Displaying items by tag: threat actors

If I have said it once, I have said it a thousand times; attackers are cunning. The adage that attackers are lazy has nothing to do with strategic, tactical, or technical knowledge. They understand the landscape and, in many cases, better than the organizations they are attacking do. Because of this deep understanding of their target environment, they also know to be on the lookout for special purpose entities. In this case we are talking about Security Researchers. Security researchers are a special target for attackers and when they can leverage an existing opportunity to target and potentially compromise them, they are going to take it.

One of the things that has always confused me is how often a business will look at and spend on revenue generating and very little on revenue maintenance. Every budget year you see money thrown at expansion, new tools or software that bring in more money and I get it. You have to earn to keep the lights on. However, you also need to ensure that you can keep what you earn. Think about it like this, if you have a business and it only takes cash you would not just leave the cash laying around for anyone to take. No, you would invest in a secure place like a safe to keep it. This concept also involves modern “digital” businesses, but we just are not seeing them spend any money on the safe.

2022 has been a busy year for the information security industry on both sides of the playing field. We have seen an increase in target attacks on businesses, a larger number of Zero-Day vulnerabilities disclosed that were being actively exploited in the wild, several major companies had data stollen and leaked, and we cannot forget the threat actor war going on over the Russian Invasion of Ukraine. With all these items, law enforcement agencies have also been very busy with the seizure and shut down of two major “hacker” marketplaces, Hydra and RaidForums.

Life would not be the same without new popping up that one state level threat actor or another was attacking and compromising US defense contractors or other businesses linked to US national security and defense. The counties of origin for these actors become a blur over time, although you do see some highlighted depending on current political trends. The two most often bandied about are Russia and China with North Korea getting an honorable mention.

The Threat Landscape is an interesting topic of discussion. It is a constantly changing thing and even the best predictions can often fall short of the actual threat. This is because in most cases, the attackers are a step ahead of the defenders. They have the advantage, to coin a D&D phrase, they won the initiative roll. Defenders are always waiting to see what might happen, they plan without really knowing what the attackers are going to do which means they have to be secure everywhere (not really a possibility). To help them put their resources in the right places, most security teams rely on threat intelligence feeds and an understanding of the Threat Landscape.