Management and a monitoring software are ubiquitous in the IT operation industry. They are force multipliers that allow for what are usually small teams to manage a large number of assets. By design they need to have elevated permission to accomplish their intended tasks. The problem is that these permissions also make them targets for attackers. This means that developers of these tools need to take extra steps to ensure that they are not vulnerable to attack or become the thing that compromises a network.

SentinelOne’s threat team has been tracking a couple of threat groups with an unusual goal. These groups are not looking to steal money or get a ransom, instead they are looking to track, monitor and incriminate specific targets. The targets that have been identified so far have been journalists and activists that oppose government practices. So far, the countries where these groups have been identified are limited to India and Trukey but if threat groups like this have been found there, it is likely they are everywhere.

The Dark Web (whispered in Letterkenny) is a playground for all kinds of illegal activity. One well traded item is Personal Information including Credit Card numbers. Due to the state of security in most organizations (Stuart!) there is no shortage of personally identifying information and credit cards for sale. There is a lot of money that trades hands around this as well, so it has been and will continue to be a target for law enforcement in the constant battle against the financial threat actor groups.

The shift to services like AWS, GCP and more have meant that many organizations are also making a shift away from the Microsoft Windows platform and moving to a Linux centric environment and while this is a good move for the most part, it has left many open to exploit due to improper configurations and a lack of proper security tools to protect their environments.