Security News > 2022 > February
ZeroFox published a threat intelligence forecast for 2022, detailing expected cybercriminal behavior trends including ransomware, malware-as-a-service, vulnerabilities and exploits. Within the report, the ZeroFox Intelligence team reviews 12 months of threat actor activity from 2021 and provides go-forward recommendations for security teams as we continue into 2022.
State-sponsored actors backed by the Russian government regularly targeted the networks of several U.S. cleared defense contractors to acquire proprietary documents and other confidential information pertaining to the country's defense and intelligence programs and capabilities. Compromised entities include contractors that dabble in command, control, communications, and combat systems; surveillance and reconnaissance; weapons and missile development; vehicle and aircraft design; and software development, data analytics, and logistics.
When employees quit their jobs, there is a 37% chance an organization will lose IP. With 96% of companies noting they experience challenges in protecting corporate data from insider risk, it's clear insider risk must be prioritized. 71% don't know what and/or how much sensitive data departing employees take to other companies.
Customers are increasingly turning away from private DNS resolvers and going for large cloud-based public DNS resolvers instead. What are the security concerns driving customers to public DNS resolvers? Better security and privacy are identified as key drivers for this shift to public DNS resolvers.
Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for quantum cryptography estimated at $93.1 million in the year 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of $291.9 million by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 20.8% over the analysis period, according to ResearchAndMarkets. The U.S. quantum cryptography market is estimated at $40.6M in 2021.
Google plans to extend its rework of web ad technology - the optimistically named Privacy Sandbox - to Android devices in an effort to limit the misuse of data in its mobile ecosystem. It began to take shape a year after Google undertook Project Strobe, a rethink of Google Account and Android data access in the wake of ongoing security and privacy problems.
A two-year campaign by state-sponsored Russian entities to siphon information from US defense contractors worked, it is claimed. CISA's announcement and an accompanying report [PDF] state that it, the FBI, and the NSA have all spotted "Regular targeting" of contractors that serve the US Department of Defense, intelligence agencies, and all branches of the US military other than the Coast Guard.
The practice of blurring out text using a method called pixelation may not be as secure as previously thought. While the most foolproof way of concealing sensitive textual information is to use opaque black bars, other redaction methods like pixelation can achieve the opposite effect, enabling the reversal of pixelized text back into its original form.
Data privacy, the process of collecting, storing, managing and sharing access to data with third parties, is a crucial factor in ensuring business success. A KPMG report last August revealed that "62% felt that their companies should do more to protect customer data" and "86% of [consumers] said they feel a growing concern about data privacy, while 78% expressed fears about the amount of data being collected. Some 40% of the consumers surveyed don't trust companies to use their data ethically, and 13% don't even trust their own employers."
Cyberattackers are targeting 60 different high-profile companies with the TrickBot malware, researchers have warned, with many of those in the U.S. The goal is to attack those companies' customers, according to Check Point Research, which are being cherry-picked for victimization. The TrickBot malware was originally a banking trojan, but it has evolved well beyond those humble beginnings to become a wide-ranging credential-stealer and initial-access threat, often responsible for fetching second-stage binaries such as ransomware.