Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

January 2021

Malicious Actors Reserving Their Cyber Attacks for the Hospitality Industry

Cyber attacks that lead to data breaches are becoming increasingly common in all industries, but there are certain types of businesses that are more vulnerable than others. The hospitality industry in particular is one of the most likely industries to be targeted by cybercriminals in addition to retail and finance.

Applying 3 Practical Lessons from the SolarWinds Breach

It’s been more than a month since the SolarWinds breach first started dominating security headlines, and we’re still learning new details about the attacks and the organizations affected. Even as the discussion quiets down, it’s easy to imagine we’ll still be looking back and analyzing the full effects of these incidents in much the same way we talk about other seminal breaches and security events from the past 20 years.

DNS Hijacking - Taking Over Top-Level Domains and Subdomains

TL;DR: On January 7, the Detectify security research team found that the .cd top-level domain (TLD) was about to be released for anyone to purchase and claimed it to keep it secure before any bad actors snatched it up. A technical report with full details is available on Detectify Labs. This blog post will discuss the basics of domain takeover.

An Analysis of Cyber Attack Costs on the Life Sciences Industry

2020 provided a perfect storm for cybercriminals to extort record amounts from vulnerable businesses. Recent reporting has identified life sciences companies as being particularly attractive to target as they have valuable intellectual property information and have enough funding to pay high ransom demands. The pharmaceutical industry is currently at the top of the most targeted industries for such attacks.

Top 10 Hacks Of The Past Decade | Solarwinds | WannaCry | Panama Papers | Cambridge Analytica |

Security breaches have become a normal part of our lives over the past decade, but each hack comes with its own complications and ramifications. In this webinar, Teleport Tech Writer Virag Mody will dive deep into the details of the top 10 hacks of the past decade and how they affected the way we approach cybersecurity.

What is DLL hijacking? The Windows exploit endangering your sensitive data.

A simple DLL file was the catalyst to the most devastating cyberattack against the United States by nation-state hackers. This cinematic breach demonstrates the formidable potency of DLL hijacking and its ability to dismantle entire organizations with a single infected file. DLL hijacking is a method of injecting malicious code into an application by exploiting the way some Windows applications search and load Dynamic Link Libraries (DLL).

SolarLeaks

In the aftermath of the notorious SolarWinds breach, occurring in mid-December 2020, a nefarious website was observed on 12 January 2021 and, presumably linked to the threat actors involved in the original supply chain attacks, purports to offer stolen data from four victim companies for sale: Other than the above, no file listings, screenshots or detailed 'proof' have been provided although links to four encrypted archive files, one for each potential victim organization, were uploaded to the popular

Exploring NTFS Alternate Data Streams from a security standpoint

In this blog we will explore several ways that Alternate Data Streams (ADS) are abused by attackers to hide files and evade detection, defences based on them (and ways to bypass those defences!) but also how they can be used to help malware evade dynamic analysis.

Olivier Trupiano (Founder of Signalement) Reviews Astra's Security Audit & VAPT

Signalement is well renowned professional alert system & a whistleblowing platform based out of France. They have more than 100 private and public customers. Security is one of the major concerns as they store lot of sensitive & personal information. Astra team helped Signalement on the security front by performing detailed security audit & helping them to patch the vulnerabilities. Also, our firewall & malware scan ensures real time protection of the sites from any malware attack.

Why cybersecurity awareness is a team sport

Cybersecurity may be different based on a person's viewpoint. One may want to simply protect and secure their social media accounts from hackers, and that would be the definition of what cybersecurity is to them. On the other hand, a small business owner may want to protect and secure credit card information gathered from their point-of-sale registers and that is what they define as cybersecurity.

Featured Post

4 Most Common Types of Cybersecurity Threats

There's every indication that the pandemic is changing the nature of cybersecurity. Online threats are evolving to match our new remote-work paradigm, with 91% of businesses reporting an increase in cyberattacks during the coronavirus outbreak. Hackers are getting more and more sophisticated and targeted in their attacks. Many of these cyber threats have been around for a while, but they are becoming harder for the average user to detect. Beware of these four common types of cyber threats - and learn what you can do to prevent them.

Why are cybercriminals suddenly targeting maritime infrastructure?

If you were asked to list out the top problems society has been facing in 2020, cyberattacks on the maritime industry might not be an obvious issue that would come to mind. But the industry has seen a worrying trend in recent months, as a spike in cyberattacks that has left some of the biggest companies in the industry exposed. Specifically, both the fourth largest global shopping company and the International Maritime Organization (IMO) have been targeted in these attacks.

The Biggest Cyber Attacks and Tips to Build Cyber Resilience

A Q3 Report by Risk Based Security on data breaches in 2020 showed that by the end of Q2, 2020 was already considered as the worst year in terms of data exposed. To add a cherry on the top, in Q3, a total of six breaches together accounted for approximately 8 billion exposed records. The pandemic further made the health sector most vulnerable to data breaches. No surprises there!

What is a supply chain attack (and how to prevent it)

In December 2020, the U.S government announced that it fell victim to what is believed to be the largest security breach in the nation's history. The breach occurred through an innocuous IT update from the Government's network monitoring vendor, SolarWinds. This monumental breach exposes a novel and powerful method of clandestinely penetrating even the most sophisticated security defenses through third-party vendors - supply chain attacks.

Redscan Threat Intelligence update: SolarWinds Sunburst Q&A

The threat actor then gained a back door into the company’s Orion network management platform – used by over 300,000 organisations worldwide. Given the seriousness of the attack, its potential to affect customers across the SolarWinds supply chain and reports of espionage by nation state attackers, this is a story that is likely to have ongoing repercussions for organisations in 2021.