Threat Spotlight: Data Extortion Ransomware Threats
Over the last few years, the ransomware landscape has changed significantly. Between 2022 and 2023, ransomware attacks increased by more than 100% year-over-year, with more attacks consisting of double and triple extortion. At a high level, the categories of ransomware can be defined as: Modern ransomware attacks are no longer a lone individual sitting at […]
Threat Spotlight: New Frontier of AI Exploits
As machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) become increasingly complex, they pose new possibilities for organizations and threat actors. Over the last fifteen years, neural networks and deep learning technologies have evolved at a rapid pace. Over the past four years, from the release of GPT1 through today’s GPT4, AI models have evolved from […]
Threat Spotlight: Data Extortion Ransomware: Key Trends in 2023
Ransomware Trends Overview As ransomware’s fundamental nature shifts from encryption to data exfiltration, organizations’ data backup and recovery practices no longer protect them from attacks. Over the course of the past few years, the cybercriminal landscape changed too. More and more criminal ransomware organizations are adopting “as-a-Service” business models on the dark web which open the […]
Threat Spotlight: Initial Access Brokers on Russian Hacking Forums
Russian Hacking Forum Trends Initial access brokers (IAB) are sophisticated, focused, and specialized threat actors that focus on finding and gaining access to corporate environments. Once they compromise these environments, they auction off or sell the access on dark web forums. To date in 2023, more than 100 companies across 18 industries had access to […]
Threat Spotlight: The Dark Web and AI
Executive Overview More than 200,000 credentials to AI language models are currently being sold on the dark web as part of stealer logs, files containing thousands of credentials derived from infostealer malware. This certainly raises the risk that employees will leak sensitive data into models, and then lose the credentials. However, we see even more […]
Threat Spotlight: Stealer Logs & Corporate Access
Executive Overview Over the last three years, infostealer malware variants have become a “popular trend” in the cybercriminal Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) ecosystem. Doing precisely as their category implies, these malware variants steal information from users’ devices. After infecting the device, the malware employs various techniques to remain undetected while sending data to the malicious actors’ command […]
Threat Spotlight: Incident Response & Cybercrime in 2023
Executive Summary As the threat environment rapidly changes (and threat actors’ tactics along with it), what should cyber practitioners be on the lookout for? Former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Deputy Director Andrew McCabe & former United States Postal Services (USPS) CISO Gregory Crabb spoke with Flare CEO Norman Menz and Director of Marketing Eric […]
Threat Spotlight: “Legal” Cybercrime Activities
Executive Overview We often generalize threat actors as the “attackers” and cyber practitioners as the “defenders.” This simplification can work for many purposes, but what if we’re missing key relationships because of it? Not all activities related to cybercrime require secrecy or direct malicious intent, so cybercriminals utilize a vast network of contractors to develop […]
Threat Spotlight: The New Dark Web?
Executive Overview Illicit Telegram channels have become a growing concern in the realm of cybercrime. Threat actors want to connect with each other in fast, reliable, and “anonymous” ways. Telegram has been their answer, and malicious actors are increasingly moving off of Tor and onto the instant messaging platform. Flare Director of Marketing Eric Clay […]
Threat Spotlight: Triple Extortion Ransomware
Executive Overview Threat actors have escalated the single extortion ransomware attack model to double and even triple extortion. With the commodification of cybercrime, adversaries have significantly increased the sophistication levels of their operations, and therefore also the potential devastating impacts of a ransomware attack. Flare Director of Marketing Eric Clay and CTO & Co-Founder Mathieu […]
