Unveiling the secrets of cyber criminals

There was another keynote at Zenith 2024 by Zscaler on unveiling the secrets of cyber criminals by Brian Krebs, Investigative Reporter. He examined the Russian market. Attackers can compromise a token. Bad guys can do lot of damage. In China, threat actors found a Microsoft-based account. Microsoft introduced a key on its MSA system in 2016. In 2021, they introduced a new key, but did not remove 2016 MSA key.

Next, Google can be seen fighting cookie hijacking with encryption keys on browser. This April, CISA warned CISOs about breach at Sisense, a business intelligence company. CISA urged customers to reset credentials and secrets shared with the company.

One technology has democratized access to cyber crime. That application happens to be Telegram. States-sponsored hacking is also evolving. There are groups operating out of Russia, China, and North Korea. There are also collaborations with Russian and some English-speaking attackers. Today, hackers coming up are more influenced by ideology and nationalism. 

Forget AI, fear TMI
Next, we say, forget AI, fear TMI. Meta removed AI-generated influence campaigns in China and Israel in May 2024. Autocrats in China, Russia, and elsewhere are making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom across the world.

Win Schwartau talked about TMI. He talked about the tragedy of the situation of demoralization. You still cannot change the basic perception and logic of behavior. There is also talk about anti-disinformation efforts. More news organizations should look at all of this. UnitedHealth reported that hackers possibly stole large number of American's data.

We are now seeing psyops vs. cybercrooks, and cyber force. We are seeing national breach identification effort, and pushback on SaaS vendors. Organizations are taking the word of their SaaS vendors. You need to build strong network policies. You can exploit faulty assumptions on security. We need to think of our assumptions.