Netskope
Threat Labs Report:
Middle East 2024

The Netskope Threat Labs Report highlights a different segment every month and aims to provide strategic, actionable intelligence on active threats against users in each segment. This month, we look at users working in the Middle East.

Middle East
October 2024

In This Report Cloud App Adoption Cloud Apps Abused for Malware Delivery Top Malware Families Recommendations Netskope Threat Labs About This Report

5 min read

In This Report

Cloud App Adoption: Enterprise users in the Middle East regularly interact with an average of 20 cloud apps each month. While the most popular apps in the Middle East generally mirror global trends, the messaging app WhatsApp is more popular in the Middle East.

Cloud App Abuse: In the Middle East, the top three most popular apps abused to deliver malware were OneDrive, GitHub, and SharePoint.

Malware & Ransomware: Among the top malware families identified were the Guloader Downloader and AgentTesla Infostealer.

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Cloud App Adoption

Cloud apps are ubiquitous in the enterprise, with the average user in the Middle East interacting with 20 different cloud apps every month. The most popular apps in the Middle east generally mirror global trends, featuring apps from Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. The sole stand-out in this list is the messaging app WhatsApp, whose popularity in the Middle East indicates that users tend to prefer it for business or personal communications more than other messaging apps in the region.

With so many cloud apps in use, especially the combinations of enterprise and personal apps, it underscores the importance of organizations in the Middle East having policies to ensure the safe handling of sensitive data.

Cloud Apps Abused for Malware Delivery

Because adversaries deliver malware through many different channels, organizations in the Middle East must ensure that they have security controls to block malware downloads over the most popular apps. Approximately half of all global HTTP/HTTPS malware downloads originate from popular cloud apps, with the other half originating from different locations on the web. This section highlights the apps with the most malware downloads that were blocked by Netskope over the past year.

The most popular apps around the world are also among the top apps in terms of the number of malware downloads, reflecting adversary tactics (adversaries tend to abuse top apps because of their popularity), user behavior (users interact with popular apps more frequently), and organizational policy (organizations tend to allow popular apps).

The top apps for malware downloads in the Middle East mirror global trends and are dominated by apps commonly used in the enterprise. For example, OneDrive, GitHub, and SharePoint are also the top three apps in most other geographic regions.

Top Malware Families

This list contains the top five malware and ransomware families detected by Netskope targeting users in the Middle East over the last 12 months:

Backdoor.Zusy (a.k.a. TinyBanker) is a banking Trojan based on the source code of Zeus, aiming to steal personal information via code injection into websites.
Downloader.BanLoad is a Java-based downloader widely used to deliver a variety of malware payloads, especially banking Trojans.
Downloader.Guloader is a small downloader known for delivering RAT and infostealers, such as AgentTesla, Formbook, and Remcos.
Infostealer.AgentTesla is a .NET-based RAT with many capabilities, such as stealing browsers’ passwords, capturing keystrokes, clipboard, etc.
Phishing.PhishingX is a malicious PDF file used as part of a phishing campaign to redirect victims to a phishing page.

Recommendations

This report highlights increasing cloud adoption, including increased data uploaded to, and downloaded from, various cloud apps. It also highlights an increasing trend of attackers abusing various cloud apps, especially popular enterprise apps, to deliver malware (mostly Trojans) to their victims. Netskope Threat Labs recommends organizations in the Middle East review their security posture to ensure that they are adequately protected against these trends:

Inspect all HTTP and HTTPS downloads, including all web and cloud traffic, to prevent malware from infiltrating your network. Netskope customers can configure their Netskope NG-SWG with a Threat Protection policy that applies to downloads from all categories and applies to all file types.
Ensure that high-risk file types like executables and archives are thoroughly inspected using a combination of static and dynamic analysis before being downloaded. Netskope Advanced Threat Protection customers can use a Patient Zero Prevention Policy to hold downloads until they have been fully inspected.
Configure policies to block downloads from apps and instances that are not used in your organization to reduce your risk surface to only those apps and instances that are necessary for the business.
Configure policies to block uploads to apps and instances that are not used in your organization to reduce the risk of accidental or deliberate data exposure from insiders or abuse by attackers.
Use an Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) that can identify and block malicious traffic patterns, such as command and control traffic associated with popular malware. Blocking this type of communication can prevent further damage by limiting the attacker’s ability to perform additional actions.
Use Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) technology to provide additional protection when there is a need to visit websites that fall into categories that can present higher risk, like newly observed and newly registered domains.

Netskope Threat Labs

Staffed by the industry’s foremost cloud threat and malware researchers, Netskope Threat Labs discovers, analyzes, and designs defenses against the latest cloud threats affecting enterprises. Our researchers are regular presenters and volunteers at top security conferences, including DefCon, BlackHat, and RSA.

About This Report

Netskope provides threat protection to millions of users worldwide. Information presented in this report is based on anonymized usage data collected by the Netskope One platform relating to a subset of Netskope customers with prior authorization.

This report contains information about detections raised by Netskope’s Next Generation Secure Web Gateway (SWG), not considering the significance of the impact of each individual threat. Stats in this report are based on the period starting May 1, 2023 through April 30, 2024. Stats are a reflection of attacker tactics, user behavior, and organization policy.

Threat Labs Reports

In the monthly Netskope Threat Labs Report, you will find the top 5 malicious domains, malware, and apps that the Netskope Security Cloud platform blocked plus recent publications and a threat roundup.

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