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:
- Vice Society ransomware claims attack on Cincinnati State college
November 25, 2022
The Vice Society ransomware operation has claimed responsibility for a cyberattack on Cincinnati State Technical and Community College, with the threat actors now leaking data allegedly stolen during the attack. The hackers posted a long list of documents on their Tor data leak site they claim was stolen from the college, indicating that a ransom was ...
- Who tracked internet users in 2021–2022
November 25, 2022
Every time you go online, someone is watching over you. The services you use, the websites you visit, the apps on your phone, smart TVs, gaming consoles, and any networked devices collect data on you with the help of trackers installed on web pages or in software. The websites and services send this data to ...
- Google pushes emergency Chrome update to fix 8th zero-day in 2022
November 25, 2022
Google has released an emergency security update for the desktop version of the Chrome web browser, addressing the eighth zero-day vulnerability exploited in attacks this year. The high-severity flaw is tracked as CVE-2022-4135 and is a heap buffer overflow in GPU, discovered by Clement Lecigne of Google’s Threat Analysis Group on November 22, 2022. “Google is aware ...
- Meta links US military to fake social media influence campaigns
November 24, 2022
In its latest quarterly threat report, Meta said it had detected and disrupted influence operations originating in the US, and it calls out those it believes are responsible: the American military. Meta said it picked up on three major covert influence operations on its platforms in the third quarter of the year, the first of which ...
- UK: Government departments ordered to stop installing cameras made by Chinese firms in ‘sensitive sites’
November 24, 2022
Government departments have been told to stop installing cameras made by Chinese firms in “sensitive sites”. They have also been urged to disconnect Chinese-made devices from core computer networks and to consider removing them altogether, amid security concerns. The Government Security Group has said that since companies in China have to comply with the country’s national intelligence ...
- European Parliament Putin things back together after cyber attack
November 24, 2022
The European Parliament has experienced a cyber attack that started not long after it declared Russia to be a state sponsor of terrorism. The attack appears to have made part of the Parliament’s website inoperable and made access impossible for a few hours. A pro-Russian group called KILLNET appears to have claimed responsibility for the attack in ...