Guest Editorial by Dr. Brian Gant, Assistant Professor of Cybersecurity at Maryville University

It turns out that an effective way for hackers to infiltrate networks is not by targeting those networks directly but by targeting cybersecurity tools on the edges of those networks designed to protect them.

This was shown recently when the cybersecurity firm Mandiant, now owned by Google, reported that for the past year, suspected Chinese state-sponsored hackers have been using this indirect method of cyber espionage for hacking into networks while avoiding detection.

As with each new major cybersecurity incident, this points to some important issues and risks that both the general public and IT and cybersecurity professionals in particular, need to become more aware of to better protect themselves and the organizations they work for.

Why These New Methods Are Hard to Detect

Let’s first look at why this latest tactic can be difficult to detect. One reason involves the common perception that hackers usually target networks directly.

Most organizations recognize this as a risk and depending on their available resources and budget, they’ll devote at least some resources toward protecting their networks. This can be through an in-house team of cybersecurity professionals, outsourcing to third-party vendors, or a combination of both.

However, a risk that’s less widely recognized by both the public and even IT professionals is the way that hackers can indirectly access networks by targeting the very tools designed to protect those networks, tools designed by companies such as VMware, Citrix Systems, SonicWall, and Fortinet.

Since organizations tend not to monitor their security tools as closely as their networks, compromises can go undetected for a long time. Combined with this, even though these tools are designed to protect networks, the tools themselves are often inadequately protected and vulnerable.

Unfortunately, once hackers compromise these security tools, they can use them as peripheral gateways into networks.

With high-profile events such as the Colonial Pipeline ransomware incident, the motive of the hackers was profit-oriented. Still, with this latest string of intrusions, that is not necessarily the case.

(See how the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack caused a major blow to the gasoline industry in the southern and eastern parts of the United States, but it also showed how vulnerable the US energy grid is to more attacks in the future. Courtesy of CNET and YouTube.)

These state-sponsored actors are likely after any kinds of new technology, research, and information they could use now or in the future to benefit the state sponsoring their activities, most likely China.

Sometimes it’s not necessarily out of a motive to actively harm or dominate so much as wanting just to assert their presence and relevance on the world stage. But regardless of the reason, organizations need to protect themselves.

Stepping Up Protection and Minimizing Vulnerabilities

It’s easy to get desensitized to news about cyber intrusions and data breaches due to how many there have been in recent years. However, the significance of this latest development is that it suggests the scale of China’s breach of U.S. organizations may be more serious than previously realized.

This is partly because of the aforementioned way that this method of cyber espionage can be difficult to detect. It took this long to figure out that this has been happening, which suggests there may be more of it going on than has been uncovered.

This should be very concerning to organizational leaders, IT and security professionals, and the general public alike.

There are many reasons why the public should be concerned and why IT and cybersecurity professionals should help them understand these reasons. Cybercrime impacts everyone at multiple levels simultaneously: themselves as individuals, the organizations they work for, and society as a whole.

The same method of indirect infiltration that these state-sponsored hackers have been using can also be used on small businesses and individuals.

These Chinese espionage groups are also known to target at least 39 different industries. Many of these are linked to the 16 critical infrastructures in the U.S. that make everything we do at almost every minute of our day possible.

This is why it would be beneficial for organizations to invest more in developing an overall security awareness culture to help their employees understand these risks and to habituate them to certain basic practices and precautions that protect both the organization and themselves.

Organizations must also do their due diligence regarding whether any third-party vendors they work with adequately protect themselves.

Despite how obvious this may seem, I am continually surprised at how unaware these many organizational leaders, and even the IT professionals who work for them, can be and how lax they are about verifying that the security firms they work with are securing their tools.

After all, how can a cybersecurity firm protect your organization if they don’t protect itself? This is a major reason why these recent cyber attacks happened in the first place.

Likewise, it’s extremely important to have good device and asset management practices: knowing what’s in your network, how many Windows machines you have, how many Linux machines you have, and which departments and persons own those machines.

It’s common for vulnerabilities to be allowed to persist, allowing Advanced Persistent Threat groups ample opportunities to exploit those vulnerabilities. Often, these vulnerabilities are allowed to persist even if administrators are aware of them and even if they have the patches for them, simply because they don’t know who the owner of the compromised devices in question are.

Other times, even if they know who the owners are, the organization may not have sufficient resources, manpower, or skill level of their personnel to employ the fix.

Finally, organizations across all industries need to be more proactive and vigilant about immediately sharing information whenever there’s an indication of a compromise.

Unfortunately, despite ISACs (Information Sharing and Analysis Centers), many organizations neglect to share information about possible cybersecurity compromises with the ISACs of their industries and/or law enforcement.

This can be for a variety of reasons but frankly, whatever those reasons are, organizations need to do it and understand that it hurts everyone when they don’t, including themselves.

Rather than being attributable to a single cause, this latest string of cyber espionage is likely a result of a combination of the reasons I’ve mentioned.

But whether it’s lack of awareness, poor asset and device management, insufficient resources and personnel, working with cybersecurity firms that don’t adequately protect themselves, or neglecting to share information—the result is that organizations across a wide range of industries have become increasingly vulnerable to stealthier and more sophisticated methods of cyber espionage.

Solving the problem will, therefore, also require a combined and comprehensive approach to being more proactive and less reactive in the ways described.

About the Author

Dr. Brian Gant, an accomplished information technology, cybersecurity, and critical infrastructure educator and researcher, is an Assistant Professor & Program Coordinate of Undergraduate Cybersecurity Programs at Maryville University.

Dr. Gant brings more than 15 years of teaching experience into his practice. He is a 2003 alumnus of Maryville and continues to serve in various capacities across campus.

Dr. Gant is dedicated to practical instruction and allowing his students to think abstractly about complex problems which require multilayered approaches. His instruction is hands-on, allowing his students to learn at different levels and communicate with each other as future cybersecurity leaders.

 

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