Clark County School District in Nevada, the fifth-largest school district in the United States, recently experienced a massive data breach. Threat actors gained access to the school district’s email servers, which exposed the sensitive data of over 200,000 students. The district is now facing a class-action lawsuit from parents, alleging it failed to protect sensitive personal information and take steps to prevent the cybersecurity attack.

The information stealers ecosystem continues to expand as we witness the ongoing maintenance and new capabilities in the latest stealers versions. 2023 was a good year for InfoStealers as they keep evolving along with exploiting the popular vulnerabilities from the last years to infiltrate targeted devices. InfoStealer malware has become increasingly widespread, new business models are being introduced and new detection evasion capabilities are being implemented.

A threat actor, hoping to launch a ransomware attack on an organization, is able to use stolen credentials to get into a user’s email account. Utilizing spear phishing techniques and reconnaissance, the threat actor emails the IT department, asking for credentials to an important network application. They gain the credentials, move deeper into the network, and start setting up a ransomware attack.

The Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) model, and its readily available scheme, remains to be the preferred method for emerging threat actors to carry out complex and lucrative cyberattacks. Information theft is a significant focus within the realm of MaaS, with a specialization in the acquisition and exfiltration of sensitive information from compromised devices, including login credentials, credit card details, and other valuable information.

There’s a massive elephant in the room: unstructured data. It’s valuable, and it needs to be protected. Let’s talk about why.

The different types of ransomware include crypto ransomware, locker ransomware, scareware, leakware and Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS). Ransomware is a type of malware, also known as malicious software, that prevents victims from accessing the data stored on their devices until they’ve paid a cybercriminal a certain amount of money, commonly referred to as a ransom.

Man Bites Dog: In an unusual twist in cybercrime, the ransomware group BlackCat/ALPHV is manipulating the SEC's new 4-day rule on cyber incident reporting to increase pressure on their victims. This latest maneuver highlights a sophisticated understanding of regulatory impacts in ransomware strategies.

Google Cloud releases its Q3 Threat Horizons report, BlueNoroff hacks macOS machines with ObjCshellz malware, and a ChatGPT-powered infostealer targets cloud platforms.