The Trustwave SpiderLabs team's recent in-depth look at the threats facing the retail landscape has uncovered a wide array of adversaries actively attacking this sector along with their tried-and-true methods of gaining access, moving laterally, and finally exfiltrating valuable data.
This information is thoroughly detailed in the Trustwave Threat Intelligence Briefing: The 2023 Retail Services Sector Threat Landscape.
In the report, Trustwave SpiderLabs analyzed the threat actors active in attacking the retail sector, including Royal, Bian Lian, LockBit, Clop, BlackCat, Play, 8BASE, and RasomedVC.
SpiderLabs found that these groups have a deep arsenal of well-tried hacking tools at their disposal to gain access, move laterally inside their target, and then exfiltrate data. The most prevalent tactics are email-borne malware, phishing, BEC, and vulnerability exploitation.
In the same manner that Trustwave SpiderLabs presented its earlier financial, healthcare, and hospitality reports, the Trustwave Threat Intelligence Briefing: The 2023 Retail Services Sector Threat Landscape details the most often used attack vectors.
First, Why Target Retail?
As always, the driving factor behind attacks on retailers is the massive repository of extremely valuable data held by these organizations. Threat actors covet consumer credit cards and personally identifiable information (PII) as criminals can quickly and easily monetize it.
Retailers compile this consumer data while investing significant resources to earn a coveted spot in consumers' minds as household names. The allure of brand recognition is undeniable, but it also presents a stark reality in cybersecurity: the bigger the brand, the larger the target.
This effort does pay off. The online retail, or e-commerce, market surpassed a staggering $1.09 trillion in 2022, marking a 209% increase from 2019, according to Comscore.
In addition to financial loss due to a data breach or other type of attack, retailers face massive reputational damage, which, in the long run, may prove even more damaging than the attack itself.
Unlike security incidents affecting businesses in less-publicized sectors, a breach involving a major retailer is almost guaranteed to become a headline-grabbing affair. While the average cost of a breach in the retail sector ($2.9 million) is lower than the industry average ($4.4 million), the extensive public awareness of these retail giants, coupled with the loyal customer base they command, can amplify the reputational consequences of any breach.
Gaining Entry
Every attack starts with an adversary finding the target's weak spot. This area can include staff, system vulnerabilities, or even its supply chain.
SpiderLabs noted the attacker's primary methods of gaining an initial foothold were phishing emails and business email compromise attacks, using legitimate credentials, exploiting a vulnerability, and going through a third party.
While each method is described in greater detail in the report, along with additional information on lateral movement and mitigations, here is a quick overview of how most successful attacks start.
Email - Phishing and email-borne malware stand out as the most commonly exploited method for gaining an initial foothold in an organization. Instead of attempting to exploit the software or systems on the network, attackers direct their focus towards targeting the individuals operating the keyboard.
Based on the data from Trustwave's retail client base, we observed that over 70% of the malicious emails contain malicious HTML attachments, with 30% being obfuscated. These attachments include local, standalone phishing pages, redirectors, and malware. Aside from HTML, other file types included are executables, Microsoft Office documents, PDFs, and One Note files. Common malware that we found piggybacking off these attachments were Agent Tesla, Emotet, and Qakbot.
Credentials - Sometimes attackers gain access to your network simply by logging in with actual credentials. This can occur if the default credentials for a device have not been changed, weak passwords are used and thus vulnerable to brute-forcing, and sometimes credentials can be purchased from an underground forum.
Credential Access accounts for 30% of all tactics for reported incidents in our retail client base. Generic brute-force attacks make up the majority of the observations.
Vulnerabilities - An unfortunate reality is that a great deal of software currently in use has publicly known vulnerabilities, and some are discovered by the adversary. Attackers create software or scripts to exploit the vulnerability and circumvent security controls, such as authorization, authentication, and audit controls. Once an attacker exploits the vulnerability, the attacker can bypass security controls and introduce a payload, manifesting as various types of malware.
Trustwave found the most common vulnerabilities exploited are ZeroLogon (CVE-2020-1472) and Apache Log4J (CVE-2021-44228.
Supply Chain - The report found threat actors are increasingly using supply chain attacks. These entail doing an "end around" with attackers concentrating their efforts on trusted third-party partners frequently utilized by large numbers of organizations. The result is one successful attack can lead to multiple companies being breached.
Like many industries, retailers rely heavily on third-party vendors to maintain inventory, manage deliveries, support geographic expansion, and maintain e-commerce operations, making them particularly vulnerable.
In a world where the retail sector faces constant cyber threats, the Trustwave SpiderLabs 2023 Retail Services Sector Threat Landscape report vividly depicts the challenges ahead.
The reputation of major retailers, coupled with loyal customer bases, only amplifies the consequences of breaches. As retailers navigate e-commerce, supply chain vulnerabilities, seasonality, omnichannel strategies, gift cards, and franchise models, they must contend with emerging threats like AI-driven phishing, malicious bots, and third-party vulnerabilities.
Vigilance and robust cybersecurity measures are essential to protect business and consumer interests in this ever-evolving threat landscape.
Click the image above to download Trustwave Threat Intelligence Briefing: The 2023 Retail Services Sector Threat Landscape.
