As ransomware incidents continue to grow, Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 has discovered a new ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) group. Unit 42 has released research on the group, Repellent Scorpius, and how they’re distributing Cicada3301 ransomware.
Highlights include:
Based on the timeline from a Unit 42 IR engagement, it’s estimated that the ransomware group began their operations in May 2024
Despite its recent inception, the group is quickly picking up pace by setting up an affiliate program and recruiting partners. This has increased its number of victims
Repellent Scorpius employs a double extortion scheme of encrypting systems. This entails stealing data and threatening to publish it if the victim doesn’t pay the ransom
You can find the full report here which provides more insights into the new attack group and attack strategy.
DomainTools recently published their latest blog exploring how threat actors are taking advantage of this growing retail sector and how their activity can be “clustered” to help organizations defend themselves. The various clusters include:
E-commerce Domain Fraud
Brand Impersonation for Financial Fraud
Success Sadly Has a Thousand Cousins
The retail sector faces not only the broader threats that businesses more generally face such as ransomware, phishing, and BEC, but threats that try to leverage brand loyalty.
Posted in Commentary with tags OWC on September 11, 2024 by itnerd
Spoiler alert: If you want a fast and high quality portable SSD that will fit a number of use cases, and will likely survive a zombie apocalypse, the OWC Envoy SSD is the one that you should get. You can stop reading the review now.
I’m just kidding. This is why I feel that way. Let’s start with the size of the drive:
I put this SSD next to a mouse so that you can get an idea of the size. It’s tiny. In fact, my wife saw this and said that she could carry a couple of these in her purse. It’s made of aircraft-grade aluminum which makes it not only rugged, but it dissipates heat as well. In fact, during my testing, it was warm to the touch versus other SSD’s of this type that can get very hot to the touch. It’s also very light. On my wife’s kitchen scale it was 45 grams.
The drive comes with a cable and OWC didn’t cheap out on it as you can see here. This cable which is about a foot in length, does 60W power delivery and up to 20 Gb/s in speed. I am pointing this out because this is one area where companies often cut corners. OWC not only didn’t do that, but they went overboard in terms of the cable that they provide. Thus that has to be noted as a big plus.
The drive is bus powered and is USB-C only with a light to right of the USB-C connector. That means that it has a theoretical maximum speed of 10Gb/s.
OWC quotes a speed of “over” 1000MB/s for this drive. As you know, I take any speed claims for any device with a grain of salt. But when I tested this drive, I was pleasantly surprised:
The read speed is pretty close to 1000MB/s, and the write speed is above that speed on my M1 Pro MacBook Pro. Thus I can see this drive doing better than the speeds I got. It also means that OWC wasn’t just throwing a number into the product’s web page to get your attention, and hoping that someone like me wouldn’t call them on it when those speeds didn’t measure up to reality.
Another interesting thing that I want to point out is this:
If you look at the top right corner of this picture, you’ll see a picture of the drive rather than some generic macOS icon. It’s a little thing, but a nice thing.
I’ll also note that the drive comes with a piece of software called Drive Guide which will help you to format it for anything from APFS for use with modern Macs, to exFAT for cross platform compatibility, to HFS+ for older Macs. What’s nice about this is that it saves novice users from having to figure out how to use Disk Utility on Mac to format the drive. OWC also has an app called Copy That Mobile to copy photos and videos from your iPhone or iPad to the drive. I am pointing that out because using this drive with a phone that has USB-C like the iPhone 15 series is a use case that I can see this drive being used in.
The OWC Envoy comes in 1 and 2 terabyte sizes. I have been using the 1 terabyte model and that’s $129 USD. The 2 terabyte model is $249 USD. And I have been impressed enough by this drive that it is going into my Tech Sling as part of the toolkit that I bring to customer sites. It’s small, fast, rugged and decently priced. Simply put, it checks all the boxes for me. And I believe it will check all the boxes for you as well.
New Unit 42 Repellent Scorpius/Cicada3301 Research Report Is Live
Posted in Commentary with tags Palo Alto on September 11, 2024 by itnerdAs ransomware incidents continue to grow, Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 has discovered a new ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) group. Unit 42 has released research on the group, Repellent Scorpius, and how they’re distributing Cicada3301 ransomware.
Highlights include:
You can find the full report here which provides more insights into the new attack group and attack strategy.
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