Data Breaches

Why CISOs change jobs

Being a CISO is a hard job. You must constantly balance business, technology, and regulatory requirements against things like employee and adversary behavior. You can be a superstar, build a world-class cybersecurity program, and follow best practices, providing exceptional protection for the organization. Despite this excellence, a single employee can click on a malicious web link, share a password, or misconfigure an asset, leading directly to a successful cyberattack. When this happens, it’s your fault.…

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Three-quarters of businesses braced for ‘serious’ email attack this year

IT security leaders at three-out-of-four global businesses expect an email-borne attack will have serious consequences for their organization in the coming year, with the increasing sophistication of attacks a top concern, according to the 2023 State of Email Security (SOES) report. Businesses’ use of email is increasing, with 82% of companies reporting a higher volume of email in 2022 compared with 2021 and 2020, the 2023 SOES report found. More email has led to more…

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GoDaddy connects a slew of past attacks to a multiyear hacking campaign

Web hosting and infrastructure provider GoDaddy said it suspects a recent attack on its infrastructure in December 2022 may be connected to a series of incidents the business has been experiencing since 2020. The attack involved an unauthorized third-party gaining access to and installing malware on GoDaddy’s cPanel hosting servers, the company disclosed in an SEC filing. The company only discovered the security breach following customer reports in early December 2022 that their sites were…

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7 reasons to avoid investing in cyber insurance

With cyberattacks rising at an alarming rate around the world, cyber insurance has become an increasingly popular layer of protection for businesses across all sectors. However, despite its clear appeal as a means of supporting and augmenting cyber risk management, insurance might not be the right fit for all companies in every circumstance. In fact, there are compelling reasons why some might be advised to avoid, delay, or at least seriously reconsider buying or renewing…

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EU parliamentary committee says ‘no’ to EU-US data privacy framework

The European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs has recommended that the European Commission reject the proposed EU-US Data Privacy Framework, which would govern the way in which the personal information of EU citizens is handled by US companies. The committee’s decision — formally, a draft motion for a resolution— represents a rejection of the European Commission’s recommendation, announced in December, that the data privacy framework should be adopted. The recommendation stated…

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New Mirai botnet variant V3G4 targets Linux servers, IoT devices

A new variant of Mirai — the botnet malware used to launch massive DDoS attacks —has been targeting 13 vulnerabilities in IoT devices connected to Linux servers, according to researchers at Palo Alto Network’s Unit 42 cybersecurity team.  Once the vulnerable devices are compromised by the variant, dubbed V3G4, they can fully controlled by attackers and become part of a botnet, capable of being used to conduct further campaigns, including DDoS attacks.  “The vulnerabilities have…

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IOTW: Russian hackers target NATO sites with DDoS attack

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has been the victim of a series of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, causing temporary disruption to some of its sites. The DDoS attacks have been linked to the Russian hacktivist collective Killnet which had posted via an encrypted channel on social media platform Telegram that it was planning to launch attacks against NATO. The group also appeared to be asking for cryptocurrency donations to launch further attacks.…

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Malware authors leverage more attack techniques that enable lateral movement

A new study of over a half-million malware samples collected from various sources in 2022 revealed that attackers put a high value on lateral movement, incorporating more techniques that would allow them to spread through corporate networks. Several of the most prevalent tactics, as defined by the MITRE ATT&CK framework, that were identified in the dataset aid lateral movement, including three new ones that rose into the top 10. “An increase in the prevalence of…

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Evolving cyberattacks, alert fatigue creating DFIR burnout, regulatory risk

The evolution of cybercrime is weighing heavily on digital forensics and incident response (DFIR) teams, leading to significant burnout and potential regulatory risk. That’s according to the 2023 State of Enterprise DFIR survey by Magnet Forensics, a developer of digital investigation solutions. The firm surveyed 492 DFIR professionals in North America and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa working in organizations in industries such as technology, manufacturing, government, telecommunications, and healthcare. Respondents described the current…

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BEC groups are using Google Translate to target high value victims

Abnormal Security has identified two groups that are using executive impersonation to execute Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks on companies worldwide.  The first group, Midnight Hedgehog, engages in payment fraud, while the second group, Mandarin Capybara, executes payroll diversion attacks. Both groups have launched BEC campaigns in at least 13 different languages, including Danish, Dutch, Estonian, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish, the researchers noted. While attacking targets across various regions…

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