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:

  • Microsoft fixes under-attack Windows zero-day Follina

    June 15, 2022

    Microsoft claims to have finally fixed the Follina zero-day flaw in Windows as part of its June Patch Tuesday batch, which included security updates to address 55 vulnerabilities. Follina, eventually acknowledged by Redmond in a security advisory last month, is the most significant of the bunch as it has already been exploited in the wild. Criminals and ...

  • CISA Adds One Known Exploited Vulnerability to Catalog 

    June 14, 2022

    CISA has added one new vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. These types of vulnerabilities are a frequent attack vector for malicious cyber actors and pose significant risk to the federal enterprise. Note: to view the newly added vulnerabilities in the catalog, click on the arrow in the “Date ...

  • A new vulnerability in Intel and AMD CPUs lets hackers steal encryption keys

    June 14, 2022

    Microprocessors from Intel, AMD, and other companies contain a newly discovered weakness that remote attackers can exploit to obtain cryptographic keys and other secret data traveling through the hardware, researchers said on Tuesday. Hardware manufacturers have long known that hackers can extract secret cryptographic data from a chip by measuring the power it consumes while processing ...

  • An Autopsy on a Zombie In-the-Wild 0-day

    June 14, 2022

    Whenever there’s a new in-the-wild 0-day disclosed, I’m very interested in understanding the root cause of the bug. This allows us to then understand if it was fully fixed, look for variants, and brainstorm new mitigations. This blog is the story of a “zombie” Safari 0-day and how it came back from the dead to ...

  • GALLIUM Expands Targeting Across Telecommunications, Government and Finance Sectors With New PingPull Tool

    June 13, 2022

    Over the past year, this group has extended its targeting beyond telecommunication companies to also include financial institutions and government entities. During this period, we have identified several connections between GALLIUM infrastructure and targeted entities across Afghanistan, Australia, Belgium, Cambodia, Malaysia, Mozambique, the Philippines, Russia and Vietnam. Most importantly, we have also identified the group’s ...

  • Exposing HelloXD Ransomware and x4k

    June 12, 2022

    HelloXD is a ransomware family performing double extortion attacks that surfaced in November 2021. During our research Palo Alto team observed multiple variants impacting Windows and Linux systems. Unlike other ransomware groups, this ransomware family doesn’t have an active leak site; instead it prefers to direct the impacted victim to negotiations through TOX chat and ...