Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

As the cybercrime industry continues to provide us with new Malware as a Service (MaaS) products, we have become used to seeing the operators advertising and developing the panels underground. An allegedly legitimate software company named Venom Control Software emerged, offering a Remote-Access-Tool (RAT) for “hackers and pen-testers”.

Over the past week, an establishment of a new ransomware franchise has emerged named GhostLocker. Ghost Locker is a new Ransomware-as-a-Service (Raas) established by several hacktivist groups led by GhostSec. Recently, many hacktivist groups have tried to engage in cybercrime activities in order to sustain themselves and GhostLocker seems to be one of these cases. In fact, some ransomware groups have already migrated to using GhostLocker instead of their original products.

Artificial Intelligence, often abbreviated to AI, refers to the development of computer systems capable of carrying out tasks and rendering decisions that traditionally demand human intelligence. This entails the creation of algorithms and models that empower machines to acquire knowledge from data, discern patterns, and adjust to unique information or scenarios.

Q3 will be remembered as a new record for the ransomware industry as it was the most successful quarter ever recorded. While the number skyrocketed in Q2 with 1386 cases, in Q3, the ransomware industry was able to surpass this number with 1420 cases. With no surprise, the U.S. continues to be the most targeted country by ransomware, while the business services sector is the most targeted sector.

You don’t need to be an expert in cybersecurity to know that ransomware, which gets plenty of coverage in the media, is a threat – and one that’s getting worse. Cyberint’s research shows that Q2 2023 alone saw 1386 new ransomware cases, a 67 percent increase in ransomware victims compared to the preceding quarter. This number was surpassed in Q3 with a whopping 1420 cases. Finding and analyzing ransomware groups is a central part of the Cyberint research team’s focus.

The United States is a focal point for cyber threats, offering the highest potential gain to threat actors worldwide. Unquestionably, it remains the most targeted country worldwide. Ransomware, poses a particularly severe threat to organizations globally, with the U.S. being its primary target. In light of these realities, this comprehensive threat landscape report aims to shed light on the specific cyber threats that the nation faces.

Just two months ago, researchers from Vienna conducted a study that revealed the abuse of dangling DNS records to hijack subdomains of numerous major organizations, highlighting the potential vulnerability of thousands of entities. The researchers targeted subdomains belonging to various government organizations, political parties, universities, media companies, and financial institutions. They managed to take control of these subdomains to demonstrate the risk associated with this vulnerability.

On September 15th, 2023, it was announced that a company in Stockport, UK, responsible for producing ID cards for various organizations, including Greater Manchester Police, fell victim to a ransomware attack. The attack, conducted using ransomware, had significant implications. Thousands of police officers’ personal details, including their names, were at risk of exposure to the public domain.

It would be great if Dark Web scans were as simple as Google searches – if you could simply plug your business’s name into a search engine, run a query and view a list of results about threats that impact your company. Unfortunately for businesses seeking to stay a step ahead of threat actors, quite the opposite is true. It’s not just that there is no Google or search index that teams can turn to when searching for threats.

You can’t manage what you can’t measure – and unfortunately, measuring cyber risk exposure can be quite difficult. That’s not, of course, because no one attempts to put labels on risks and threats. In fact, there is a great deal of effort placed on identifying, quantifying, and deciding how to manage cyber risk.