Tomáš Foltýn

The attackers gained access to a range of customer data such as names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, and marital status. Making matters worse, the historical payment card details of some 18,000 customers were also compromised.

The distribution of the USB sticks was halted on December 12 after some of the quiz’s successful entrants reported that their rewards had been flagged by their security software as containing malware.

Bitcoin, the progenitor of the entire cryptocurrency boom and still the most popular virtual currency, experienced a truly heady run-up in value. Its price surge was punctuated with a crescendo midway through December, when a single bitcoin approached $20,000.

ESET research spots Turla using a fresh weapon in campaigns targeting embassies and consulates in the post-Soviet states

As Wauchos was sold on underground forums, there were various monetization schemes. One of them was to use the form grabber plugin to steal passwords for online accounts.

Courtesy of its highly customizable nature – along with its ability to persist in the system and to provide valuable information for fine-tuning the highly configurable payloads – the malware can be adapted for attacks against any environment, making it extremely dangerous.

Ransomware and data breaches remain major thorns in the sides of users and organizations across the world, often piercing their defenses without too much effort.

Banks are being urged to step up to the plate and to “work together to tackle this problem head on”, as their response has been found to be disproportionate to the scale of the problem.

To help the reader navigate through the maze of such threats, ESET’s thought leaders have zeroed in on several areas that top the priority list in our exercise in looking forward.