Enterprises throughout Australia and the APAC area have been warned that cyber criminals are exploiting in style platforms like Atlassian to launch extra convincing phishing assaults on legislation companies and different companies. These assaults goal to steal worker credentials and breach firm cyber safety defences.
Ryan Economos, APAC area chief know-how officer at e mail safety agency Mimecast, instructed TechRepublic that such phishing assaults are uncommon of their use of Atlassian as a canopy. However he famous that phishing assaults have gotten more and more subtle, due to phishing kits and AI, which make it simpler for cyber criminals to execute their actions.
Atlassian workspaces, Japanese ISPs, and a compliance cowl story
Mimecast’s International Menace Intelligence Report 2024 H1 reported on the emergence of a brand new phishing tactic that used a compliance replace cowl story to focus on legislation agency workers. The phishing assaults:
- Leveraged in style native model Atlassian’s workspaces, in addition to different unified workspace platforms, together with Archbee and Nuclino, to ship workers dangerous emails that seemed acquainted and legit.
- Used system compliance updates as a canopy, instructing workers by way of e mail that they wanted to replace their units to stay compliant with firm coverage.
- Had been designed to redirect those that clicked the hyperlink to a faux firm portal, the place attackers may harvest credentials and different delicate data.
- Embedded the phishing hyperlink in an e mail despatched from addresses related to Japanese ISPs.
“There’s various personalisation within the emails resembling particulars of a ‘system’ and a number of other references to the corporate area they’re sending these campaigns to extend validity,” Mimecast’s report stated.
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“The sender handle title at all times refers back to the goal organisation’s area title with the goal of fooling finish customers into considering it’s from their inner division.”
The rising sophistication of phishing assaults
Economos famous that whereas the marketing campaign initially focused Australian legislation companies, it has since expanded to different industries and is not confined to the authorized sector. He highlighted a number of facets of the marketing campaign that point out growing sophistication amongst menace actors.
Use of Atlassian and different workspaces
Economos stated the rising use of Atlassian workspaces was a more moderen growth for the market.
“Mimecast continues to see menace actors making use of companies resembling OneDrive and Google Docs to host recordsdata or hyperlinks of their campaigns, however the usage of workspaces resembling Atlassian has not been closely abused beforehand,” he stated.
A part of the marketing campaign was an e mail that seemed to be from Atlassian’s Confluence product. Mimecast referred to a “noticeable enhance in the usage of Atlassian” to evade detection in latest occasions.
“Abuse of authentic companies is an ongoing and evolving problem,” Economos stated. “Attackers will proceed to leverage respected sources to launch and host their campaigns, in an try to evade detection.”
SEE: The alarming state of knowledge breaches in Australia in 2024
Harvesting of tracker knowledge intelligence
The marketing campaign used postmark URLs to redirect customers to the unified workspace options. Postmark URLs permit attackers to assemble knowledge resembling location, browser particulars, and which a part of the e-mail was clicked, enabling them to leverage this intelligence to make the phishing lure extra convincing.
A number of URL obfuscation methods
Making it tougher for customers to determine the true vacation spot of the URL, the phishing marketing campaign used “a number of obfuscation methods,” Mimecast stated. This consists of a number of redirections throughout the URL, encoded characters, and the insertion of monitoring parameters.
Enlisting unsuspecting Japanese ISPs
Though the usage of Japanese ISPs isn’t distinctive to this phishing marketing campaign, Economos famous that they have been exploited as soon as once more, as they’d in a number of earlier assaults.
“It continues to reveal the lengths that menace actors will go to with a purpose to efficiently generate assaults on organisations,” he commented.
Phishing assaults will get simpler to mount — and extra convincing
Phishing continues to be among the many most typical cyber threats amongst organisations, Economos stated.
Generative AI and machine studying, whereas additionally serving to defenders cease assaults, is predicted to extend the sophistication and enhance the focusing on and content material of phishing campaigns. This can drive defenders’ have to detect and shortly reply to new and novel assault methods.
SEE: APAC workers are selecting comfort over cyber safety
“The largest evolution has been the speed and accuracy of phishing threats, via the usage of phishing kits, automation, and AI-based applied sciences,” Economos stated. “These platforms permit even low-skill-level attackers to launch large-scale campaigns and a capability to shortly craft extra convincing phishing emails to evade detection by conventional safety instruments.”
Economos additionally famous the rise of pretexting — the place a cyber legal will analysis and pose as a personality to offer a convincing story or “pretext” to trick the phishing sufferer — in addition to Enterprise Electronic mail Compromise, as vital elements within the evolution within the phishing menace panorama.
“As our work surfaces proceed to diversify, menace actors are diversifying the vectors they exploit past e mail, focusing on social media platforms, collaboration instruments like Microsoft Groups, Slack, and OneDrive proper via to vishing and smishing assaults utilizing telephone calls or textual content messages to deceive victims,” he stated.
