Why Threat Actors Are Increasingly Conducting Cyberattacks on Local Government
Cyberattacks on local government in the U.S. have increased dramatically over the last several years. In 2019 alone, ransomware affected more than 100 state and local governments, according to Recorded Future — and that’s just one threat vector. Municipalities...
Increase Automation to Overcome Cyber Resilience Challenges
Security operations teams face an exponentially growing volume of security event data while resources mostly remain static. One great way to help solve issues in this space is automation. Despite the recognized benefits of security automation, however, few organizations...
What Is a DDoS Attack?
After 20 years of prominence, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks may be causing more devastating effects than ever. The first DDoS attack occurred way back on July 22, 1999 when a network of 114 computers infected with a malicious script...
Will Weak Passwords Doom the Internet of Things (IoT)?
Weak passwords can hurt any organization’s security efforts and make any device easily hackable, but could they also be the greatest point of failure for internet of things (IoT) security? Weak passwords certainly put companies deploying IoT devices at...
Sextortion Scams Delivered by Emotet Net 10 Times More Than Necurs Sextortion — Here’s Why
Recent spam campaigns from Emotet featured sextortion content very similar to emails previously sent by the Necurs botnet. However, Emotet spam ended up netting 10 times the amount that a comparable Necurs campaign did — within a matter of...
We Need More Than Security Awareness to Combat Insider Threats
When I was new to the security industry, I firmly believed that people got infected with malware because they didn’t know how to be safe online. I thought problems happened because computers were too complicated, or the technology was...
3 Trends in Data Privacy Breach Laws That Will Carry Over to 2020
During 2019, new privacy laws were introduced, and many current laws evolved in the United States and across the global landscape. With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in full effect, we saw expensive fines levied upon companies that...
X-Force Threat Intelligence Index Reveals Top Cybersecurity Risks of 2020
The volume of threats that security teams see on a daily basis can make it especially difficult to look at the big picture when it comes to developing an effective cybersecurity strategy. To see through the flood of data...
How to Create Value With Your (Security) Data Analytics Program
I have been fascinated by data analytics for all my professional life — from my early days of using Linux command-line tools like grep, cut, sort and unique to make sense of log files and identify the chain of...
What Leadership Qualities for CISOs Are Most Important in 2020?
Organizations today have to balance the need for continuous evolution along the digital continuum with the need to protect their data and operations and keep cyber risk at an acceptable level. The chief information security officer (CISO) role is...
Biased AI Is Another Sign We Need to Solve the Cybersecurity Diversity Problem
Artificial intelligence (AI) excels at finding patterns like unusual human behavior or abnormal incidents. It can also reflect human flaws and inconsistencies, including 180 known types of bias. Biased AI is everywhere, and like humans, it can discriminate against...
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Security: A Match Made in the SOC
Change is constant in cybersecurity — continual, rapid, dynamic change. It’s impossible to maintain an effective defensive posture without constantly evolving. Security measures that worked in the past will not be effective today, and today’s security controls will not...
Emotet Activity Rises as It Uses Coronavirus Scare to Infect Targets in Japan
IBM X-Force has identified a spam campaign targeting users in Japan that employs the Coronavirus scare as a lure to encourage people to open malicious emails. The messages contain Microsoft Office files loaded with macros that, when enabled, launch...
How Deepfakes Will Make Us Question Everything in 2020
We’ve written about deepfakes before, but there’s one overlooked side effect that must be brought to our attention: As the technology improves and becomes more commonplace, what’s stopping anyone from claiming that what they definitively said was the result...
CamuBot Resurfaces With Cross-Channel, Targeted Attacks in Brazil
The malware discussed in this blog saw input from X-Force researchers Andre Piva and Ofir Ozer. It was initially described in a blog post by X-Force’s Maor Wiesen and Limor Kessem.
The IBM Trusteer cybercrime research labs specialize in the...
Sensitive plastic surgery images exposed online
Researchers at VPN advisory company vpnMentor have found yet another online data exposure caused by a misconfigured cloud database.
Lenovo, HP, Dell Peripherals Face Unpatched Firmware Bugs
A lack of proper code-signing verification and authentication for firmware updates opens the door to information disclosure, remote code execution, denial of service and more.
12 hottest new cybersecurity startups at RSA 2020
Starting on February 24, the RSA Conference (RSAC) 2020 gives security vendors old and new a chance to demonstrate their capabilities. The event has become an attractive venue for startups to make their debut. This year’s crop will be...
Hundreds of Millions of PC Components Still Have Hackable Firmware
The lax security of supply chain firmware has been a known concern for years—with precious little progress being made.
Remote Wipe Plugin Bug Hits 200,000+ WordPress Sites
Remote Wipe Plugin Bug Hits 200,000+ WordPress SitesSecurity researchers are warning of a new plugin vulnerability which is exposing over 200,000 WordPress sites to the risk of being remotely wiped by an attacker.
The problem lies with versions 1.3.4 and...
