Search Results: ransomware

In 2017, Kaspersky Lab research revealed the extent to which medical information and patient data stored within the connected healthcare infrastructure is left unprotected and accessible online for any motivated cybercriminal to discover. This risk is heightened because cyber-villains increasingly understand the value of health information, its ready availability, and the willingness of medical facilities to pay to get it back.

Looking back at a year like 2017 brings the internal conflict of being a security researcher into full view: on the one hand, each new event is an exciting new research avenue for us, as what were once theoretical problems find palpable expression in reality. On the other hand, as people with a heightened concern for the security posture of users at large, each event is a bigger catastrophe.

2017 was one of the most intense in terms of incidents affecting the information security of industrial systems. Security researchers discovered and reported hundreds of new vulnerabilities, warned of new threat vectors in ICS and technological processes, provided data on accidental infections of industrial systems and detected targeted attacks.

According to KSN data, Kaspersky Lab solutions detected and repelled 277,646,376 malicious attacks from online resources located in 185 countries all over the world.

Our growing dependence on technology, connectivity and data means that businesses present a bigger attack surface than ever. Targeted attackers have become more adept at exploiting their victims’ vulnerabilities to penetrate corporate defences while ‘flying under the radar’.

Kaspersky Lab Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (Kaspersky Lab ICS CERT) publishes the results of its research on the threat landscape for industrial automation systems for the first six months of 2017.

In Q2 2017, the average share of spam in global email traffic amounted to 56.97%, which was only 1.07 p.p. more than in the previous quarter. One of the most notable events of this quarter – the WannaCry epidemic – did not go unnoticed by spammers: numerous mass mailings contained offers of assistance in combating the ransomware.

The threat from ransomware continues to grow. Between April 2016 and March 2017, we blocked ransomware on the computers of 2,581,026 Kaspersky Lab customers. In May, we saw the biggest ransomware epidemic in history, called WannaCry.

According to KSN data, Kaspersky Lab solutions detected and repelled 342, 566, 061 malicious attacks from online resources located in 191 countries all over the world.

Since 2014, Kaspersky GReAT has been providing threat intelligence reports to a wide-range of customers worldwide, leading to the delivery of a full and dedicated private reporting service. Prior to the new service offering, GReAT published research online for the general public in an effort to help combat the ever-increasing threat from nation-state and other advanced actors.

The second quarter quite clearly showed that the DDoS-attack threat is perceived rather seriously. Some companies were prepared to pay cybercriminals literally after their first demand without waiting for the attack itself. This set off a whole new wave of fraud involving money extortion under threat of a DDoS attack, also known as “ransom DDoS”.

The first half of 2017 began with two intriguing ransomware events, both partly enabled by wormable exploit technology dumped by a group calling themselves “The ShadowBrokers”. These WannaCry and ExPetr ransomware events are the biggest in the sense that they spread the quickest and most effectively of known ransomware to date.

Recently, there have been discussions around the topic that if our product is installed, ExPetr malware won’t write the special malicious code which encrypts the MFT to MBR. Some have even speculated that some kind of conspiracy might be ongoing. Others have pointed out it’s plain and simple nonsense. As usual, Vesselin Bontchev, a legend

To date, nobody has been able to find any significant code sharing between ExPetr/Petya and older malware. Given our love for unsolved mysteries, we jumped right on it. We’d like to think of this ongoing research as an opportunity for an open invitation to the larger security community to help nail down (or disprove) the link between BlackEnergy and ExPetr/Petya.

Earlier today (June 27th), we received reports about a new wave of ransomware attacks spreading around the world, primarily targeting businesses in Ukraine, Russia and Western Europe. Our investigation is ongoing and our findings are far from final at this time. Despite rampant public speculation, the following is what we can confirm from our independent analysis.