Watering Hole Attacks: What They Are and How to Prevent Them

Hackers often lurk around the most popular websites, looking for ways to exploit users. These sites include ticket purchasing, travel, e-commerce, and banking. Watering hole attacks continue to become a genuine threat to any user who frequently visits popular sites.”Hackers use malware, browser exploits, and DNS poison to lure users into exposing their login credentials or clicking on a malicious link.”

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What is a Watering Hole Attack?

Watering hole attacks also target company employees and customers assessing their firms' external portals. Websites like Cisco.com, Amazon.com, Google.com, and Apple.com draw millions of users daily. Like many, these sites have, at one point or another, zero-day vulnerabilities, security vulnerabilities within the cloud infrastructure, or software updates that need to be updated. They also host connections via API to third-party traffic networks. Zero-day attacks often happen against published APIs, leading to a third-party cloud application.

Using various attack techniques, including social engineering, baiting attacks, email phishing, and application exploits, hackers lure victims to fake websites to change their passwords and disclose personal information, including their home addresses or phone numbers.

Many targeting "watering hole" websites commonly ask users for personal information. Travel sites, banking, and ticket purchasing collect some elements of personal information, including home address, email, and phone number, along with credit card information. This reality makes watering hole attacks so effective.

Users expect to disclose this information on these sites. Who they disclose to ultimately becomes the breach. Other indicators users should realize are if their browser runs low or if they notice their security settings within their preferred browser suddenly change. These are early indications of a hacker controlling their devices.

What is the Anatomy of a Watering Hole Attack?

Hackers use common attack threads when executing a Watering hole attack.

Intelligence Gathering

Hackers monitor the usage of various websites, looking at trends surrounding users' habits. They subscribe to newsletters, join social media groups, post messages on a chat board, and contact Internet influencers. Many Internet influencers get paid to redirect users to specific websites. Hackers follow these influencers to see if the latest website draws the most attention.

Analysis

Hackers will process the data collected during their intelligence gathering and look for ways to exploit the domain or possibly exposed APIs.

Moving Ahead with Exploiting the Website

Hackers begin by code-injecting their rogue lines into ActiveX, JavaScript, and images. These code injections place their malicious lines on the target website. As users click on links and images and navigate through the various pages, their devices become exploited.

Owning the Endpoint

Once the victims have downloaded the malware from the exploited webpage, the hacker controls the device and has the means to launch attacks against other neighboring devices.

What Are Some Examples of Watering Hole Attacks?

2020 - SolarWinds

“State-sponsored agents spied on SolarWinds, cybersecurity companies, the Treasury Department, Homeland Security, and more using watering hole phishing.”

2021 - Hong Kong

Google found many attacks on Hong Kongers who visited certain websites. The attacks installed bad software on Apple devices.

The Importance of Updating The Cybersecurity Architecture

Organizations recognizing increases in watering hole attacks need to assess their current cybersecurity infrastructure and posture. Legacy security gateway solutions with static website and category rules no longer prevent watering hole-type attacks. Along with security gateway solutions becoming out-of-date, legacy email security devices based on attack signature detection also continue to deliver little value.

Preventing watering hole attacks begins with guarding users against the elements within the attack chain. This involves leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) defense tools to help detect early elements of the watering hole attack, including  web-crafted content embedded within chat windows attempting to lure users into clicking on malicious links.

AL and ML defensive tools exist within cloud-based advanced email security solutions, next-generation firewalls (NGFW), intrusion prevention solutions, and extended detection and response (XDR) architectures.

These next-generation solutions capture elements from across the enterprise and use AI and ML to correlate the security telemetry data, looking for early signs of watering hole attacks. With this early detection, users become notified, or elements become blocked well before the attack occurs.

Additional Preventing Watering Hole Attack Measures

Watering hole attacks aim to deceive users by appearing as trusted sites or sources, making them hard to detect. If not caught in real-time, changes in network behavior and data loss could indicate an attack. It's crucial to stay vigilant against zero-day exploits commonly used in such phishing attempts.

These attacks can be a concern as they target trusted locations, but identifying and preventing this cyberattack can be manageable with the proper knowledge, tools, and vigilance. Following the recommended cybersecurity guidelines is essential for keeping safe.

Organizations have several strategies to help prevent waterhole attacks from affecting their users, and individuals also have several options available to help protect themselves from these attacks.

Security Awareness Program and Attack Simulation

Organizations adding watering hole attack prevention training to their current content inventory is a critical first step. Leveraging monthly, quarterly, and annual training cycles helps educate users on how to identify if they are part of a watering hole attack and what they can do to protect themselves.

Keep Operating Systems, Anti-virus, Anti-phishing, and Anti-malware updated

Corporate users, students, and home users can all benefit from keeping their systems updated with the latest security patches and feature enhancements. A big part of a watering hole attack is targeting vulnerable web browsers and unpatched operating systems. Keeping the devices updated helps reduce the attack surface.

Organizations Blocking Personal Devices on Corporate Networks

As organizations continue to implement the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) to work strategy, these decisions continue to expose the company to watering hole attacks. Allowing users to surf non-business-oriented websites during working hours is another risk. Users accessing popular websites from the corporate network for non-business matters place their organization at risk.

Ultimately, every member of the organization is critical in stopping watering hole attacks. Users deciding to only connect to personal websites from their home network or public Wi-Fi is essential to reducing the threat.

In conclusion, watering hole attacks are dangerous and tricky to prevent, but with security measures in place, they can be stopped.

Begin by educating employees on prevention practices, like avoiding personal computers for work-related tasks and sticking to secure internet connections. Regularly monitor data and connections to detect unusual activity and promptly respond to threats.

Corporate users, students, and home users concerned that their personal information, medical records, credit card information, or login credentials have become compromised by watering hole attacks should subscribe to cybersecurity scanning services offered by IDStrong.com.

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