Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

While ransomware continues to be a growing problem, double extortion ransomware in particular has been growing even more rapidly for organizations. Zscaler’s ThreatLabz has found a nearly 120% growth in double extortion ransomware. Double extortion attacks are devastating for organizations because they involve both the encryption of production data as well as the exfiltration of data.

The continued increase in cybercrime and breach attempts is not a new trend. For years now, the percentages have ticked upwards, and though cybersecurity has evolved, so have hackers seeking data, money, or infamy. While the initial attack vectors can be myriad — vulnerability exploits, misconfigurations, and credential theft to name a few — there are two tactics that stand tall above the rest: Ransomware and business email compromise (BEC).

Cyber attacks have become inevitable. According to research from Rubrik Zero Labs, 99% of IT and Security leaders were made aware of a cyberattack against their organization in 2022 with an average of 52 cyberattacks in this category. On top of that, 96% of IT and Security leaders are concerned they will be unable to maintain business continuity if they experience a cyberattack this year.

The JFrog Security Research team recently discovered a new malware payload in the PyPI repository, written in C#. This is uncommon since PyPI is primarily a repository for Python packages, and its codebase consists mostly of Python code, or natively compiled libraries used by Python programs. This finding raised our concerns about the potential for cross-language malware attacks.

South Korean cyber security organisation AhnLab has identified a breach in Microsoft SQL servers allowing deployment of Trigona ransomware. The attacks were threat actors using brute-force or dictionary attacks with obtained or guessed credentials to infiltrate externally accessible MS-SQL servers.

Cyber attacks can have a significant impact on point-of-sale (POS) services, which are used in retail environments to process transactions and collect payments from customers. POS systems typically involve the use of software, hardware, and network components, which can be vulnerable to a variety of cyber threats. A successful campaign targeting POS systems can result in credit card theft, transaction tampering, service disruption, brand damage and other severe organizational damage.

As Aviation, Maritime, Rail and Road transport organisations are reportedly experiencing increased levels of ransomware activity across Europe as per ENISA’s recent report, JUMPSEC analysts have combined the findings with JUMPSEC’s attacker reported data scraped from a variety of sources (including the dark web) providing further context to the risks currently posed to European transport organisations.

The Splunk Threat Research Team (STRT) continues to analyze and produce content related to the ongoing geopolitical conflict in eastern Europe where new variances of destructive payloads are being released, targeting government and civilian infrastructure. The sole purpose of these destructive payloads is to decimate infrastructure; there is no ransom or alternative presented, and they need to be addressed as soon as they are detected.