Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

December 2024

Rainbow Table Attacks: How They Work and How to Defend Against Them

Many common password attack methods are quite straightforward — much like trying various physical keys to open the lock on a door. For example, in brute force attacks, adversaries systematically guess passwords until they find the correct one. Or instead of simply guessing, they can use a list of username/password combinations leaked from other breaches (credential stuffing) or cycle through known usernames combined with commonly used passwords (password spraying).

5 Reasons Why Securing your IP Address is Important

Think of your IP address as your home address on the internet-it's how websites know where to deliver information and how your devices connect to the digital world. It's not just a random string of numbers; it's a direct link to you. That might sound harmless at first, but here's the catch: leaving your IP address exposed is like putting up a neon sign outside your house saying, "Come on in!"

Holiday Season Cyber Attack Patterns: How They Impact Enterprise Operations

The holiday season is a time when hardworking employees relax — and hardworking threat actors look for their next victims. As workers buy more products online, take seasonal trips, and give in to holiday distractions, large organizations become tempting targets for cyber attacks. Phishing, ransomware, and similar threats may be even more effective than usual in the last few months of the year. That means the impact of cyber attack strategies can also be more significant.

Prevent yourself from Phishing Attack: Simple and Best Strategies

Are you concerned about preserving yourself against phishing attacks? Phishing is a common online threat. Many attackers use it to trick people on the Internet. The attackers might trick you into sharing personal details like passwords. Additionally, they can also ask for sensitive information, such as credit card numbers. Phishing attempts usually appear as communications from trusted sources. They are made to take your information, though.

Attackers Abuse HubSpot's Free Form Builder to Craft Phishing Pages

A threat actor is abusing HubSpot’s Free Form Builder service to craft credential-harvesting phishing pages, according to Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42. The campaign has targeted at least 20,000 users at European companies in the automotive, chemical, and industrial compound manufacturing sectors. The attacks are designed to steal credentials in order to compromise victims’ Microsoft Azure cloud services.

Mobile Phishing Attacks Use New Tactic to Bypass Security Measures

ESET has published its threat report for the second half of 2024, outlining a new social engineering tactic targeting mobile banking users. Threat actors are using Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) and WebAPKs to bypass mobile security measures, since these files don’t require users to grant permissions to install apps from unknown sources. “The initial phishing messages were delivered through various methods, including SMS, automated voice calls, and social media malvertising,” ESET says.

How (and Why) Cyber Attacks are Exploiting the Supply Chain

Your business is a link in one or more supply chains. Your business depends on those who supply to you, and in turn those you supply to (and their customers and their customers’ customers) depend on you. Any disruption at any point affects the flow of goods, services, and information affecting others in the supply chain. It’s important that we understand the risk in our supply chain and the potential risk we pose to our customers, especially cyber-related risk. Why?

Securing Infrastructure in the Age of Identity Attacks with Ev Kontsevoy

Learn why identity-based attacks are now more common than malware attacks and discover practical strategies to secure your computing infrastructure. The talk covers the economics of cybersecurity, the impact of complexity on human error, and proven approaches to reduce your attack surface. With real data from industry surveys, learn how leading organizations are successfully preventing identity attacks through passwordless authentication, cryptographic identities, and infrastructure simplification.

Refresh yourself on 2024's top cyber attack trends to stay safe in 2025

We’re officially in the final days of 2024, a year so eventful it feels difficult to remember half of what happened. We had the Olympics in Paris, which turned the world into fans of sharpshooting, breakdancing, and the pommel horse; a solar eclipse visible in totality from the US for the first time since 1979; and a monthslong, very impassioned rap battle between Kendrick Lamar and Drake.

Email Bombing: Why You Need to be Concerned

Over the last few months, the topic of email bombing has been brought to our attention multiple times, mostly queries from customers that go something like this: “I have a few users experiencing some sort of spam attack, where they are receiving thousands of random registration or subscription emails. What do I do, and why is it occurring? Help!” This scenario is known as email or subscription bombing.

Critical Infrastructure Under Siege: 42% Spike in Ransomware Attacks on Utilities

Ransomware attacks targeting utilities have surged by 42% over the past year, with spear phishing playing a major role in 81% of cases, according to a ReliaQuest study spanning November 2023 to October 2024. Analyzing data from its GreyMatter platform and dark web activity, ReliaQuest found that utilities like water and energy systems are disproportionately affected. Their critical role in infrastructure makes them prime targets for cybercriminals.

The Largest and Most Notorious Cyber Attacks in History

Cyber attacks are deliberate attempts to steal, alter, or destroy data or to disrupt operations and to damage the digital parts of a critical infrastructure. This blog post explores the most destructive major cyber attacks in history, detailing the underlying motives and impact, and then offers prevention and detection best practices.

Trustwave's 2025 Cybersecurity Predictions: AI-Powered Attacks, Critical Infrastructure Risks, and Regulatory Challenges

As 2024 comes to a close, we went around the room and asked some of Trustwave’s top executives what cybersecurity issues and technology they saw playing a prominent role in 2025. Here is the latest installment. As we look ahead to 2025, the landscape of cyber threats continues to evolve, presenting new challenges for cybersecurity professionals.

Account Takeover Protection: How AppTrana Stops Attacks

Worried about account takeovers (ATO)? In this video, watch how AppTrana actively protects against account takeover attacks, such as credential stuffing and brute force attempts. See how AppTrana detects, blocks, and mitigates these threats in real time, keeping your accounts safe and secure. Learn more about AppTrana’s Account Takeover protection.

The Evolution of Cyber Attacks: Lessons for Staying Safe in 2025

The pace at which cyberattacks are evolving has accelerated in recent years, driven by technological advances, particularly artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. The sophistication of cybercriminals' tactics has reached unprecedented levels, posing new challenges for traditional cybersecurity defenses. In this article, we will explore the key developments in cyber threats, identify emerging risks, and offer practical lessons on how businesses and individuals can stay safe in 2025.
Featured Post

The Key Steps to Ensuring DORA Compliance

As we approach 2025, financial institutions across the EU face the challenge of complying with the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), which is set to take effect on the 17th of January. DORA is focused on strengthening cybersecurity and operational resilience across financial ecosystems, with the consequences for non-compliance ranging from regulatory fines to reputational damage and an increased risk of cyberattacks.

How to Prevent and Defend Against Spoofing Attacks

In this age of computers and the internet, cyber risks like spoofing attacks are getting smarter and more harmful. Spoofing is when cybercriminals pretend to be legitimate entities, like companies, people, or websites, in order to trick people into giving up private information or doing malicious activities. Spoofing has big effects, ranging from losing money to having a bad image. Over 90% of phishing attacks happen because of email spoofing alone.

How Threat Hunters Can Detect Scattered Spider Attacks and Related Intrusions

Cyberattacks are becoming more advanced, and groups like Scattered Spider are leading the way with their sophisticated techniques. This group is notorious for using social engineering methods like SIM swapping, voice phishing, and SMS phishing to trick employees into giving them access to sensitive systems. By pretending to be IT administrators, they bypass traditional security defenses, moving through networks unnoticed and stealing valuable data.

Analyzing Salt Typhoon: Telecom Attacker

Salt Typhoon is a Chinese-speaking threat actor that the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have tied to a series of attacks that breached and exfiltrated data from several of the world's most prominent telecommunications companies. Trustwave SpiderLabs has created a deep analysis of the threat group Salt Typhoon, detailing the group's history, techniques, tactics, and procedures (TTP), and preferred targets.

27 DDoS-For-Hire Services Disrupted In Run-Up To Holiday Season

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 over two dozen "booter" or "stresser" websites offline.

Ultralytics AI Pwn Request Supply Chain Attack

The ultralytics supply chain attack occurred in two distinct phases between December 4-7, 2024. In the first phase, two malicious versions were published to PyPI: version 8.3.41 was released on December 4 at 20:51 UTC and remained available for approximately 12 hours until its removal on December 5 at 09:15 UTC. Version 8.3.42 was published shortly after on December 5 at 12:47 UTC and was available for about one hour before removal at 13:47 UTC.

The Ultralytics Supply Chain Attack: Connecting the Dots with GitGuardian's Public Monitoring Data

On December 4, 2024, the Ultralytics Python module was backdoored to deploy a cryptominer. Using GitGuardian’s data, we reconstructed deleted commits, connecting the dots with the initial analysis. This investigation highlights the value of GitGuardian’s data in understanding supply chain attacks.

Phishing Holds the Top Spot as the Primary Entry Point for Ransomware Attacks

New analysis of ransomware attacks shows that phishing is the primary delivery method and organizations need to offer more effective security awareness training to mitigate the threat. Hornet Security’s Q3 2024 Ransomware Attacks Survey report paints a pretty bleak picture of how organizations have fared this year against ransomware attacks. So almost one in five organizations is a victim. According to the survey data, 52.3% of the attacks started with a phishing email.

When User Input Lines Are Blurred: Indirect Prompt Injection Attack Vulnerabilities in AI LLMs

It was a cold and wet Thursday morning, sometime in early 2006. There I was sitting at the very top back row of an awe-inspiring lecture theatre inside Royal Holloway's Founder’s Building in Egham, Surrey (UK) while studying for my MSc in Information Security. Back then, the lecture in progress was from the software security module. The first rule of software security back then was never to trust user inputs.

Cyber Attacks and You: What the South Staffs Water Breach Teaches Us

The recent cyber attack on South Staffs Water has sent ripples across the digital security landscape, highlighting the vulnerabilities that organisations and individuals face in an increasingly connected world. This breach serves as a sobering reminder of the potential risks and repercussions associated with cyber threats. To truly grasp the magnitude of these incidents, it's essential to explore what transpired during the South Staffs Water breach, and subsequent South Staff Water data breach claim.

How to Safeguard your Network from DDoS Attacks?

Did you know that during the past year, DDoS attacks have increased by 117%? Industries including retail, shipping, and public relations have been the most impacted by this increase, with businesses seeing significant disruptions during peak shopping seasons like Black Friday. Businesses must understand how to stop these attacks as they become increasingly common and complex.

It's Typhoon Season: Attackers are deliberately evading EDR. What can you do about it?

Over the past year, several sophisticated cyber-espionage campaigns have grabbed the attention of our industry and challenged defenders and vendors alike with advanced tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). One of the most visible campaigns is Volt Typhoon, named by the Microsoft threat intelligence team in May 2023 and attributed to Chinese state-sponsored threat actors.

What is Session Hijacking and 8 Ways to Prevent It

What if there were a way to negate the effectiveness of multi-factor authentication (or even bypass secure login protocols) without ever cracking a password? Session hijacking offers attackers a tempting shortcut to user accounts, bypassing the usual security barriers. In 2022 alone, researchers scouring the shadier corners of the internet (like the dark web) found 22 billion device and session cookie records – each of which could help to enable session hijacking.

The @Solana/web3.js Incident: Another Wake-Up Call for Supply Chain Security

On December 2, 2024, the Solana community faced a significant security incident involving the @solana/web3.js npm package, a critical library for developers building on the Solana blockchain with over 450K weekly downloads. This blog post aims to break down the attack flow, explore how it happened, and discuss the importance of supply chain security.

Navigating Cybersecurity Challenges in the Manufacturing Sector

The manufacturing sector has seen a significant transformation in recent years, with increasing reliance on digital systems and interconnected devices to streamline operations. While this shift toward Industry 4.0 has brought efficiency and innovation, it has also introduced a new wave of cybersecurity threats. With cybercriminals targeting vulnerabilities in industrial networks, protecting sensitive data and systems has become a top priority for manufacturers.

Data Detection and Response (DDR): Stopping an Attack in its Tracks

In this episode of Into the Breach, host James Purvis dives into the cutting-edge world of Data Detection and Response (DDR) with data security expert Drew Russell. Together, they explore how DDR can halt cyberattacks in their tracks by combining autonomous asset inventory, user activity insights, and data classification for a comprehensive defense strategy.

The Rise of Cross-Domain Attacks Demands a Unified Defense

Modern adversaries are quiet. No longer reliant on clunky malware to breach their targets, they have adopted more subtle and effective methods to infiltrate businesses, move laterally and access critical applications, steal data, impersonate users and more. They are also gaining speed: The average eCrime breakout time, now just 62 minutes, has fallen in recent years as adversaries accelerate from initial intrusion to lateral movement.