Ransomware Attacks Hit A Record High

The number of successful ransomware attacks is increasing, according to the NCC Group who monitor criminal data leak websites,  listing ransom 514 victims in September 2023. This breaks the record set in July this year, when criminal forums on the Dark Web listed 502 victim organisations.

Evidence from these sites is considered reliable, with the US still the most attacked country.

A new ransomware gang Rhysida runs as a ransomware-as-a-service operation, according to research from Kaspersky. Notably, Rhysida has a unique self-deletion mechanism which works on current on older versions of MS Windows.

Several technology companies have confessed to being ransom victims, including Cloudflare and the password management specialist, LastPass. Recently. VMware urged users to patch their software to fix multiple vulnerabilities. The notice was later updated with a warning that threat actors now have exploit code to take advantage of an unpatched server.

Intrusive Data Collection

The increased threat to users is not limited to criminal  ransom exploits. Intrusive collection of personal user data by legitimate apps is also increasing. According to research published by crypto experts at The Money Mongers, Meta's new App Threads, designed as a competitor to TwitterX  is the most invasive of the 100 apps it studied. The other apps reviewed include Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, LinkedIn and Uber Eats.

According to this research, Threads collects as much as 86 per cent of its users’ personal data, a particular concern when around half of all the apps studied share their user data with third parties.

That may be defensible on the basis that in almost every case legitimate apps ask users to consent to their data being used for financial gain, however.  its doubtful that many users read the full terms & conditions before giving their consent.

NCC Group:    Kaspersky:    US Justice Dept:    ITWorld Canada:   Securelist:      MoneyMongers: 

Image: fernando arcos

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