Ransomware affects 90 percent of companies in the past year
Despite increased spending on cybersecurity, a new report reveals that 90 percent of organizations were affected by ransomware in some way over the past 12 months, up from last year's 72.5 percent.
The study from SpyCloud shows that security efforts are being stepped up, the number of organizations that have implemented or plan to implement multi-factor authentication jumped 71 percent, from 56 percent the previous year to 96 percent. Monitoring for compromised employee credentials also increased from 44 percent to 73 percent.
How to avoid becoming a victim of malicious mobile apps
According to statistics, there are almost 6,6 billion smartphone users in the world -- nearly 83 percent of the total population of the Earth. The revolution in the world of mobile devices has led to the fact that the phone has lost its primary function of making calls and has become a tool for entertainment, study, business, and much more.
All these functions are possible due to mobile apps available in specialized stores such as the Apple Store or Google Play as well as unofficial stores.
Ransomware variants almost double in six months
In the past six months, FortiGuard Labs has seen a total of 10,666 ransomware variants, compared to just 5,400 in the previous half year.
In addition ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS), with its popularity on the dark web, continues to fuel an industry of criminals forcing organizations to consider ransomware settlements.
Cybercriminals take shortcuts to attack business PCs
Office macros have long been a favorite attack method for cybercriminals but now that Microsoft has started blocking them by default the bad guys have started to turn to other methods.
A new report from HP Wolf Security shows a shift to shortcut (LNK) files being used to deliver malware. Attackers often place shortcut files in ZIP email attachments, to help them evade email scanners.
Malware, botnets and exploits all soar in second quarter of 2022
In the second quarter of this year malware events increased over 25 percent, botnets doubled and exploit activity grew by nearly 150 percent, according to a new report.
The report from managed security services provider Nuspire, based on threat intelligence analyzed from Nuspire's trillion traffic logs from client sites and associated with thousands of devices from around the world, shows a substantial increase in botnet activity near the end of Q2, attributed to Torpig Mebroot botnet, a banking trojan designed to scrape and collect credit card and payment information from infected devices.
Ransomware contained in typosquat Python scripts
Researchers at Sonatype have identified multiple malicious Python packages that contain ransomware scripts.
The packages are named after a legitimate, widely known library called 'Requests', with names like 'requesys', 'requesrs' and 'requesr', in order to trick developers into installing the wrong version.
Linux malware reaches an all time high
In the past cybercriminals have tended to shun Linux in favor of more widely used operating systems, but new data indicates that this trend is starting to shift.
Statistics from the Atlas VPN team show new Linux malware reached record numbers in the first half of 2022, with nearly 1.7 million samples being discovered. This puts it in second spot for the number of new samples even though it has only one percent of the OS market (not counting Android).
Cybercriminals use messaging apps to steal data and spread malware
The shift to remote working has boosted the popularity of messaging apps, in particular those like Discord and Telegram which have underlying elements that allow users to create and share programs or other types of content that's used inside the platform.
But research from Intel471 shows cybercriminals are finding ways to use these platforms to host, distribute, and execute functions that ultimately allow them to steal credentials or other information from unsuspecting users.
Symbiote is an extremely dangerous, 'nearly-impossible-to-detect' Linux malware
Fans of Linux-based operating systems often cite greater security as the basis for the love of their chosen distro. Whether Linux distros have better security track records than the likes of Windows 11 and macOS because they are inherently more secure or because they are simply not targeted as much as very much open to debate, but Linux remains fallible, nonetheless.
Going some way to prove this is the Symbiote malware discovered by security researchers from BlackBerry and Intezer Labs. Symbiote is worrying for a number of reasons including the fact that it is described as "nearly-impossible-to-detect". It is also extremely dangerous piece of malware that "parasitically infects" systems, infecting all running processes and giving threat actors rootkit functionality, remote access and more.
Emotet rockets to the top of the malware charts in Q1
The latest Threat Insights Report from HP Wolf Security shows a 27-fold increase in detections resulting from Emotet malicious spam campaigns in the first quarter of 2022.
Based on findings from millions of endpoints running HP Wolf Security, this makes Emotet the most seen malware family in the period accounting for nine percent of all malware captured.
Old botnets make a comeback
Several older botnets have seen a resurgence in activity in the first quarter of 2022, including Mirai, STRRAT and Emotet, according to the latest threat report from Nuspire.
Mirai, known for co-opting IoT devices to launch DDoS attacks and first seen in 2016, showed a spike in activity in February of this year. This corresponded with the discovery of Spring4Shell, a zero-day attack on popular Java web application framework, Spring Core. The attack allows for unauthenticated remote code execution, and data show Mirai exploited this vulnerability to its botnet.
Staff at Fortune 1000 enterprises put their employers at risk
A new report has identified over 687 million exposed credentials and PII tied to Fortune 1000 employees, a 26 percent increase over last year's analysis.
The study from SpyCloud, based on its database of over 200 billion recaptured assets, also shows a 64 percent password reuse rate, widespread use of easy-to-guess passwords, and a spike in malware-infected devices.
New malware targets AWS Lambda cloud environment
The latest research from Cado Security reveals the first publicly known malware that is specifically designed to execute in the AWS Lambda serverless environment.
Named Denonia, the malware downloads and runs crypto mining software, and demonstrates how attackers are exploiting newer cloud computing use cases to take advantage of their ephemeral nature to evade detection.
Beware the three percent -- tiny proportion of users account for most malware incidents
A new report and infographic released today by Elevate Security shows that a mere three percent of a company's internal users are to blame for 92 percent of malware incidents, while just four percent are responsible for 80 percent of phishing incidents.
The research, carried out for Elevate by the Cyentia Institute, also shows 12 percent of users are responsible for 71 percent of browsing incidents with one percent triggering 200 events every week.
Attivo expands Active Directory protection
In 2021, there was a surge of attacks targeting Active Directory domain controllers in order to gain the privileges that are needed to install backdoors, change security policies, and distribute ransomware or malware.
In recent days there have also been attacks targeting organizations in the Ukraine using the HermeticWiper malware which is implanted via Active Directory to destroy data on the machine.
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