TECHNOLOGY
“ WE ’ VE SEEN A CYBERCRIME SHIFT FROM COVERT SHADOW GROUPS INTO THESE CYBERCRIME CARTELS , NOW PROVIDING RANSOMWARE-AS-A-SERVICE AND EXECUTING MULTISTAGE CAMPAIGNS ”
TOM KELLERMANN HEAD OF CYBERSECURITY STRATEGY , VMWARE
one of the dominant forms across the threat landscape . The criminals running these campaigns are in it for the money and were initially drawn to ransomware because the payoff was so quick .”
Undoubtedly , though , the landscape has shifted significantly since WannaCry – as Curran explains : “ Threat actors have gone to a great effort to remain under the radar of leading antivirus ( AV ) solutions . Once a network has been compromised , they further penetrate the connected internal network using exploits and automatic USB infection to encrypt files , in addition to sending them outwards . A key threat of this malware is its ability to evade detection – and it goes to great lengths to do so effectively .”
He adds : “ Some have adopted a ' radio silence ' technique , through a sophisticated monitoring of system processes , where malware knows when to stay silent or lie dormant ; ' stealth mode ' techniques have been adopted by malware to evade detection . Techniques include frequently checking AV results to change versions and builds on all infected servers when any trace of detection appears , in addition to monitoring memory consumption to prevent common server administration utilities from detecting the ransomware processes .”
IBM SECURITY
According to IBM Security , the average cost of data breaches is nearing US $ 4.24mn .
94 July 2022