When businesses begin to take steps to improve network security, the mailroom is likely to be one of the last areas they look at. However, a new type of attack uncovered earlier this year may force businesses to reconsider the shipments they allow in the office.
What Is Warshipping?
Warshipping is the next step in the evolution of hacking techniques known as wardriving and wardialing. All of these methods enable attackers to remotely penetrate a network.
In the early days of the internet, attackers utilized wardialing to get network access by dialing a series of numbers until they found a vulnerable system that they could easily attack.
Wardriving has recently taken the place of wardialing. In this case, the perpetrators drive around the target place with their equipment in order to access the corporate network.
However, the wardialing and wardriving systems have limits. These constraints include the time required to undertake wardialing and the suspicions that arise when a car is seen circling the block hundreds of times.
Warshipping overcomes these constraints in a variety of methods, including the use of disposable, low-power equipment to undertake close-proximity attacks remotely. Furthermore, warshipping significantly improves target accuracy.
An attacker may manage the device from anywhere in the world from the comfort of their own home. To get access to a victim’s network, a hostile actor only needs to conceal a small device in a package and ship it to them.
How Warshipping Works?
Warshipping employs custom-built devices made of inexpensive, readily available components. The finished device can be as small as your palm and, once configured, can be readily concealed and transported to a target.
While an attacker will require some technical expertise to assemble the required components, it’s easy to imagine this being a commonly available product in the near future.
Once the package is dispatched, the mobile internet chip sends the attacker its location on a regular basis. This enables the attacker to detect when the device arrives and begin complete deployment.
At this point, the device is normally set up to mimic the current Wi-Fi network, gathering user login credentials. Alternatively, the gadget will intercept packets and reverse engineer them in order to gain network access.
Once an attacker has gained access to the network, he or she can exploit weaknesses to obtain more access. This enables more attacks to be launched directly into the network, eventually granting permanent access.
Warshipping Prevention
Cybersecurity and physical security can appear to be distinct concepts. However, for the best results, firms should always consider the two to be interrelated. Especially as automated technologies and the internet of things proliferate.
By physically intruding into the network, warshipping circumvents practically all popular perimeter defenses. With no established protections in place, the threat may appear unavoidable, but with the right plan, it can be mitigated.
Of course, you can’t simply apply a filter to your mailroom the same way you would to your inbox. Your priority should be to secure wireless access points and manage incoming supplies efficiently.
Here are some measures you can take to prevent warshipping.
Improve Package Management
You wouldn’t let unwanted guests inside your business, so you should approach any package with the same level of caution. Keep packages out of secure areas like server rooms and dispose of them as quickly as possible.
Employees should not be allowed to have personal packages delivered to the office. Consider implementing a scanning process for all inbound packages.
Improve WiFi Security
If your company uses unprotected WiFi, you may as well be putting out a welcome mat for cyber attackers. Secure your WiFi with a strong password and a VPN. Even WPA2 protection will not fully prevent this exploit, although it will make an attacker work much harder to break in.
Use MFA
You should already be utilizing multi-factor authentication because it is a security standard and is required to run a secure IT system. Having a second factor ensures that even if the attacker obtains the password to get login data, they will still be locked out without the second factor.
Don’t Accept or Open Unexpected Packages
When it comes to email, it is usual practice never to open any unwanted attachments. Similarly, if an unknown box arrives in your mailroom, rely on your intuition and refuse to open it. If the sender is unfamiliar, as with a phishing email, do not trust it.
Scan for New Wi-Fi Points
Monitoring your network for new and strange devices on a regular basis allows you to spot new access points. However, keep in mind that technical measures alone are unlikely to totally eliminate this risk.
Educate Employees
Educating employees about the risks of connecting to new or similar networks can help prevent warshipping. Ensure that your personnel is taught to recognize all typical security threats.
Avoid USB Drives
Never insert an unknown USB flash drive into a device. Even better, turn off any superfluous USB ports on corporate equipment. Your administrator can make this hardware control a business policy.
Hire Professionals
Hire a cybersecurity firm to upgrade all of your cybersecurity practices and policies. This service may have some significant upfront charges, but it will undoubtedly pay off in the long run.
What Can We Learn from Warshipping?
Warshipping can teach us a lot about current cybercrime trends. It demonstrates that cybercriminals are outside-the-box thinkers when it comes to finding new attack channels.
Sending a box containing a hacking device to a firm in order to breach into their network sounds like something out of a science fiction film. However, the fact that we are now dealing with this demonstrates the creativity of cybercriminals.
Businesses must devote resources to anticipating what the future holds for cyber-security if they are to stay up with new attack vectors.
There are tools available to combat every existing security threat. The hazards can be greatly reduced in an environment that adheres to all security best practices. Most breaches are avoidable if the company follows security protocols.
Nowadays, the majority of cyber-attacks require some type of social engineering instead of just breaking into systems using only computer skills. With attacks prepared to shift into the physical arena, many digital defenses will become ineffective, and the human element will be more susceptible than ever.
Final Words
So far, we have explored what a warshipping attack is and how it works. After that, we covered eight measures you can take to prevent it from affecting your business. Finally, we explained what companies could learn from recent advancements in cybercrime.
Now that you know more about warshipping, we highly recommend taking immediate action to protect your business. To start off, just follow the preventive measures we outlined in this article.
