Over the millennia, there have been many inventions that have enhanced our lives by making tasks easier, faster and simpler. A number of innovations have literally changed the way societies around the world communicate, share information and learn. The Internet is a great example of a technology innovation that has made our world smaller and more connected.
As with most things that are beneficial and valuable, there are those who find ways to abuse and exploit them for their own gain. The Internet is no exception, and it has become another medium for bad actors to commit their crimes. All the traffic running over the Internet, and the resources that individuals, corporations, and government agencies have connected to it, are fair game and vulnerable to cyber criminals.
The cybercrime trajectory is clear, and cybersecurity can’t be left behind
Cyber-extortion is a growing and evolving business that has burgeoned into a trillion-dollar industry. As a culture, we tend to categorize industries, and even those within the criminal element. As criminals become organized, including cybercriminals, we refer to them as gangs, cartels, mobs, and organized crime syndicates. Whatever you want to call then, ransomware criminals are becoming increasingly more sophisticated, and some have business models that rival large legitimate corporations. Many operate through coordinated efforts with other groups or partners, even providing 24/7 help desk support.
Enterprising ransomware gangs have evolved by teaming up with other like-minded groups in a bid to expand their reach and revenue, taking advantage of having more resources at their disposal, to intimidate their victims. For years now, Ransomware-as-a-Service, or RaaS, has continuously grown on the dark web. Their platforms and infrastructure are made available to less resourced hackers for a fee and share of the profits.
Several ransomware gangs, including Twisted Spider, Viking Spider, Wizard Spider, and Lockbit have combined forces. They’ve essentially formed an alliance to coordinate their attacks and share intelligence and infrastructure. One ransomware gang will steal the data, while another performs extortion and publishing. They share tactics, by using virtual machines in their victim’s environments and have even issued press releases on the dark web claiming their group affiliation.
RidgeBot helps your enterprise become the hunters, not the prey
By deploying cybersecurity solutions that understand how bad actors change and evolve, and how they diversify their tactics, companies can create an effective plan that proactively moves them from victim to hunter.
RidgeBot is an automated penetration testing robot for risk-based vulnerability management. RidgeBots act like human attackers, relentlessly locating exploits, then documenting their findings. Unlike humans, it comes armed with dynamic of attack strategies it tries before moving on to the next target. RidgeBot automated pentesting is affordable and runs at enterprise scale.
To eliminate risk, RidgeBot conducts four primary steps:
- Discovers active assets like servers, network devices, operating systems and websites.
- Scans and reports on discovered assets and attack surfaces that include weak URLs, open ports and system vulnerabilities. Beyond software mapping, scanning uses actual payload to detect vulnerabilities.
- Exploits using ethical hacking skills learned from human testers, launching sophisticated, joint and iterative attacks.
- Conducts post-exploit verification to indicate whether certain configurations allow hackers to laterally move further into the environment, using testing techniques like privilege escalation, Pass-the-hash, and others.
RidgeBot ransomware template is specifically designed to combat ransomware attacks. Capabilities include scanning for 27 high-profile ransomware entry point vulnerabilities, launching attacks to exploit these vulnerabilities, and providing detailed reporting on exactly how the successful testing exploitations were achieved.
Click here to read our whitepaper and learn more about how RidgeBot can help you defend against ransomware.