blog will focus on one aspect of the overarching report, the impact of AI on cybersecurity solutions.

To access the full report, click here.

The effects of AI on cybersecurity solutions

Overwhelming alert volumes, high false positive rates, and endlessly innovative threat actors keep security teams scrambling. Defenders have been forced to take a reactive approach, struggling to keep pace with an ever-evolving threat landscape. It is hard to find time to address long-term objectives or revamp operational processes when you are always engaged in hand-to-hand combat.                  

The impact of AI on the threat landscape will soon make yesterday’s approaches untenable. Cybersecurity vendors are racing to capitalize on buyer interest in AI by supplying solutions that promise to meet the need. But not all AI is created equal, and not all these solutions live up to the widespread hype.  

Do security professionals believe AI will impact their security operations?

Yes! 95% of cybersecurity professionals agree that AI-powered solutions will level up their organization’s defenses.                                                                

Not only is there strong agreement about the ability of AI-powered cybersecurity solutions to improve the speed and efficiency of prevention, detection, response, and recovery, but that agreement is nearly universal, with more than 95% alignment.

This AI-powered future is about much more than generative AI. While generative AI can help accelerate the data retrieval process within threat detection, create quick incident summaries, automate low-level tasks in security operations, and simulate phishing emails and other attack tactics, most of these use cases were ranked lower in their impact to security operations by survey participants.

There are many other types of AI, which can be applied to many other use cases:

Supervised machine learning: Applied more often than any other type of AI in cybersecurity. Trained on attack patterns and historical threat intelligence to recognize known attacks.

Natural language processing (NLP): Applies computational techniques to process and understand human language. It can be used in threat intelligence, incident investigation, and summarization.

Large language models (LLMs): Used in generative AI tools, this type of AI applies deep learning models trained on massively large data sets to understand, summarize, and generate new content. The integrity of the output depends upon the quality of the data on which the AI was trained.

Unsupervised machine learning: Continuously learns from raw, unstructured data to identify deviations that represent true anomalies. With the correct models, this AI can use anomaly-based detections to identify all kinds of cyber-attacks, including entirely unknown and novel ones.

What are the areas of cybersecurity AI will impact the most?

Improving threat detection is the #1 area within cybersecurity where AI is expected to have an impact.                                                                                  

The most frequent response to this question, improving threat detection capabilities in general, was top ranked by slightly more than half (57%) of respondents. This suggests security professionals hope that AI will rapidly analyze enormous numbers of validated threats within huge volumes of fast-flowing events and signals. And that it will ultimately prove a boon to front-line security analysts. They are not wrong.

Identifying exploitable vulnerabilities (mentioned by 50% of respondents) is also important. Strengthening vulnerability management by applying AI to continuously monitor the exposed attack surface for risks and high-impact vulnerabilities can give defenders an edge. If it prevents threats from ever reaching the network, AI will have a major downstream impact on incident prevalence and breach risk.

Where will defensive AI have the greatest impact on cybersecurity?

Cloud security (61%), data security (50%), and network security (46%) are the domains where defensive AI is expected to have the greatest impact.        

Respondents selected broader domains over specific technologies. In particular, they chose the areas experiencing a renaissance. Cloud is the future for most organizations,
and the effects of cloud adoption on data and networks are intertwined. All three domains are increasingly central to business operations, impacting everything everywhere.

Responses were remarkably consistent across demographics, geographies, and organization sizes, suggesting that nearly all survey participants are thinking about this similarly—that AI will likely have far-reaching applications across the broadest fields, as well as fewer, more specific applications within narrower categories.

Going forward, it will be paramount for organizations to augment their cloud and SaaS security with AI-powered anomaly detection, as threat actors sharpen their focus on these targets.

How will security teams stop AI-powered threats?            

Most security stakeholders (71%) are confident that AI-powered security solutions are better able to block AI-powered threats than traditional tools.

There is strong agreement that AI-powered solutions will be better at stopping AI-powered threats (71% of respondents are confident in this), and there’s also agreement (66%) that AI-powered solutions will be able to do so automatically. This implies significant faith in the ability of AI to detect threats both precisely and accurately, and also orchestrate the correct response actions.

There is also a high degree of confidence in the ability of security teams to implement and operate AI-powered solutions, with only 30% of respondents expressing doubt. This bodes well for the acceptance of AI-powered solutions, with stakeholders saying they’re prepared for the shift.

On the one hand, it is positive that cybersecurity stakeholders are beginning to understand the terms of this contest—that is, that only AI can be used to fight AI. On the other hand, there are persistent misunderstandings about what AI is, what it can do, and why choosing the right type of AI is so important. Only when those popular misconceptions have become far less widespread can our industry advance its effectiveness.  

To access the full report, click here.

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