Cybercrime has become more prevalent since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, 81% of organizations worldwide experienced an uptick in cyber threats and 79% suffered downtime due to cyberattacks during peak season, according to a 2021 report by McAfee Enterprise and FireEye. Attacks have also become more complex. IBM and the Ponemon Institute report that the average time to spot and contain a data breach in 2021 was 287 days, a week longer than in 2020.

A buffer overflow is a type of runtime error that allows a program to write past the end of a buffer or array — hence the name overflow — and corrupt adjacent memory. Like most bugs, a buffer overflow doesn’t manifest at every program execution. Instead, the vulnerability is triggered under certain circumstances, such as unexpected user input.

A possible method of attacking your code base is a bit of social engineering that involves using open source to report potential bugs in software that provides reproduction applications. These applications can include malicious code that can compromise your software and applications. In the blog post, we’ll briefly look at why and how they operate, and how to mitigate this practice.

Have you looked into some of the most well-known Active Directory (AD) attacks from around the world? Do you understand the nuances of these popular attacks and can you put the AD fundamentals you learned in the earlier parts of this blog series to good use?

Read also: Knauf Group hit with Black Basta ransomware, 50,000 payment cards compromised in the Magecart campaigns, and more.

Typosquatting forms the basis of cyber attacks that aim to take advantage of users who mistake a malicious website for a legitimate one. Attackers register domain names that are similar to popular brands or products in the hopes that users will mistype the name and end up on their malicious site instead. Once on the site, users may be tricked into providing sensitive information or installing malware.

Third-party risk has always been a concern for organizations, but since COVID and the rise of remote work, we’ve seen a dramatic acceleration in campaigns leveraging software supply chain attacks. Not just through open source vulnerabilities, but through closed source applications and services as well. To adapt to this new normal, it’s important to develop an understanding of supply chain attacks and protect yourself from them.