So much about good, basic Security comes down to proper access control. Information security, physical security, personal security, (probably even financial security?) – all security, it seems, works better when there’s proper control over who has access to what and when.

ThreatSTOP’s platform has historically allowed two levels of user access: Admin and Reporter. In this simple scheme, Admins could access everything, like creating a custom DNS Firewall policy, or whitelisting an IP across all their firewalls, while lowly Reporters got read-only access to look at reports. Two extremes of access control for what was a simpler time.

In the years since, things have really evolved in Security. It's gotten scarier outside – there are more threats, nastier ones, more sophisticated attackers, and shrewder methods. DDoS for hire, and turn-key ransomware. The myth of companies “too big to take down” or “too small to be targeted” got busted. It has gotten crazy out there.

In recent months, the global COVID-19 epidemic has forced millions of employees to work from home. While some have experience working remotely in the past, for most working from home for months on end has been a first-time experience. Cyber attackers are at large exploiting this time of chaos and panic to deploy a variety of attacks, and with millions working from home, a plethora of additional vulnerabilities and attack options arise. In this article, we will recommend 10 tips for secure remote work from your home during COVID-19.

Since the beginning of the Coronavirus epidemic, threat actors have been exploiting the panic around the deadly virus to deploy cyber attacks. Every day, more and more Coronavirus-related campaigns are spotted, and we are seeing a surge in the number of suspicious domains registered in relation to the virus every day.

To combat these prevalent attacks, our Security Research Team has curated a blocklist including thousands of malicious Covid19-related domains, integrated from our threat intelligence sources and supplemented with additional IOCs found by our team through manual analysis.

We highly recommend adding the Covid-19 domain target to your policy in order to protect yourself from these threats. You can do so by enabling the COVID19 Fake Domains – Domains target, or by enabling our Phishing bundle.

This is an opportunistic time for cyber attackers. While people are in a frenzy to buy food and masks, to figure out how they are going to work from home or how to cope with the loss of their job, cyber attackers show no mercy in taking advantage of the situation to deploy a grandiose variety of Coronavirus-themed attacks.

When people imagine threat actors tricking victims into installing malware, the first thing that comes to mind is probably email phishing or typosquatted domains. These days, digital attack vectors are so easy to deploy that physical vectors may even get a chance to fly under the radar.

In a recent campaign uncovered by Trustwave, the criminal threat group FIN7 mailed USB drives serving an unknown malware strain disguised as a free Best Buy gift card offering. The letter mailed with the USB drive states that the retail giant is sending out gift cards to its loyal customers, and the gifted credit can be used to buy products from a specific list that is found on the enclosed USB stick.

When security personnel think of email attacks, usually the first word that comes to mind is “phishing." While phishing is a very common (and sadly, very successful) attack vector, many threat actors take a different approach to gaining access to victims’ accounts. Breaching an email mailbox is a critical first step, creating a doorway to endless exploitation possibilities.

In this blog post, we will outline five different ways that cyber attackers can breach your email account and steal personal information.

Photo Cred: Forbes

Many companies have gone completely remote, and had to do it quickly in light of current events, but that doesn’t mean the need to secure company data has diminished. As more workers are accessing secure files and applications from home, there is an increased need for organizations to be thinking about how to secure those devices that are accessing that information. We have already seen evidence that criminals are trying to take advantage of this situation to launch attacks against companies, and employees working from home without the security protections of the company network are targets for opportunistic attacks.

With the Coronavirus death toll constantly on the rise, people are becoming more and more panicked. It seems that almost everyone these days is thirsty for any information they can get on how to avoid the deadly virus, creating a tremendous opportunity for cyber attackers to exploit these fears and steal personal information and credentials.

Most malware is often delivered from otherwise legitimate sites. Sometimes this occurs via compromising existing websites, but more often than not, it is by using existing advertising networks as a means to ultimately deliver malware. Quite simply, the attacker buys impressions via existing channels and uses a variety of malvertising tricks to either directly compromise the web browser, or at the least trick the user to installing the malware. This specialized form of malware delivery requires a specialized collection methodology to detect such attacks.

Malicious emails are one of the cyber realm’s most widespread epidemics. Over 215 billion business and consumer emails are received daily, and with such an overwhelming flow of emails arises a very attractive opportunity for threat actors to easily penetrate victims’ online activity and lure them in to giving up credentials, downloading malware and more. According to the Symantec Internet Threat Security Report, one out of 412 emails contains a malware attack.

Although it seems as though cyber awareness is somewhat increasing due to the attempt to keep up with rapid advances in attack techniques, preying on human error continues to be extremely rewarding for threat actors. In retrospect, many email attack victims are dumbfounded when they realize that the email they so willingly acted upon is quite obviously suspicious upon second look. On top of that are highly thought out, sometimes tailored malicious emails, which do not even alert relatively cyber-aware people.