The real risk of business disruption, brand damage, and potential liabilities caused by ransomware attacks has elevated cybersecurity from a technical or operational issue normally handled by security teams, to a major Board level priority and discussion. Even the most sophisticated and mature organizations that once believed their cybersecurity defenses were robust are now rethinking their preparedness and response capabilities required to address the imminent threat of ransomware attacks.

Security researchers are warning biomanufacturing facilities around the world that they are being targeted by a sophisticated new strain of malware, known as Tardigrade. The warning comes from the non-profit Bioeconomy Information Sharing and Analysis Center (BIO-ISAC) which revealed that at least two large facilities working on manufacturing bio-drugs and vaccines have been hit by the same malware this year, in what appear to be targeted attacks.

Black Friday is a long-awaited day for many people, as it generates a lot of sales in both physical stores and online marketplaces. With the ongoing COVID pandemic, online sales are expected to be even more intense this year, and along with that, we will likely see an increase in cyber scams. Attackers will try to steal your money in many ways: through phishing sites, banking malware, remote access trojans, and more. However, there is one type of malware that people often underestimate: adware.

Currently, ransomware is the most prominent cyber threat to businesses and individuals. Ransomware attacks are growing more prevalent as cybercriminals find new ways to profit from them. According to CyberEdge’s 2021 Cyberthreat Defense Report, 62% of organizations were victimized by ransomware in 2019—up from 56% in 2018 and 55% in 2017. This rise is arguably fueled by the dramatic increase in ransomware payments.

At the beginning of 2021, Emotet was considered to be the world’s most dangerous malware by Europol. The threat was first discovered in 2014 when it was acting as a banking trojan. Over the years, the malware evolved into one of the most relevant botnets in the threat landscape, often used to deliver other threats, such as Trickbot and Ryuk ransomware. Netskope detected Emotet during Oct 2020, using PowerShell and WMI to download and execute its payload.

It is prediction time once again, and we’ve polled some of our esteemed experts here at Netskope to see what’s piquing their interest with 2022 on the horizon. Much like our predictions last year, we’ve broken the list out into some longer shots and some pretty safe bets. Here’s what we think is in store for 2022.

A few months ago, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a draft framework for ransomware risk management. But it's not the only publication on such threats, as the institute has also produced a guide recently on how MSPs should protect data from ransomware and other data loss events.

The JFrog Security research team continuously monitors popular open source software (OSS) repositories with our automated tooling to report vulnerable and malicious packages to repository maintainers. Earlier this year we disclosed several malicious packages targeting developers’ private data that were downloaded approximately 30K times.

Protect your organization from the Trojan Source exploit with fast and trusted vulnerability detection from Rapid Scan Static. As everyone in the industry knows, all software vulnerabilities are not equal—some are trivial, some are irrelevant, and some are severe. Obviously, you should focus your attention on those that are characterized as severe. The recently published Trojan Source (CVE 2021-42574) vulnerability falls into the severe category—meaning you should give it full attention.

Malware is continuously mutating, targeting new services and platforms. The Sysdig Security Research team has identified the famous Muhstik Botnet with new behavior, attacking a Kubernetes Pod with the plan to control the Pod and mine cryptocurrency. A WordPress Kubernetes Pod was compromised by the Muhstik worm and added to the botnet. On the Pod has been deployed and executed various types of crypto miners, like xmra64andxmrig64.

When organizations are attacked by ransomware, only a little more than half are able to recover their data using a backup. This begs the question, “What about the rest? Why might they be unable to recover?” One reason may be that their backup data has been compromised. Backups are a hot target for hackers. If they can get to an organization’s backup data, they have far more leverage.

We decided to try to run a well-known Remote Access Trojan (RAT) called Remcos used by FIN7. This tool has been around for some time and has a reputation for being stealthy and effective in controlling compromised hosts. Sold as a remote computer monitoring tool, this tool has plenty of features that can allow an operator behind the control to do multiple operations against a compromised system.

On 3rd November, Bleeping Computer reported that the BlackMatter Ransomware-as-a-Service group had posted a message alerting users that its operations were ceasing within 48 hours. The message advised affiliates to obtain their decryption keys so that they could continue to extort current victims.

A recently published report from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has warned that official security guidance from the Department of Education is out-of-date, and needs to be refreshed to address the increasing reports of ransomware and other cyber threats.

AT&T Alien Labs™ has found new malware written in the open source programming language Golang. Deployed with more than 30 exploits, it has the potential of targeting millions of routers and IoT devices.

The number of ransomware attacks continues to grow, and that trend will likely continue in 2022. Organizations will be attacked, files will be encrypted, and victims will need to decide whether to pay ransom or try to implement expensive and painful recovery techniques on their own. That much, unfortunately, should come as no surprise, but what will be different is how those attacks are carried out.

A keylogger is a type of spyware that monitors and records user keystrokes. They allow cybercriminals to read anything a victim is typing into their keyboard, including private data like passwords, account numbers, and credit card numbers. Some forms of keyloggers can do more than steal keyboard strokes. They can read data copied to the clipboard and take screenshots of the user's screen - on PCs, Macs, iPhones, and Android devices. Keyloggers are not always the sole threat in cyberattacks.

IcedID is a banking trojan, it is designed to be stealthy and built to collect financial information. IcedID harvests user credentials and banking sessions to commit financial crimes, including carding, money laundering, and transferring of funds to foreign financial institutions. In recent research published by Splunk Threat Research Team (STRT) the inclusion of cryptocurrency exchange information was also included by Trickbot in the web inject code.

Malware analysis is a fundamental factor in the improvement of the incident detection and resolution systems of any company. The Sysdig Security Research team is going to cover how this Shellbot malware works and how to detect it. Shellbot malware is still widespread. We recorded numerous incidents despite this being a relatively old and known attack that is also available on open Github repositories.

The common theme across ransomware, insider threats, and data theft is the exfiltration of data. While threat research labs usually publish the process steps of ransomware encryption, keys, and disk clean-up, the parts about accessing the data and exfiltration are often left out. Also, one security solution does not solve the problem itself, making partner integrations vital to the success of security solution stacks.

A few months ago, the largest U.S. pipeline operator, Colonial Pipeline, was forced to halt operations for nearly a week due to a ransomware attack. While it ultimately didn’t stop consumers from buying gasoline, the incident forced the company to pay $4.4 million in ransom payment and illustrated just how vulnerable energy organizations are to cyberattacks.