Cybersecurity

There are various ways to assess the threat landscape, but it’s what companies think of it that is most important. We decided to pick the top 10 events of 2014 by a single criterion: the popularity of the corresponding stories. And here is what we came up with.

The number of corporate-targeting attacks increased this year more than two times compared to 2013. Why?

A new malware hits banks and their clients worldwide. Codenamed Chthonic, it is actually an evolved version of notorious Zeus banking Trojan.

2014 was marked by a streak of major cyberattacks on large retailers in the US. In most cases, PoS malware was at play. Now retailers are scrambling to improve their Point-of-Sale terminal security. It’s encouraging, but a pity that it took so long.

Kaspersky Lab experts unveiled new Linux-targeting malware related to the infamous Turla APT. Such modules were known to exist before, but never met in the wild. Until now.

The RedOctober operation was hastily wrapped-up just after a Kaspersky Lab’s publication in January 2013, but it was expected to return. And it did.

Yesterday, Kaspersky Lab hosted the ‘Emerging Threats in the APT World: Predictions for 2015’ webinar. Special thank you to everyone who joined our discussion on how APTs will evolve in the coming year.

Kaspersky Lab experts shared their predictions on the evolution of APT. While these predictions may not come true, they are based on facts and trends already observed.

Catch up on our most popular posts from November.

Disgruntled ex-employees don’t need to have special hacking skills to inflict severe damage on the company infrastructure. Cynthia James reviews a number of scenarios, and ways to prevent attacks of this kind.

Today’s information technologies are a rather mishmashed system comprised of top-notch innovations interspersed with legacy technologies, some of which have been in use for decades and rarely changed. This “coexistence” of new and old led to the discovery of dramatic bugs that had stayed below the radar for years.

Kaspersky Lab released its new IT Threat Evolution Q3 2014 report, dedicated to the most important security incidents and trends in the cybersecurity sphere. It may seem like attacks are increasing more rapidly than ever, but it’s detection rates that are growing.

Medieval doors were extremely sturdy due to their two-layer construction and different wood grain directions across those layers. Multilayered defensive structures is a must in cybersecurity as well.

Microsoft has patched yet another bug in OLE, this time one that’s 19-years-old. While it is extremely surprising this bug hadn’t been discovered earlier, the crucial question here is the use of the underreviewed legacy code that developers have to drag along for decades.

1 in 8 people don’t believe that cyberthreats are real. The threat may go away if you turn your back to it in a dream, but that won’t work in reality.

Kaspersky Lab has just announced the discovery of an alarming APT campaign codenamed “Darkhotel,” targeted mainly at business executives staying at certain hotels in Asia. Luxury hotels offer not just places to stay, but also comfort and privacy. However, their cybersecurity occasionally fails.

Kaspersky Lab revealed a cyberspy campaign, Darkhotel, which had been active for seven years in a number of luxury Asian hotels.

Read highlights from our top posts in October.

Many organizations—especially government agencies or heavily regulated businesses—are nervous about sharing this data, for fear of reprisals if information about successful attacks becomes public. And politicians and security experts say this is an issue that needs to be solved if businesses are going to have the chance to succeed.

Can a business be “partially” prepared to ward off cyberthreats? That’s up for debate, but it seems there is little difference between “partial protection” and no protection at all.

APT is a term often mentioned in cybersecurity bulletins. Here’s what you need to know to understand it.