Phishing ranks low on the list of cyberattacks in terms of technological sophistication. Even more sophisticated phishing variants like spear phishing (focused and often personalized phishing attacks) and whaling (phishing attacks focused on high-profile or high-dollar targets) are focused more on social engineering than on technology. Yet phishing remains one of the most effective types…

Report: The cybersecurity impact of COVID-19

Cybersecurity company Cynet has released a report detailing changes in cyberattacks they’ve observed across North America and Europe since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report shares the cyberattack volume change observed across industry sectors, the increased use of spear phishing as an initial attack vector, and the approaches being used to distribute malware…

WordPress ‘File Manager’ Plugin Patches Critical Zero-Day Exploited in Attacks

Designed to provide WordPress site admins with copy/paste, edit, delete, download/upload, and archive functionality for both files and folders, File Manager has over 700,000 active installs. Assessed with a CVSS score of 10, the recently identified critical security flaw could have allowed an attacker to upload files and execute code remotely on an affected site,…

In the last few years, we’ve seen ample evidence of how cyberattacks on critical infrastructure can be leveraged by nation-states and other powerful adversaries as weapons in geopolitical conflicts. The attacks on the Ukraine power grid and several other incidents demonstrated a show of power and how a country’s infrastructure can be disrupted. The indiscriminate…

IoT Attacks Up Significantly in First Half of 2019

Malicious actors aren’t tiring of the Internet of Things (IoT), with cyberattacks on network-connected smart devices and process controllers rapidly increasing in number. One network of honeypots, put in place by Kaspersky, saw 105 million attacks on IoT devices coming from 276,000 unique IP addresses in the first six months of 2019, compared with just…

It’s Not Healthy to Confuse Compliance with Security

Cyberattackers’ interest in healthcare organizations continues to increase. In 2018, there were 284 breaches reported on the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) breach portal and 27 so far in 2019. According to InfoSec Institute, “nearly 95 percent of all medical and health care institutions have been victims of some form of cyberattack.”…

Cyber-Attacks: How to Stop a Multibillion-Dollar Problem

Where there’s money, there has always been crime. Traditional bank robbery and physical assaults on ATMs are still a challenge, and now a new breed of cyber-enabled theft—using ATMs as the endpoint for cash-outs— has become a multibillion-dollar problem. One recent raid saw $13.5m stolen from India’s Cosmos Bank. Although the FBI issued a warning…

Damaging cyberattacks surge ahead of 2018 U.S. midterm elections

Carbon Black released its Quarterly Incident Response Threat Report (QIRTR) aggregating key findings from IR partner investigations during the last 90 days. Key findings Destructive cyberattacks are on the rise. IR firms said that victims experienced destructive attacks 32% of the time Of 113 investigations Carbon Black partners conducted in the third quarter, 41 percent…