Back in the 90’s we (as in security teams) were having discussions on the very scary possibility that an attacker could capture the contents on your monitor or screen from outside a building. This scare was mainly driven from companies concerned about their competitors gleaning information from their businesses.
My take on those concerns in the 90’s was if they’re actually spending enough money to pack a surveillance team outside of your house or company, they’re really making an effort. What we were faced with in the 90’s—the days of Mission Impossible and Tom Cruise—was entirely different than today. Different fears and what if’s. Most of them were probably not substantiated with any clear and present danger. Those Mission Impossible risks and attacks were (at least in retrospect) not well-founded.
In all honesty—you can’t mitigate against every Mission Impossible attack. Whatever you try to prevent, they’ll find a different way of getting in.
What’s going on in 2019?
Attackers are using those evasive techniques seen in Mission Impossible and are applying them to ransomware attacks.
What most organizations don’t know is that they may have been hit with an attack and not know it. Nearly a third of cyberattacks go undetected for over 90 days. Let me repeat that. It generally takes at least 90 days for a business to feel the effects of a virus or malicious piece of software on their network. At that point the damage is done. Entire networks are completely shut down because a virus was able to crawl onto every single computer and server. Money or valuable data was slowly leaked offsite (in many instances of data leaks, businesses have lost millions of dollars). The fact of the matter is that undetected viruses are a big deal. And most organizations do not have the manpower, technology, automation, process, or strategy to understand when this is happening (this list can go on and on).
The end result of sleeper attacks on your network? Nearly 80% of businesses actually go out of business within the first year of a major cyberattack or data breach.
What many CEOs, CFOs and other organization leaders often wrongly assume is that their networks are secure because they have antivirus and firewalls set up.
These devices are practically set up on every network at this point. Do you think criminals are thinking to themselves, “that network has a firewall, can’t get in there. Better try and find someone else to attack”?
Not a chance! Those criminals—especially the masterminds behind many of the big attacks in the past couple of years—are finding ways to circumvent, deceive and crack through standard technology.
Maybe your firewall isn’t configured properly (we see this in nearly 70% of our security audits!). Maybe your users aren’t trained on latest phishing schemes. Maybe your IT guy isn’t really doing your security updates and patching because he or she has too many other fires to fight (this happens an awfully lot). Or maybe you have users on your network that have compromised credentials.
Whatever the work around is to penetrate your network and lie undetected on it until a big enough payday presents itself, rest assured criminals are figuring out the most effective ways to get in and steal or ransom your data.
What is a big way they’re cracking onto networks in 2019?
Cybersecurity experts are warning businesses and organizations of dangerous evasive malware—malicious software that is capable of evading detection on your network. Criminals are devising software that has up to nearly a hundred different ways of evading your standard network monitoring software or antivirus program from detecting it on network.
Even more worrisome? Those criminals using evasive malware are actually creating phishing campaigns that evade detection as well!
Coined evasive phishing, cybercriminal masterminds are developing ways web filtering and email filtering tools cannot detect their malicious emails. They are developing techniques that bypass many of the red flag parameters once thought the gold standard of email security monitoring to get through to your most unsuspecting users.
After that they simply need to device some simple social engineering tricks to get a user to comply with a simple request to click on a link. (These tricks have been around for centuries and they are proven. Don’t for a second think that every single user in your organization will be able to see through their attacks).
Someone will ultimately click on a malicious link that passes though and then you might have a big problem on your hands—a problem you might not even knows exists until it’s too late!
Essentially this evasive phishing is hiding all of the technical infrastructure that makes code malicious from being detectable. In most recent cases websites with malicious viruses that are being linked are going undetected because the actual benign URL in the email is being redirected to a malicious link.
The take home: criminals are finding sneakier ways to bypass standard technology. If your IT security team is not paying attention to these methods and isn’t devising strategies to confront them OR if you don’t have a security team (Note: Dynamic Edge has an expert team of certified cybersecurity experts), you’re probably risking a whole lot that really could be prevented.
My question to you: are you safe from evasive cyberattacks in 2019? Is your IT team equipped with dull tools that no longer work at detecting latest attacks? Contact us today for a free ransomware vulnerability assessment to see where you stand.