Malware, Phishing and Ransomware

KnowBe4 has announced the results of its 2022 and Q4 2022 top-clicked phishing report. The results include the top email subjects clicked in phishing tests, top attack vector types, holiday phishing email subjects and more insightful information that reveal the most popular phishing email tactics. Phishing emails continue to be one of the most common and effective methods to maliciously impact a variety of organisations around the world – everyone is a potential victim. Cybercriminals...

KnowBe4 has announced that its new SecurityCoach product now integrates with Netskope. The two security organisations have collaborated together to help reduce risky behaviour with product integration to support real-time security coaching of users. SecurityCoach helps IT/security professionals to develop a strong security culture by enabling real-time security coaching of their users in response to risky security behaviour. Leveraging an organisation’s existing security stack, security teams and administrators can configure their real-time coaching campaigns to...

Today, Comparitech released the results of its most recent study, looking at the true cost of ransomware on healthcare organisations around the world. It found that, since 2018, there have been 500 publicly-confirmed ransomware attacks; and this excludes those that may have not been disclosed at all. In total, these have crippled nearly 13,000 separate facilities and have impacted almost 49 million patient records. As such, Comparitech was able to estimate that these attacks exceed...

International Cyber Expo today announced the speaker line-up for its annual Global Cyber Summit sponsored this year by Snyk, and hosted at Olympia London on the 27th and 28th of September 2022. Introduced by former CEO of NCSC, Professor Ciaran Martin CB, the Summit endeavours to be an educational platform for IT professionals, C-Level executives and board members on the issues impacting the industry; both current and emerging.   In a combination of roundtable discussions, fireside...

The pandemic tested the business resilience of every organisation. Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) had to maximise their digital footprint to keep operational, service their customers and survive. Just as companies are starting to return to some semblance of new normal, another threat is on the horizon. The pandemic has fuelled an increase in cybercrime that shows no signs of abating. Small and medium sized enterprises caught in the cross hairs The speed with...

On 16 April 2022, the ContiNews ransomware PR site posted the gang's newest victim: the Ministry of Finance of Costa Rica. Three days later, the post was updated with a sample of the stolen data, and a threat to continue attacks against Costa Rican agencies unless the government paid a requested ransom of $10 million. On April 21, the post was updated to include the URLs of two more compromised government departments - the Ministry...

DomainTools has announced the availability of DomainTools Iris Detect, an innovative new product designed to discover and monitor domain names spoofing brands, trademarks, or other domains with unprecedented speed, accuracy, and comprehensiveness. Building on the world’s largest databases of domain registration and Domain Name System (DNS) data developed by DomainTools and Farsight Security, the discovery engine underpinning Iris Detect identifies some 350,000 new domains every day—far more than any other technology available. In fact, in a 12-hour period earlier...

The nefarious minds behind a dangerous malware called BotenaGo have uploaded the source code to GitHub on October 16th 2021, according to new research by AT&T Alien Labs. This could mean hackers around the world, who now have access to this source code, will have the ability to create their own versions of the malware and adapt it to their own attack objectives. There is concern BotenaGo malware 'variants' will begin to surface quickly and...

Being struck by ransomware has been compared to having a heart attack. It’s something that stalks everyone in theory and yet when it happens the shock of the experience is always a surprise. For the first seconds, minutes - and sometimes hours - organisations are on their own. It’s a moment of unexpected trauma which many organisations find paralysing, something attackers plan for. This makes the attack’s effects even worse. Eventually a growing number call...

By the time you have finished reading this sentence, an organisation somewhere in the world will have fallen victim to a ransomware attack and had at least some of its corporate data encrypted. Globally, on average, the criminals behind ransomware attacks hit a new organisation every 10 seconds, but less than five years ago, it was every 40. Recently, Colonial Pipeline, a major US fuel company made headlines after falling victim to such an attack...