The chat boxes were on fire and Twitter was buzzing during the recent Hybrid Identity Protection Conference 2021, where the identity and security community gathered to grapple with current-day challenges and prepare for the future of identity. The online conference held Dec. 1-2 drew a mix of identity and access…
Update August 10, 2021: Microsoft released a patch that partially covers the initial PetitPotam authentication coercion through MS-EFSR. Fresh on the heels of PrintNightmare and SeriousSam, we now have another high-impact attack vector on Windows domains that is relatively easy to carry out and difficult to mitigate. What is now…
In a recent webinar I co-hosted with Semperis (the folks behind the Purple Knight security assessment tool), we focused on a key common denominator across recent high-profile attacks—Active Directory. In the session “How Attackers Exploit Active Directory: Lessons Learned from High-Profile Breaches,” Sean Deuby and Ran Harel from Semperis joined…
While every IT manager or administrator knows that a solid Active Directory recovery plan is an essential component of any business continuity strategy, calculating the practical return on investment (ROI) of an optimized AD recovery plan is notoriously tricky. Too many variables are at play to generate a defensible, exact…
The attacks on Microsoft Exchange servers around the world by Chinese state-sponsored threat group Hafnium are believed to have affected over 21,000 organizations. The impact of these attacks is growing as the four zero-day vulnerabilities are getting picked up by new threat actors. While the world was introduced to these…
Any ransomware recovery plan needs to include regular file backups and encrypted data with offline copies, as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) recently reminded as part of the organization’s campaign to drive awareness of its ransomware guidance and resources. The guidance includes best practices and checklists to help…
Last week, news broke that a sophisticated adversary penetrated FireEye's network and stole the company's Red Team assessment tools. The attack is reportedly linked to a larger supply-chain assault that struck government, consulting, technology, and telecom organizations throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. To get an idea of what this stolen toolset…
The latest ransomware-as-a-service attack leaves the well-known retailer, Kmart, with service outages and a compromised Active Directory. In the wake of Maze ransomware "retiring" last month, many of its affiliates have moved to the new kid on the ransomware block, Egregor. Named after an occult term meaning the collective energy or force…