30 Nation Ransomware Commitment & New Strain | Microsoft Office 365 Password Attacks | Seven Hot Digital Transformation Trends – And Three Going Cold
Article by Christopher Lauder, Delegate Relationship Executive, Rela8 Group
30 Nation Ransomware Commitment & New Strain
Last Thursday, a two-day “counter ransomware initiative” meeting ended with the participants agreeing on joint action against this malicious software which is being used increasingly in global cyberattacks. More than 30 nations took part and pledged to work together to combat the growing threat of ransomware.
In a statement issued following the meeting, the nations called ransomware “an escalating global security threat with serious economic and security consequences”. They agreed to consider “all national tools” to act against ransomware operators. Russia was absent from the conference.
Each country has planned to address the abuse of financial mechanisms used to launder ransom payments or conduct other activities that makes ransomware profitable. Also, the nations have agreed to disrupt the ransomware ecosystem through law enforcement collaboration to investigate and prosecute ransomware actors, addressing safe havens for ransomware criminals, and continuing diplomatic engagement.
Keeping with ransomware news – The Symantec Threat Hunter Team has uncovered a new ransomware strain called Yanluowang which has been used in targeted attacks. In the readme ransom note left on a hacked device, the attackers warn victims to not contact law enforcement or else they will conduct DDoS attacks on the victim, make calls to employees and business partners, and repeat the attacks in a few weeks’ time and delete the victim’s data.
Microsoft Office 365 Password Attacks
Microsoft has warned that multiple Office 365 customers in the United States, Europe, and in the Israeli defence sector have been targeted by password-guessing attacks. These attacks are also known as “password-spraying” attacks. In these attacks, the attackers try to access as many accounts as possible that use the most used passwords. These attacks will keep trying different passwords for the same accounts over several hours, or even days. This technique relies on people using different variations of the most common passwords.
In this attack in particular, Microsoft has said that less than 20 of the targeted accounts were successfully compromised.
The risk of accounts being compromised by attacks like this is significantly reduced for organisations that use multi-factor authentication. As such, Microsoft is encouraging all its clients to enable MFA on their accounts.
Seven Hot Digital Transformation Trends – And Three Going Cold
Finally, in an article on CIO.com, they have looked at the digital trends which IT leaders say are hot and examine those trends that are going cold. Click on the source below to see the full article and more context for each point. For a TL; DR, here are the hot and cold trends.
- Autonomous Operations - Hot
- Self-Service Experiences - Hot
- Autonomous Drones - Hot
- Predictive AI - Hot
- The Changing Face of Work, While Building Customer Ecosystems – Hot
- Digital Twins – Hot
- Advanced Sensors – Hot
- Blockchain - Cold
- Office Tech Mainstays - Cold
- Owing The Customer - Cold
