GRABNEW

Blurred Lines: Sophisticated Hacks Building On Commodity Crime Tools

The information security industry has long operated with the premise of two, very different kinds of threats: indiscriminate, cyber criminal activity aimed at making money quick and sophisticated, targeted attacks intended to provide long term competitive advantage to another company (or economy), disrupt the operation of the target or provide a (future) strategic advantage in some kind of cyber conflict. But new research from FireEye suggests that the lines between sophisticated and unsophisticated cyber operations are blurred, making it hard for organizations to know if a given infection is merely bad luck, or evidence of a larger and more dangerous operation. Writing about a new financially motivated hacking crew called Fin6, FireEye said that the group, which targeted point-of-sale systems made off with “millions of payment card numbers.” Still, FireEye said that it couldn’t figure out how the group compromised its victims. “In Mandiant’s investigations of FIN6, the group already […]