Current Cyber Attacks
In many cases, paying the ransom is ineffective and does not restore the user’s data. According to Homeland Preparedness News, many mid-sized U.S. companies have a difficult time defending their systems against cyber-attacks. Around 80 percent of assets vulnerable to a cyber-attack are owned by private companies and organizations.
A Trojan horse attack uses a malicious program that is hidden inside a seemingly legitimate one. When the user executes the presumably innocent program, the malware inside the Trojan can be used to open a backdoor into the system through which hackers can penetrate the computer or network. This threat gets its name from the story of the Greek soldiers who hid inside a horse to infiltrate the city of Troy and win the war.
A whale-phishing attack is so-named because it goes after the “big fish” or whales of an organization, which typically include those in the C-suite or others in charge of the organization. These individuals are likely to possess information that can be valuable to attackers, such as proprietary information about the business or its operations. Reducing the risk of a cyber attack relies on using a combination of skilled security professionals, processes and technology. Man-in-the-middle, or MitM, where attackers secretly insert themselves between two parties, such as individual computer users and their financial institution.
The intent might be to inflict reputational damage or harm to a business or person, or theft of valuable data. Cyber attacks can target individuals, groups, organizations, or governments. Cybercriminals use many different methods to launch a cyber attack, a phishing attack, an exploitation of compromised credentials, and more. From this initial access, cybercriminals can go on to achieve different objectives including malware infections, ransomware, denial of service attack, data theft, and more. A cyberattack occurs when cybercriminals try to gain illegal access to electronic data stored on a computer or a network. Cyberattacks can target individuals, groups, organizations, or governments.
In other configurations, an access number is generated on a handheld device that the user has to log in to. The user can only access the secure area if both the password and the number are correct. In July 2020, Twitter was breached by a group of three attackers, who took over popular Twitter accounts. They used social engineering attacks to steal employee credentials and gain access to the company’s internal management systems, later identified by Twitter as vishing .
Likewise, the personally motivated, such as disgruntled current or former employees, will take money, data or a mere chance to disrupt a company's system. Socio-political motivated attackers seek attention for their causes. As a result, they make their attacks known to the public—also known as hacktivism.
The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control attributed the March 29 hack of Ronin Network to a North Korean hacking group and announced sanctions against the hackers. State-sponsored hackers took down RuTube, the Russian version of YouTube, according to the company. A Chinese hacking group stole intellectual property assets from U.S and European companies since 2019 and went largely undetected. Researchers believe the group is backed by the Chinese government. A DDoS attack targeted the Port of London Authority, forcing its website to go offline. Get an intelligent, integrated unified threat management approach to help you detect advanced threats, quickly respond Magazine with accuracy, and recover from disruptions.