MITM Attacks - Is Your Inbox Secure?
Man In The Middle (MITM) attacks are sophisticated and difficult to detect. Until recently, MITM attacks were mainly carried out on large corporations. With the recent introduction of RaaS (Ransomware as a Service) contributing to the distribution of phishing kits, the attacks happen more frequently and now include SMBs.
What is the main attack vector for MITM attacks? It’s no surprise bad actors choose to target email inboxes considering that:
Email is the most successful vector for a threat actor to compromise an organization
According to research, 95% of cybersecurity breaches are caused by human error.
Its clear email is the ideal platform hackers prefer to introduce malicious code, ransomware, and phishing scams. Out of these, phishing is often the fastest and most successful method as it relies on human error and fewer resources it would take hackers to brute-force passwords.
A successful Man In The Middle Attack is one of the most damaging and terrifying attacks to encounter. A malicious actor inserts themselves into a conversation between two parties, impersonates both of them, and gains access to the information that the two parties were trying to share. Once in, they sit and wait patiently, hence, “Man-in-the-middle.” The attacker then monitors compromised email accounts for discussions regarding finances, invoices, money transfers, and donations, and when those emails pop up they plan their attack. Proceeding to send fake invoices and impersonate individual decision-makers, in many cases successfully tricking someone to transfer funds to their accounts.
MITM attacks often happen and are over without the victim knowing about them. Hackers minimize their footprint by deleting emails they sent from compromised accounts in an attempt to hide their tracks. Forwarders are often created to notify hackers of account activity, and rules are set to delete sent items. All this is typically done in an automated fashion. In one instance, email was routed around the victim's server to the attacker's server unannounced to the compromised user to keep themselves hidden during their attack.
Here are some alarming statistics:
Since the pandemic advanced phishing email attacks have increased by 650%
The development of machine learning makes MITM attacks more complex making it extremely difficult for organizations to protect themselves.
RaaS contribution is relatively new to the cyber ecosystem, however easy to see the devastation created.
Total ransomware revenues in 2020 were around $20 billion, up from $11.5 billion the previous year.
Ambit IT is here to help protect you from all attacks, not just MITM attacks, contact us to learn more about our email security and protection.
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