This Week's Gurus

As the general public tried to get its head around the concept of cryptocurrency and blockchain at the back-end of 2017, infosecurity professionals were facing one of the universal truths of our industry: whenever there is an innovation in technology or society, those who want to exploit it for illicit gain are never far behind. In the case of cryptocurrency, its current high profile is legitimising a means of exchange that, until recently, was mostly...

Many adversaries to enterprise cybersecurity are using sophisticated encryption tactics to bypass defences and infiltrate networks. Enterprises are trying to fight back by employing HTTPS and using SSH, as well as other advanced protocols for data exfiltration. SSH, for example, is often used for remote management access because it performs well. But, when nearly 70 percent of all enterprise traffic is encrypted, understanding what’s hiding inside that traffic is imperative. So, what can you do...

It is virtually impossible to open a magazine or newspaper recently without reading something about GDPR but with little over a month until the introduction of the regulation on 25th May 2018, it seems few British people and businesses are prepared for its implications. Despite the new regulations being announced two years ago, there still appears to be a great deal of mystery surrounding GDPR for most British people. The noise surrounding the regulation is...

Cryptocurrency seems to bring out the best effort from cyber criminals. From nation states to traditional attackers, the rise in crypto-related attacks is staggering. The motivation is obvious: it’s financially driven. Despite the recent drop, cryptocurrency values have skyrocketed over the past couple of years incentivising attackers to create malicious code and sophisticated hacking tools to harvest cryptocurrency coins. One quick way to a massive payday is achieved by compromising a digital wallet and stealing...

Adam Vincent, CEO, ThreatConnect We've all heard the phishing attack stories that start with someone receiving an email that requests an urgent invoice review or password change and ends with a data breach where personal information is compromised, and money is lost. Although many of us may roll our eyes at the possibility of falling for such an obvious scam, we must acknowledge that if those tricks didn't work, malicious actors wouldn't keep trying. Sometimes,...

While the mobile industry was busy celebrating telecom innovation at MWC18, another kind of innovation was making headlines: a record 1.35 Tbps DDoS attack. It caused some disruption and highlighted the potential for much worse. In this instance, the attack was detected and mitigated relatively quickly—but it required manual intervention and rerouting of traffic. Fortunately, service was only disrupted for a few minutes, but it could have been much worse, and other targets might not...

Cryptocurrency is not a new presence in the world of cyber security. For years cryptocurrencies have been the ransom of choice for hackers looking to make money from cyber attacks. However, over the last six months, we have seen a new strategy from hackers: crypto mining malware. This new motive for hackers has risen in prominence significantly with a 27% increase in use in the first quarter of 2018 and it is on the fast-track...

Malicious VBScript has long been a fixture of spam and phishing campaigns, but until recently its functionality has been limited to downloading malware from an attacker-controlled server and executing it on a compromised computer.   Researchers at Flashpoint have seen and analysed a unique departure from this norm in ARS VBS Loader, a spin-off of a popular downloader called SafeLoader VBS that was sold and eventually leaked in 2015 on Russian crimeware forums.   ARS...

By Matthias Maier, Security Evangelist, Splunk It’s usually wrong to judge people by their names, but an organisation that calls itself “Snake” probably isn’t up to much good. Citing unidentified security sources, DPA reported that Snake is the group suspected of carrying out a sophisticated and successful attack on the government’s computer network. As always, it’s difficult to be completely certain who exactly is behind a well-executed cyberattack, but this is believed to be connected with Russian...

Ever wondered what the role of a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) encompasses? To put it simply, they are the guardians and protectors of everything information security related to a business. However, the tasks are far from simple as their teams work around the clock to respond to incidences that directly affect the safety of the company and its data. As the issues in cyber have evolved, so too has the role of the CISO,...