In gaming and betting, it is said that the house always wins. However, some bettors are constantly looking for loopholes to guarantee a profit no matter the outcome of their bets. They have even developed sophisticated software tools to help with a controversial tactic called arbitrage betting, which costs the industry millions each year.
The term DDoS attack refers to a malicious actor or group of actors intentionally trying to overwhelm a victim’s computer network with traffic. The large influx of network traffic being directed at the target can cause serious issues for legitimate traffic, such as regular users who need to access websites, data or services. Everyone from gamer sites to large enterprises fears the threat of distributed denial of service attacks.
Netacea surveyed 440 enterprise organizations based in the USA and UK across travel, entertainment, eCommerce, telecommunications and financial services to understand the cost of bot traffic on businesses. Our respondents indicated that they are aware of the increase in scale and frequency of bot attacks over the course of Covid-19 pandemic, with 85% more attacks occurring in 2020 vs. 2019.
Over the past five years, blockchain technology has gone mainstream. More and more investors, businesses and opportunistic hobbyists are filling their cryptocurrency wallets with crypto assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum. In fact, the global user base of all cryptocurrencies increased by an estimated 190 percent between 2018 and 2020. There is undoubtedly money to be made, ushering newcomers into the world of blockchain.
The Splunk Threat Research Team (STRT) has detected the resurface of a Crypto Botnet using Telegram, a widely used messaging application that can create bots and execute code remotely. The STRT has identified attacking sources from China and Iranian IP addresses specifically targeting AWS IP address space. The malicious actors behind this botnet specifically target Windows server operating systems with Remote Desktop Protocol.
The old saying goes “cheaters never prosper”, but sadly that is not always the case in online gaming. In dark corners of the internet, new ways of cheating at online games – and getting away with it – are being developed on an alarming scale. Both purchasable and “free to play” (F2P) games now offer rewards either in exchange for real world currency or through “grinding” in game, which takes time and effort.
In the wake of the pandemic, airlines are fighting back against challenges from all directions this year. Many have banded together to protest government orders around banned routes, Covid testing and post-travel quarantine periods. International holiday-going in 2021 has become an unappealing prospect for many, due to the added expense and inconvenience imposed by Covid restrictions.
Detecting and preventing malicious activity such as botnet attacks is a critical area of focus for threat intel analysts, security operators, and threat hunters. Taking up the Mozi botnet as a case study, this blog post demonstrates how to use open source tools, analytical processes, and the Elastic Stack to perform analysis and enrichment of collected data irrespective of the campaign.
It’s no secret that Covid-19 has accelerated the number of cyber-attacks and data breaches witnessed across the globe. Increased reliance on technology as the world worked, shopped and socialised from home increased the surface area for attackers, who capitalised on a growing amount of PII (personally identifiable information) available across the internet.
