Cisco Midyear Security Report Highlights Weak Links in Increasingly Dynamic Threat Landscape

LAS VEGAS, NV--(Marketwired - Aug 5, 2014) - Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) - The Cisco 2014 Midyear Security Report, released today at Black Hat U.S. (Cisco Booth #611), examines the "weak links" in organizations that contribute to the increasingly dynamic threat landscape. These weak links -- which could be outdated software, bad code, abandoned digital properties, or user errors -- contribute to the adversary's ability to exploit vulnerabilities with methods such as DNS queries, exploit kits, amplification attacks, point-of-sale (POS) system compromise, malvertising, ransomware, infiltration of encryption protocols, social engineering and "life event" spam.

The report also shows that focus on only high-profile vulnerabilities rather than on high-impact, common and stealthy threats puts these organizations at greater risk. By proliferating attacks against low-profile legacy applications and infrastructure with known weaknesses, malicious actors are able to escape detection as security teams focus instead on boldface vulnerabilities, such as Heartbleed.

Key Findings

Researchers closely examined 16 large multinational organizations, who, as of 2013, collectively controlled over $4 trillion in assets with revenues in excess of $300 billion. This analysis yielded three compelling security insights tying enterprises to malicious traffic:

•     "Man-in-the-Browser" attacks pose a risk for enterprises: Nearly 94 percent of customer networks observed in 2014 have been identified as having traffic going to websites that host malware. Specifically, issuing DNS requests for hostnames where the IP address to which the hostname resolves is reported to be associated with the distribution of Palevo, SpyEye, and Zeus malware families that incorporate man-in-the-browser (MiTB) functionality.
  
  
•     Botnet hide and seek: Nearly 70 percent of networks were identified as issuing DNS queries for Dynamic DNS Domains. This shows evidence of networks misused or compromised with botnets using DDNS to alter their IP address to avoid detection/blacklist. Few legitimate outbound connection attempts from enterprises would seek dynamic DNS domains apart from outbound C&C callbacks looking to disguise the location of their botnet.