Victims of ransomware attacks could potentially receive civil penalties for making ransom payments to a growing list of threat actors. On October 1, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) revealed that it could choose to impose civil penalties on ransomware victims who make ransom payments to malicious actors whom it has designated under its cyber-related sanctions program.

For many companies it would be a nightmare to discover that they are the latest unwitting victim of a ransomware attack, capable of crippling computer systems and locking up data if a payment isn’t made to cybercriminals. There’s no magic wand that can make a ransomware attack simply disappear with no impact at all on an organisation, but you can lessen the problem by carefully following tried-and-trusted steps in the immediate aftermath of an attack.

Emotet is one of the world’s prolific modular botnets that has several evasive and technical variations up its sleeve. After a brief intermission, Emotet has recently re-emerged using massive malspam campaigns.

Ransomware attacks have become the most common security threat faced by businesses today. A recent report from TrustWave indicates that the number of ransomware attacks quadrupled last year; this type of attack now accounts for more than 20% of all digital security incidents. It’s now more common than even credit card theft.

The second most common type of malware incident is the notorious ransomware attack. According to the Verizon 2020 Data Breach Investigations report, the primary aim of a ransomware attack is “to disrupt operations badly enough and long enough that the organization will pay the ransom.” The average ransom payment in Q2 2020 was a whopping $178,254 — a 60% increase from Q1.

On August 15th the NSA and FBI published a joint security alert containing details about a previously undisclosed Russian malware. The agencies say that the Linux strain malware has been developed and deployed in real-world attacks by Russian military hackers.

GuLoader is a sophisticated malware downloader that stores its payloads in Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. In addition to using popular cloud apps to evade network-based detection, it uses anti-VM techniques to evade sandbox analysis. Since it was first discovered in December 2019, GuLoader has become one of the top malware delivery mechanisms observed in the wild. It is used by multiple threat actors to deliver a variety of threats, most commonly remote access Trojans (RATs).

While major, multi-million dollar man-in-the-middle attacks have remained under the radar in recent months, spear phishing and social engineering attacks are on the rise as fraudsters continue to take advantage of the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19.

Pitney Bowes, a global package delivery giant, has been hit by a second ransomware attack in less than seven months, according to ZDNet. Those responsible for the attack have released screenshots portraying directory listings from inside the company’s network. What is Maze ransomware and what makes it so special?