Ransomware and Cybercrime


Book Description

In May 2021, Jim Gosler, known as the Godfather and commander of US agencies’ cyber offensive capability, said, ''Either the Intelligence Community (IC) would grow and adapt, or the Internet would eat us alive.'' Mr Gosler was speaking at his retirement only several months before the terrorist attacks of 9/11. He possibly did not realise the catalyst or the tsunami that he and his tens of thousands of US IC offensive website operatives had created and commenced. Over the last two decades, what Mr Gosler and his army of Internet keyboard warriors created would become the modus operandi for every faceless, nameless, state-sponsored or individual cybercriminal to replicate against an unwary, ill-protected, and ignorant group of executives and security professionals who knew little to nothing about the clandestine methods of infiltration and weaponisation of the Internet that the US and UK agencies led, all in the name of security. This book covers many cyber and ransomware attacks and events, including how we have gotten to the point of massive digital utilisation, particularly during the global lockdown and COVID-19 pandemic, to online spending that will see twice the monetary amount lost to cybercrime than what is spent online. There is little to no attribution, and with the IC themselves suffering cyberattacks, they are all blamed on being sophisticated ones, of course. We are witnessing the undermining of our entire way of life, our economies, and even our liberties. The IC has lots to answer for and unequivocally created the disastrous situation we are currently in. They currently have little to no answer. We need—no, we must demand—change. That change must start by ensuring the Internet and all connections to it are secure and no longer allow easy access and exfiltration for both the ICs and cybercriminals.




Ransomware and Cyber Extortion


Book Description

Protect Your Organization from Devastating Ransomware and Cyber Extortion Attacks Ransomware and other cyber extortion crimes have reached epidemic proportions. The secrecy surrounding them has left many organizations unprepared to respond. Your actions in the minutes, hours, days, and months after an attack may determine whether you'll ever recover. You must be ready. With this book, you will be. Ransomware and Cyber Extortion is the ultimate practical guide to surviving ransomware, exposure extortion, denial-of-service, and other forms of cyber extortion. Drawing heavily on their own unpublished case library, cyber security experts Sherri Davidoff, Matt Durrin, and Karen Sprenger guide you through responding faster, minimizing damage, investigating more effectively, expediting recovery, and preventing it from happening in the first place. Proven checklists help your security teams act swiftly and effectively together, throughout the entire lifecycle--whatever the attack and whatever the source. Understand different forms of cyber extortion and how they evolved Quickly recognize indicators of compromise Minimize losses with faster triage and containment Identify threats, scope attacks, and locate "patient zero" Initiate and manage a ransom negotiation--and avoid costly mistakes Decide whether to pay, how to perform due diligence, and understand risks Know how to pay a ransom demand while avoiding common pitfalls Reduce risks of data loss and reinfection Build a stronger, holistic cybersecurity program that reduces your risk of getting hacked This guide offers immediate value to everyone involved in prevention, response, planning, or policy: CIOs, CISOs, incident responders, investigators, negotiators, executives, legislators, regulators, law enforcement professionals, and others. Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.




The Art of Cyberwarfare


Book Description

A practical guide to understanding and analyzing cyber attacks by advanced attackers, such as nation states. Cyber attacks are no longer the domain of petty criminals. Today, companies find themselves targeted by sophisticated nation state attackers armed with the resources to craft scarily effective campaigns. This book is a detailed guide to understanding the major players in these cyber wars, the techniques they use, and the process of analyzing their advanced attacks. Whether you’re an individual researcher or part of a team within a Security Operations Center (SoC), you’ll learn to approach, track, and attribute attacks to these advanced actors. The first part of the book is an overview of actual cyber attacks conducted by nation-state actors and other advanced organizations. It explores the geopolitical context in which the attacks took place, the patterns found in the attackers’ techniques, and the supporting evidence analysts used to attribute such attacks. Dive into the mechanisms of: North Korea’s series of cyber attacks against financial institutions, which resulted in billions of dollars stolen The world of targeted ransomware attacks, which have leveraged nation state tactics to cripple entire corporate enterprises with ransomware Recent cyber attacks aimed at disrupting or influencing national elections globally The book’s second part walks through how defenders can track and attribute future attacks. You’ll be provided with the tools, methods, and analytical guidance required to dissect and research each stage of an attack campaign. Here, Jon DiMaggio demonstrates some of the real techniques he has employed to uncover crucial information about the 2021 Colonial Pipeline attacks, among many other advanced threats. He now offers his experience to train the next generation of expert analysts.




Cybercrime and the Law


Book Description

The first full-scale overview of cybercrime, law, and policy




Handbook of Research on Innovations in Technology and Marketing for the Connected Consumer


Book Description

Connected customers, using a wide range of devices such as smart phones, tablets, and laptops have ushered in a new era of consumerism. Now more than ever, this change has prodded marketing departments to work with their various IT departments and technologists to expand consumers’ access to content. In order to remain competitive, marketers must integrate marketing campaigns across these different devices and become proficient in using technology. The Handbook of Research on Innovations in Technology and Marketing for the Connected Consumer is a pivotal reference source that develops new insights into applications of technology in marketing and explores effective ways to reach consumers through a wide range of devices. While highlighting topics such as cognitive computing, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality, this publication explores practices of technology-empowered digital marketing as well as the methods of applying practices to less developed countries. This book is ideally designed for marketers, managers, advertisers, branding teams, application developers, IT specialists, academicians, researchers, and students.




Ransomware Revealed


Book Description

Know how to mitigate and handle ransomware attacks via the essential cybersecurity training in this book so you can stop attacks before they happen. Learn the types of ransomware, distribution methods, internal structure, families (variants), defense strategies, recovery methods, and legal issues related to reporting ransomware incidents to authorities and other affected parties. This book also teaches you how to develop a ransomware incident response plan to minimize ransomware damage and recover normal operations quickly. Ransomware is a category of malware that can encrypt your computer and mobile device files until you pay a ransom to unlock them. Ransomware attacks are considered the most prevalent cybersecurity threats today—the number of new ransomware variants has grown 30-fold since 2015 and they currently account for roughly 40% of all spam messages. Attacks have increased in occurrence from one every 40 seconds to one every 14 seconds. Government and private corporations are targets. Despite the security controls set by organizations to protect their digital assets, ransomware is still dominating the world of security and will continue to do so in the future. Ransomware Revealed discusses the steps to follow if a ransomware infection occurs, such as how to pay the ransom through anonymous payment methods, perform a backup and restore your affected files, and search online to find a decryption tool to unlock (decrypt) your files for free. Mitigation steps are discussed in depth for both endpoint devices and network systems. What You Will Learn Be aware of how ransomware infects your system Comprehend ransomware components in simple terms Recognize the different types of ransomware familiesIdentify the attack vectors employed by ransomware to infect computer systemsKnow how to prevent ransomware attacks from successfully comprising your system and network (i.e., mitigation strategies) Know what to do if a successful ransomware infection takes place Understand how to pay the ransom as well as the pros and cons of paying Set up a ransomware response plan to recover from such attacks Who This Book Is For Those who do not specialize in the cybersecurity field (but have adequate IT skills) and want to fully understand the anatomy of ransomware threats. Although most of the book's content will be understood by ordinary computer users, it will also prove useful for experienced IT users aiming to understand the ins and outs of ransomware threats without diving deep into the technical jargon of the internal structure of ransomware.




Blackhatonomics


Book Description

Blackhatonomics explains the basic economic truths of the underworld of hacking, and why people around the world devote tremendous resources to developing and implementing malware. The book provides an economic view of the evolving business of cybercrime, showing the methods and motivations behind organized cybercrime attacks, and the changing tendencies towards cyber-warfare. Written by an exceptional author team of Will Gragido, Daniel J Molina, John Pirc and Nick Selby, Blackhatonomics takes practical academic principles and backs them up with use cases and extensive interviews, placing you right into the mindset of the cyber criminal. - Historical perspectives of the development of malware as it evolved into a viable economic endeavour - Country specific cyber-crime analysis of the United States, China, and Russia, as well as an analysis of the impact of Globalization on cyber-crime - Presents the behind the scenes methods used to successfully execute financially motivated attacks in a globalized cybercrime economy - Provides unique insights, analysis, and useful tools for justifying corporate information security budgets - Provides multiple points of view, from pure research, to corporate, to academic, to law enforcement - Includes real world cybercrime case studies and profiles of high-profile cybercriminals




Cybercrime and Cyber Warfare


Book Description

In order to enable general understanding and to foster the implementation of necessary support measures in organizations, this book describes the fundamental and conceptual aspects of cyberspace abuse. These aspects are logically and reasonably discussed in the fields related to cybercrime and cyberwarfare. The book illustrates differences between the two fields, perpetrators’ activities, as well as the methods of investigating and fighting against attacks committed by perpetrators operating in cyberspace. The first chapter focuses on the understanding of cybercrime, i.e. the perpetrators, their motives and their organizations. Tools for implementing attacks are also briefly mentioned, however this book is not technical and does not intend to instruct readers about the technical aspects of cybercrime, but rather focuses on managerial views of cybercrime. Other sections of this chapter deal with the protection against attacks, fear, investigation and the cost of cybercrime. Relevant legislation and legal bodies, which are used in cybercrime, are briefly described at the end of the chapter. The second chapter deals with cyberwarfare and explains the difference between classic cybercrime and operations taking place in the modern inter-connected world. It tackles the following questions: who is committing cyberwarfare; who are the victims and who are the perpetrators? Countries which have an important role in cyberwarfare around the world, and the significant efforts being made to combat cyberwarfare on national and international levels, are mentioned. The common points of cybercrime and cyberwarfare, the methods used to protect against them and the vision of the future of cybercrime and cyberwarfare are briefly described at the end of the book. Contents 1. Cybercrime. 2. Cyberwarfare. About the Authors Igor Bernik is Vice Dean for Academic Affairs and Head of the Information Security Lab at the University of Maribor, Slovenia. He has written and contributed towards over 150 scientific articles and conference papers, and co-authored 4 books. His current research interests concern information/cybersecurity, cybercrime, cyberwarfare and cyberterrorism.




Hacking Multifactor Authentication


Book Description

Protect your organization from scandalously easy-to-hack MFA security “solutions” Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is spreading like wildfire across digital environments. However, hundreds of millions of dollars have been stolen from MFA-protected online accounts. How? Most people who use multifactor authentication (MFA) have been told that it is far less hackable than other types of authentication, or even that it is unhackable. You might be shocked to learn that all MFA solutions are actually easy to hack. That’s right: there is no perfectly safe MFA solution. In fact, most can be hacked at least five different ways. Hacking Multifactor Authentication will show you how MFA works behind the scenes and how poorly linked multi-step authentication steps allows MFA to be hacked and compromised. This book covers over two dozen ways that various MFA solutions can be hacked, including the methods (and defenses) common to all MFA solutions. You’ll learn about the various types of MFA solutions, their strengthens and weaknesses, and how to pick the best, most defensible MFA solution for your (or your customers') needs. Finally, this book reveals a simple method for quickly evaluating your existing MFA solutions. If using or developing a secure MFA solution is important to you, you need this book. Learn how different types of multifactor authentication work behind the scenes See how easy it is to hack MFA security solutions—no matter how secure they seem Identify the strengths and weaknesses in your (or your customers’) existing MFA security and how to mitigate Author Roger Grimes is an internationally known security expert whose work on hacking MFA has generated significant buzz in the security world. Read this book to learn what decisions and preparations your organization needs to take to prevent losses from MFA hacking.




Confluence of AI, Machine, and Deep Learning in Cyber Forensics


Book Description

Developing a knowledge model helps to formalize the difficult task of analyzing crime incidents in addition to preserving and presenting the digital evidence for legal processing. The use of data analytics techniques to collect evidence assists forensic investigators in following the standard set of forensic procedures, techniques, and methods used for evidence collection and extraction. Varieties of data sources and information can be uniquely identified, physically isolated from the crime scene, protected, stored, and transmitted for investigation using AI techniques. With such large volumes of forensic data being processed, different deep learning techniques may be employed. Confluence of AI, Machine, and Deep Learning in Cyber Forensics contains cutting-edge research on the latest AI techniques being used to design and build solutions that address prevailing issues in cyber forensics and that will support efficient and effective investigations. This book seeks to understand the value of the deep learning algorithm to handle evidence data as well as the usage of neural networks to analyze investigation data. Other themes that are explored include machine learning algorithms that allow machines to interact with the evidence, deep learning algorithms that can handle evidence acquisition and preservation, and techniques in both fields that allow for the analysis of huge amounts of data collected during a forensic investigation. This book is ideally intended for forensics experts, forensic investigators, cyber forensic practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in cyber forensics, computer science and engineering, information technology, and electronics and communication.