Cyber Threat Report: 'REDCURL - The pentest you didn't know about'

This report by researchers at Group-IB outlines activity by a group they call RedCurl. The report identifies victimology and motivation (corporate espionage) as well as outlining tactics, techniques and procedures used by the group between 2018 and 2022.

Privileged Account Management

Manage the creation, modification, use, and permissions associated to privileged accounts, including SYSTEM and root.

Disable or Remove Feature or Program

Remove or deny access to unnecessary and potentially vulnerable software to prevent abuse by adversaries.

Execution Prevention

Block execution of code on a system through application control, and/or script blocking.

Code Signing

Enforce binary and application integrity with digital signature verification to prevent untrusted code from executing.

Antivirus/Antimalware

Use signatures or heuristics to detect malicious software.

Operating System Configuration

Make configuration changes related to the operating system or a common feature of the operating system that result in system hardening against techniques.

Password Policies

Set and enforce secure password policies for accounts.

Behavior Prevention on Endpoint

Use capabilities to prevent suspicious behavior patterns from occurring on endpoint systems. This could include suspicious process, file, API call, etc. behavior.

Credential Access Protection

Use capabilities to prevent successful credential access by adversaries; including blocking forms of credential dumping.

Privileged Process Integrity

Protect processes with high privileges that can be used to interact with critical system components through use of protected process light, anti-process injection defenses, or other process integrity enforcement measures.

User Training

Train users to be aware of access or manipulation attempts by an adversary to reduce the risk of successful spearphishing, social engineering, and other techniques that involve user interaction.

Data Loss Prevention

Use a data loss prevention (DLP) strategy to categorize sensitive data, identify data formats indicative of personal identifiable information (PII), and restrict exfiltration of sensitive data.(Citation: PurpleSec Data Loss Prevention)

User Account Management

Manage the creation, modification, use, and permissions associated to user accounts.

Audit

Perform audits or scans of systems, permissions, insecure software, insecure configurations, etc. to identify potential weaknesses.

Exploit Protection

Use capabilities to detect and block conditions that may lead to or be indicative of a software exploit occurring.

Encrypt Sensitive Information

Protect sensitive information with strong encryption.

Restrict Web-Based Content

Restrict use of certain websites, block downloads/attachments, block Javascript, restrict browser extensions, etc.

Software Configuration

Implement configuration changes to software (other than the operating system) to mitigate security risks associated to how the software operates.

Filter Network Traffic

Use network appliances to filter ingress or egress traffic and perform protocol-based filtering. Configure software on endpoints to filter network traffic.

Network Intrusion Prevention

Use intrusion detection signatures to block traffic at network boundaries.

Restrict File and Directory Permissions

Restrict access by setting directory and file permissions that are not specific to users or privileged accounts.

Remote Data Storage

Use remote security log and sensitive file storage where access can be controlled better to prevent exposure of intrusion detection log data or sensitive information.