Project Aspis will help hosting providers
remove persistent criminal activity from their networks before it spreads to
end users
Following its disruption of a major distributor of Angler ransomware,
Cisco is offering up free security consulting for hosting providers that’s
aimed at wiping out persistent attacks that abuse providers’ services and
threaten the rest of the Internet.
Cisco’s Talos security
intelligence and research group has launched Project Aspis, which hosting
providers can sign up for to work with Talos and in return receive help
including systems forensics, reverse engineering, threat intelligence sharing
and, in the right circumstances, dedicated research engineers to work with, according to Cisco’s security blog.
“This collaboration
will help the hosting provider maintain a safe and cost-effective environment
and assist Talos in its mission of pissing off the bad guys,” the Talos team
says in the blog.
The project stems from
Cisco’s work with hosting provider Limestone Networks to glean insight into how
criminals ran Angler ransomware operations. Talos researchers traced
significant Angler activity to Limestone, then enlisted that company’s
assistance to gather data on how the Angler group did business and shut down
its activity at Limestone.
The effort saved
Limestone money because the Angler group bought servers from Limestone using
stolen credit cards. When the credit card companies found out, Limestone was
hit with charge-backs amounting to $10,000 per month.
Project Aspis offers
similar assistance to other providers willing to sign up, which they can do via
email at project-aspis@external.cisco.com. Cisco wants
the name and contact information for the providers’ point person, a description
of the problem they want help with, forensic details they can share and
indicators of compromise they are leveraging.
Aspis is the name for
a heavy wooden shield used in Ancient Greece.
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