Turns out the fastest way to get a company to consider paying a ransom isn’t calling the CEO – it’s targeting the 46-year-old IT manager.
That’s according to Zscaler, whose ThreatLabz researchers tracked 351 victims across 334 organizations caught up in a single ransomware campaign over the course of a month.
The data suggests today’s ransomware crews have become oddly specific about their preferred victim profile: nearly two-thirds of victims held manager-level titles or above, the average victim was a 46-year-old Gen Xer, and three-quarters worked in accounting and finance, sales, operations, HR, or marketing. Half worked in the industrial or IT sectors.
Read more…
Source: The Register News
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- Ghost CMS flaw hijacked to target hundreds of websites with ClickFix attacks
May 26, 2026
A critical-severity vulnerability that reportedly was patched three months ago is being exploited in a massive ClickFix campaign, researchers have claimed. In mid-February 2026, a critical SQL injection vulnerability was found in Ghost CMS, a popular open-source Content Management System (CMS) currently used by more than 57,000 websites, including the likes of 404 Media, The Canadian ...
- Industrial robots targeted by malware, which could open them up to hacking
May 25, 2026
A critical command injection vulnerability has been discovered in Universal Robots PolyScope 5, the operating system whucg powers the company’s collaborative robots. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-8153, carries a CVSS score of 9.8 and affects all software versions prior to PolyScope 5.25.1. This vulnerability could lead to complete compromise of the robot controller, affecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability ...
- Another major Linux security flaw revealed — nine-year old issue could spell disaster for users
May 23, 2026
Security researchers Qualys discovered a major flaw in the Linux operating system (OS) that could let any ordinary user, or malicious actor, gain full admin access on vulnerable endpoints. This bug lingered in Linux systems since 2016, and affects the default installations of several major distributions, including Red Hat, SUSE, Debian, Fedora, AlmaLinux, CloudLinux, and others. Read more… Source: TechRadar News Sign up ...
- Cloud Atlas activity in the second half of 2025 and early 2026: new tools and a new payload
May 22, 2026
In 2025, Kaspersky observed pervasive SSH tunnel activity, which has remained active into 2026, affecting many government organizations and commercial companies in Russia and Belarus. Behind some of this activity is Cloud Atlas, a group which was known to Kaspersky researchers since 2014. During the investigation, the researches identified new tools used by this group, as ...
- ROADtools and Nation-State Tactics in the Cloud
May 22, 2026
ROADtools is a publicly available toolkit for offensive and defensive security purposes that attackers have integrated into cloud attacks. The tool is designed to: Enumerate Entra ID Register devices in Entra ID Acquire, exchange and manipulate Microsoft Entra ID tokens ROADtools is an open-source framework written in Python and built for red-teaming and research. It primarily targets the identity and ...
- Tracking Iranian APT Screening Serpens’ 2026 Espionage Campaigns
May 22, 2026
Unit 42 researchers have observed evidence of cyberattacks by the Iran-nexus advanced persistent threat (APT) group Screening Serpens (aka UNC1549, Smoke Sandstorm and Iranian Dream Job). Based on Unite 42 visibility, researchers believe that the group targeted entities in the U.S., Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and likely two additional Middle Eastern entities. This research follows ...