Topic: Understanding the Threat

From the Summer 2024 Issue

Increasingly, Companies Aren’t Allowed to Pay Ransoms, and This is a Good Thing

Author(s):

Alex Haynes, CISO , IBS Software

Ransom Payments

In the evolving landscape of cyber threats, the dilemma of whether or not to pay ransomware actors remains a contentious issue. As cybercriminals continue to leverage ransomware attacks to extort money from organizations, the responses from victims, cyber insurance companies, and government cyber emergency response teams (CERTs) have progressively shifted away from acquiescence to a … Read more

From the Spring 2023 Issue

Three Ways to Protect Your Business Against Wiper Malware: The Growing Cyber Threat

Author(s):

Ahsan Siddiqui, Director, Product Management, Arcserve

A fast-growing and alarming threat to corporate data is wiper malware. Unlike ransomware, which can encrypt and disable your files until you pay a ransom, wiper malware deletes company data permanently to cause as much destruction as possible. Once it infects your system, it will make your data completely unrecoverable. This type of malware is … Read more

From the Winter 2023 Issue

Fighting Against Cybercriminals: Using The FBI’s Out-of-the-Box Approach

Author(s):

Anh Tran, Senior Data Scientist, DevoTeam

Fighting Against Cybercriminals

It is no exaggeration that cybercrime, if not addressed effectively, could change the shape of the economy. Its costs are predicted to reach $10.5 trillion USD annually by 2025, up from $3 trillion USD in 2015, according to Cybersecurity Ventures [1]. If it were measured as a country, cybercrime would be the world’s third-largest economy … Read more

From the Winter 2023 Issue

Dynamic Malware Including Trends from 2022

Author(s):

Meghan Jacquot, Security Engineer, Inspectiv

Dynamic Malware

As cybersecurity professionals, defenders and red teamers, we are well aware of the pervasiveness of malware. Malicious software, written in a variety of programming languages and distributed in many ways, continues to be a main lever in cyber-attacks.  Just as we read articles, attend conferences, and continue our learning, so do threat actors. It is … Read more

From the Summer 2022 Issue

Enterprise IoT is Currently Extremely Inadequate – But it Doesn’t Have To Be

Author(s):

Brian Contos, Chief Security Officer, Phosphorus Cybersecurity

The state of Internet of Things (IoT) security across the enterprise and government agencies is shockingly bad. IoT devices are highly vulnerable; therefore, making organizations vulnerable. In many ways enterprise IoT security today is like IT security in the early 1990’s with poor asset inventories, limited patching, and weak credentials, which is to say, enterprise … Read more

From the Fall 2020 Issue

Guidelines for Identifying Social Engineering Techniques Associated With COVID-19

Author(s):

Jeanna Bray, Freelance Training Consultant, Author

social-engineering-guidelines

Cybercriminals do not empathize with global health emergencies. They take advantage of any situation they can profit from. Such is the case with the current COVID-19 outbreak. This is aggravated by the stress that organizations in the Healthcare and Logistics sectors are under. The overload they experience makes them a much more vulnerable target, and … Read more

Logic Bombs: How to Prevent Them

Author(s):

Caleb Townsend, Staff Writer, United States Cybersecurity Magazine

Logic Bomb concept, illustrating logic bombs, tick tock, white time bomb

A logic bomb is a piece of malicious code that hackers insert into a software or operating system. This code lies dormant until a specific condition occurs. These conditions could be a pre-determined time (often referred to also as a time bomb) or a specific command that the user types in. Once the conditions occur, … Read more

Cybercriminals in Movies and TV Shows

Author(s):

Frankie Wallace, ,

cybercriminals, hacker dude in a movie or tv show cybercriminals

Hollywood has long held a certain image of cybercriminals. What they look like, how they commit their crimes, and their motivations. However, like many things in Hollywood, the portrayal of hackers and cybercrime in general often misses the mark. A lone-wolf hacker takes on a corrupt corporation. They simultaneously drain their enemies bank accounts while … Read more