Story 2016-08-02 1P8DF Ransomware is targeting the enterprise at an increasing pace

Ransomware is targeting the enterprise at an increasing pace

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in security on (#1P8DF)
Enterprise-targeting cyber enemies are deploying vast amounts of potent ransomware to generate revenue and huge profits - nearly $34 million annually according to Cisco's Mid-Year Cybersecurity Report out this week.

Ransomware, Cisco wrote, has become a particularly effective moneymaker, and enterprise users appear to be the preferred target. One of the main reasons is that corporations have access to (and can afford) ransom money whereas individual users may not.

Problems include faster and more effective propagation methods that maximize the impact of ransomware campaigns, exploit kits, which make ransomware easy to deploy, and vulnerabilities in the enterprise application software JBoss, which is providing attackers with a new vector that they can use to launch ransomware campaigns with.

Another very troubling issue is that a small but growing number of malware samples show that bad actors are using Transport Layer Security (TLS), the protocol used to provide encryption for network traffic, to hide their activities. This is a cause for concern among security professionals, since it makes deep-packet inspection ineffective as a security tool.
Reply 3 comments

XP (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2016-08-04 01:21 (#1PE0E)

It'd be particularly funny at my workplace. They're really cheap, so incredibly cheap that you wouldn't believe it. We still use XP on all of our machines except for two, which use certain software packages that require Windows 7 or newer.

The reason is that the owner feels computers are like really old hardware, printing presses or conveyor belts, which need repairs but not upgrades. I used to work with a ten year old machine that took 9 hours to do basic jobs that my i7 could do in about half an hour.

So, yeah. I dream of the malware invasion that is inevitably coming soon to a PC near me. It will be funny.

Re: XP (Score: 2, Funny)

by evilss@pipedot.org on 2016-08-04 16:53 (#1PG8K)

Your PCs are probably too old to run the ransomware :)

Re: XP (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2016-08-05 02:52 (#1PHQN)

Ha! That's very likely. We actually have a couple of systems (PCs) that are older than the staff that use them!