Email bombing in cyber security

No other Barracuda products are affected, according to the security vendor. Soon after spotting abnormal traffic originating from its email security products, Barracuda called in Mandiant to help with an investigation. The day after it issued a patch, on May 21, Barracuda deployed a script to the compromised ESG appliances "to contain the incident and counter unauthorized access methods," it said. Plus the vendor is sending a series of additional patches "in furtherance of our containment strategy," according to Barracuda. The biz declined to say how many customers were compromised, and who has been exploiting the vulnerability. It claims Last Friday, the US government's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Saltwater, Seaspy and Seaside, oh my The flaw, a remote command injection vulnerability, is due to incomplete input validation of a user-supplied .tar archive. Remote attackers can format the filenames in that archive in a way that allows them to execute a system command through Perl's qx operator when the file is processed. After exploiting CVE-2023-2868 in the wild, the unnamed attacker deployed three types of malware on the compromised email security devices. First, a backdoor dubbed Saltwater for uploading and downloading files, and executing commands. It also included proxy and tunneling capabilities. "Mandiant is still analyzing SALTWATER to determine if it overlaps with any other known malware families," the alert says. Next, the crooks deploye...

Overview An email bomb is an attack against an email server designed to inhibit the server’s normal function or render it unresponsive, preventing email communications, degrading network performance, or causing network downtime. An attack’s intensity can range from an inconvenience to a complete interruption of service. Some email bombs are accidental or self-inflicted, such as when automatic replies sent to a distribution list cause a cascade of emails. Additionally, cybercriminals sometimes use email bomb attacks to mask other attacks and prevent users from receiving notices about account activity. • Mass mailing attacks occur when actors intentionally or unintentionally send large quantities of email traffic to targeted email addresses. • List linking attacks involve malicious actors signing targeted email addresses up to numerous email subscription services. Many of these services do not ask for verification or if they do, they send confirmation requests via email. This type of attack is difficult to prevent because the traffic originates from various legitimate sources. • ZIP bomb attacks consist of malicious actors sending malicious archive files designed to decompress to very large sizes. When the email server decompresses the file, significant server resources are consumed, potentially causing the server to slow down or stop responding. • Attachment attacks occur when malicious actors send multiple emails with large attachments, intending to overload the storage sp...

Ransomware is a type of malware (malicious software) that locks a victim’s data or device and threatens to keep it locked—or worse—unless the victim pays a ransom to the attacker. According to the The earliest ransomware attacks simply demanded a ransom in exchange for the encryption key needed to regain access to the affected data or use of the infected device. By making regular or continuous data backups, an organization could limit costs from these types of ransomware attacks and often avoid paying the ransom demand. But in recent years, ransomware attacks have evolved to include double-extortion and triple-extortion attacks that raise the stakes considerably—even for victims who rigorously maintaining data backups or pay the initial ransom demand. Double-extortion attacks add the threat of stealing the victim’s data and leaking it online; on top of that, triple-extortion attacks threaten to use the stolen data to attack the victim’s customers or business partners. The 2023 X-Force Threat Intelligence Index found that ransomware's share of all cybersecurity incidents declined by 4 percent from 2021 to 2022, likely because defenders were more successful detecting and preventing ransomware attacks. But this positive finding was eclipsed by a massive 94 percent reduction in the average attack timeline—from 2 months to fewer than 4 days, giving organizations very little time to detect and thwart potential attacks. Ransomware victims and negotiators are reluctant to disclose...

Welcome to The Cybersecurity 202! I’m often recommending TV shows and movies here, but I’d like to recommend the book “Recursion,” by Blake Crouch. It would be irresponsible to tell you the plot, but it’s equal parts science fiction and thriller. If that description works for you, then you should give it a try. • Everyone was “expecting a larger impact on breaches being initiated by the exploitation of vulnerabilities,” Pinto said, “but that didn’t happen. We prevented something potentially much worse from happening if that response hadn’t happened.” • “It did happen, and as far as everybody is concerned, it happened a lot,” Pinto said. But, “the scale of this was potentially muted because of the coordinated response. It still got a lot of play, absolutely.” • “After acquiring Twitter in late October, Elon Musk placed an emphasis on the issue, vowing in tweets that removing such material from Twitter is ‘priority #1’ and ‘will forever be our top priority,’” the Journal writes. Musk did not return the outlet’s request for comment. • Twitter said it suspended more than 400,000 accounts that created or engaged with CSAM in January. “Not only are we detecting more bad actors faster, we’re building new defenses that proactively reduce the discoverability of tweets that contain this type of content,” • But trouble has brewed for researchers wanting to access the inner-workings of the platform, as Twitter under Musk has begun charging

Exploring the Path to Single-Vendor SASE: Insights from Fortinet Featuring Gartner® Gain valuable insights from two industry leaders, John Maddison (CMO & EVP Products, Fortinet) and featuring Jonathan Forest (Sr. Director Analyst, Gartner), on Tue, June 27th at 10 AM PT/1 PM ET. • Enterprise Networking A man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack is a form of cyberattack in which criminals exploiting weak web-based protocols insert themselves between entities in a communication channel to steal data. None of the parties sending email, texting, or chatting on a video call are aware that an attacker has inserted their presence into the conversation and that the attacker is stealing their data. While most cyberattacks are silent and carried out without the victims' knowledge, some MITM attacks are the opposite. They might include a bot generating believable text messages, impersonating a person's voice on a call, or spoofing an entire communications system to scrape data the attacker thinks is important from participants' devices. A MITM attack may target any business, organization, or person if there is a perceived chance of financial gain by cyber criminals. The larger the potential financial gain, the more likely the attack. Sales of stolen personal financial or health information may sell for a few dollars per record on the Popular industries for MITM attacks include banks and their banking applications, financial companies, health care systems, and businesses that operate industri...

Hundreds of thousands of dollars lost. Financial and emotional ruin. And These type of attacks don’t garner the same attention as high-profile hacks, he said. Why? Because BEC attacks are simple – yet potent. Instead of having to develop malware or complex attack chains, all attackers need to do is send an email – usually mimicking a coworker’s email account or using a compromised account – and con victims to wire transfer money, for example. But the fallout from these types of attacks are devastating. Worse, BEC actors are “growing up”– evolving into more sophisticated actors with novel techniques. And it’s working, according to Agari. The average amount requested in wire transfer-based BEC attacks increased in 2020 from $48,000 in the third quarter to $75,000 in the fourth quarter, . In this Threatpost one-on-one video interview, Agari’s Tokazowski walks us through some of the worst BEC attacks he’s seen – and why these type of email attacks are getting worse. Check out the full video below, or click here. Below find a lightly edited transcript of the video. Lindsey Welch: Welcome to Threatpost Now. This is Lindsey Welch with Threatpost, and I’m joined today by Ronnie Tokazowski, who is the senior threat researcher with Agari. Ronnie, thanks so much for joining me today. Ronnie Tokazowski: Yep, thanks for having me. Business Email Compromise Attacks During Covid-19 LW: All right, great. Well, a lot has changed over the past year, including us being remote. But a lot has ...

Spear phishing definition Spear phishing is a targeted email attack purporting to be from a trusted sender. In spear phishing attacks, attackers often use information gleaned from research to put the recipient at ease. The ultimate aim is to either infect devices with Spear phishing messages are often crafted with care using pernicious "What’s important to note about spear phishing is that the individual being spear phished isn’t often the real target," J.R. Cunningham, CSO at Nuspire, a Michigan based MSSP. "Rather, their corporate environment is most likely the attacker’s ultimate end goal." Phishing vs. spear phishing vs. whaling Phishing, spear phishing, and whaling are all types of email attacks, with Most phishing attacks take the form of generic messages sent automatically to thousands of recipients. They're written to be somewhat tempting—the attachment might have a name like "salary report," or the link might be a fake lottery winning site—but no attempt is made to match the message content to any particular person who might be receiving it. The name derives from "fishing" (with the "ph" being part of the tradition of whimsical hacker spelling), and the analogy is of an angler throwing out a baited hook (the phishing email) and hoping some victim will swim along and bite. Spear phishing, as the name implies, involves attempting to catch a specific fish. A spear phishing email includes information specific to the recipient to convince them to take the action the at...

Updated 9/7/22 Bombarded by thousands of unsolicited subscription confirmation emails in your inbox? Your organization may be experiencing an email bomb attack. Read on to learn how to survive an email bomb attack. How to survive an email bomb attack This type of email attack is difficult to defend against because the attacker uses automated bots to subscribe a victim’s email address to multiple lists per second, including forums and message boards, newsletters, retail mailing lists, and other everyday communications. How to survive an email bomb attack is a special concern for sectors that are experiencing drastic spikes in ransomware attacks, like healthcare. Beyond the initial strike, a steady and annoying stream of unwanted emails can keep arriving even years after the attack. To add insult to injury, other attackers will add the victim to additional spam, Additional Reading: What is an email bomb? An email bomb is a denial of service attack (DoS) against an email server, designed to make email accounts unusable or cause network downtime. Email bombs started in the late 1990s with high-profile cases such as the cyber attack on Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. Historically, journalists have found themselves the target of email bombing campaigns in retribution for critical stories. Anyone can be a victim though, including government officials , policymakers, emergency coordinators, healthcare providers, and many others. Today’s email bombs are more sophisticated and c...

Exploring the Path to Single-Vendor SASE: Insights from Fortinet Featuring Gartner® Gain valuable insights from two industry leaders, John Maddison (CMO & EVP Products, Fortinet) and featuring Jonathan Forest (Sr. Director Analyst, Gartner), on Tue, June 27th at 10 AM PT/1 PM ET. • Enterprise Networking A man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack is a form of cyberattack in which criminals exploiting weak web-based protocols insert themselves between entities in a communication channel to steal data. None of the parties sending email, texting, or chatting on a video call are aware that an attacker has inserted their presence into the conversation and that the attacker is stealing their data. While most cyberattacks are silent and carried out without the victims' knowledge, some MITM attacks are the opposite. They might include a bot generating believable text messages, impersonating a person's voice on a call, or spoofing an entire communications system to scrape data the attacker thinks is important from participants' devices. A MITM attack may target any business, organization, or person if there is a perceived chance of financial gain by cyber criminals. The larger the potential financial gain, the more likely the attack. Sales of stolen personal financial or health information may sell for a few dollars per record on the Popular industries for MITM attacks include banks and their banking applications, financial companies, health care systems, and businesses that operate industri...

Ransomware is a type of malware (malicious software) that locks a victim’s data or device and threatens to keep it locked—or worse—unless the victim pays a ransom to the attacker. According to the The earliest ransomware attacks simply demanded a ransom in exchange for the encryption key needed to regain access to the affected data or use of the infected device. By making regular or continuous data backups, an organization could limit costs from these types of ransomware attacks and often avoid paying the ransom demand. But in recent years, ransomware attacks have evolved to include double-extortion and triple-extortion attacks that raise the stakes considerably—even for victims who rigorously maintaining data backups or pay the initial ransom demand. Double-extortion attacks add the threat of stealing the victim’s data and leaking it online; on top of that, triple-extortion attacks threaten to use the stolen data to attack the victim’s customers or business partners. The 2023 X-Force Threat Intelligence Index found that ransomware's share of all cybersecurity incidents declined by 4 percent from 2021 to 2022, likely because defenders were more successful detecting and preventing ransomware attacks. But this positive finding was eclipsed by a massive 94 percent reduction in the average attack timeline—from 2 months to fewer than 4 days, giving organizations very little time to detect and thwart potential attacks. Ransomware victims and negotiators are reluctant to disclose...