ENISA Threat Landscape 2015
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ENISA Threat Landscape 2015 JANUARY 2016 www.enisa.europa.eu European Union Agency For Network And Information Security ENISA Threat Landscape 2015 | January 2016 About ENISA The European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) is a centre of network and information security expertise for the EU, its member states, the private sector and Europe’s citizens. ENISA works with these groups to develop advice and recommendations on good practice in information security. It assists EU member states in implementing relevant EU legislation and works to improve the resilience of Europe’s critical information infrastructure and networks. ENISA seeks to enhance existing expertise in EU member states by supporting the development of cross-border communities committed to improving network and information security throughout the EU. More information about ENISA and its work can be found at www.enisa.europa.eu. Authors Louis Marinos ([email protected]), ENISA, Adrian Belmonte, ENISA (contribution Attack Vectors and SDN), Evangelos Rekleitis, ENISA (contribution Big Data). Contact For contacting the authors please use [email protected] For media enquiries about this paper, please use [email protected]. Acknowledgements The author would like to thank the members of the ENISA ETL Stakeholder group: Paolo Passeri, Consulting, UK, Pierluigi Paganini, Chief Security Information Officer, IT, Paul Samwel, Banking, NL, Tom Koehler, Consulting, DE, Stavros Lingris, CERT, EU, Jart Armin, Worldwide coalitions/Initiatives, International, Thomas Häberlen, Member State, DE, Neil Thacker, Consulting, UK, Margrete Raaum, CERT, NO, Shin Adachi, Security Analyst, US, R. Jane Ginn, Consulting, US, Lance James, Consulting, US, Polo Bais, Member State, NL. Moreover, we would like to thank CYjAX for granting access pro bono to its cyber risk intelligence portal providing information on cyber threats and cyber-crime. Thanks go to ENISA colleagues who contributed to this work by commenting drafts of the report. Special thanks to Jakub Radziulis, iTTi and his colleagues for the support in information analysis. Legal notice Notice must be taken that this publication represents the views and interpretations of the authors and editors, unless stated otherwise. This publication should not be construed to be a legal action of ENISA or the ENISA bodies unless adopted pursuant to the Regulation (EU) No 526/2013. This publication does not necessarily represent state- of the-art and ENISA may update it from time to time. Third-party sources are quoted as appropriate. ENISA is not responsible for the content of the external sources including external websites referenced in this publication. This publication is intended for information purposes only. It must be accessible free of charge. Neither ENISA nor any person acting on its behalf is responsible for the use that might be made of the information contained in this publication. Copyright Notice © European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA), 2015 Reproduction is authorised provided the source is acknowledged. 02 ENISA Threat Landscape 2015 | January 2016 Table of Contents Executive Summary 5 1. Introduction 8 Policy context 9 Target audience 9 Structure of the document 10 2. Purpose, Scope and Method 11 Data structures used in the threat analysis process and threat landscaping 12 Threat taxonomy 14 Graphical support 16 Used definitions 16 3. Top Cyber-Threats: The Current Threat Landscape 18 Content and purpose of this chapter 18 Malware 19 Web based attacks 22 Web application attacks 24 Botnets 25 Denial of service 28 Physical damage/theft/loss 30 Insider threat 31 Phishing 33 Spam 35 Exploit kits 37 Data Breaches 38 Identity theft 41 Information leakage 43 Ransomware 45 Cyber Espionage 47 Visualising changes in the current threat landscape 51 03 ENISA Threat Landscape 2015 | January 2016 4. Threat Agents 52 Threat Agents Models 52 Overview of threat agents 54 Threat Agents and Top Threats 59 5. Attack vectors 61 Attacks against cyber physical systems 61 Targeted attacks 63 Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) 64 6. Emerging Threat Landscape 67 Cloud computing 68 Mobile computing 70 Cyber physical systems 72 Internet of things (IoT) 74 Big data 77 Network Function Virtualization, Software Defined Networks and 5G 80 7. Food for thought: Lessons Learned and Conclusions 82 Lessons learned 82 Conclusions 83 Annex A: Comparison ENISA and STIX data models 86 04 ENISA Threat Landscape 2015 | January 2016 Executive Summary For yet another year the 2015 edition of the cyber-threat landscape features a number of unique observations, the main one being the smooth advancement of maturity. As a matter of fact, cyber-space stakeholders have gone through varying degrees of further maturity. While the friendly agents – the good guys – have demonstrated increased cooperation and orchestrated reaction to cyber-threats, hostile agents – the bad guys – have advanced their malicious tools with obfuscation, stealthiness and striking power. On the defenders’ side, improvements have been achieved in coordinated campaigns to disturb operations of malicious infrastructures, strengthen the legal/governmental cyber-defence framework and develop more efficient products. In particular: Performing orchestrated actions to take down malicious infrastructure but also to analyse incidents and improve attribution. Strengthening governmental awareness, cyber-defence expenses, capabilities and level of cooperation among states. Performing exercises, development of threat intelligence, proliferation of information sharing, tools and products to enhance awareness, preparedness and efficiency of defence. Focusing on research and development to accommodate developments of the cyber-threat landscape to existing protection measures and methods and tools. These are qualities that have been consistently developed throughout 2015 and have reached a momentum that allows for a persistent course of action. Adversaries have achieved considerable advances too. No Snowden or Heartbleed-like events have been reported. Instead, cyber-threats have undergone significant evolution and just as in 2014, significant breaches have covered front pages of media. And exactly this is an alerting fact: seemingly, cyber-threat agents have had the tranquillity and resources to implement a series of advancements in malicious practices. In particular: Performing persistent attacks based on hardware, far below the “radar” of available defence tools and methods. Achieving enhancements in the provision of “cyber-crime-as-a-service”, tool developments for non- experts and affiliate programmes. Highly efficient development of malware weaponization and automated tools to detect and exploit vulnerabilities. Campaigning with highly profitable malicious infrastructures and malware to breach data and hold end-user devices to ransom. Broadening of the attack surface to include routers, firmware and internet of things. Details for all the above-mentioned points can be found in the ENISA Threat Landscape 2015 (ETL 2015). Top 15 cyber-threats together with threat trends, trends of threat agents and trends for emerging technologies have been assessed and presented in this report. This material delivers evidence upon which the consequences for the development of cyber-defences can be based. 05 ENISA Threat Landscape 2015 | January 2016 Lessons learned and conclusions summarise our experience from this year’s threat landscape and draw a roadmap with aspects that need to be addressed in the future by policy, businesses and research. An overview hereof is as follows: Policy conclusions: - Make threat intelligence collection, management and sharing an inherent part of the national cyber- defence capabilities. - Foster voluntary reporting and perform analysis of reported incidents and recycle results for better planning of defences. - Disseminate cyber-threat knowledge to all players in cyber-space, including end-users. Business conclusions: - Simplify content of threat intelligence to achieve wider uptake in the stakeholder community. - Elaborate on threat agent models and make it inherent part of threat intelligence. - Create correlated, contextualized threat information to increase timespan of relevance. - Continuously adapt protection and detection tools to the threats. - Invest in better vulnerability management and exploitation of dark web. Research conclusions: - Develop applied statistic models to increase comparability of cyber-threat and incident information. - Develop new models for seamlessly operated security controls to be included in complex, smart end- user environments. - Develop trust models for the ad hoc interoperability of devices within smart environments. Finally, regarding the overall highlights for the future cyber-threat landscapes, one should mention two overarching trends for defenders and adversaries respectively: - The need for “Streamlining and consolidation” of existing policies, defences and cooperation to accommodate changes in threat landscape and - Ongoing activities towards “Consumerization of cyber-crime”, that is, making malicious tools available to everybody. The figure below summarizes the top 15 cyber-threats and threat trends in comparison to the threat landscape of 2014. 06 ENISA Threat Landscape 2015 | January 2016 Assessed Assessed Change in Top Threats 2014 Top Threats 2015 Trends 2014 Trends 2015 ranking 1. Malicious code: 1. Malware Worms/Trojans → 2. Web-based attacks 2. Web based attacks