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2015 Malware RATs and Cybercrime is Out of Control

Friends,

You can’t open your eyes in the morning without reading about
another breach. As you know, I like to cover the most breaking
cybercrime and cyber threat news each day at Cyber Defense
Magazine. I don’t have to look far for hackers to be breaking into an
Airline or a Bank or showing how weak and insecure critical
infrastructure is, to simple attacks going after common vulnerabilities.

Then we look to the east and we find some of the most advanced zero-day malware and remote
access Trojans being developed on a daily basis by the Chinese. Some is for the government
but it also seems that some is for profit. As Brian Krebs points out in his weekly blog, there’s
much for sale on the black market. One breach and a million records makes you a millionaire.
Sure, you’ll be running from the law but maybe not in the deep dark alleyways of a Chinese
Hutong. You might even be working for the Chinese government by day – helping perform
cyberespionage for your government as your paid job but act, unfettered, as a cyber-criminal by
night. If they need to hack into a mail server for spear phishing reconnaissance, they do it, as
you can see here at http://map.ipviking.com

This quiet cyber war and ongoing cyber crime has sparked some of the biggest breaches and
reactions in history – from the Sony Pictures breach by what appears to be the North Korean
government (DPRK) to the recent Anthem breach (over 80,000,000 ‘fullz’ records – all the PII
th
anyone would want on 1/4 of the entire American population), we’re looking at these events
becoming astronomical in data theft, damages and costs.
Meanwhile, what you don’t read about in the news are all the SMBs (Smaller to Medium Sized)
businesses getting attacked. In fact, when one SMB is exploited, there’s a 50% chance they will
go out of business. It’s simply that costly for them to recover from a full network breach or PII
data theft. In America, over 80% of the companies are SMBs, so yes, they are also a rich target
for many of the hackers who don’t want to be the cover story on the newspaper or mainstream
media. The biggest thing that Sony Pictures, Anthem and SMBs all have in common is one
thing – people getting infected with RATs. As you read no through this month’s edition of Cyber
Warnings, think about your organizational goals. Have you included training against Spear
Phishing, Social Engineering and RAT infections as a top priority? If you haven’t, now is the
time.

To our faithful readers, Enjoy
Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini, Editor-in-Chief, [email protected]

3 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine – June 2015 Edition
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