CyberSecure Specialist

The number of ransomware attacks observed over the previous three months declined compared to the previous quarter, according to reports from two threat intelligence companies. However, the gap left by the Conti gang has been filled by other players, with LockBit cementing itself in the top position and likely to serve as a future source for ransomware spin-offs. From July to September, security firm Intel 471 counted 455 attacks from 27 ransomware variants, with LockBit…

As phishing attacks increase, preventing them from doing damage is proving costly for organizations. Phishing-related activities are consuming a third of the total time available to IT and security teams and costing organizations anywhere between $2.84 and $85.33 per phishing email, according to a new report by Osterman Research. The report does not calculate the cost of damage caused by phishing, rather the productivity loss of IT and security teams. On average, organizations spend 16-30…

Losses to imposter scams based on synthetic identities—identities that only exist as figments in a credit reporting bureau’s records—will rise from a reported $1.2 billion in 2020 to $2.48 billion by 2024 in the US, according to an analysis published Thursday by identity verification vendor Socure. Synthetic identities became a common concern for businesses and financial institutions in the mid-2010s, Socure’s report said. Typically, such an identity is based on a real person, but with…

Distributing malware inside password-protected archives has long been one of the main techniques used by attackers to bypass email security filters. More recently, researchers have spotted a variation that uses nested self-extracting archives that no longer require victims to input the password. “This is significant because one of the most difficult obstacles threat actors face when conducting this type of spam campaign is to convince the target to open the archive using the provided password,”…