In a co-ordinated international effort, the law enforcement agencies of 15 countries have made the holiday season a little less stressful for companies and consumers - by seizing control of some of the internet's most popular DDoS-for-hire services.Operation PowerOFF has disrupted what was anticipated to be a surge of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks over the Christmas period by taking...

Web browsers and email clients are used to interact with external and internal assets. Both applications can be used as a point of entry within an organization. Users of these applications can be manipulated using social engineering attacks. A successful social engineering attack needs to convince users to interact with malicious content. A successful attack could give an attacker an entry point...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s December 2024 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-1136 as soon as coverage is completed. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEsCVE-2024-49138The only vulnerability that has been publicly disclosed and exploited this month is CVE-2024-49138, a vulnerability in the Windows Common Log File System...

What is 3AM?3AM (also known as ThreeAM) is a ransomware group that first emerged in late 2023. Like other ransomware threats, 3AM exfiltrates victims' data (threatening to release it publicly unless a ransom is paid) and encrypts the copies left on targeted organisations' computer systems.So it's the normal story with ransomware - exfiltrate, encrypt, extort?Pretty much - but there are some...

In today’s data-driven world, collecting information is just the beginning. The real value lies in transforming raw data into actionable insights that drive decisions. For enterprise security, this means making data not only accessible but also organized, relevant, and easy to analyze.Splunk is a powerful tool for analyzing large volumes of data and is widely used to support security operations....

When I was younger, I played a variety of team sports and enjoyed competing against opponents with my teammates. Winning was always a matter of applying sound tactics and strategy, attacking and defending well and using a blend of skill, talent and luck.Now that I'm older, I watch more than I play, and I'm able to appreciate the many lessons team sports teach, especially at the professional level....

Technological advances usually lead to a brighter future. While that may be true, these developments could also be used to refine and increase cybersecurity scams. Attackers do not care about who they target as long as they get people's and establishments' information and credentials. Cybersecurity professionals must be aware of the current scams plaguing the digital world and how to combat them....

Cyber resilience is a constant topic of concern in technology and cybersecurity, as it approaches security from the standpoint of assuming that attacks are inevitable rather than solely attempting to prevent them. Layered cybersecurity is crucial to ensure comprehensive defense against a wide range of threats. Cyber resilience has long been a necessity for hardware and software components, but...

The UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) has revealed details of Operation Destabilise, a years-long international law enforcement investigation into a giant Russian money laundering enterprise that handled billions of dollars for drug traffickers and ransomware gangs worldwide. The multi-billion dollar Smart and TGR networks are said to have used a complex system of cash handovers and cryptocurrency...

It's not a new technique, but that doesn't mean that cybercriminals cannot make rich rewards from SEO poisoning. SEO poisoning is the dark art of manipulating search engines to ensure that malware-laced adverts and dangerous websites appear high on users' results - often impersonating legitimate businesses and organisations. But the simplest way of all to get a malicious website in front of a...

Tripwire's November 2024 Patch Priority Index (PPI) brings together important vulnerabilities for Microsoft and Google Chromium.First on the list are patches for Microsoft Edge, Excel, and Word that resolve remote code execution and security feature bypass vulnerabilities.Next are patches that affect components of the core Windows operating system. These patches resolve over 35 vulnerabilities,...

With the continuing rise of ransomware, malware defenses are more critical than ever before with regard to securing the enterprise. Anti-Malware technologies have become an afterthought in many organizations, a technology that they’ve always had, always used, and never really thought about. This control serves as a reminder that this technology is as critical as it ever was and lays out the...

Vulnerability management (VM) has always been a complex area of concern that requires continuous and active effort to work properly. This can make it challenging for organizations to maintain their VM strategies and solutions over time, as there are many angles to secure and processes to oversee. There are a wide range of potential ways that VM can go wrong, and it is essential for organizations...

The issue of diversity in the cybersecurity sector has been present since the early days of IT companies. The public perception of a cybersecurity professional carries with it a specific image of the kind of person who works in IT and cybersecurity, and many minority groups—including women, people of color and ethnic minorities, and disabled and neurodivergent people—are heavily underrepresented...

What Are LLM Applications?Large Language Models (LLMs) are AI systems trained on vast textual data to understand and generate human-like text. These models, such as OpenAI’s Chat GPT-4 and Anthropic Claude, leverage their wide-ranging language input to perform various tasks, making them versatile tools in the tech world. By processing extensive datasets, LLMs can predict subsequent word sequences...

The holiday shopping season is here, and while it brings excitement and joy, it also opens opportunities for cybercriminals to exploit unsuspecting shoppers. With more people buying gifts online and taking advantage of holiday deals, the risk of falling victim to cyberattacks increases. Whether you're shopping from your desktop, mobile device, or in-store, it's essential to be aware of common...

What is Mimic?Mimic is family of ransomware, first found in-the-wild in 2022. In common with many other ransomware attacks, Mimic encrypts a victim's files, and demands a ransom payment in cryptocurrency for the release of a decryption key.Does Mimic also steal data?Yes, some variants of Mimic can also exfiltrate data from a user's computers before it is encrypted - the stolen data is typically...

Data loss can be a consequence of a variety of factors from malicious ransomware to hardware failures and even natural disasters. Regardless of the reason for data loss, we need to be able to restore our data. A data recovery plan begins with prioritizing our data, protecting it while it is being stored, and having a plan to recover data. Key Takeaways for Control 11Prioritize your data and come...

As cyber threats escalate in frequency and severity, IT and security teams face increased pressure to maintain transparency. With this in mind, the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Cyber Disclosure Rule, released on 26 July 2023, mandates timely and detailed public disclosures about cyber incidents.This rule places a heavy burden on chief information security officers (CISOs), chief...

Today's CISOs wear many hats. They are expected to be experts in technologies, negotiators, strategists, influencers, and a source of inspiration throughout the value chain. As cybersecurity threats evolve and grow, the role of the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) is becoming even more critical.Cybersecurity Budgets are BoomingFortunately, unlike other tech leaders, CISOs have largely...