Threat Spotlight: Leaked Credentials and Geography
Executive Summary Leaked credentials are the cause of many cyberattacks, and the number of them on the dark web continues to grow rapidly: there are over 10 billion unique username password combinations once duplicates and combo lists have been removed. Flare has been monitoring and archiving the dark web for over 5 years, which has […]
How to Apply Natural Language Processing to Cyber Threat Intelligence
The dark web is challenging to monitor. On top of it being structurally difficult to navigate, malicious actors have a unique vocabulary that is complex to understand for outsiders. Web scraping and web crawling enable extracting and indexing information on a larger scale. These tools need manually written rules to function. Since these processes require […]
5 Hotspots for Threat Actor Activity
Where are malicious actors hiding on the web? Though it might seem like they’re mostly on the dark web, they can be hiding in plain sight on the clear web too. They can lurk on websites and messaging platforms you may use, like Telegram or Discord. By understanding how malicious actors can take advantage of […]
Flare’s Coming Soon to a Town Near You: Fall 2022 Events Edition
Come Say Hello! Flare will be touring Canada and the U.S. this fall. If you are attending any of these events, come say hi at our booth for: Can’t make it to any of these? Don’t worry! Schedule a demo and we can talk. BSides Charlotte – Saturday, September 24th, 2022 SINET NY – Thursday, […]
Spear Phishing Defense: A Complete 2022 Guide
Phishing emails are still one of the most widely used attack vectors. Threat actors create a convincing pretext in emails that dupes victims into revealing passwords, downloading malware, or unknowingly initiating fraudulent transactions. This pretext exploits human behavior and psychology. Many of today’s successful phishing campaigns are more sophisticated and targeted than traditional mass phishing […]
Preventing Credential Theft: 3 Critical Steps
Stolen credentials provide cybercriminals with both an entry point into your network and a way to move through your network undetected. While the cyber threat landscape is more diverse in terms of tactics and techniques than ever, the aftermath of many data breach and ransomware incidents ends up tracing either their origin or their escalation […]
Attack Surface Monitoring: The Definitive 2022 Guide
Widespread digital transformation initiatives over the last decade mean that most IT environments are more complex and heterogeneous than ever. Cloud computing, virtual machines on multiple operating systems, and remote work arrangements are cornerstone infrastructural elements that blur the boundary between the internal network and external Internet at most organizations. From a cybersecurity perspective, dissolved […]
Attack Surface Reduction: 5 Steps to Reduce Cyber Risk
There are many contributing factors that make it difficult to deal with today’s cyber threat landscape. Complex infrastructure, sophisticated threats, cybersecurity talent shortages—these things all matter. Arguably a more important factor, however, is that businesses fail to view security from threat actors’ perspectives and neglect to manage their attack surface. This article takes a deep […]
8 Passive OSINT Methods for Profiling Cybercriminals on the Dark Web
Cybercrime is ever present in the increasingly digital landscape. Experts say that almost six ransomware attacks will occur every minute and back in November, 2021, our data science team reported a 280% increase in ransomware groups within the last year. But that’s only ransomware, cybercrime in general has also been increasing at a rapid pace, […]
What Is a Digital Footprint? A Flare View
Digital footprints have often been seen in the context of the individual. However, at Flare, we view things in a slightly different light. As cloud adoption has risen and organizations have increasingly digitized information, the digital footprint of organizations has expanded dramatically. So let’s get the basics out of the way. What exactly is an […]
