Ransomware gangs skip the CEO, head straight for the 40-something IT manager


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:

  • Tallahassee Memorial hospital victim of suspected ransomware attack

    February 3, 2023

    Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare is postponing all non-emergency patient procedures as officials manage an Information Technology security issue that occurred late Thursday night, according to a memo from the hospital. The IT security breach is a suspected ransomware attack, according to sources with knowledge of the situation. Read more… Source: Florida Politics  

  • GoAnywhere MFT zero-day vulnerability lets hackers breach servers

    February 3, 2023

    The developers of the GoAnywhere MFT file transfer solution are warning customers of zero-day remote code execution vulnerability on exposed administrator consoles. GoAnywhere is a secure web file transfer solution that allows companies to securely transfer encrypted files with their partners while keeping detailed audit logs of who accessed the files. Read more… Source: Bleeping Computer  

  • New APT34 Malware Targets The Middle East

    February 2, 2023

    On December 2022, Trend Micro researchers identified a suspicious executable (detected by Trend Micro as Trojan.MSIL.REDCAP.AD) that was dropped and executed on multiple machines. The investigation led them to link this attack to advanced persistent threat (APT) group APT34, and the main goal is to steal users’ credentials. Even in case of a password reset ...

  • CISA Releases Six Industrial Control Systems Advisories

    February 2, 2023

    CISA released six Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisories on February 2, 2023.These advisories provides timely information about current security issues, vulnerabilities, and exploits surrounding ICS. CISA encourages users and administrators to review the newly released ICS advisories for technical details and mitigations: ICSA-23-033-01 Delta Electronics DIAScreen ICSA-23-033-02 Mitsubishi Electric GOT2000 Series and GT SoftGOT2000 ICSA-23-033-03 Baicells Nova Read more… Source: U.S. ...

  • North Korean hackers stole research data in two-month-long breach

    February 2, 2023

    A new cyber espionage campaign dubbed ‘No Pineapple!’ has been attributed to the North Korean Lazarus hacking group, allowing the threat actors to stealthily steal 100GB of data from the victim without causing any destruction. The campaign lasted between August and November 2022, targeting organizations in medical research, healthcare, chemical engineering, energy, defense, and a leading ...

  • What SOCs Need to Know About Water Dybbuk, A BEC Actor Using Open-Source Toolkits

    February 2, 2023

    In September 2022, Trend Micro researchers observed a new potential BEC campaign that was targeting large companies around the world which we believe has been running since April 2022. By carefully selecting their target victims and leveraging open-source tools, the group behind this campaign stayed under the radar for quite some time. This attack leveraged an ...