KT Connections Blog

Ransom: a sum of money is demanded in order for the release of goods.
Software: the programs and other operating information used by a computer.

What do you get when you combine the two? Ransomware. 

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone nowadays who hasn’t heard of malware, although they may have difficulty identifying different threats as they encounter them. Does this sound like the people that you work with? We’re here with a simple solution to assist you and your team in spotting the different kinds of threats - a malware guide to distribute among your staff so they can better spot the usual suspects.

The most significant advantage technology brings to businesses (and the world, in general) is the ability to compensate for human error. As we have noted many times before, the most significant vulnerability to network security will always be the person at the keyboard, usually inadvertently. Hackers know this, which is the reason they choose to attack the areas where people interact with the system.

What’s a smartphone without some apps to download to it? With millions of apps to choose from, developers might often have less-than-virtuous motives that put their users at risk for their own benefit. Recently, Google has removed 22 apps from the Google Play Store that were found to contain automated click-fraud scripts. We’ll delve into what these developers were up to with these fraudulent applications, as well as how they would affect the two-million users that downloaded them.

It’s fair to say that today's organizations are faced with more online threats than ever before. To properly manage the information systems that they depend on for productivity, redundancy, and operational management, they need to ensure that they are doing what they need to do to mitigate problems stemming from the continuous flow of threats.

The latest malware threat that attacks IoT devices is called the VPNFilter. VPNFilter is malware which infects routers or NAS (network storage devices). These devices are primarily older consumer and SOHO (small office home office) grade level devices. When first discovered last May, VPNFilter had already hijacked half a million devices from a handful of vendors. However, as time has progressed, the malware had increased its reach, commandeering six new vendors and increasing the number of models it could infect.

At the time of this writing, it has only been about a half a year since the Meltdown and Spectre exploits became public knowledge. Fortunately, patches were swiftly rolled out to mitigate the problems that these exploits could cause, but that doesn’t mean that these exploits are dead and buried. Let’s look back at Meltdown and Spectre to help us establish where we stand today.

There is a famous thought experiment devised by physicist Erwin Schrödinger, describing a very particular paradox in quantum physics through the experience of a cat. While Schrödinger’s cat was initially intended to demonstrate a very different phenomenon, it can also be applied to something that all businesses need to consider: their email security.

Threat Evolves and So Must Your Security

Face it, the days of people sitting in the parking lot, hacking your WiFi to ‘share’ your bandwidth is gone. Today their goal is to co-op your technology for their own nefarious needs and use your own data against you.

Limitations Of a Firewall

A firewall’s essential function is to allow and deny data packets by determining the source IP address of incoming packets, the destination IP addresses, type of Internet Protocols (IP) the packet may contain and to provide various routing capabilities. Simply put, a firewall controls incoming and outgoing network traffic.

There is no shortage of threats on the Internet, from situational issues to deliberate attacks meant to damage your company or steal your valuable data. While new threats pop up almost every day, some have been around for some time--so long, that many seem to not consider them as viable threats.

How quickly could your business recover if it were suddenly hit by a Distributed Denial of Service, or DDoS, attack? Are you protected against the effects they could have on your operations? If asked these questions, most businesses should want to say yes, but in reality, over half lack the means to defend against DDoS.

We have no problem going on the record as saying that there are more than enough strains of malware to go around. As such, it’s important that you know what to do if your workstation is struck by an infection.

Ransomware remains a very real threat, and is arguably only getting worse. Attacks are now able to come more frequently, and there are opportunities for even relative amateurs to level an attack against some unfortunate victim. However, this is not to say that there is nothing you can do to keep your business from becoming another cautionary tale.

Imagine that, despite the extreme care you took to avoid threats from infecting your devices, they turned out to be infected anyway. However, what if the device had been infected before you had even gotten your hands on it?

A new kind of cyberattack affecting every version of Windows has been discovered called AtomBombing. If the name alone with its mushroom-cloud imagery doesn't cause worry, then wait until you hear what the attack is capable of.

It's old news that webcams are routinely targeted by hackers looking for a literal window into the lives of their victims. Although, it's new news that webcams for Macbooks are now at risk of a malware allowing hackers to control the device's camera and microphone. Obtained easily through exploits in 3rd party software such as Flash and Java, this once again shows that Macs aren't immune to malicious software. So what's a Macbook owner to do?

In yet another example of why you should be careful about what you download, cybersecurity researchers at Trend Micro have found more than 400 apps in the Google Play Store containing the Dresscode Trojan malware, a particularly nasty-yet-hard-to-detect malware.

Ransomware is a major problem in both the personal and private sectors of computing, but up until very recently, Apple users had little to fear from potential ransomware hacks. Security researchers at Palo Alto Networks have discovered what’s known to be the first completed ransomware on an Apple device. The threat, called KeRanger, is officially “in the wild,” and is a danger to any Mac user.

Today’s various versions of ransomware are dangerous. By forcibly locking down important files on a victim’s computer, threats like CryptoLocker and CryptoWall are posing significant threats to both businesses and ordinary computer users. However, a new type of ransomware has appeared called CryptoJoker; and we assure you, there’s nothing funny at all about this one.