These arrests underscore the growing pattern of law enforcement agencies success in pursuing charges against some cybercrime gangs, says Jamie Hart, cyber threat intelligence analyst for Digital Shadows. Since the beginning of 2021, seeing law enforcement coordinate to take down NetWalker, take down Emotet, and now they have taken down Egregor it shows the cooperation is improving and law enforcement are getting the hang of this, she says.
Officials arrests of several people suspected of ties to the Egregor ransomware-as-a-service operation is the latest success. In January, the US Department of Justice arrested a Canadian national and seized almost $500,000 in cryptocurrency as part of their investigation into the Netwalker ransomware operation. A day earlier, an international alliance of law enforcement agencies shut down the Emotet botnet by taking over the infrastructure its operators used.
Firms Patch Greater Number of Systems, but Still Slowly
Fewer systems have flaws; however, the time to remediate vulnerabilities stays flat, and many issues targeted by in-the-wild malware remain open to attack.
Companies have nearly halved the number of systems with vulnerabilities in the past year and had even greater success mitigating systems with a large number of security issues, according to data released by vulnerability management firm Edgescan.
In 2020, the company found that 43% of its clients systems had at least one vulnerability, and 4% of systems had 10 or more security issues, a significant improvement from the 77% of systems that had at least one issue and the 15% of systems that had 10 or more issues in 2019. However, companies still had a significant number of systems with vulnerabilities such as the Bluekeep and EternalBlue exploits that exposed them to common ransomware attacks, according to the firm.
US Needs Comprehensive Policy to Combat China on IP Theft
The United States cannot lose sight of Chinese cyber operations that target intellectual property, a panel of experts says.
The United States needs a more systematic approach to engage with China on cybersecurity and intellectual property issues, and to address the ongoing theft of industrial and defensive technologies via cyberattacks, a panel of policy and technology experts stated last week.
Without good options to respond to other nations cyber operations, the US and Western countries are at a disadvantage. While the lion s share of cyberattacks are criminal in nature, the targeting of intellectual property is eroding and in some areas, has already eroded the United States technological lead. The resemblance between China s advanced fighter aircraft and the US F-35 stealth fighter underscores that China is building much of its global power on technology from the US and other countries, said US Senator Angus King J
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