The IT Nerd

Darktrace has just released its 2018 Threats Report, highlighting the top areas of concern and citing examples where Darktrace has intervened. Top threats include,

• Cryptocurrency mining: many Canadians are unknowingly affected. But Darktrace has detected crypto mining under the hood at a company-wide level as well, affecting entire networks of computers at a time.
• Ransomeware & worms: while ransomeware has been a threat for many years, the “return of the network worm” caused headaches across the world, via WannaCry. Darktrace has been actively detecting network worms and removing them within a matter of seconds.
• Insider threat: 65% of early-stage threats that Darktrace detects entail insiders misusing legitimate access to damage their employer, either knowingly or unknowingly.

Also within the report are several examples of vulnerabilities and “entry-points” throughout a company’s supply chain. Some of the threats caught and removed by Darktrace’s AI include:

• Hacked fingerprint scanner at a manufacturing plant. global luxury goods manufacturer used biometric fingerprint scanners to restrict access to its warehouses. Unbeknown to the security team, an attacker exploited vulnerabilities in one of these connected devices and started surreptitiously changing the biometric data in a suspected attempt to gain access to the highly secure facilities.
• Infiltrated refrigeration system at global food chain. A fast food chain managed a significant issue where a flaw in the software running on their storage refrigerators could have allowed attackers to change the temperature of the units, which in turn could have caused widespread food spoilage.
• An unsuspecting insider. A major US pharmaceuticals company found itself infected with an aggressive malware, due to insider threat. An employee had accessed BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer network used for transferring large files, to download media content, including pirated films.

You can request a copy of the report here.

This entry was posted on March 16, 2018 at 9:15 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Darktrace. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.