Living Off the Land (LOTL) cyber attacks represent a growing and increasingly sophisticated threat within the cybersecurity landscape. The significance of LOTL attacks extends beyond mere technicalities; they pose substantial risks to global security, influencing everything from corporate stability to national defense mechanisms.

Municipalities are no strangers to cyberattacks, but the introduction and ready availability of malware through ransomware-as-a-service providers has led to an increasing number of attacks against cities and counties. One small sample taken from the past six months revealed that Lowell, Mass., Spartanburg County, S.C. and Suffolk Country, N.Y. were victimized, knocking services offline and causing millions of dollars in recovery costs.

The Sysdig Threat Research Team (Sysdig TRT) recently discovered a new Freejacking campaign abusing Google’s Vertex AI platform for cryptomining. Vertex AI is a SaaS, which makes it vulnerable to a number of attacks, such as Freejacking and account takeovers. Freejacking is the act of abusing free services, such as free trials, for financial gain. This freejacking campaign leverages free Coursera courses that provide the attacker with no-cost access to GCP and Vertex AI.

From February to July 2023, Netskope Threat Labs has been tracking a staggering 61-fold increase in traffic to phishing pages hosted in Cloudflare R2. The majority of the phishing campaigns target Microsoft login credentials, although there are some pages targeting Adobe, Dropbox, and other cloud apps. The attacks have been targeting victims mainly in North America and Asia, across different segments, led by the technology, financial services, and banking sectors.

While the tech sector is a pillar of efficiency and creativity, tech businesses are often vulnerable because of the type and amount of critically important data they handle. Tech companies are often at risk of cyber attacks from individual hackers, cyber spies, and nation-state-sponsored hacking groups. In this post, we’ll look at common traits of tech businesses that can expose them to cyber risks and make them a popular target for cybercriminals.

‍Educational institutions are among the top targets for hackers and cybercriminals. Education is among the sectors that experience the most cyber attacks, including healthcare, finance, and retail. According to Check Point’s Mid-Year Report for 2022, the education sector had 44% more cyber attacks than the year earlier. An average of about 2300 attacks against educational organizations were reported weekly.

Most social engineering scams search out their potential victims, often sending emails to known email addresses, sending chat messages to them or calling known phone numbers. The attackers take an active role in seeking out and making contact with their victims.

In recent weeks, the Cyberint research team has observed an alarming emerging trend – an ongoing and successful hacking campaign is targeting LinkedIn accounts, all following a consistent method. This campaign is currently affecting individuals worldwide, resulting in a significant number of victims losing access to their accounts. Some have even been pressured into paying a ransom to regain control or faced with the permanent deletion of their accounts.