In 2020 Toll Group went twice through a ransomware attack, now Sophos which acted as a response and investigation team for the events, announces that the entry point was an account of an employee who died but remained active in the system.
Nefilim Ransomware Attack Used “Ghost” Credentials.
According to the report by Sophos, the Nefilim group responsible for the infidelity attack that was on the company’s network for about a month without the defense systems identifying suspicious activity, the user used by the attack group belonged to a deceased employee but his account was locked/deleted due to being integrated into various services.
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Hackers Target Universities – Not Just For Money
🎓 Universities Are High-Impact Targets – Not Just For Money
🚨 Attackers deface pages and leak records to expose perceived policy violations or to protest actions.
🔍 Academic networks hold sensitive research, personal data, and fragmented systems that invite exploitation by attackers.
⚠️ Ideological groups sometimes use breaches to make public statements and pressure institutional leaders.
💥 Some attacks include multi-year data dumps, causing reputational damage and regulatory exposure for schools.
📈 Attempts against higher education infrastructure have risen sharply, showing a global and persistent trend.
🛡️ Defenders must prioritize unified governance, visibility, and rapid incident response across all departments.
🔐 Implement identity hygiene, segmentation, and rapid patching to reduce attack surface and lateral movement risk.
🧪 Run red team simulations and tabletop exercises to test readiness and public communication plans effectively.
🔎 Monitor for spikes in submissions, unusual access patterns, and cross-departmental anomalies in logs to detect intrusions early.
🤝 Coordinate with legal, PR, and academic leadership to prepare rapid, transparent responses that limit fallout.
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AkiraBot Spam Campaign – How AI-Powered Bots Outsmart Contact Forms and CAPTCHAs
🤖 AkiraBot Spam Campaign Exposes Weak Contact Forms
🚨 AkiraBot used GPT-based content and browser automation to send personalized messages to over 80,000 websites.
🧩 The messages embedded site names and service descriptions to bypass duplicate-content spam heuristics used by filters.
🔐 The bot simulated human browsing with Selenium, injected page scripts, and used CAPTCHA solving services when needed.
🕵️ Detection failed due to reliance on content similarity rather than behavioral analysis of submissions.
🛡️ Defenders must adopt layered controls including behavior analytics, strict validation, rate limits, and provenance checks.
💥 The campaign caused wasted marketing spend, potential brand damage, and increased remediation costs for victims.
🔎 Look for signals like spikes in form submissions, anomalous interaction timings, and diverse proxy networks in logs.
⚙️ Immediate steps include temporary form lockdowns, forensic captures, and coordinated takedowns with providers.
📈 Regular tabletop exercises and simulations improve readiness and reduce the risk of large-scale automated abuse.
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and harden forms.
#CISO #CTO #CIO #WebSecurity #SpamPrevention #ContactSecurity #AUMINT
Scallywag Exposes WordPress Ad Fraud – What You Must Know
🛑 WordPress Ad Fraud Alert: Scallywag at Work
🚨 Scallywag injects malicious scripts into WordPress ad slots that reroute clicks or run hidden cryptomining.
⚠️ Sites appear normal—users don’t notice—but revenue and performance suffer silently over time.
🧩 Ad networks often allow third-party JavaScript without strict validation, making plugins or dependencies risky.
🔐 Defend by restricting script origins, applying CSP, sandboxing iframes, and auditing JS payloads regularly.
✅ AUMINT.io simulates ad fraud attacks and builds alert systems to catch script anomalies.
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