- Court orders seizure of ransomware botnet controls as U.S. election nears
October 12, 2020
Microsoft said Monday it had used a court order to take control of computers that were installing ransomware and other malicious software on local government networks and threatening to disrupt the November election. The maker of the Windows operating system said it seized a series of internet protocol addresses hosted by U.S. companies that had been ...
- The most common malicious email attachments infecting Windows
October 11, 2020
To stay safe online, everyone needs to recognize malicious attachments that are commonly used in phishing emails to distribute malware. When distributing malware, threat actors create spam campaigns that pretend to be invoices, invites, payment information, shipping information, eFaxes, voicemails, and more. Included in these emails are malicious Word and Excel attachments, or links to them, ...
- ZeroLogon: Ransomware gang now using critical Windows flaw in attacks
October 9, 2020
Microsoft is warning that cybercriminals have started to incorporate exploit code for the ZeroLogon vulnerability in their attacks. The alert comes after the company noticed ongoing attacks from cyber-espionage group MuddyWater (SeedWorm) in the second half of September. This time, the threat actor is TA505, an adversary who is indiscriminate about the victims it attacks, with ...
- Massachusetts school district shut down by ransomware attack
October 8, 2020
The Springfield Public Schools district in Massachusetts has become the victim of a ransomware attack that has caused the closure of schools while they investigate the cyberattack. Springfield is the third largest school district in Massachusetts with over 25,000 students, 4,500 employees, and more than sixty schools. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the school district opened ...
- HEH P2P Botnet Sports Dangerous Wiper Function
October 8, 2020
A freshly discovered botnet dubbed HEH by researchers is casting a wide net, looking to infect any and all devices that use Telnet on ports 23/2323. It’s particularly destructive: It contains code that wipes all data from infected systems. Perhaps ironically, its operators also have a penchant for civil advocacy – a loading of the Universal ...
- Transforming IoT Monitoring Data into Threat Defense
October 8, 2020
In our midyear roundup report, we shared that in the first half of 2020, there was a 70% increase in inbound attacks on devices and routers compared with the second half of 2019. This data includes attacks on Internet of Things (IoT) systems, which remain alarming and prevalent. With the aim of protecting customers effectively by ...
- US brokerage firms warned of widespread survey phishing attacks
October 7, 2020
The U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has issued a notice warning member brokerage firms of widespread phishing attacks using surveys to harvest information. FINRA is a non-profit organization and self-regulatory body authorized by the U.S. government to regulate exchange markets and brokerage firms. According to FINRA, the organization supervises over 624,000 brokers across the country and ...
- French companies Under Attack from Clever BEC Scam
October 6, 2020
The highly anonymous and often secretive nature of the internet has led to the proliferation of scams aimed at separating people and organizations from their money. Trend Micro has been following these scams over the years and have seen many of them evolve from simplistic schemes to more sophisticated campaigns. One of the most dangerous ...
- Inside the Bulletproof Hosting Business – Cybercriminal Methods and OpSec
October 6, 2020
Many cybercriminal operations have some level of organization, planning, and some form of foundation that reflects the technical acumen of the individual or group behind them. The use of underground infrastructure is inherent to the modus operandi of a cybercriminal. In our Underground Hosting series, we have differentiated how cybercrime goods are sold in marketplaces ...
- New ransomware vaccine kills programs wiping Windows shadow volumes
October 4, 2020
A new ransomware vaccine program has been created that terminates processes that try to delete volume shadow copies using Microsoft’s vssadmin.exe program, Every day, Windows will create backups of your system and data files and store them in Shadow Volume Copy snapshots. These snapshots can then be used to recover files if they are mistakenly changed or ...