Sporting events, like the upcoming FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 (Qatar 2022 World Cup), attract massive attention from every corner of the world. Just think, the last edition of the tournament in Russia was watched by a combined 3.57 billion viewers, equating to more than half of the global population aged four and over. Unfortunately, […]
When asked to write about the Winter Olympic Games this year, I immediately thought about my alpine holiday in Niseko. Those fun-and-games were two years ago, and little did I know I would not be setting my feet on a slope till…I have no idea when (thank you, COVID-19). It looks like the 2022 Winter […]
Just a few weeks ago, Digital Shadows (now ReliaQuest) published a blog written by yours truly that analyzed the cyber threats to the UEFA EURO 2020 Championship. Little did I know that the biggest threat to that tournament would turn out to be the Italy national football team—an event that made me burst into tears […]
On 02 July 2021, details started to emerge of a sophisticated supply-chain attack targeting Kaseya VSA, virtual system administrator software used to manage and monitor customers’ infrastructure. Researchers initially attributed this attack to ransomware gang “REvil” (aka Sodinokibi), whose members claimed responsibility in a press release on their dark-web data-leak site, Happy Blog. Kaseya VSA […]
Last week, Motherboard reported that source code for FIFA 21 had been stolen from EA sports by hackers. This was based on a post on a criminal forum from 6th June, where a forum user advertised a 780GB dump of the files claiming to be from EA Sports. EA Sports confirmed a data breach had […]
There is light at the end of the coronavirus tunnel: Countries are now beginning a gradual return to normalcy thanks to vaccination programs. Many people—cybercriminals included—are most looking forward to going on post-vaccination vacations and catching up on all the travel that’s been missing over the past year. Countries are opening up their borders to […]
In recent years, there’s been an industry-wide movement to look more externally to predict, prevent, and adapt to threats. This shift has resulted in increased demand and consumption of cyber threat intelligence, but it’s often challenging to operationalize. Just reading about a malware a threat actor uses or purchasing access to profiles on the specific […]
Last week, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (EUROPOL) published a press release detailing the operation that led to the disruption of Emotet, one of the most prominent trojans that populated the cyber threat landscape. This operation, dubbed “Operation Ladybird”, was a joint effort led by the authorities of several European countries and […]
Once upon a time, a high-profile dark web marketplace seizure or exit scam would have been big news in the cybercriminal community. When Empire marketplace went down we saw widespread expressions of shock, fear, and speculation. But is the strength of reaction to such events beginning to diminish? The recent alleged seizure of the carding […]
Note: Our findings in this blog stem from analysis of all Q4 2020 cyber threat activity by our in-house research team Photon using open and restricted access resources including Digital Shadows (now ReliaQuest)’ Dark Web Spider. You can subscribe to our weekly threat intelligence newsletter here. In recent years, financially-motivated cyber criminals have been increasingly […]