A year ago, what was planned to be as a swift, focused, military invasion of Ukraine did not go according to Russian expectations. The war continues, and so do its effects on cybersecurity. Let’s focus attention on three key areas that have seen significant changes: state-sponsored activity, cybercrime, and hacktivism. Understanding their evolution will help […]
The fallout of the recent Optus breach got me thinking about a common occurrence: seller’s remorse… Most of us have experienced it. You feel like you’re getting a good deal, and then bang! You realize you could have got more for your money if you’d only just waited that extra day. Although this might be […]
Back in 2015, few would have foresaw what Raid Forums would become when it was first created by a then 14-year old Portuguese citizen. Fast forward seven years and half a billion members later, its seizure by law enforcement in February 2022 had left a sizable chunk in the cybercriminal landscape. Although there were and […]
After a tumultuous few months at the start of the year in which each week seemed to bring a major development in the cybercrime scene, we’ve been enjoying a period of relative stability in the dark web. We have just about recovered from the closure of the English-language forum giant RaidForums, the bombshell leak of […]
As a threat intelligence professional, it’s difficult to ignore how major developments in the real world affect the lives of cybercriminals. In 2020, threat actors saw instant success when executing COVID-19-themed social engineering campaigns after the onset of the pandemic. In 2021, we saw an unprecedented shift in the cybercriminal landscape after the Colonial Pipeline […]
At the end of February, the cybersecurity community was rocked by the appearance of alleged chat logs recording conversations between members of the prolific Russian-speaking ransomware group Conti. A Ukrainian cybersecurity researcher published over 60,000 messages allegedly taken from the backend of a Jabber server that Conti used for internal communications. Other cybersecurity researchers have […]
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the Digital Shadows (now ReliaQuest) Photon team has been following multiple aspects of the tragic conflict and its impact on the cybersphere. We’ve explored threat actors’ initial responses to the war, shared advice on how to plan a cyber response to the events, and investigated the revival of […]
Arguably the biggest cybersecurity event of the year so far was the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) arresting suspected members of the REvil (aka Sodinokibi) ransomware group on 14 Jan 2022. News of this operation, which reportedly occurred at the request of US authorities, rocked the cybersecurity community and has led to endless debates about […]
A few months back, we wrote about how AlphaBay, the infamous dark web marketplace, has returned. For those who missed the history lesson, the original AlphaBay was closed down in 2017 following a joint law enforcement operation, which resulted in the arrest of one of the marketplace’s founding members, Alexandre Cazes (AKA “alpha02”). However, another […]
I’m sure we can all agree that this year has been busy for anyone who had anything, even remotely, to do with security. The year 2021 started off with a bang as we all dealt with the fallout from a handful of Exchange bugs, dealt with the repercussions of the Accellion and Kaseya attacks, and […]