Ransomware can be expensive—in 2021, the average cost of a ransomware attack was $4.62million, and that doesn’t include the ransom itself. Beyond financial costs, the cost of time, data, and brand reputation can also be astronomical. According to the IST Ransomware Task Force, the average downtime can be 21 days, with full recovery taking on average 287 days from the initial ransomware incident response. And cyber criminals are getting more sophisticated every year.

Wiper’s main objective is to destroy data from any storage device and make the information unavailable (T1485). There are two ways of removing files, logical and physical. Logical file removal is the most common way of erasing a file, performed by users daily when a file is sent to (and emptied from) the Recycle bin, or when it is removed with the command line or terminal with the commands del/rm.

On April 28 and April 30, respectively, WhiteSource Diffend identified, blocked, and reported two packages we deemed were malicious versions of original Amazon Web Services (AWS) packages. Whitesource security experts have reached out to contacts at Amazon to notify them of our findings. This discovery may point to a new takeover method that targets packages of well-known origins, in this case, AWS.

If your company is worried about the financial hit of paying a ransom to cybercriminals after a ransomware attack, wait until they find out the true cost of a ransomware attack. Because the total costs of recovering from the ransomware attack are likely to be much, much higher. That’s the finding of a new study by researchers at Check Point, who discovered that the average total cost of a ransomware attack is more than seven times higher than the average ransom paid.

As part of our regular Dark Web and cybercriminal research, Trustwave SpiderLabs has uncovered and analyzed postings from a politically motivated, pro-Russian ransomware group named Stormous. The group has recently proclaimed support for Russia in its war with Ukraine, attacking the Ukraine Ministry of Foreign Affairs and allegedly obtaining and making public phone numbers, email addresses, and national identity cards.

As the world of technology grows, so should the cybersecurity practices that protect them. Having a ransomware defense strategy should be a priority for any individual or company. Without it, poorly protected users and organizations can put themselves at risk of losing important and confidential information. A report from Cybersecurity Ventures estimates that there was one ransomware attack every 11 seconds in 2021, resulting in almost $20 billion in damages.

Threat actors utilize numerous anti-analysis techniques, one of the most common of which is Anti-Debugging, to make post-detection analysis more difficult. In the malware they create and the ways they use to avoid detection and analysis by cybersecurity experts and solutions, threat actors have shown to be more inventive.

There has been tremendous growth in Microsoft 365 usage with the current remote work trend, leading to an explosion of Microsoft 365 data. Microsoft infrastructure and platforms support the availability, reliability, and security of this infrastructure by providing world-class perimeter defense, controlling access to keep attackers out, and detecting risky behavior. However, customers are responsible for protecting the data itself - emails, chats, files, etc.