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:

  • LokiBot Impersonates Popular Game Launcher and Drops Compiled C# Code File

    February 14, 2020

    LokiBot, which has the ability to harvest sensitive data such as passwords as well as cryptocurrency information, proves that the actors behind it is invested in evolving the threat. In the past, we have seen a campaign that exploits a remote code execution vulnerability to deliver LokiBot using the Windows Installer service, a Lokibot variant that uses ISO ...

  • US Cyber Command, DHS, and FBI expose new North Korean malware

    February 14, 2020

    US Cyber Command, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Federal Bureau of Investigations have exposed today a new North Korean hacking operation. Authorities have published security advisories detailing six new malware families that are currently being used by North Korean hackers. According to the Twitter account of the Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF), a subordinate unit ...

  • Wireshark Tutorial: Examining Qakbot Infections

    February 13, 2020

    Qakbot is an information stealer also known as Qbot. This family of malware has been active for years, and Qakbot generates distinct traffic patterns. This Wireshark tutorial reviews a recent packet capture (pcap) from a Qakbot infection. Understanding these traffic patterns can be critical for security professionals when detecting and investigating Qakbot infections. Note: This tutorial assumes you have ...

  • Emotet Now Spreads via Wi-Fi

    February 13, 2020

    A new strain of Emotet was found spreading through wireless internet connections, deviating from the email spam campaigns that the malware commonly utilizes as a means of propagation. According to researchers from Binary Defense, this new loader type takes advantage of the wlanAPI interface to spread from an infected device to an unsecure Wi-Fi network. Emotet was discovered by Trend ...

  • An In-Depth Technical Analysis of CurveBall (CVE-2020-0601)

    February 13, 2020

    The first Microsoft patch Tuesday of 2020 contained fixes for CVE-2020-0601, a vulnerability discovered by the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) that affects how cryptographic certificates are verified by one of the core cryptography libraries in Windows that make up part of the CryptoAPI system. Dubbed CurveBall or “Chain of Fools,” an attacker exploiting this vulnerability could potentially create ...

  • New Cyber Espionage Campaigns Targeting Palestinians: The Spark and Pierogi Campaigns

    February 13, 2020

    Over the last several months, the Cybereason Nocturnus team has been tracking recent espionage campaigns targeting the Middle East. These campaigns are specifically directed at entities and individuals in the Palestinian territories. This investigation shows multiple similarities to previous attacks attributed to a group called MoleRATs (aka The Gaza Cybergang), an Arabic-speaking, politically motivated group that has operated ...