From the outset of the pandemic, we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of cyber-attacks and data breaches. And with much success, threat actors are abusing the fear and panic these adverse conditions are causing. As a result, there has been a precipitous rise in the number of COVID-themed trojans, ransomware attacks, as well as scams, and phishing attacks across organizations and verticals. As more organizations shift to remote work, with inadequate policies and strategies in place, they gamble on their own employee and business data security, and privileged controls. And this has served as a catalyst, for an increased number of data breaches, across the globe. 

This article delves into the various ways in which data breaches can occur, and safety practices to ensure that you organization is not impacted by:

• Cloud misconfigurations
• Elasticsearch exposures
• Exposed Internal API/ portals 
• Phishing attacks and credential disclosure
• Insecure WiFi/ no VPN

Cloud Misconfigurations

Cloud misconfigurations have led to massive data breaches. For example, The “Capital One” and “Imperva” data breaches were caused by the disclosure of AWS API keys. 

Fugue’s survey shows that 84% of the 300 IT professionals surveyed believe that they are already victims of undiscovered cloud breaches.

As pointed out by the survey, the most common causes of cloud misconfigurations are: 

• Lack of awareness of cloud security and related policies, 
• Insufficient controls and lapse in supervision, 
• Too many cloud APIs to adequately govern, and 
• Negligent internal activities

Although Cloud operations take a considerable load off of developers, and facilitate the smooth management and monitoring of multiple services, enforcing proper access control policies, user management, access key management, API access control becomes essential.

How to prevent cloud misconfiguration 

• Understand and utilise the ‘shared responsibility’ security model.
• Ensure multiple checks while shifting operations to the cloud giving careful consideration to IAM roles, user account permissions, key rotations, test accounts, and storage bucket permissions.
• Review inbound and outbound traffic rules carefully for the VPC. Security groups are also susceptible to misconfigurations. Therefore, enforce a zero trust policy, and enable VPC logs and monitoring. 
• Set up behavioural analysis and activity monitoring in addition to strict access policies.

Elasticsearch Exposures

Elasticsearch is a search engine that indexes data in the form of documents. Typically, the size of data that this engine indexes is quite large and the indexed result comprises metadata, personal user information, emails or application logs, and more. The service, by default, runs on TCP port 9200. Moreover, most Elasticsearch instances are self-hosted free versions of the software. 

CloudSEK XVigil’s Infrastructure Monitor has detected a significant increase in Elasticsearch instances running on the default port. But it is not rare these days. Recently a UK-based security firm accidentally exposed an Elasticsearch cluster, leaking more than 5 billion documents of breached data between 2012 and 2019.

How to secure Elasticsearch

• Prevent access to Elasticsearch clusters from the internet. This is the best approach for most databases.
• Practice ‘security by obscurity,’ whereby, the installed services are not run on the default port. This measure does not merely fix the problem, but drastically reduces the chances of exploitation even via unfocused attacks. 
• Perform periodic assessments of vendors’/ partners’ networks and ensure that their security controls are set properly. The misconfiguration of privately-owned infrastructure, as well as that of partners and vendors in possession of critical data, adversely impact businesses.
• Analyse and test every potential entry point to any critical data source/ functionality. This includes supplementary tools, used to expand an application’s capabilities. Most users instal Kibana along with Elasticsearch, which helps to visualise the data Elasticsearch indexes. Kibana dashboards are usually left unauthenticated, inadvertently granting anyone access to the indexed data. 
• Encrypt the stored data, to render the data useless to the attacker, even if it is accessible. 
• Employ Elasticsearch’s security methods for authentication, including:
  • Active Directory user authentication
  • File-based user authentication
  • LDAP
  • SAML
  • PKI
  • Kerberos

• Enforce role-based access control policy, for users who access the cluster.
• Update Elasticsearch versions regularly, to safeguard the cluster from frequent exploits that affect the older versions. 
• Back up the data stored in the production cluster.  This is as important as the security measures adopted. A recent attack campaign accessed as many as 15,000 Elasticsearch clusters, and their contents were wiped using an automated script. 

Exposed Internal APIs/ Portals

Organizations deploy various applications for internal use. This includes HR management tools, attendance registration applications, file sharing portals, etc. In the event that the entire workforce shifts to remote work, such as times like now, it becomes difficult to track the access and usage of these applications. To top it off, applications are increasingly allowed traffic from the internet, instead of local office networks. As a result, applications and APIs, which lack authentication or use default credentials, are increasingly surfacing on the internet. 

In the past couple of weeks, a number of HR Portals, payroll applications, lead management dashboards, internal REST APIs, and shared FTP servers have surfaced on the internet. Most of the applications are self-hosted, and their default passwords can be used to access them. XVigil has detected multiple instances of directories that contain transaction reports, employee information documents, etc. being served without any authentication. 

How to prevent data disclosure through APIs/ portals

• Security teams must test these applications thoroughly. 
• Continuously monitor all internet facing servers. 

Phishing attacks and credential disclosures

With a remote workforce communicating primarily via text-based channels such as emails, chats and SMS, it has been much easier for phishing campaigns to take advantage of the distributed workforce. Consequently, the number of spear phishing attacks have surged. Barracuda researchers have observed 3 main types of phishing attacks in the last couple of months: 

• Scamming
• Brand impersonation
• Business Email Compromise (BEC)

Individuals fall prey to phishing attacks, especially during the pandemic, due to:

• Lack of direct communication
• Absence of processes and strategies for situations such as this
• Lack of awareness 

Since emails that use the word COVID have higher click-rates now, scammers are increasingly using them as lures to spread malicious attachments. Once the attachment is downloaded and the malware payload is dropped, threat actors can access keystrokes, files, webcam, or install other malware or ransomware. (Access CloudSEK’s threat intel on COVID-themed scams and attacks)

How to prepare for phishing attacks

• Be extremely cautious about any mail you receive.
• Verify the source of the email, before clicking on any links or attachments. 
• Even if the links look legitimate, double-check for malicious files. For example: hovering over the attachment will show its actual URL. 

Insecure WiFi/ No VPN

Today, every remote workforce is connected to their personal devices and networks. So, the connectivity of such devices should be secured. 

How to prevent attacks via WiFi

• To avoid brute force attacks, set complex passwords for the router. If the router is an old model, it may use weak encryption for connections, which can be cracked in no time. 
• Employees working from shared spaces such as hostels, may be connected to shared wifi networks as well. So, to ensure that the data is not tampered within such insecure channels, set up a VPN. In case your organization does not provide a Business VPN, do not download free VPNs which might log your traffic data.