How Attackers are Taking Advantage of the Human Factor

2013 is well on its way to be another record year for cyber intrusions, keeping security as a topic in every corporation’s boardroom and in every government agency.

How many vulnerabilities did your security team find scanning today, last month, or this year? And how many were high risk? In the first six months of 2013, the IBM X-Force Research and Development team analyzed 4,100 new security vulnerabilities and 900 million new web pages and images.

The IBM X-Force team just released their Trend and Risk Report which summarizes their findings on emerging threats and the 2013 attack landscape. If you are a CIO, CEO, CISO or a line of business executive this must read report outlines the new attack opportunities in areas like:

Social media: how social media is a valuable tool for business, but is also being used by attackers for reconnaissance and launching attacks
Mobile device malware: how the explosive growth of Android devices is attracting malware authors
Poisoning the watering hole: how attackers are compromising a central strategic target and launching zero day exploits
Distraction and diversion: how attackers are amplifying Distributed-Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks as a distraction to allow them to breach other systems
Old techniques, new success: how today’s security complexity can enable old gaps to be exploited

Read the latest research from IBM X-Force

Caleb Barlow

Strela Stealer: Today’s invoice is tomorrow’s phish

12 min read - As of November 2024, IBM X-Force has tracked ongoing Hive0145 campaigns delivering Strela Stealer malware to victims throughout Europe - primarily Spain, Germany and Ukraine. The phishing emails used in these campaigns are real invoice notifications, which have been stolen through previously exfiltrated email credentials. Strela Stealer is designed to extract user credentials stored in Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird. During the past 18 months, the group tested various techniques to enhance its operation's effectiveness. Hive0145 is likely to be…

Hive0147 serving juicy Picanha with a side of Mekotio

17 min read - IBM X-Force tracks multiple threat actors operating within the flourishing Latin American (LATAM) threat landscape. X-Force has observed Hive0147 to be one of the most active threat groups operating in the region, targeting employee inboxes at scale, with a primary focus on phishing and malware distribution. After a 3-month break, Hive0147 returned in July with even larger campaign volumes, and the debut of a new malicious downloader X-Force named "Picanha,” likely under continued development, deploying the Mekotio banking trojan. Hive0147…

FYSA – Critical RCE Flaw in GNU-Linux Systems

2 min read - Summary The first of a series of blog posts has been published detailing a vulnerability in the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS), which purportedly allows attackers to gain remote access to UNIX-based systems. The vulnerability, which affects various UNIX-based operating systems, can be exploited by sending a specially crafted HTTP request to the CUPS service. Threat Topography Threat Type: Remote code execution vulnerability in CUPS service Industries Impacted: UNIX-based systems across various industries, including but not limited to, finance, healthcare,…

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More from X-Force

Strela Stealer: Today’s invoice is tomorrow’s phish

Hive0147 serving juicy Picanha with a side of Mekotio

FYSA – Critical RCE Flaw in GNU-Linux Systems

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