2013 Top Cyber Security Threats

Year 2013 saw another tumultuous year for companies struggling with Cyber security issues. Russian IT security firm Kaspersky Lab has released a report on the biggest cyber security stories of the year 2013.
 
Cyber espionage has been the highlight of 2013 which many countries reporting multiple attacks on their Government organisations and embassies. Notably Red October was a major large scale cyber-espionage network that was was revealed and analyzed. MiniDuke was another major threat which stole data from government organisations and research institutions in 23 countries including the US, India, Australia. Another threat was NetFile-801, aka NetTraveler manipulate to compromise more than 350 organizations across 40 countries.
Ransomware: This was another major threat that has and is still continuing to wreak hovac on day to day PC users. Ransomware operate like a computer-specific ‘denial-of-service’ attack. The affected user is unable to access files as it says access to files is blocked or encrypted. The user is then asked to pay a Ransom to regain access to the computer data files stored on the computer.  The Trojan Cryptolocker was a major ransomware threat and it has been described as the most dangerous ransomware to pop up so far.
Watering Hole 101
The watering-hole attack is used by cyber criminals as a replacement for spear-phishing and other methods.  In a watering hole attack scenario, threat actors compromise a carefully selected website by inserting an exploit resulting in malware infection. One such attack was reported on a Tibetan refugee NGO called the Tibetan Homes Foundation.  Their web site was compromised in order to distribute backdoors signed with stolen certificates.
Cyber Threats are here to stay. With the advancement of solid network security measures, these attacked have been contained. The focus should be better managed security to discourage these attacks.
Contact us for complete network security services in Mississauga