Another week, another extortion group data-leak site emerges. Cyjax has continued to observe the emergence of data-leak sites (DLSs) for extortion and ransomware groups. New groups FunkSec, ContFR, Argonauts, Kairos, Chort, and Termite appeared in December and November 2024 alone, bringing this year’s total up to 69. On 11 December 2024, Cyjax identified the emergence of a Tor-based DLS belonging to a new data-leak extortion group going by the name ’Bluebox’.

Cyjax’s open-source intelligence team has recently conducted an investigation into Meta’s impact on fraud and scams with regards to advertisements. The investigation consisted of extensive research and data collection from dark web sources, closed and open chats, social media platforms, marketplaces, and threat actor marketing forums.

MacOS, often regarded for its robust security measures, has increasingly become a target for sophisticated cyber threats. Among the latest examples is Banshee Stealer, a malware engineered to compromise macOS systems by extracting sensitive user information. Developed by Russian cybercriminals and offered at a premium subscription fee of $3,000 per month, this malware underscores the growing attention of threat actors toward macOS platforms.

Security advice for brand new devices this holiday season.

Rockstar 2FA targets M365 users, threat actors deploy new RevC2and Venom Loader malware, and SmokeLoader malware reappears after a decline.

The evolution of the professional work environment and digital transformation continues to challenge the boundaries of traditional workforce management systems and practices. With 28% of workers worldwide working from home at least one day a week, gaining visibility into the digital behavior of the workforce is paramount to effective and secure management.

Recent advances in AI technologies have granted organizations and individuals alike unprecedented productivity, efficiency, and operational benefits. AI is, without question, the single most exciting emerging technology in the world. However, it also brings enormous risks. While the dystopian, AI-ruled worlds of sci-fi films are a long way off, AI is helping cyber threat actors launch attacks at a hitherto unknown scale and level of sophistication. But what are AI-powered attacks?

In a time when 94% of companies have experienced an identity-related breach, many CISOs feel the urgency to strengthen identity and access management (IAM) across their organizations. In fact, a recent survey of CISOs found that identity is the top focus area going into 2025. However, communicating IAM’s value to the board remains a challenge—it isn’t enough for these security leaders to craft effective IAM strategies—they must also secure their board’s support.

On December 10, 2024, Ivanti released updates for three critical-severity vulnerabilities impacting their Cloud Services Application. By chaining the vulnerabilities together, a threat actor could obtain administrative privileges via authentication bypass (CVE-2024-11639), which could then allow for remote code execution (CVE-2024-11172) and/or SQL injection (CVE-2024-11173).

Organizations understand their sensitive data is everywhere — and adversaries are after it. Data protection solutions have become an essential part of modern cybersecurity strategies. Organizations realize that in order to avoid a breach, they must have a plan to monitor and control data flow at the user level so they can better understand where data is going, who is accessing it and when malicious activity occurs. But when it comes to deployment and operationalization, things can get complicated.