Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (ROY1781268922)
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 Royal Mail'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 Royal Mail 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 Royal Mail breach identified under incident ID ROY1781268922.
The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Royal Mail's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/royal-mail, the number of followers: 186123, the industry type: Freight and Package Transportation and the number of employees: 38211 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 568 and after the incident was 420 with a difference of -148 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 Royal Mail and their customers.
Royal Mail recently reported "Royal Mail Hit by Russia-Linked Ransomware Attack, Disrupting International Deliveries", a noteworthy cybersecurity incident.
Royal Mail, a critical part of the UK’s national infrastructure, has been targeted in a ransomware attack linked to Russian cybercriminals, causing severe disruptions to international mail services.
The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting Back-office systems handling overseas dispatch, tracking, and tracing, and exposing Sensitive information stolen and encrypted.
In response, and began remediation that includes Workarounds being developed to restore operations, and stakeholders are being briefed through Advising customers to avoid sending international mail until further notice.
The case underscores how Ongoing (NCA and NCSC investigating), with advisories going out to stakeholders covering Avoid sending international mail until further notice; some pre-existing shipments may face delays.
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 Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating attack encrypted back-office systems handling overseas dispatch and Valid Accounts (T1078) with lower confidence (40%), supported by evidence indicating lockBit ransomware group typically uses compromised credentials. Under the Execution tactic, the analysis identified User Execution: Malicious File (T1204.002) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating ransomware attack linked to LockBit group, known for malicious payloads. Under the Persistence tactic, the analysis identified Scheduled Task/Job (T1053) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating lockBit ransomware often establishes persistence via scheduled tasks. Under the Privilege Escalation tactic, the analysis identified Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating lockBit group known to exploit vulnerabilities for higher privileges. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Obfuscated Files or Information (T1027) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating ransomware encrypted back-office systems, indicating obfuscation and Execution Guardrails (T1480) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating lockBit ransomware avoids detection via environmental checks. Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified OS Credential Dumping (T1003) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating lockBit group likely dumped credentials for lateral movement. Under the Discovery tactic, the analysis identified File and Directory Discovery (T1083) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating ransomware encrypted back-office systems, implying file discovery. Under the Lateral Movement tactic, the analysis identified Remote Services (T1021) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating lockBit ransomware spreads across networks via remote services. Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Data from Local System (T1005) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating data was stolen and encrypted, indicating collection of sensitive info. Under the Command and Control tactic, the analysis identified Application Layer Protocol (T1071) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating lockBit ransomware uses C2 channels for encryption and exfiltration. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating data was stolen and encrypted, with threat of release if ransom not paid. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Encrypted for Impact (T1486) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating back-office systems encrypted, disrupting international mail services and Inhibit System Recovery (T1490) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating lockBit ransomware often deletes backups to prevent recovery. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.
Sources & References
- Royal Mail Rankiteo Cyber Incident Details: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/royal-mail/incident/ROY1781268922
- Royal Mail CyberSecurity Rating page: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/royal-mail
- Royal Mail Rankiteo Cyber Incident Blog Article: https://blog.rankiteo.com/roy1781268922-royal-mail-ransomware-january-2023/
- Royal Mail CyberSecurity Score History: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/royal-mail/history
- Royal Mail CyberSecurity Incident Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64244121
- 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