Earlier this month, Microsoft threat analysts released an alert in a blog post warning organisations of a new attack vector being used to deploy malware.
New ‘Copyright’ Phishing Scam Uses Website Contact Forms
More Than Half of Major Cyber Incidents in 2020 Involved Ransomware
With 2020 coming to an end, after what felt like an eternity to many, cybersecurity & technology firm CrowdStrike have released their annual ‘Cyber Front Lines’ incident-analysis report, and it contains much food for thought. One of the more striking figures is that more than half of the cyber attacks they investigated involved ransomware; a form of malware which encrypts any files it can find until a ‘ransom’ is paid. Ransomware attacks are known to be extremely destructive, spreading quickly through networks and shutting down critical operations as they go.
Financially-motivated attacks in general, the majority of which were ransomware-based, made up 63% of the more than 200 incidents they responded to, demonstrating that the file-encrypting malware is big business for cyber criminals, and not going away any time soon.
WordPress Sites Seeing Increased Cyber Attacks Thanks to Plugin Vulnerability
The team behind Wordfence, a popular security plugin for WordPress, have reported seeing a large increase in cyber attacks aimed at WordPress-based websites over the last few weeks. This is believed to be due to a vulnerability in another WordPress plugin, File Manager, which has over 700,000 active installations. While the vulnerability only affects those running certain versions of the File Manager plugin, Wordfence reports that cyber attacks are up across the board, as cyber criminals cast a wide net with their attacks.
Users Warned of Major New Phishing Campaign, Using Infected Excel Files
Microsoft has released a statement warning users to stay vigilant of phishing emails, as a malicious campaign has been detected which tricks users into downloading an Excel sheet containing harmful software. The criminals responsible are taking advantage of the confusion around Covid-19, as many others have been doing lately, to convince users that the emails are genuine and to enable macros within Excel once the file has been downloaded to their computer.
Three Major Antivirus Companies Breached by Russian Hackers
In the latest major security breach to rock the business world, three major US-based antivirus companies have been hit by Russian hacker group Fxmsp. Fxmsp, who are well known in the cyber security community for previous high-profile breaches, began advertising the spoils of their latest venture on the dark web for upwards of $300,000, while providing strong evidence of their claims.
