Evolution is a continuous process, and nothing can exemplify the process better in our industry than the threats we defend against. From simple pranks and nuisances, they've become thieves of information, violators of privacy, destroyers of reputations and even saboteurs of businesses, all for the sake of money. They've also become tools for activists and terrorists of the cyber variety, used to make strong statements against governments or organizations.
But as such threats evolve, so must the security solutions that defend against them, ...
The use of contextually-relevant emails is one of the most common social engineering tactics employed in targeted attacks. Emails still being the primary mode of business communications are often abused to deliver exploits to penetrate a network that consequently lead to other stages of a targeted attack cycle.
In one of the targeted attacks we’re monitoring, threat actors used the news of a plane crash that killed the deputy prime minister of Laos. The email message bore the subject line BREAKING: ...
In its recent report, National Police Agency mentioned that the current estimated total cost of unauthorized transactions suffered by Japanese users reached 1.417 billion yen during the period of January-May 2014. In comparison the estimated total damage cost from these kinds of threats was 1.406 billion yen in 2013.
Data released by Japanese Bankers Association also gives similar alarming statistics: 21 cases of online banking theft occurred in Q1 2014 compared to 14 cases for the whole of 2013. The damage cost in ...
In the recent 2H-2013 Targeted Attack Roundup Report we noted that we have been seeing several targeted attack campaign-related attacks in Taiwan.
We are currently monitoring a campaign that specifically targets government and administrative agencies in Taiwan. We are naming this specific campaign PLEAD because of the letters of the backdoor commands issued by the related malware.
The point of entry for this campaign is through email. In the PLEAD campaign, threat actors use the RTLO (right to left override) technique in order ...
The first quarter of the year saw cybercrime hit targets that may not have been considered worthwhile in previous quarters. Multiple Bitcoin exchanges found themselves the victims of various attacks and were forced to close shop. The most high-profile victim Mt. Gox, which had been, at one time, the leading Bitcoin exchange in the world.
Exchanges were not the only target. With more than 12 million Bitcoins in existence - with a value of 6-8 billion US dollars - it ...
