Because of the amount of data that can be obtained and the high impact that successful attacks may have, educational institutions are frequent targets of cybercriminals. Both public and private schools and universities rely on software for managing personally identifiable information (PII) that is often insecure or insufficiently tested against known vulnerabilities. In addition, machines used by multiple people without accountability can be vulnerable to insider threats.
The complexity of academic environments amplifies this risk. Unlike corporate networks, educational institutions have to provide a network that supports students, professors, researchers, administrative staff, third-party contractors, and visitors. Each of these groups has different security requirements and access control levels, making it difficult to enforce consistent security policies. A security breach can have severe consequences since it may expose vast amounts of sensitive information, such as social security numbers (CPF in Brazil), addresses, phone numbers, and even parents’ names. Armed with this information, attackers can attempt phishing attacks and impersonate the victims in SIM swapping attacks, a common practice in Brazil.
Read more…
Source: Kaspersky
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- Brute-force cyberattacks on the rise in Brazil
August 24, 2020
Brazil has seen a spike in brute-force cyberattacks driven by the increase in remote working, according to a new report on security threats in the first six months of 2020. More than 2.6 billion attempts at cyber attacks have been recorded by cybersecurity firm Fortinet from January to June, out of a total of 15 billion ...
- The Tetrade: Brazilian banking malware goes global
July 14, 2020
Brazil is a well-known country with plenty of banking trojans developed by local crooks. The Brazilian criminal underground is home to some of the world’s busiest and most creative perpetrators of cybercrime. Like their counterparts’ in China and Russia, their cyberattacks have a strong local flavor, and for a long time, they limited their attacks ...
- Brazilian federal police investigates presidential data leak
June 26, 2020
The Brazilian federal police reported advances around an investigation into a cybercrime organization supposedly responsible for exposing personal details of senior government officials including president Jair Bolsonaro. The investigation follows a leak earlier this month, claimed by hacker group Anonymous Brazil, involving personal information relating to Bolsonaro, his sons and supporters, as well as various ministers. Information ...
- Cosmetics giant Avon is recovering from a mysterious cyber-security incident
June 16, 2020
Avon has filed documents with the US Securities Exchange Commission disclosing the incident on June 9, a day after the company first discovered issues with some of its IT infrastructure. The company said the incident “interrupted some systems and partially affected operations.” Last week, Avon distributors reported problems accessing the company’s backend, where they usually file new product ...
- Swiss encryption company secretly owned by U.S. and German intelligence agencies
February 11, 2020
The U.S. intelligence community actively monitored for decades the diplomatic and military communications of numerous Latin American nations through encryption machines supplied by a Swiss company that was secretly owned by the CIA and the German intelligence agency, BND, according to reports today by the German public television channel, ZDF and the Washington Post. Declassified records ...
- Calypso APT Emerges from the Shadows to Target Governments
October 31, 2019
A newly discovered APT group, dubbed Calypso after a custom malware RAT that it uses, has been targeting state institutions in six different countries since 2016. Government organizations in India (34 percent), Brazil and Kazakhstan (18 percent respectively), Russia and Thailand (12 percent respectively) and Turkey (6 percent) have all been successfully infiltrated at some point, ...