Ransomware is one of the most intractable — and common — threats facing organizations across all industries and geographies. And, incidents of ransomware attacks continue to rise. Meanwhile, ransomware threat actors are adjusting their attack model to adapt to improvements that organizations are making to recover from these attacks. As of Septem

Jackpotting, an older ATM theft technique, could show security operations team members what to look out for when it comes to Internet of things (IoT) attacks in general, and even election machine vulnerabilities.  This technique first entered the U.S. cybersecurity lexicon in 2018, when Brian Krebs warned of attacks at American ATMs. Jackpotting, Krebs

From the basic building blocks of the internet to cryptocurrency mining on a supercomputer, SOCKS sits at the core of computing. A SOCKS proxy can be used to improve network security in an enterprise, but can also be exploited by cybercriminals for nefarious reasons. Take a look at how SOCKS proxies have been manipulated recently by threat actors. What is

Threat hunting is an essential part of security operations center services and should be incorporated at an early stage. Threat hunting is the art of finding the unknowns in the environment, going beyond traditional detection technologies, such as security information and event management (SIEM), endpoint detection and response (EDR) and others. There are m

The current information security landscape is rapidly evolving. According to the latest research from IBM Security and the Ponemon Institute’s 2020 Cyber Resilient Organization Report, 67% of organizations reported that the volume of attacks had significantly increased over the past 12 months. It’s not just the amount of attacks that grew; 64% o

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are increasing in size, frequency and duration. Kaspersky Lab reported a doubling of DDoS attacks in the first quarter of 2020 compared with the fourth quarter of 2019, plus an 80% jump compared with the same quarter last year. Kaspersky also found that DDoS cyberattacks are increasing in duration. Average attack

The combination of lockdown measures, travel restrictions and stalling demand brought on by COVID-19 has caused an unprecedented collapse in the global air transport industry. Facing a projected loss of $84.3 billion in revenue and 32 million aviation-related jobs worldwide, nations are scrambling to provide much-needed financial support to sustain domestic

Financial firms continue to move to digital-first deployments, as retail branches close, and people shift to remote work. This shift makes understanding and preventing even common darknet, or dark web, threats a priority. Financial cybersecurity investment institutions need to understand what the dark web is, provide their security teams with the tools to ex

Transportation networks are foundational to our modern way of life. The current restrictions on global movement and the corresponding reduction in demand for travel and transportation services, while profound, are temporary. Forecasting future demand and capacity requirements is nearly impossible. But, the travel and transportation industries are part of the

Cyber ranges may be one of the most effective ways to train IT professionals in defending against cyber attacks. The virtual environments deliver simulated real-world attacks that test multiple dimensions and stakeholders within diverse environments. Cybersecurity teams can use cyber ranges to practice defending against simulated threats in immersive trainin

On Wednesday, July 15, the Twitterverse was ablaze with what Twitter itself has described as a “coordinated social engineering attack” that was launched at around 4pm ET. The outcome of this breach was compromised Twitter accounts of many well-known people and organizations, including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, former President Barack Obama, Joe Bide

IBM X-Force Incident Response Intelligence Services (IRIS) has uncovered rare details on the operations of the suspected Iranian threat group ITG18, which overlaps with Charming Kitten and Phosphorous. In the past few weeks, ITG18 has been associated with targeting of  pharmaceutical companies and the U.S. presidential campaigns. Now, due to operational erro

IBM X-Force Incident Response and Intelligence Services (IRIS) has been tracking cybercrime capitalizing on the coronavirus pandemic since January, and has observed the geographical areas of this activity shift over time. In February, cybercriminals were focusing on Asia, and we observed threat actors targeting potential victims in Japan with coronavirus-rel

Since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11, IBM X-Force has observed a more than 6,000 percent increase in COVID-19-related spam, with lures ranging the full gamut of challenges and concerns facing individuals — from phishing emails impersonating the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the WHO to U.S.

IBM X-Force Incident Response and Intelligence Services (IRIS) responds to security incidents around the globe. During analysis and comparison of malicious activity on enterprise networks, our team identified attacks likely linked to Hive0065, also known as TA505. We observed that Hive0065 continues to spread the SDBbot remote-access Trojan (RAT) alongside o