Tech support scam page triggers denial-of-service attack on Macs
Tech support scammers have been using various themes to push fake alerts to scare users into calling for assistance. These fall into the ‘browlock’ category if they are via the browser and into the screen lockers category if they are actual malware that runs on the system. Recently, there has been a trend for scammers to cause…
The year ransomware became one of the top threats to enterprises
On Feb. 5, employees at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, started having network access problems that prevented electronic communications. Over the next few days, they learned that the hospital was the victim of a ransomware attack that encrypted files on multiple computers. After several days during which staff had to resort to pen…
Highly lucrative Ransomware as a Service attacks poised to accelerate in 2017
Ransomware can be likened to global warming. It’s been around for years, but it’s now becoming an epidemic which needs serious attention. According to a recent survey conducted by Osterman Research, nearly 50% of U.S. companies experienced a “ransomware incident” over the last year. Without taking into account the number of unreported ransomware incidents, the…
BrandPost: New POS Malware Attacks Are Becoming More Aggressive
Professionally written-malware is rarely unsubtle. Long, slow and stealthy attacks are generally the rule—but a rogue malware author has decided to break that rule by going fast and loud. What’s more, this approach is actually finding a great deal of success, which should have retailers worried in the lead up to the holiday season. How…
DDoS attacks via WordPress now come with encryption
Kaspersky Lab experts have noted an emerging trend – a growth in the number of attacks using encryption. Such attacks are highly effective due to the difficulty in identifying them amongst the overall flow of clean requests. Recently, the company encountered yet more evidence of this trend – an attack exploiting vulnerabilities in WordPress via…
BrandPost: Emerging cybersecurity vulnerabilities
One unfortunate aspect of human psychology involves how people tend to deal with potential threats. As long as the threats are more abstract than actual, all too often we reason that there’s no rush to build defenses against them. Only after a threat materializes and does actual harm do we start to really take it…
Akamai: Look for IoT devices to attack during Thanksgiving, Christmas
The annual holiday uptick in denial of service attacks will likely continue this year only this time with a new devastating weapon: Internet of Things (IoT) devices, according to Akamai. In its quarterly State of the Internet/Security Report, the company says certain types of DDoS attacks are on the rise compared to the third quarter…
Phishing Scams as a Service? Thieves Make It Easier To Steal Passwords
It used to be that hacking required technical prowess to create malware. Now it’s becoming possible for non-technical people with criminal intent to create a malware attack, and these service providers are making it easy. These types of attacks are being offered as malware as a service. It allows malware developers to sell their malicious…
Overconfidence is putting organizations at higher risk for attacks
In the past twelve months, roughly one in three targeted attacks resulted in an actual security breach, which equates to two to three effective attacks per month for the average company, according to Accenture. Still, a majority of security executives (75 percent) surveyed are confident in their ability to protect their enterprises from cyberattacks. Accenture…
Hacking forum cuts section allegedly linked to DDoS attacks
An online hackers’ forum has deleted a section that allegedly offered paid distributed denial-of-service attacks, following last Friday’s massive internet disruption. HackForums.net will be shutting down the “Server Stress Testing” section, the site’s admin Jesse “Omniscient” LaBrocca said in a Friday posting. “I do need to make sure that we continue to exist and given…