About the Author: Dr. Antoine Lemay
Handling Ransomware Attacks to Minimize Disaster
Ransomware attacks take place in two phases: access development, then monetization. Stopping cyber attacks while they are still intrusions, and not ransomed data, can prevent data privacy disasters. Cyber Crime Requires a Division of Labor Cyber attackers take a specialized approach to ransomware development. First, the attacker develops access to a target. Second, the attacker [...]
Cyber Threat Research: Nuclear Power Plant Cyber Attack
In early September 2019, the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu, India suffered a cyber intrusion. On September 3, a local security expert and former member of the Indian signals intelligence agency received a tip that there had been a malware attack and informed the Indian CERT on September 4. Mission Critical Systems Effected [...]
Revue de mi-année 2021
Comme nous venons de passer la première moitié de 2021, j’ai décidé de revoir le top 5 des menaces que nous avons détectées durant cette période de 6 mois. À tous les quarts, nous produisons des rapports de tendance pour certains clients. Pour ce faire, nous creusons dans notre base de données d’incidents pour générer [...]
2021 Mid-Year Threat Review
As the first half of 2021 comes to a close, I decided to look back at the top 5 threats we detected during this 6-month period. Every quarter, we produce trend reports for some clients. To do so, we dig back in our incident database to generate reports. One of our clients (who doesn’t receive [...]
Check Your {User} Privileges
User privileges settings in commercial software frequently (and inadvertently) expose your business to privilege escalation attacks. Monitoring for access rights changes can help to proactively mitigate the risks. The team at CYDEF advocates for the principle of minimum privileges; according to which users should have only the minimal access rights to perform their jobs. A big part of the goal of minimum privileges is to ensure that users do not casually operate their machines [...]
ROI of PuP Detection
The security impact of detecting potentially unwanted programs is sometimes fuzzy, but in our experience, it helps reduces help desk costs. Small Victories: The ROI of PuP Detection Potentially Unwanted Programs (PuPs) generally have no real security impact. In most cases, they are more of an annoyance than a real threat (even if the threat can [...]
Moral Hazard of Cyber Insurance
Cyber insurance is not a replacement for harm prevention measures. The prices are high and will continue to go up. Here’s why. While doing research for a customer about trends you can expect for 2021, I found a number of outlets warning that the cyber insurance market was hardening with rises in premiums. Should we expect this trend to continue [...]
macOS Coverage: Is It Worth It?
With CYDEF’s recent coverage expansion to the macOS platform, we need to address the value of cybersecurity protection for Macs. After all, aren’t Macs completely impervious to security threats? The answer is no of course. So why is the question "Do I need Malware Protection for Mac?" so popular? This post will start by covering [...]
Phishing Campaigns Bypass Reputation Engine
The team at CYDEF observed an increasing proportion of phishing attempts that leverage trusted sites to bypass filtering resources. The following post addresses some of the detected campaigns and addresses security awareness programs. Phishing Off the River In recent posts we took an in-depth look at anti-virus bypass, especially living-off-the-land techniques. The general concept of these techniques is that, by abusing trusted resources, an attacker can capitalize on [...]
Vivre de la terre – Pas seulement pour les menaces avancées
Quand les gens discutent des dernières techniques d’attaques, ils assument souvent que ces techniques sont la prérogative exclusive des attaquants sophistiqués. Toutefois, ces attaques sont démocratisées très rapidement. Pour illustrer ceci, cette semaine nous allons analyser un logiciel classé « potentiellement non-désiré » qui utilise une chaîne de techniques « vivre de la terre » pour éviter d’être bloqué par [...]