Cyber Gangs: Who Are They in 2021 and What Do They Want?

Cyber Gangs: Who Are They in 2021 and What Do They Want?

  • Gangs, such as Cosmic Lynx, Exaggerated Lion, Fin7 and Florentine Banker, have become major threats. Cyber crime gangs are getting smarter, increasingly basing their operations in countries beyond the legal reach of their targets.
  • All cyber attacks seek some element of surprise, but contemporary threat actors are getting better at faking authenticity.
  • A new whaling technique involves the research-intensive process of learning all about a target through their social media posts. (Whaling is a phishing attack on a big target, like a CEO.) The gang might study those posts for months. Then, the threat actor impersonates someone known to the target and invites their victim to share a document in an online office suite app.
  • An ongoing trend that favors the accelerating evolution of cyber gangs is the commoditization of malware, including those that abuse SSH machine identities in their attack approach. A single SSH key can give attackers full access to an organization’s applications and data. This technique was developed, and previously used exclusively by, state-sponsored attackers, but is now for sale on the dark web.
  • Cyber criminal organizations are developing tools and techniques so sophisticated they’re increasingly being adopted by state-sponsored attackers.
  • You should prevent tools, including cloud-based office suites, from being accessed with a simple username and password. Set up additional authentication to prevent gangs from gaining access by stealing names and passwords.

– Mike Elgan | June 8, 2021