Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (BBCNATAOL1781269433)
The details regarding individual company incidents & reports gives you full view from every side.
Rankiteo Score Impact Analysis
Key Highlights From The Incident Analysis
- Timeline of AOL's Ransomware and lateral movement inside company's environment.
- Overview of affected data sets, including SSNs and PHI, and why they materially increase incident severity.
- How Rankiteo’s incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score.
- How this cyber incident impacts AOL Rankiteo cyber scoring and cyber rating.
- Rankiteo’s MITRE ATT&CK correlation analysis for this incident, with associated confidence level.
Full Incident Analysis Transcript
In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the AOL breach identified under incident ID BBCNATAOL1781269433.
The analysis begins with a detailed overview of AOL's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aol, the number of followers: 158440, the industry type: Software Development and the number of employees: 3551 employees
After the initial compromise, the video explains how Rankiteo's incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score. The incident score before the incident was 768 and after the incident was 664 with a difference of -104 which is could be a good indicator of the severity and impact of the incident.
In the next step of the video, we will analyze in more details the incident and the impact it had on AOL and their customers.
New York Times recently reported "Major News Websites Hit by Ransomware-Laced Malvertising Campaign", a noteworthy cybersecurity incident.
A widespread malvertising campaign targeted millions of users in the U.S.
The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting User systems with outdated software.
Formal response steps have not been shared publicly yet.
The case underscores how teams are taking away lessons such as The incident underscores the risks of malvertising and the importance of keeping software updated to mitigate vulnerabilities. It also highlights the growing threat of ransomware and the debate over ad blockers as a protective measure, and recommending next steps like Keep software and plugins updated to patch known vulnerabilities, Consider using ad blockers to mitigate malvertising risks and Enhance monitoring and detection capabilities for exploit kits like Angler.
Finally, we try to match the incident with the MITRE ATT&CK framework to see if there is any correlation between the incident and the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
The MITRE ATT&CK framework is a knowledge base of techniques and sub-techniques that are used to describe the tactics and procedures of cyber adversaries. It is a powerful tool for understanding the threat landscape and for developing effective defense strategies.
MITRE ATT&CK® Correlation Analysis
Rankiteo's analysis has identified several MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques associated with this incident, each with varying levels of confidence based on available evidence. Under the Initial Access tactic, the analysis identified Drive-by Compromise (T1189) with high confidence (90%), with evidence including malvertising campaign hijacking ads on high-traffic websites, and malicious ads redirected users to servers hosting the Angler exploit kit and Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating exploited vulnerabilities in outdated software, including Microsoft Silverlight plugin flaw. Under the Execution tactic, the analysis identified Exploitation for Client Execution (T1203) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating angler exploit kit deployed cryptolocker-style ransomware after probing for weaknesses. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Scripting (T1064) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating angler exploit kit commonly uses scripting to evade detection. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Encrypted for Impact (T1486) with high confidence (100%), supported by evidence indicating cryptolocker-style ransomware encrypting hard drives and demanding Bitcoin payments. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating ransomware may exfiltrate data prior to encryption (implied by financial motivation). These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.
Sources & References
- AOL Rankiteo Cyber Incident Details: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/aol/incident/BBCNATAOL1781269433
- AOL CyberSecurity Rating page: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/aol
- AOL Rankiteo Cyber Incident Blog Article: https://blog.rankiteo.com/bbcnataol1781269433-bbc-aol-nfl-ransomware-march-2016/
- AOL CyberSecurity Score History: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/aol/history
- AOL CyberSecurity Incident Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/16/major-sites-new-york-times-bbc-ransomware-malvertising
- Rankiteo A.I CyberSecurity Rating methodology: https://www.rankiteo.com/Images/rankiteo_algo.pdf
- Rankiteo TPRM Scoring methodology: https://static.rankiteo.com/model/rankiteo_tprm_methodology.pdf