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Next week marks the start of Fal.Con 2024. CrowdStrike’s annual conference brings together cybersecurity leaders and practitioners, as well as our customers and partners, in Las Vegas for four days of keynotes, breakout sessions, workshops and demos.
Adam and Cristian will both be speaking at this year’s show. In this episode, they share the talks they’re most excited about and how they tie into the broader threat landscape. Some sessions will dive into insights from the CrowdStrike Counter Adversary Operations team; some will explore how adversaries are using large language models (LLMs) and how to defend against adversarial use of AI technology. One will discuss generative AI and data security, in particular how genAI raises concerns around privacy, data fencing, and IP, as well as how data can be misused when training new AI models.
A key highlight of Fal.Con is the Adversary Underground, during which Adam and Cristian will bring guests onstage to showcase a machine learning-based research project they’ve been working on.
Register for the Fal.Con Digital Experience to stream the keynotes live during the show and view select sessions on-demand after the event.
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For students aspiring to work in cybersecurity, sitting in a classroom isn’t enough to gain the skills and experience they need to succeed. Industry internships are invaluable opportunities to learn how security pros operate in the real world and understand the responsibilities each role requires.
CrowdStrike’s University Program welcomes interns across virtually every field to gain this real-world experience. This summer, David Feldman and Chandler McClellan interned for the CrowdStrike threat intelligence and Falcon Adversary OverWatch teams, respectively. Like many cybersecurity pros, both David and Chandler found their way into the industry after first exploring different fields. In this episode, they join Adam to share the details of how they got into cybersecurity, how they discovered CrowdStrike’s internship program and the projects they’ve been tackling as part of the CrowdStrike team.
“You just get to dive in,” says Chandler in this episode. “You feel like you’re doing meaningful work, and you are ... What we’re doing here matters.”
Tune in to learn how CrowdStrike’s interns are aiding in the fight against adversaries, what they consider the coolest parts of their summer roles and more in this episode of the Adversary Universe podcast.
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FAMOUS CHOLLIMA, a new adversary CrowdStrike is tracking, has recently made headlines for its insider threat activity. In April 2024, CrowdStrike Services responded to the first of several incidents in which FAMOUS CHOLLIMA threat actors targeted 30+ US-based companies. The insiders claimed to be US residents and were hired for remote IT positions, which granted them access they exploited to attempt data exfiltration, install malware and conduct other malicious activity. CrowdStrike has now informed more than 100 companies they have hired these threat actors as employees.
In this episode, Adam and Cristian dig into the details of who FAMOUS CHOLLIMA is, how this attack was uncovered and why malicious insider threats are on the rise. They also examine the key findings of the CrowdStrike 2024 Threat Hunting Report, including the growth of cross-domain activity, adversary adoption of remote monitoring and management tools, and the concerning pattern of identity-focused attacks.
Download the CrowdStrike 2024 Threat Hunting Report today: https://www.crowdstrike.com/resources/reports/threat-hunting-report/
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Where in the world are Adam and Cristian? In this episode, they’re coming to you live from São Paulo, Brazil, where they sat down with a special guest: Fernando Madureira. Fernando is the Global CISO of Cosan, a Brazilian conglomerate of several businesses spanning energy, transportation and logistics, and other sectors that operates around the world.
Given Cosan’s size and the nature of its business, Fernando has a broad range of threats at top of mind. Operational technology (OT) security is a key concern because adversaries seek access to OT devices and traffic, and it requires a different mindset and technology than a modern IT environment. Social engineering is another, as adversaries attempt to disguise themselves as employees to manipulate customers and partners.
Tune in to hear a conversation that explores OT security, modern phishing scams and how the Global CISO of a major company is taking steps to protect it.
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What happens when there is a takedown of a major cybercriminal group or law enforcement activity has a major impact on its leadership?
In this episode, Adam and Cristian unpack what happens in the aftermath of a takedown, including how some groups splinter, reemerge and even rebrand.
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How do adversaries react when they know they’re being tracked? How do they respond to organizations that are on to them — and how do they know what the defenders know?
In this episode, Adam and Cristian explore how adversary behavior shifts as their activity is discovered and tracked. Today’s adversaries carefully research their victims. They read corporate blog posts and craft their techniques based on the information defenders share. As this intelligence becomes more detailed, organizations like CrowdStrike are forced to consider an important question: How much information can they share when they know adversaries are looking for it? Helping potential victims often comes at the cost of adversaries knowing we can see them and shifting their behavior accordingly.
How does their behavior change? As always, it depends on the group. Tune in for this fascinating conversation and real-world examples of adversaries responding to defenders’ actions.
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What happens when two cyber superpowers — and the most populous countries in the world — target one another? Tensions between China and India have been rising in recent years, and it’s time we take a deep dive into the many factors at play.
In this episode, Adam and Cristian examine the dynamics between the two nations, the drivers of their evolving cyber activity and the key adversaries involved in this growing conflict. “The key thing to understand here is adversaries are not only focused on us … in the U.S. or in Europe … and they’re not only focused on a particular business vertical,” says Adam. “They target each other all the time.”
When did we start to see this adversary-vs.-adversary conflict? What do the attacks between China and India look like? And how have we seen other nations target one another around the world? Tune in for these answers and to learn what organizations operating in these countries need to know to stay secure.
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Social engineering is not a new threat — adversaries have long used psychological manipulation to gain access, money, information and more. But as we learn in this episode from Shelly Giesbrecht, Director of Professional Services at CrowdStrike, it remains a top cybersecurity challenge for all organizations.
Today’s social engineers are more convincing than ever. Gone are the days of clunky phishing emails rife with spelling errors. Modern social engineering attacks arrive as convincing and well-crafted text messages, emails and voice calls. They prey on human emotion and instinct, creating situations where technology can’t always help.
“It really comes down to that human factor,” says Shelly. “We talk a lot about technology, and obviously CrowdStrike is a technology company, but we are fallible still at the human level — and that’s where social engineering is targeted.”
In a conversation that starts with impostor syndrome and quickly pivots to the impostors who are emailing employees and calling help desks, Adam, Cristian and Shelly explore the modern social engineering landscape. Shelly describes what her team is seeing on the front lines of incident response, how social engineering campaigns are evolving with the rise of AI, and guidance for organizations worried about this prolific technique.
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The rise of hacktivism — the use of hacking techniques to make a statement supporting a political or social cause — is often associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Anonymous hacktivist collective. But the practice of hacking as a form of civil disobedience goes back to the 1990s. It has taken many forms in the years since, driven by a wide range of hacktivists around the world.
In this episode, Adam and Cristian trace the history of hacktivism to its early days, dive into high-profile examples and explain the practice of “faketivism” often used among nation-states. They share why hacktivism is top of mind during a year in which 55 countries have held, or will hold, elections. And they disclose the meaning behind JACKAL, the name CrowdStrike broadly uses to track activists who operate online. Tune in for an engaging explanation of a complex and oft overlooked topic.
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Organizations fear adversaries will attack. Threat hunters assume adversaries are already in the system — and their investigations seek unusual behavior that may indicate malicious activity is afoot.
Andrew Munchbach, CrowdStrike’s Global VP, Field Engineering, joins Adam and Cristian in this week’s episode to explore what threat hunting is, how it works, and what makes a good threat hunting program.
As CrowdStrike’s “Chief Reddit Officer”, Andrew also shares how he came to run CrowdStrike’s Reddit account and discusses the platform’s evolving role in communicating with the security community. Now with nearly 20,000 followers, CrowdStrike’s Reddit account is used to share information — from key data on active attacks to weekly threat hunting exercises — with CrowdStrike customers and the general public.
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Today’s conversation explores a common question around adversary activity: Why does attribution matter? When a cyberattack hits, why go to the trouble of learning who is behind it? Each attempt at an intrusion can reveal a lot about an adversary — who they are, what they’re doing and what their motivations may be.
This information can not only inform your response to an attack but how you strengthen your security architecture against future attacks. In this episode, Adam and Cristian discuss the importance of knowing who the adversary is and what they’re after.
They go back to the early days of adversary attribution, explain how adversaries are tracked as their activity changes over time and examine the value of this intelligence in helping organizations succeed in the face of evolving cyber threats.
The tool Adam mentions at the end of this episode can be found at https://adversary.crowdstrike.com/
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The National Security Agency’s Cybersecurity Collaboration Center (CCC) was created based on a growing need for the public and private sectors to work together and share insights to understand adversaries’ intentions, as well as the scope and scale of their activity. In this special episode of the Adversary Universe podcast, Adam and Cristian are joined by Morgan Adamski, Chief of the CCC and government security expert, onstage at CrowdStrike’s Gov Threat Summit in Washington, D.C.
“We both had different pieces of the puzzle,” said Adamski of the NSA and private sector organizations, which collect different types of data on adversaries and how they operate. In this conversation, she, Adam and Cristian discuss the CCC’s mission and its evolution, explain how it works with private sector partners, and go “around the world” to discuss their observations of modern nation-state adversary activity.
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CrowdStrike Chief Security Officer Shawn Henry joined CrowdStrike as employee number 19 after a 24-year career at the FBI, where he retired as the Bureau’s Executive Assistant Director.
Today, he joins Adam and Cristian for a wide-ranging conversation exploring his early days at CrowdStrike and transition to the private sector, his perspective on the 2016 DNC breach and the risks modern elections face. Adversaries have numerous opportunities to sway voters’ opinions — and now they have the technology to wield greater influence through misinformation and disinformation campaigns.“I think we've just scratched the surface with AI from a deepfake perspective,” Shawn says of how artificial intelligence may play a role in this activity. Tune in to hear his perspective, stories and guidance as we navigate this election year.
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The days of automated cyberattacks are dwindling: last year CrowdStrike saw a 60% jump in interactive intrusions, a type of attack in which a human is on the other side, working to break in and navigating their target environment as soon as they gain access. Most (75% of) attacks in 2023 didn’t involve malware at all — in nearly all cases, the adversary relied on identity-related techniques or exploited an unmanaged device. The threat landscape is constantly evolving as adversaries explore new tactics. And as the CrowdStrike 2024 Global Threat Report shows, a lot can change in a year. We’re seeing more adversaries, operating at greater speed and conducting more attacks than ever. In this episode, Adam and Cristian reflect on the early days of the Global Threat Report and examine the key findings of this year’s report. Highlights include:62 minutes: The average time an adversary needs to move from an initial access point to another host in the target environment232: The number of adversaries CrowdStrike tracks75%: The year-over-year increase in attacks targeting cloud environments76% increase in postings on data leak sites
Download your copy of the CrowdStrike 2024 Global Threat Report today at crowdstrike.com/global-threat-report
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CrowdStrike has long said, “You don’t have a malware problem — you have an adversary problem.” Much like we analyze the malware and tools used in cyberattacks, we must also learn about the people who orchestrate them.Adam and Cristian are joined by Cameron Malin, a behavioral profiler who specializes in understanding adversaries and the “why” behind their activity. Cameron built the FBI’s Cyber Behavioral Analysis Unit, which works to understand the motivations for cybercrime across different types of offenses and has focused for years on exploring why adversaries do what they do. In this episode, he discusses how the discipline of cyber behavioral profiling emerged, how experts approach interviewing and analyzing adversaries, and the “dark triad” and “dark tetrad” of personality traits commonly observed in cyberattacks.
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Though the inner workings of North Korea remain a mystery to much of the world, its global cyber activity has been tracked and analyzed for years. CrowdStrike’s Counter Adversary Operations team, which tracks five North Korean threat actors, has a unique perspective on the country’s evolution as a global cybersecurity threat and the many ways it has used cyber capabilities to achieve its goals.
In this episode, Adam and Cristian trace the history of North Korean cyber operations from its early days of destructive attacks to its focus on financial gain and espionage. Tune in for the answers to questions such as: How does North Korea discover its cyber talent? When did it pivot to cryptocurrency theft? And why does CrowdStrike track North Korean adversaries under the name CHOLLIMA? Come for the history, stay for Cristian’s singing skills in this conversation about the complex and changing world of North Korean cyber activity.
Check out some the CHOLLIMAs we track here:
https://www.crowdstrike.com/adversaries/silent-chollima/https://www.crowdstrike.com/adversaries/labyrinth-chollima/https://www.crowdstrike.com/adversaries/ricochet-chollima/https://www.crowdstrike.com/adversaries/velvet-chollima/https://www.crowdstrike.com/adversaries/stardust-chollima/ -
Cristian is joined by CrowdStrike Global CTO Elia Zaitsev to revisit the world of AI and large language models (LLMs), this time from the perspective of modern defenders.
While this space has seen explosive growth in the past year, most organizations are still working to determine how LLM technology fits into their cybersecurity strategies. In this episode, Cristian and Elia unpack the rapid evolution of AI models — a trend the two consider both exciting and frightening — and examine how LLMs are empowering defenders, their effect on automation in the enterprise and why humans will continue to be part of the picture even as AI-powered tools evolve.
Additional Resources:
Five Questions Security Teams Need to Ask to Use Generative AI ResponsiblyIntroducing Charlotte AI, CrowdStrike’s Generative AI Security Analyst: Ushering in the Future of AI-Powered Cybersecurity -
In mid-December 2023, an adversary CrowdStrike tracks as VOODOO BEAR targeted Ukrainian telecom provider Kyivstar, wreaking havoc and disrupting thousands of systems and assets.
The Russia-linked adversary has for years treated Ukraine as its “lab of offensive cyber operations”, testing attack techniques and demonstrating the destructive behavior it has become known for since it emerged in late 2010.
In this episode, Adam and Cristian dive into the details of the recent Kyivstar attack and how it aligns with VOODOO BEAR’s history of disruptive cyberattacks, both in Ukraine and around the world. They also pull back the curtain on the broad, complex history of Russian intrusion operations, shedding light on adversaries operating within the country and what has motivated them over the years.
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It has been a whirlwind year for the cybersecurity industry.
In this episode of the Adversary Universe podcast, we revisit clips from standout episodes of 2023. Tune in to catch pieces of our conversations on the evolution of cloud-focused cyberattacks, the rise of cyber activity from Iran and China, the process of discovering and mitigating vulnerabilities, the role of AI in the cyber threat landscape and more. For those who want to listen to the full episodes related to each of these clips, the episodes highlighted here are in the following order:
Adversaries and AI: Today’s Reality and Tomorrow’s Potential DataExtortion Dethrones Ransomware as the Threat to WatchCloud Is the New BattlegroundInvisible Threats: Discovering, Tracking and Mitigating VulnerabilitiesHave You Been Breached?Urgent Care Required: The State of Healthcare CybersecurityIran’s Rise from Nascent Threat Actor to Global AdversaryInside China’s Evolution as a Global Security Threat -
Organizations around the world must navigate a growing number of cyber incident reporting regulations mandated by government bodies.
In the U.S., these regulations come from agencies including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and others. This “alphabet soup” of regulations, as Cristian puts it, can be tough for businesses to understand and follow — especially as the threat landscape evolves and compliance requirements change.In this episode, Cristian is joined by Drew Bagley, VP and Counsel for Privacy and Policy at CrowdStrike, to dig into the details of why these myriad regulations have emerged and shed some light on common questions: When does a breach need to be reported, and why is the timeline a hot debate topic? What is a “material breach”? How are adversaries using these regulations to their advantage? And most importantly, how should businesses respond to all of this? Tune in for these answers — and more.
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