Kroll Cyber Threat Intelligence analysts have identified a new strain of ransomware, named CACTUS, targeting large commercial entities since March 2023. The name “CACTUS” is derived from the filename provided within the ransom note, cAcTuS.readme.txt, and the self-declared name within the ransom note itself. Encrypted files are appended with.cts1, although Kroll notes the number at the end of the extension has been observed to vary across incidents and victims.

Organizations are increasingly turning to the cloud in their attempt to become more agile and efficient. Many will choose the Microsoft ecosystem and will need to become familiar with threat detection and response offered by this environment, how these technologies can be leveraged to their full potential, and what should be supplemented to avoid unnecessary risk.

The use of Amazon Web Services (AWS) in organizations around the world is prolific. The platform accounted for 31% of total cloud infrastructure services spend in Q2 2022, growing by 33% annually. Despite its widespread use, many organizations still fail to consider the nuances of incident response in AWS.

You have probably wondered what would happen if your company laptop got lost or stolen. Would someone be able to extract sensitive data from your laptop even if the device is encrypted or locked? There are several ways to compromise a laptop with physical access, and one of them is through a direct memory access (DMA) attack.

Human error behind misconfigurations, a host of insecure remote access issues, exposed business credentials with reused passwords and unpatched vulnerabilities have all contributed to a significant increase in cloud security incidents. Many organizations don’t foresee the challenges of what it will take to protect their data and operations after a move to the cloud.

Undeniably, many companies fail to subscribe to an effective process for developing software that does not introduce added risk to the enterprise. Proprietary applications are coded without regard for security implications and are rushed to production in the name of increased quarterly revenue opportunities. Poorly engineered code can result in software security issues such as buffer overflows, improperly handled exceptions, memory leaks and input validation issues.

In late 2022, artificial intelligence (AI) chat and conversational bots garnered large followings and user bases. AI chatbots, including ChatGPT, Meta’s Blender Bot3 and DeepMind, and Google’s Sparrow, have numerous benefits and uses, including potentially replacing current search engines, but there are notable drawbacks.

A major logistics company was hit by a ransomware attack at a time when it was reviewing and upgrading its cybersecurity defense. Kroll provided seamless incident response to enable the company to act quickly to mitigate and minimize the damage caused by the attack. The company also deployed Kroll Responder, Kroll’s award-winning Managed Detection and Response (MDR) solution, giving it comprehensive 24/7 visibility and management of threats and enhancing its long-term cyber resilience.

As part of a project to obtain more awareness of initial attack vectors outside of the common phishing and web application exploitation, Kroll’s Cyber Threat Intelligence team has developed a tool to enable the enhanced monitoring of the Python Package Index (PyPI) to find and obtain malicious packages that are added to it.