Okta CySec Breach
Introduction
Cybersecurity threats have been globally prevalent for quite some time now. All nations, organisations and individuals stand at risk from new and emerging potential cybersecurity threats, putting finances, privacy, data, identities and sometimes human lives at stake. The latest Data Breach Report by IBM revealed that nearly a staggering 83% of organisations experienced more than one data breach instance during 2022. As per the 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report by Verizon, the total number of global ransomware attacks surged by 13%, indicating a concerning rise equal to the last five years combined. The statistics clearly showcase how the future is filled with potential threats as we advance further into the digital age.
Who is Okta?
Okta is a secure identity cloud that links all your apps, logins and devices into a unified digital fabric. Okta has been in existence since 2009 and is based out of San Francisco, USA and has been one of the leading service providers in the States. The advent of the company led to early success based on the high-quality services and products introduced by them in the market. Although Okta is not as well-known as the big techs, it plays a vital role in big organisations' cybersecurity systems. More than 18,000 users of the identity management company's products rely on it to give them a single login for the several platforms that a particular business uses. For instance, Zoom leverages Okta to provide "seamless" access to its Google Workspace, ServiceNow, VMware, and Workday systems with only one login, thus showing how Okta is fundamental in providing services to ease the human effort on various platforms. In the digital age, such organisations are instrumental in leading the pathway to innovation and entrepreneurship.
The Okta Breach
The last Friday, 20 October, Okta reported a hack of its support system, leading to chaos and havoc within the organisation. The result of the hack can be seen in the market in the form of the massive losses incurred by Okta in the stock exchange.
Since the attack, the company's market value has dropped by more than $2 billion. The well-known incident is the most recent in a long line of events connected to Okta or its products, which also includes a wave of casino invasions that caused days-long disruptions to hotel rooms in Las Vegas, casino giants Caesars and MGM were both affected by hacks as reported earlier this year. Both of those attacks, targeting MGM and Caesars’ Okta installations, used a sophisticated social engineering attack that went through IT help desks.
What can be done to prevent this?
Cybersecurity attacks on organisations have become a very common occurrence ever since the pandemic and are rampant all across the globe. Major big techs have been successful in setting up SoPs, safeguards and precautionary measures to protect their companies and their digital assets and interests. However, the Medium, Mico and small business owners are the most vulnerable to such unknown high-intensity attacks. The governments of various nations have established Computer Emergency Response Teams to monitor and investigate such massive-scale cyberattacks both on organisations and individuals. The issue of cybersecurity can be better addressed by inculcating the following aspects into our daily digital routines:
- Team Upskilling: Organisations need to be critical in creating upskilling avenues for employees pertaining to cybersecurity and threats. These campaigns should be run periodically, focusing on both the individual and organisational impact of any threat.
- Reporting Mechanism for Employees and Customers: Business owners and organisations need to deploy robust, sustainable and efficient reporting mechanisms for both employees well as customers. The mechanism will be fundamental in pinpointing the potential grey areas and threats in the cyber security mechanism as well. A dedicated reporting mechanism is now a mandate by a lot of governments around the world as it showcases transparency and natural justice in terms of legal remedies.
- Preventive, Precautionary and Recovery Policies: Organisations need to create and deploy respective preventive, precautionary and recovery policies in regard to different forms of cyber attacks and threats. This will be helpful in a better understanding of threats and faster response in cases of emergencies and attacks. These policies should be updated regularly, keeping in mind the emerging technologies. Efficient deployment of the policies can be done by conducting mock drills and threat assessment activities.
- Global Dialogue Forums: It is pertinent for organisations and the industry to create a community of cyber security enthusiasts from different and diverse backgrounds to address the growing issues of cyberspace; this can be done by conducting and creating global dialogue forums, which will act as the beacon of sharing best practices, advisories, threat assessment reports, potential threats and attacks thus establishing better inter-agency and inter-organisation communication and coordination.
- Data Anonymisation and Encryption: Organisations should have data management/processing policies in place for transparency and should always store data in an encrypted and anonymous manner, thus creating a blanket of safety in case of any data breach.
- Critical infrastructure: The industry leaders should push the limits of innovation by setting up state-of-the-art critical cyber infrastructure to create employment, innovation, and entrepreneurship spirit among the youth, thus creating a whole new generation of cyber-ready professionals and dedicated netizens. Critical infrastructures are essential in creating a safe, secure, resilient and secured digital ecosystem.
- Cysec Audits & Sandboxing: All organisations should establish periodic routines of Cybersecurity audits, both by internal and external entities, to find any issue/grey area in the security systems. This will create a more robust and adaptive cybersecurity mechanism for the organisation and its employees. All tech developing and testing companies need to conduct proper sandboxing exercises for all or any new tech/software creation to identify its shortcomings and flaws.
Conclusion
In view of the rising cybersecurity attacks on organisations, especially small and medium companies, a lot has been done, and a lot more needs to be done to establish an aspect of safety and security for companies, employees and customers. The impact of the Okta breach very clearly show how cyber attacks can cause massive repercussion for any organisation in the form of monetary loss, loss of business, damage to reputation and a lot of other factors. One should take such instances as examples and learnings for ourselves and prepare our organisation to combat similar types of threats, ultimately working towards preventing these types of threats and eradicating the influence of bad actors from our digital ecosystem altogether.
References:
- https://hbr.org/2023/05/the-devastating-business-impacts-of-a-cyber-breach#:~:text=In%202022%2C%20the%20global%20average,legal%20fees%2C%20and%20audit%20fees.
- https://www.okta.com/intro-to-okta/#:~:text=Okta%20is%20a%20secure%20identity,use%20to%20work%2C%20instantly%20available.
- https://www.cyberpeace.org/resources/blogs/mgm-resorts-shuts-down-it-systems-after-cyberattack
Related Blogs
Executive Summary:
A viral video has circulated on social media, wrongly showing lawbreakers surrendering to the Indian Army. However, the verification performed shows that the video is of a group surrendering to the Bangladesh Army and is not related to India. The claim that it is related to the Indian Army is false and misleading.
Claims:
A viral video falsely claims that a group of lawbreakers is surrendering to the Indian Army, linking the footage to recent events in India.
Fact Check:
Upon receiving the viral posts, we analysed the keyframes of the video through Google Lens search. The search directed us to credible news sources in Bangladesh, which confirmed that the video was filmed during a surrender event involving criminals in Bangladesh, not India.
We further verified the video by cross-referencing it with official military and news reports from India. None of the sources supported the claim that the video involved the Indian Army. Instead, the video was linked to another similar Bangladesh Media covering the news.
No evidence was found in any credible Indian news media outlets that covered the video. The viral video was clearly taken out of context and misrepresented to mislead viewers.
Conclusion:
The viral video claiming to show lawbreakers surrendering to the Indian Army is footage from Bangladesh. The CyberPeace Research Team confirms that the video is falsely attributed to India, misleading the claim.
- Claim: The video shows miscreants surrendering to the Indian Army.
- Claimed on: Facebook, X, YouTube
- Fact Check: False & Misleading
Introduction
The US national cybersecurity strategy was released at the beginning of March this year. The aim of the cybersecurity strategy is to build a more defensive and resilient digital mechanism through general investments in the cybersecurity infrastructure. It is important to invest in a resilient future, And the increasing digital diplomacy and private-sector partnerships, regulation of crucial industries, and holding software companies accountable if their products enable hackers in.
What is the cybersecurity strategy
The US National cybersecurity strategy is the plan which organisations pursue to fight against cyberattacks and cyber threats, and also they plan a risk assessment plan for the future in a resilient way. Through the cybersecurity strategy, there will be appropriate defences against cyber threats.
US National Cybersecurity Strategy-
the national cybersecurity strategy mainly depends on five pillars-
- Critical infrastructure- The national cybersecurity strategy intends to defend important infrastructure from cyberattacks, for example, hospitals and clean energy installations. This pillar mainly focuses on the security and resilience of critical systems and services that are critical.
- Disrupt & Threat Assessment- This strategy pillar seeks to address and eliminate cyber attackers who endanger national security and public safety.
- Shape the market forces in resilient and security has driven-
- Invest in resilient future approaches.
- Forging international partnerships to pursue shared goals.
Need for a National cybersecurity strategy in India –
India is becoming more reliant on technology for day-to-day purposes, communication and banking aspects. And as per the computer emergency response team (CERT-In), in 2022, ransomware attacks increased by 50% in India. Cybercrimes against individuals are also rapidly on the rise. To build a safe cyberspace, India also required a national cybersecurity strategy in the country to develop trust and confidence in IT systems.
Learnings for India-
India has a cybersecurity strategy just now but India can also implement its cybersecurity strategy as the US just released. For the threats assessments and for more resilient future outcomes, there is a need to eliminate cybercrimes and cyber threats in India.
Shortcomings of the US National Cybersecurity Strategy-
- The implementation of the United States National Cybersecurity Strategy has Some problems and things that could be improved in it. Here are some as follows:
- Significant difficulties: The cybersecurity strategy proved to be difficult for government entities. The provided guidelines do not fulfil the complexity and growing cyber threats.
- Insufficient to resolve desirable points: the implementation is not able to resolve some, of the aspects of national cybersecurity strategies, for example, the defined goals and resource allocation, which have been determined to be addressed by the national cybersecurity strategy and implementation plan.
- Lack of Specifying the Objectives: the guidelines shall track the cybersecurity progress, and the implementation shall define the specific objectives.
- Implementation Alone is insufficient: cyber-attacks and cybercrimes are increasing daily, and to meet this danger, the US cybersecurity strategy shall not depend on the implementation. However, the legislation will help to involve public-private collaboration, and technological advancement is required.
- The strategy calls for critical infrastructure owners and software companies to meet minimum security standards and be held liable for flaws in their products, but the implementation and enforcement of these standards and liability measures must be clearly defined.
Conclusion
There is a legitimate need for a national cybersecurity strategy to fight against the future consequences of the cyber pandemic. To plan proper strategies and defences. It is crucial to avail techniques under the cybersecurity strategy. And India is increasingly depending on technology, and cybercrimes are also increasing among individuals. Healthcare sectors and as well on educational sectors, so to resolve these complexities, there is a need for proper implementations.
Executive Summary:
Given that AI technologies are evolving at a fast pace in 2024, an AI-oriented phishing attack on a large Indian financial institution illustrated the threats. The documentation of the attack specifics involves the identification of attack techniques, ramifications to the institution, intervention conducted, and resultant effects. The case study also turns to the challenges connected with the development of better protection and sensibilisation of automatized threats.
Introduction
Due to the advancement in AI technology, its uses in cybercrimes across the world have emerged significant in financial institutions. In this report a serious incident that happened in early 2024 is analysed, according to which a leading Indian bank was hit by a highly complex, highly intelligent AI-supported phishing operation. Attack made use of AI’s innate characteristic of data analysis and data persuasion which led into a severe compromise of the bank’s internal structures.
Background
The chosen financial institution, one of the largest banks in India, had a good background regarding the extremity of its cybersecurity policies. However, these global cyberattacks opened up new threats that AI-based methods posed that earlier forms of security could not entirely counter efficiently. The attackers concentrated on the top managers of the bank because it is evident that controlling such persons gives the option of entering the inner systems as well as financial information.
Attack Execution
The attackers utilised AI in sending the messages that were an exact look alike of internal messages sent between employees. From Facebook and Twitter content, blog entries, and lastly, LinkedIn connection history and email tenor of the bank’s executives, the AI used to create these emails was highly specific. Some of these emails possessed official formatting, specific internal language, and the CEO’s writing; this made them very realistic.
It also used that link in phishing emails that led the users to a pseudo internal portal in an attempt to obtain the login credentials. Due to sophistication, the targeted individuals thought the received emails were genuine, and entered their log in details easily to the bank’s network, thus allowing the attackers access.
Impact
It caused quite an impact to the bank in every aspect. Numerous executives of the company lost their passwords to the fake emails and compromised several financial databases with information from customer accounts and transactions. The break-in permitted the criminals to cease a number of the financial’s internet services hence disrupting its functions and those of its customers for a number of days.
They also suffered a devastating blow to their customer trust because the breach revealed the bank’s weakness against contemporary cyber threats. Apart from managing the immediate operations which dealt with mitigating the breach, the financial institution was also toppling a long-term reputational hit.
Technical Analysis and Findings
1. The AI techniques that are used in generation of the phishing emails are as follows:
- The attack used powerful NLP technology, which was most probably developed using the large-scaled transformer, such as GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer). Since these models are learned from large data samples they used the examples of the conversation pieces from social networks, emails and PC language to create quite credible emails.
Key Technical Features:
- Contextual Understanding: The AI was able to take into account the nature of prior interactions and thus write follow up emails that were perfectly in line with prior discourse.
- Style Mimicry: The AI replicated the writing of the CEO given the emails of the CEO and then extrapolated from the data given such elements as the tone, the language, and the format of the signature line.
- Adaptive Learning: The AI actively adapted from the mistakes, and feedback to tweak the generated emails for other tries and this made it difficult to detect.
2. Sophisticated Spear-Phishing Techniques
Unlike ordinary phishing scams, this attack was phishing using spear-phishing where the attackers would directly target specific people using emails. The AI used social engineering techniques that significantly increased the chances of certain individuals replying to certain emails based on algorithms which machine learning furnished.
Key Technical Features:
- Targeted Data Harvesting: Cyborgs found out the employees of the organisation and targeted messages via the public profiles and messengers were scraped.
- Behavioural Analysis: The latest behaviour pattern concerning the users of the social networking sites and other online platforms were used by the AI to forecast the courses of action expected to be taken by the end users such as clicking on the links or opening of the attachments.
- Real-Time Adjustments: These are times when it was determined that the response to the phishing email was necessary and the use of AI adjusted the consequent emails’ timing and content.
3. Advanced Evasion Techniques
The attackers were able to pull off this attack by leveraging AI in their evasion from the normal filters placed in emails. These techniques therefore entailed a modification of the contents of the emails in a manner that would not be easily detected by the spam filters while at the same time preserving the content of the message.
Key Technical Features:
- Dynamic Content Alteration: The AI merely changed the different aspects of the email message slightly to develop several versions of the phishing email that would compromise different algorithms.
- Polymorphic Attacks: In this case, polymorphic code was used in the phishing attack which implies that the actual payloads of the links changed frequently, which means that it was difficult for the AV tools to block them as they were perceived as threats.
- Phantom Domains: Another tactic employed was that of using AI in generating and disseminating phantom domains, that are actual web sites that appear to be legitimate but are in fact short lived specially created for this phishing attack, adding to the difficulty of detection.
4. Exploitation of Human Vulnerabilities
This kind of attack’s success was not only in AI but also in the vulnerability of people, trust in familiar language and the tendency to obey authorities.
Key Technical Features:
- Social Engineering: As for the second factor, AI determined specific psychological principles that should be used in order to maximise the chance of the targeted recipients opening the phishing emails, namely the principles of urgency and familiarity.
- Multi-Layered Deception: The AI was successfully able to have a two tiered approach of the emails being sent as once the targeted individuals opened the first mail, later the second one by pretext of being a follow up by a genuine company/personality.
Response
On sighting the breach, the bank’s cybersecurity personnel spring into action to try and limit the fallout. They reported the matter to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) to find who originated the attack and how to block any other intrusion. The bank also immediately started taking measures to strengthen its security a bit further, for instance, in filtering emails, and increasing the authentication procedures.
Knowing the risks, the bank realised that actions should be taken in order to enhance the cybersecurity level and implement a new wide-scale cybersecurity awareness program. This programme consisted of increasing the awareness of employees about possible AI-phishing in the organisation’s info space and the necessity of checking the sender’s identity beforehand.
Outcome
Despite the fact and evidence that this bank was able to regain its functionality after the attack without critical impacts with regards to its operations, the following issues were raised. Some of the losses that the financial institution reported include losses in form of compensation of the affected customers and costs of implementing measures to enhance the financial institution’s cybersecurity. However, the principle of the incident was significantly critical of the bank as customers and shareholders began to doubt the organisation’s capacity to safeguard information in the modern digital era of advanced artificial intelligence cyber threats.
This case depicts the importance for the financial firms to align their security plan in a way that fights the new security threats. The attack is also a message to other organisations in that they are not immune from such analysis attacks with AI and should take proper measures against such threats.
Conclusion
The recent AI-phishing attack on an Indian bank in 2024 is one of the indicators of potential modern attackers’ capabilities. Since the AI technology is still progressing, so are the advances of the cyberattacks. Financial institutions and several other organisations can only go as far as adopting adequate AI-aware cybersecurity solutions for their systems and data.
Moreover, this case raises awareness of how important it is to train the employees to be properly prepared to avoid the successful cyberattacks. The organisation’s cybersecurity awareness and secure employee behaviours, as well as practices that enable them to understand and report any likely artificial intelligence offences, helps the organisation to minimise risks from any AI attack.
Recommendations
- Enhanced AI-Based Defences: Financial institutions should employ AI-driven detection and response products that are capable of mitigating AI-operation-based cyber threats in real-time.
- Employee Training Programs: CYBER SECURITY: All employees should undergo frequent cybersecurity awareness training; here they should be trained on how to identify AI-populated phishing.
- Stricter Authentication Protocols: For more specific accounts, ID and other security procedures should be tight in order to get into sensitive ones.
- Collaboration with CERT-In: Continued engagement and coordination with authorities such as the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) and other equivalents to constantly monitor new threats and valid recommendations.
- Public Communication Strategies: It is also important to establish effective communication plans to address the customers of the organisations and ensure that they remain trusted even when an organisation is facing a cyber threat.
Through implementing these, financial institutions have an opportunity for being ready with new threats that come with AI and cyber terrorism on essential financial assets in today’s complex IT environments.
