Expert instructors from the SANS Institute here yesterday detailed what they cite as the most dangerous forms of cyberattacks for 2023. Some of the key themes bubbling to the surface included the intersection of AI with attack patterns and the ways that attackers are taking advantage of highly flexible development environments. “This is my favorite…

How to Defend Against Malvertising Drive-By Attacks

Many longtime internet users will remember receiving pop-up ads warning that their computers were infected with a virus. In nearly all cases, the ad’s specific claims were bogus; the purpose was to scare users into paying for a questionable tech support service or to drive them to a site that would actually infect them with…

Steganography: A Safe Haven for Malware

Steganography, or the practice of concealing a file, message, image or video within another file, message, image or video, may be an older technique, but it continues to be an incredibly versatile and effective method for obscuring or hiding information in plain sight. In 2017, IBM X-Force has identified three different malware samples in network…

A look back at the Zyns iframer campaign

We often get asked about drive-by download attacks, how they work, and specifically about what sites people may have visited just prior to getting infected. This is an interesting aspect when tracking campaigns and what they lead to. Typically, one can divide the drive-by landscape into two categories: malvertising and compromised websites. The former involves legitimate websites…

Google Adwords Malvertising Campaign Targets Apple Macs

Apple Mac owners using the Google search engine may have been infected via malicious ads at the tip-top of their search results last week after attackers launched a malvertising campaign against Google Adwords. In an act of gumption or plain cheek, the attackers’ malicious lure of choice was a phony ad for one of Google’s…