In a statement release by Homeland Security yesterday, TA18-086A: Brute Force Attacks Conducted by Cyber Actors, they indicate that brute force attacks using a “password spraying method” is increasing. Here’s a copy:

National Cyber Awareness System:

TA18-086A: Brute Force Attacks Conducted by Cyber Actors

03/27/2018 06:00 PM EDT

Original release date: March 27, 2018

Systems Affected

Networked systems

Overview

According to information derived from FBI investigations, malicious cyber actors are increasingly using a style of brute force attack known as password spraying against organizations in the United States and abroad.

On February 2018, the Department of Justice in the Southern District of New York, indicted nine Iranian nationals who were associated with the Mabna Institute for computer intrusion offenses related to activity described in this report. The techniques and activity described herein, while characteristic of Mabna actors, are not limited solely to use by this group.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are releasing this Alert to provide further information on this activity.

Description

In a traditional brute-force attack, a malicious actor attempts to gain unauthorized access to a single account by guessing the password. This can quickly result in a targeted account getting locked-out, as commonly used account-lockout policies allow 3-to-5 bad attempts during a set period of time. During a password-spray attack (also known as the “low-and-slow” method), the malicious actor attempts a single password against many accounts before moving on to attempt a second password, and so on. This technique allows the actor to remain undetected by avoiding rapid or frequent account lockouts.

Password spray campaigns typically target single sign-on (SSO) and cloud-based applications utilizing federated authentication protocols.  An actor may target this specific protocol because federated authentication can help mask malicious traffic.  Additionally, by targeting SSO applications, malicious actors hope to maximize access to intellectual property during a successful compromise.

Email applications are also a target.  In those instances, malicious actors would have the ability to utilize inbox synchronization to (1) obtain unauthorized access to the organization’s email directly from the cloud, (2) subsequently download user mail to locally stored email files, (3) identify the entire company’s email address list, and/or (4) surreptitiously implements inbox rules for the forwarding of sent and received messages.

Technical Details

Traditional tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP’s) for conducting the password-spray attacks are as follows:

• Use social engineering tactics to perform online research (i.e., Google search, LinkedIn, etc.) to identify target organizations and specific user accounts for initial password spray
• Using easy-to-guess passwords (e.g., “Winter2018”, “Password123!”) and publicly available tools, execute a password spray attack against targeted accounts by utilizing the identified SSO or web-based application and federated authentication method
• Leveraging the initial group of compromised accounts, download the Global Address List (GAL) from a target’s email client, and perform a larger password spray against legitimate accounts
• Using the compromised access, malicious actors attempt to expand laterally (e.g., via Remote Desktop Protocol) within the network, and perform mass data exfiltration using File Transfer Protocol tools such as FileZilla

Indicators of a password spray attack include:

• A massive spike in attempted logons against the enterprise SSO Portal or web-based application. Using automated tools, malicious actors attempt thousands of logons, in rapid succession, against multiple user accounts at a victim enterprise, originating from a single IP address and computer (e.g., a common User Agent String). Attacks have been seen to run for over two hours
• Employee logons from IP addresses resolving to locations inconsistent with their normal locations

Typical Victim Environment

The vast majority of known password spray victims share some of the following characteristics [1][2]:

• Use SSO or web-based applications with federated authentication method
• Lack multifactor authentication (MFA)
• Allow easy-to-guess passwords (e.g., “Winter2018”, “Password123!”)
• Use inbox synchronization allowing email to be pulled from cloud environments to remote devices
• Allow email forwarding to be setup at the user level
• Limited logging setup creating difficulty during post-event investigations

Impact

A successful network intrusion can have severe impacts, particularly if the compromise becomes public and sensitive information is exposed. Possible impacts include:

• Temporary or permanent loss of sensitive or proprietary information
• Disruption to regular operations
• Financial losses incurred to restore systems and files
• Potential harm to an organization’s reputation

Solution

Recommended Mitigations

To help deter this style of attack, the following steps should be taken:

• Enable MFA and review MFA settings to ensure coverage over all active, internet facing protocols
• Review password policies to ensure they align with the latest NIST guidelines and deter the use of easy-to-guess passwords
• Review IT Helpdesk password management related to initial passwords, password resets for user lockouts, and shared accounts. IT Helpdesk password procedures may not align to company policy, creating an exploitable security gap
• In addition, many companies offer additional assistance and tools the can help detect and prevent password spray attacks, such as the Microsoft blog released on March 5, 2018 (link below):

https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2018/03/05/azure-ad-and-adfs-best-practices-defending-against-password-spray-attacks/

Reporting Notice

The FBI encourages recipients of this document to report information concerning suspicious or criminal activity to their local FBI field office or the FBI’s 24/7 Cyber Watch (CyWatch). Field office contacts can be identified at www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field. CyWatch can be contacted by phone at (855) 292-3937 or by e-mail at CyWatch@ic.fbi.gov. When available, each report submitted should include the date, time, location, type of activity, number of people, and type of equipment used for the activity, the name of the submitting company or organization, and a designated point of contact. Press inquiries should be directed to the FBI’s national Press Office at npo@ic.fbi.gov or (202) 324-3691.

References

• ST04-002 – Choosing and Protecting Passwords

ST05-12 – Supplementing Passwords

“My friends have an iPad, I’m going to get one this weekend.”

“My friends have an iPhone, I’m going to send my nephew to get me one this weekend.”

Those are the sentences I heard from my 80ish year-old grandmother over the past year. She’s from South Korea and survived the Korean and Vietnam wars. She’s, to this day, very smart and can list off your birthday, phone number and her doctor’s address with little thought. Give her a math problem and she’s whip the answer right back at you.

My grandfather was, in general, an engineer. He had his HVAC and plumbing master licenses and might as well of had his electrical master license. He not only owned a HVAC and plumbing supply shop on the North side of Omaha but also a computer shop that specialized in AutoCAD. His home office is a library of floppy disks and DVDs of every software you’d never use. He helped fund and setup a high school’s technology program and computerized building HVAC systems he owned on using those green terminal screens and 1200-baud modems. This was all after he retired from the Navy and civil Engineering.

But as he also hit his 80’s, now being 90, his desktops and laptops started to see the dust slowly covering them. Software and hardware started to evolve quicker than he had interest in anymore. Now his day’s consist of watching black and white western TV series.

My grandmother, on the other hand, found that should could no longer ask her husband to search the Internet for information, send emails and print off legal documents. She never really learned how to operate a Windows machine because her husband liked doing that for her so much. It was his “thing”.

Then came the iPad. She found that she could send emails, fill out online forms and do research on the Internet using this ultra portable 10″ screen. It didn’t require a cord to use; no keyboard; no mouse. It was very basic. She could push email or Safari icons and they would just work. She could even wireless print. She no longer needed her “complicated” laptop to do much of anything except write legal documents and fill in financial spreadsheets. It was perfect for her.

She now has an iPhone and loves using it to make phone calls or even send a SMS here and there. Likely because of the “bling” and “peer” factors. So then I showed her maps, camera and photos. It was exactly what she wanted. So simple.

So what’s the point of this blog post? User experience.

She uses these devices because they are not overly complicated, even though you could make them as such if you wanted to.

But let’s take a step further.

The doctor’s office has online forms to fill out. She tried filling them out using her iPad but the doctor’s office told her they didn’t receive the information they needed. She was frustrated… and I can see why.

I came over and started filling out the forms on her iPad. Even though the site worked on the iPad, it was defiantly a desktop-centric site. The form labels were hard to read as they took up multiple lines and ran into each other. The form fields were small. It was almost impossible to exit the date picker widget after I selected the date. And there were form fields that I had no idea where to get that information, yet they were required.

In today’s world if you are creating a public website you should highly consider creating a mobile-first responsive site. Take this experience. My 80ish year-old grandmother and her peers use iPads and iPhones. Not laptops and desktops. Even on a podcast the other day, the speaker was saying the funny looks his son gives him when he tries to show him his desktop setup. He’s just always on a mobile device.

In reality, I use my mobile phone for looking up quick stuff like what a medication does or the address for a auto-repair shop. I don’t own a tablet, outside of a dedicated one for my dart board. I use my work desktop and home laptop for all the “real work”.

So in conclusion, when building or maintaining a public facing website, it’s very important to be mobile friendly and responsive to serve your experience to the many generations and different devices. If you don’t they’ll just go somewhere else, or worse, call you because you’re their only option and can’t use the site you’ve invested so much money in.

Buses were the original “ride share” concept. The difference is the city always owned the vehicle, it fits many more people and is regulated.

What if the city bus concept adapted to the popular ride sharing services such as Uber and Lyft?

Instead of buses following a predefined route every day, let the computers dynamically route the buses. People with smartphones could request a pickup and set a destination. They would then be routed to the nearest bus compatible and pickup efficient location that isn’t necessarily a predefined “bus stop”. In that app they would also define their drop-off point, which could change the bus that’s picking them up with a more efficient route. People without a smartphone would go to a normal bus stop and press a vandal resistant button. Once on the bus, they would select the destination using a built-in display.

Of course a lot more thinking and planning would need to be done so as each passenger is limited to a ride that is reasonable in time and fairly predictable.

But I think this could go a long way to getting more people to use public transportation, pay via a mobile app and stop routing buses to empty bus stops.