Regardless of the political fall-out from Special Counsel Robert J. Mueller’s indictment of twelve Russian intelligence operatives for tampering with the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, this much seems clear after reading the 29-page, John LeCarre-like document: It has become unreasonable to expect any organization to successfully defend against such a massive, coordinated cyberattack.
Tags: Mueller, U.S. election, presidential election, spear-phishing, phishing, cyberattacks, Russian hackers, Russian operatives, Russian intelligence, GRU, Clinton Campaign, DNC, Democratic National Committee, DCCC, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, isolation, browser isolation, remote browsing, credential theft, malware, Podesta, Clinton, cryptojacking, cryptocurrency, X-Agent
In recent weeks a resurgence of download bomb attacks has been observed in the wild, attempting to add legitimacy to malicious websites serving a tech support based phishing scam. For users of Menlo Security’s Isolation Platform (MSIP), this attack is trivially defeated with zero malicious content reaching the end user’s device. However, the same may not be said for reputation based security, as we review below.
Tags: malware, phishing, javascript, compromised websites, isolation, download bomb
While this post is intended to be a little tongue-in-cheek for readers, it’s been written to provoke discussion on how organizations continue to do the same things they have done for the last 15 years, without thinking of all the issues they bring with them…
Tags: ransomware, phishing, isolation, web isolation, spear-phishing, malvertising
The past few years, the major studios and production companies that create movies, broadcast television, streaming content, and even online and video games have been under cyber attack.
Tags: cyber attacks, ransomware, phishing attack, isolation, malicious code, malware
The holiday shopping season kicks off this week with Black Friday (November 24 th) and Cyber Monday (November 27 th). And, if it’s any indication of how much online shopping will occur, last year (2016), Cyber Monday set a new sales record of $3.45 billion USD!
Tags: cyber attacks, phishing, cyber Monday, Black Friday, isolation, isolation platform, malware
Last month, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security directed federal agencies to begin employing enhanced security methods and protocols on all government email accounts. This action is an effort to halt the impersonation of U.S. government email domains, referred to as spoofing, by attackers intent on deploying a dizzying array of cyber attacks typically initiated by a phishing campaign. Given that many reports place the start of a cyber attack squarely on phishing campaigns—some reports place the figure at over 90% of cyberattacks are as the result of phishing—it makes sense that the DHS would require greater email security for federal government email accounts and inboxes.
Tags: DMARC, cyber attacks, cyber security, phishing attack, isolation
It seems that almost daily, there is a new story about another bank or financial services institution (FSI) falling victim to a phishing or other cyberattack.
Tags: anti-phishing, cyberattacks, malicious code, Trickbot banking Trojan, malware, CISO, multi-factor authentication, Trojans, isolation, remote browers
The financial services industry is consistently among the most highly targeted industries for cyberattacks. Financial services institutions (FSIs) are a popular and frequent focus of attackers because, to quote famed bank robber Willie Sutton, when asked why he robbed banks: “That’s where the money’s at.”
Tags: financial services industry, cyberattacks, phishing, phishing attacks, phishing prevention, malware, ransomware, isolation, banking credentials, keyloggers, employee credential theft, credential theft, watering hole attacks, drive-by exploits, spear-phishing
Lately, instances of malware with built-in worm functionality have been on the rise. The WannaCry cyberattack is a perfect example. Although the malware was classified as ransomware, to increase the number of infections, the attackers used an SMB exploit to propagate it laterally within enterprises.
Tags: malware, worm, wannacry, cyber attacks, cyber threats, ransomware, Houdini, remote access trojan, isolation, web isolation
While Black Hat USA 2017 ended three weeks ago, I wanted to share my thoughts and experiences on my very first Black Hat USA 2017 after being in security for 15+ years.
Tags: Black Hat Conference, black hat, Ichthyology, cyber attacks, cyber theft, cybersecurity, cyber training, authentication and application security, phishing training, phishing attacks, credential theft, malware, ransomware, spearphishing, isolation
