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:

  • The SessionManager IIS backdoor

    June 30, 2022

    Following on from Kaspersky earlier Owowa discovery, Kaspersky researchers continued to hunt for more backdoors potentially set up as malicious modules within IIS, a popular web server edited by Microsoft. And they didn’t come back empty-handed… In 2021, Kaspersky noticed a trend among several threat actors for deploying a backdoor within IIS after exploiting one of ...

  • Hacking the Crypto-Monetized Web

    June 30, 2022

    The web is several decades old. But it largely still relies on the same method of monetization as it always has: advertising. However, things are changing thanks to the power of cryptocurrency and blockchain. It’s what Trend Micro has coined the “crypto-monetized web” (CMW). But where there’s money to be made and users to be ...

  • Burrowing your way into VPNs, Proxies, and Tunnels

    June 29, 2022

    When considering an attack lifecycle from an adversarial perspective, the adversary has a few options on how to proceed at each step. One of questions that needs to be answered is whether the adversary will use publicly known malware (i.e. BEACON), custom built-from-the-ground-up malware (i.e. HAMMERTOSS), or legitimate software and services (i.e. SoftEther Virtual Private ...

  • ZuoRAT is targeting routers to break into networks

    June 29, 2022

    A newly discovered remote access trojan (RAT) called ZuoRAT has targeted remote workers by exploiting flaws in often unpatched small office/home office (SOHO) routers. Researchers at Lumen’s Black Lotus Labs threat intelligence unit report that ZuoRAT is part of a highly targeted, sophisticated campaign that has been targeting workers across North America and Europe for nearly ...

  • FCC Commissioner urges Google and Apple to ban TikTok

    June 29, 2022

    “TikTok is not just another video app. That’s the sheep’s clothing.” That’s what Brendan Carr wrote in his tweet along with a copy of the letter he sent Apple and Google, asking the companies to remove TikTok from their app stores. The agency’s senior Republican commissioner references a recent BuzzFeed News report that examined leaked ...

  • Bumblebee: New Loader Rapidly Assuming Central Position in Cyber-crime Ecosystem

    June 28, 2022

    Bumblebee, a recently developed malware loader, has quickly become a key component in a wide range of cyber-crime attacks and appears to have replaced a number of older loaders, which suggests that it is the work of established actors and that the transition to Bumblebee was pre-planned. By analysis of three other tools used in recent ...