A Rising Tide: New Hacks Threaten Public Technologies

Today we release our regular quarterly threat round up with information on the security and privacy trends for the second quarter of 2015.

This quarter saw threats and attacks continuing to broader in their scope and impact. From security researchers demonstrating potential weaknesses in airplanes to attacks darkening television networks, the impact of attacks and potential attacks continue to move into the daily lives of regular people.

This quarter also saw continuing major data breaches in the United States against healthcare providers like CareFirst as well as the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM). These data breaches are some of the worst data breaches ever, encompassing critical personal information that puts people at risk far beyond simple financial loses and credit card fraud.

In contrast to large-scale data breach attacks, this quarter also saw our researchers highlight the effectiveness and impact of solo, or lone-wolf operators. In Brazil, our researchers showed how effective the solo mastermind behind the FighterPOS  family is as well as “LordFenix,” the creator of one of Brazil’s top banking malware. Meanwhile, “Frapstar” in Canada showed that country has its share of cybercriminals as well.

This quarter also saw another increase in exploit-kit related attacks. The continuing problems with vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash in particular helped fuel this, with 10 of the 11 vulnerabilities added to the current leading exploit kit, Angler, being ones affecting Adobe Flash.

As always there’s much, much more in our quarterly report, be sure to check it out.

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