A study by Kroll, a division of Duff & Phelps identified a growing trend in the use of the Qakbot trojan, or Qbot, by cyber criminals to launch email thread hijacking campaigns that deploy ransomware attacks. In an article for Cointelegraph, Laurie Iacono and Cole Manaster, Vice Presidents in Kroll’s Cyber Risk practice, discuss how the Qakbot trojan is reportedly being used as a “point of entry” by the operators behind the ProLock ransomware gang.
Laurie and Cole highlight that cyber criminals are aware of the increasing cyber security training across email users, and are producing more sophisticated and authentic-looking phishing lures. They caution that, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt the global marketplace, opportunistic bad actors are increasingly utilizing trojans to deploy ransomware attacks to lure individuals into clicking malicious links and thereby breach an organization’s system, steal their data and profit by holding both systems and data ransom.
Read the full article here.
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