Cybercrime reached all new heights in 2017 according to Malwarebytes Cybercrime Tactics and Techniques: 2017 State of Malware report .* Ransomware attacks alone in 2017 represented an increase of 10 times the rate in 2016 against businesses. Michael Patterson, CEO at Plixer commented below. Michael Patterson, CEO at Plixer: “Cybercrime has evolved to focus heavily on revenue generation for bad actors. The explosive growth in ransomware and cryptocurrency mining attacks seen over 2017 was due to their effectiveness in generating revenue. Extortion in the form of encrypting user’s data, and the process of stealing CPU cycles to mine Bitcoin, have…
ISBuzz Team
New research findings from Experian’s Global Fraud and Identity Report (link to press release) tracks the global growth in fraud. Among the report’s key findings: 84 percent of businesses surveyed believe they could reduce fraud risk if they were certain about their customers’ identity; 72 percent of businesses cite fraud as a growing concern; one in four consumers has abandoned a transaction because too much data was required to set up a new account; 35 percent of consumers would increase online transactions if they encountered fewer security hurdles; just 40 percent of businesses surveyed reported being “very confident” in their fraud detection abilities; and…
Whether it’s being told that a grade one cyber-attack on the UK is inevitable, a call for a common cyber language, or the PMs speech about the ethics of AI at Davos yesterday – it’s been a busy week in terms of cyber security news. Emily Orton, Co-Founder and CMO at Darktrace commented below. Emily Orton, Co-Founder and CMO at Darktrace: In response to Theresa May’s speech on AI “It was encouraging to hear Theresa May talking about establishing the UK as a world leader in artificial intelligence at Davos yesterday, but we must not underestimate how advanced the UK already is in this…
The Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson, has warned Russia could cause “thousands and thousands and thousands” of deaths in an attack on Britain’s energy supply. He said Moscow had been looking at UK critical infrastructure such as power stations and links transferring electricity across borders. Ian Ashworth, Security Consultant at Synopsys commented below. Ian Ashworth, Security Consultant at Synopsys: “In today’s parlance, “cyber warfare” is not an unheard of term, and any nation will take this as seriously as a threat of physical attack or war. It is not something you can necessarily see or touch if its embedded within computers or networks, but the…
Newest paper finds that despite awareness of threat posed by quantum computing, little is being done to prepare The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), the world’s leading organization dedicated to defining and raising awareness of best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment, today released the Quantum-Safe Security Awareness Survey Report. Conducted by CSA’s Quantum Safe Security Working Group (QSS WG) the survey looks to assess the overall awareness and understanding of quantum security risk and is part of the group’s larger effort to develop a future framework for addressing quantum computing threats. “Within the next 10 to 15 years we can…
2017 was a year of cyber threats, old and new. The continual evolution of these threats means that now, more than ever, businesses must ensure their data is secure. Data Protection Day is on 28th January and aims to educate and bring awareness to the importance of cyber security and data protection. Here are some IT experts’ views on the topic. Tom Harwood, CPO and Co-Founder at Aeriandi: “Having good data protection doesn’t just mean deploying the most stringent technologies. Companies also need to ensure customer data is protected from the insider threat. For example, many businesses either operate or…
Ilia Kolochenko, CEO at High-Tech Bridge: Hackers hit over 15 million users with new XMRig Monero cryptocurrency mining campaign “With the steady growth and popularity of digital currencies, we should expect continuous and persistent growth of attacks targeting the wallets and/or installing malware to mine the coins. Unlike credit cards, PayPal or bank accounts, digital currencies are a unique opportunity for cybercriminals to use stolen [digital] money without risks of being halted or having their money frozen. Law enforcement and governments have virtually no control over the digital coins and cannot intervene in the game at the moment. Therefore, using all…
Last year saw some of the worst data breaches. 14 million Verizon subscribers who contacted its customer services and had their records exposed; the “best cyber security consultant in the world”, Deloitte; Forever 21’s compromised PoS devices; and lest we forget the infamous Equifax. Is there really any hope for 2018? This Sunday’s Data Protection Day is very timely indeed. It comes just four months before GDPR comes into effect. GDPR will help organisations realise the gravity of data breaches and to respect their customers’ data. However, time is ticking. According to network security company EfficientIP, it typically takes 99 days before…
It was reported yesterday that dark web marketplaces have been hosting the personal information of babies in order to be used for fraudulent purposes. Babies’ social security numbers, personal data and mothers’ maiden names can be used by cybercriminals in order to gain access to a clean credit score, which could potentially be utilized for years unnoticed. Tim Helming, Director of Product Management at DomainTools commented below. Tim Helming, Director of Product Management at DomainTools: “This kind of activity on the dark web is an indication of how sophisticated and industrialized the burgeoning fraud industry facilitated by the dark web has become. While governments have…
Researchers have discovered an emerging botnet that uses advanced communication techniques to exploit victims and build its infrastructure. The bot, dubbed ‘Hide ‘N Seek’, or ‘HNS’, was intercepted by Bitdefender’s IoT honeypot system following a credentials dictionary attack on the Telnet service. HNS is the first peer-to-peer botnet aimed at IoT devices that rolled its own communications protocol. The other known P2P botnet, dubbed Hajime, uses BitTorrent for peer-to-peer communications HNS also grows at an alarming pace – from 12 original reports on Jan 10th to 2700 infected devices by the end of the business day 23/01/18. Nadav Avital, Security Researcher at Imperva commented below.…