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:
- NortonLifeLock warns that hackers breached Password Manager accounts
January 13, 2023
Gen Digital, formerly Symantec Corporation and NortonLifeLock, is sending data breach notifications to customers, informing them that hackers have successfully breached Norton Password Manager accounts in credential-stuffing attacks. According to a letter sample shared with the Office of the Vermont Attorney General, the attacks did not result from a breach on the company but from account ...
- Royal Mail cyber attack carried out by Russian-linked ransomware gang
January 13, 2023
A ransomware gang linked to Russia carried out the Royal Mail cyber attack that suspended international postal deliveries. It is understood that Royal Mail’s investigation found the gang, named Lockbit, infected machines that print customs labels for parcels being sent overseas. The attack has left more than half a million parcels and letters stuck in limbo. Lockbit’s ...
- CISA Releases Twelve Industrial Control Systems Advisories
January 12, 2023
CISA released twelve Industrial Control Systems (ICS) advisories on January 12, 2023. These advisories provide 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-23-012-01 Sewio RTLS Studio ICSA-23-012-02 RONDS Equipment Predictive Maintenance Solution ICSA-23-012-03 InHand Networks InRouter ICSA-23-012-04 Panasonic Sanyo ...
- Hackers exploit Control Web Panel flaw to open reverse shells
January 12, 2023
Hackers are actively exploiting a critical vulnerability patched recently in Control Web Panel (CWP), a tool for managing servers formerly known as CentOS Web Panel. The security issue is identified as CVE-2022-44877 and received a critical severity score of 9.8 out of 10 as it allows an attacker to execute code remotely without authentication. On January 3, ...
- Juniper Networks Releases Security Updates for Multiple Products
January 12, 2023
Juniper Networks has released security updates to address vulnerabilities affecting multiple products. An attacker could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system. CISA encourages users and administrators to review Juniper Networks’ security advisories page and apply the necessary updates. Read more… Source: U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
- Fortinet: Government networks targeted with now-patched SSL-VPN zero-day
January 12, 2023
Fortinet says unknown attackers exploited a FortiOS SSL-VPN zero-day vulnerability patched last month in attacks against government organizations and government-related targets. The security flaw (CVE-2022-42475) abused in these incidents is a heap-based buffer overflow weakness found in the FortiOS SSLVPNd that allowed unauthenticated attackers to crash targeted devices remotely or gain remote code execution. The network security ...