After Microsoft announced this year that macros from the Internet will be blocked by default in Office, many threat actors have switched to different file types such as Windows Shortcut (LNK), ISO or ZIP files, to distribute their malware. Nevertheless, Office documents are still actively leveraged in many campaigns and pose a large risk to organizations, especially with threat actors continuously finding new ways to avoid detection.

In predicting what will transpire in cybersecurity in 2023, the best method is to look at past experience. As with any security and criminal activity, threat actors tend to build upon what they have done in the past, adding new twists to keep their tactics fresh and effective. So, taking this into consideration, it is no surprise that Trustwave's security experts see much of the same type of attacks that plagued 2022 continuing.

In predicting what will transpire in cybersecurity in 2023, the best method is to look at past experience. As with any security and criminal activity, threat actors tend to build upon what they have done in the past, adding new twists to keep their tactics fresh and effective. So, taking this into consideration, it is no surprise that Trustwave's security experts see much of the same type of attacks that plagued 2022 continuing.

ChatGPT has been available to the public since November 30, 2022. Since then, it has made headlines – from being temporarily banned from Stack Overflow because, “while the answers ChatGPT produces have a high rate of being incorrect, they typically look like they might be good, and the answers are very easy to produce,” .

Cybercriminals who use Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks are switching up their tactics, with some groups now targeting actual merchandise instead of money in their phishing attacks. Trustwave’s email security solution MailMarshal is aware of and investigating this new methodology. MailMarshal is capable of defending an organization against BEC attacks. This Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Food and Drug Administration Office of Criminal Investigations (FDA OCI), and the U.S.

Trustwave SpiderLabs is among the most well-respected teams in the cybersecurity industry, having gained a reputation for conducting cutting-edge research, plying the foggy corners of the darkweb for information, and detecting and hunting down threats. What is less well known is how Trustwave's SpiderLabs' various teams' function and then pull together to create the formidable force that is the backbone of all Trustwave's offerings.

On Tuesday, December 13, a joint announcement from the United States NSA and Citrix announced a zero-day vulnerability in Citrix ADC. The vulnerability (CVE-2022-27518) is a critical unauthenticated Remote Code Execution (RCE) issue currently rated as CVSS 9.8. Patches are already available from Citrix. The NSA attributes the zero-day to APT5, a Chinese hacking collective. There is currently no guidance for how widespread the campaign has been or how long it's been ongoing.

Meta has two of the largest social media platforms today, Facebook and Instagram. These platforms became the modern gateway for people not just to socialize and eavesdrop on the lives of famous personalities, but more importantly, to stay connected with their friends and loved ones. The sites also became effective channels for organizations to advertise and disseminate information.

An organization's database contains intellectual property, information on clients, product development, personal information on its workers, and in many cases, critical information on consumers. Therefore, it not only makes sense to fully understand how an attacker can threaten a database, but how to best defend against such an attack. So, what are those dangers? In no particular order, the most significant threats facing databases today are system, privilege, and credential threats.

Cybercriminals have long used Microsoft documents to pass along malware and they are always experimenting with new ways to deliver malicious packages. As defenders, Trustwave SpiderLabs’ researchers are always looking out for new or unusual file types, and through this ongoing research, we uncovered threat actors using a OneNote document to move Formbook malware, an information stealing trojan sold on an underground hacking forum since mid-2016 as malware-as-a-service.

Recently, we’ve noticed an increase in user reports of SMS-based Business Email Compromise (BEC) messages. This seems to be part of a wider trend as phishing scams via text messages surge. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) observed an increase in unsolicited text messages, with 2022 practically tripling the number of phishing texts reported to the FCC in 2019. Phishing scams are prevalent in the SMS threat landscape, and now, BEC attacks are also going mobile.

Trustwave has been named as a Major Player in the IDC MarketScape: Asia/Pacific Professional Security Services Vendor Assessment (doc #AP49101123e, October 2022). According to the report, “Trustwave has established itself as a reputable and reliable player in the market and plans to continually invest in enhancing its service offerings with a focus on global scalability, platform delivery models, and interconnection between MSS and PSS services.”

Trustwave SpiderLabs is among the most well-respected teams in the cybersecurity industry, having gained a reputation for conducting cutting-edge research, plying the foggy corners of the darkweb for information, and detecting and hunting down threats. What is less well known is how Trustwave’s SpiderLabs’ various teams’ function and then pull together to create the formidable force that is the backbone of all Trustwave’s offerings.

The 2022 holiday shopping season is here. Retailers’ discounts are kicking off early, and shoppers are eager to spend, especially with big price markdowns to come as the season progresses. And with the COVID-19 pandemic still a concern to shoppers, more people are expected to shop online this season. What this also means is that as consumers whip themselves into a shopping frenzy, cybercriminals have activated their seasonal scams to try and steal money or personal information.

Due to the increasing number of cyberattacks, particularly zero days, organizations are scrambling to obtain the best security services available. While even the smallest organization might feel that implementing Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) will keep its data secure, a targeted attack from a nefarious threat actor could lure an employee into clicking and opening a malicious document.