Akira (ransomware)
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Akira (ransomware)
Akira (ransomware) is a malware which emerged in March 2023. It targeted over 250 entities including: US energy firm BHI Energy, Nissan Australia, the Finnish IT services provider Tietoevry, and Stanford University. The group has also claimed responsibility for a ransomware attack on the Toronto Zoo, though the zoo has not linked the incident to any particular threat actor. Akira is offered as ransomware-as-a-service. Akira is estimated to have earned up to $42 million from its inception in March 2023, until April 2024. Methods Akira primarily targets Cisco VPN products as an attack vector to breach networks, especially those without multi-factor authentication enabled. The group uses publicly available or natively installed tools and techniques for lateral movement. There are both Windows and Linux variants of Akira ransomware. Akira uses double-extortion ransomware techniques, in which data is exfiltrated from the environment before it is encrypted with threats to publish ...
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Malware
Malware (a portmanteau of ''malicious software'')Tahir, R. (2018)A study on malware and malware detection techniques . ''International Journal of Education and Management Engineering'', ''8''(2), 20. is any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server (computing), server, Client (computing), client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems, deprive access to information, or which unknowingly interferes with the user's computer security and privacy. Researchers tend to classify malware into one or more sub-types (i.e. computer viruses, Computer worm, worms, Trojan horse (computing), Trojan horses, logic bombs, ransomware, spyware, adware, rogue software, Wiper (malware), wipers and keyloggers). Malware poses serious problems to individuals and businesses on the Internet. According to NortonLifeLock, Symantec's 2018 Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR), malware variants number has increased to 66 ...
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Tietoevry
Tietoevry Corporation (natively Tietoevry Oyj, Tieto prior to June 2019) is a Finnish IT software and service company providing IT and product engineering services. Tietoevry is domiciled in Espoo, Finland, and the company's shares are listed on the NASDAQ OMX Helsinki, NASDAQ OMX Stockholm and Oslo Stock Exchange. Tietoevry has approximately 24,000 employees across 20 countries, and has customers in the energy, forestry, banking, healthcare and public sectors. In June 2019, Tieto paid EUR 1.2 billion for the acquisition of similar-sized IT company EVRY. The intention was to expand on the Nordic market. The new company would be named TietoEVRY, have over 24.000 employees and generate a projected revenue of over EUR 3 billion for the fiscal year 2020. At the end of 2015, the number of full-time employees was over 13,000 in more than 20 countries. 28% are located in Finland, 19% in Sweden, 17% in India, 15% in Czech Republic, 5% in Latvia, and the rest spread across other countr ...
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Stanford University
Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth List of governors of California, governor of and then-incumbent List of United States senators from California, United States senator representing California) and his wife, Jane Stanford, Jane, in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., Leland Jr. The university admitted its first students in 1891, opening as a Mixed-sex education, coeducational and non-denominational institution. It struggled financially after Leland died in 1893 and again after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Following World War II, university Provost (education), provost Frederick Terman inspired an entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial culture to build a self-sufficient local industry (later Silicon Valley). In 1951, Stanfor ...
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Toronto Zoo
The Toronto Zoo is a zoo located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Encompassing , the Toronto Zoo is the largest zoo in Canada averaging around 1.2 million visitors a year. The zoo is divided into seven zoogeographic regions: Indo-Malaya, Africa, Americas, Tundra Trek, Australasia, Eurasia, and the Canadian Domain. Some animals are displayed indoors in pavilions and outdoors in what would be their naturalistic environments, with viewing at many levels. The zoo also has areas such as the Kids Zoo, Waterside Theatre, and Splash Island. The zoo has one of the most taxonomically diverse collection of animals on display of any zoo worldwide and is currently home to over 3,000 animals (including invertebrates and fish) representing over 300 species. The zoo is open to the public every day of the year. The zoo is a corporation owned by the City of Toronto government. Founded by Hugh A. Crothers and business partner, John Cameron Egan, who became the first Chairman of the Metro Toronto Zool ...
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Ransomware As A Service
Ransomware as a service (RaaS) is a cybercrime business model where ransomware operators write software and affiliates pay to launch attacks using said software. Affiliates do not need to have technical skills of their own but rely on the technical skills of the operators. The "ransomware as a service" model is a criminal variation of the "software as a service" business model. This model allows small threat attackers to gain access to sophisticated ransomware tools at lower costs, also lowering the threshold of entry into cybercrime and complicating defenses against hacking. Revenue models Affiliates can choose from different revenue models, including monthly subscriptions, affiliate programs, one-time license fees, and pure profit sharing. The most advanced RaaS operators provide portals that allow their subscribers to track the status of infections, payments, and encrypted files. This level of support and functionality is similar to legitimate SaaS products. A common profit sh ...
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Cisco VPN Client
Cisco Systems VPN Client is a software application for connecting to virtual private networks based on Internet Key Exchange#IKEv1 phases, Internet Key Exchange version 1. On July 29, 2011, Cisco announced the end of life of the product. No further product updates were released after July 30, 2012, and support ceased on July 29, 2014. The Support page with documentation links was taken down on July 30, 2016, replaced with an Obsolete Status Notification. It was succeeded by Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client. Availability and compatibility The software is not free but is often installed on university and business computers in accordance with a site-license. As with most corporate licenses, administrators are allowed to freely distribute the software to users within their network. The open-sourcvpnc clientcan connect to most VPNs supported by the official client. VPN Client 4.9.01.0230 beta added support for Mac OS X 10.6. Stable version 4.9.01.0180 appears to lack that sup ...
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Microsoft Exchange Server
Microsoft Exchange Server is a mail server and calendaring server developed by Microsoft. It runs exclusively on Windows Server operating systems. The first version was called Exchange Server 4.0, to position it as the successor to the related Microsoft Mail 3.5. Exchange initially used the X.400 directory service but switched to Active Directory later. Until version 5.0, it came bundled with an email client called Microsoft Exchange Client. This was discontinued in favor of Microsoft Outlook. Exchange Server primarily uses a proprietary protocol called MAPI to talk to email clients, but subsequently added support for POP3, IMAP, and EAS. The standard SMTP protocol is used to communicate to other Internet mail servers. Exchange Server is licensed both as on-premises software and software as a service (SaaS). In the on-premises form, customers purchase client access licenses (CALs); as SaaS, Microsoft charges a monthly service fee instead. History Microsoft had sold ...
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Virtualization
In computing, virtualization (abbreviated v12n) is a series of technologies that allows dividing of physical computing resources into a series of virtual machines, operating systems, processes or containers. Virtualization began in the 1960s with IBM CP/CMS. The control program CP provided each user with a simulated stand-alone System/360 computer. In hardware virtualization, the '' host machine'' is the machine that is used by the virtualization and the ''guest machine'' is the virtual machine. The words ''host'' and ''guest'' are used to distinguish the software that runs on the physical machine from the software that runs on the virtual machine. The software or firmware that creates a virtual machine on the host hardware is called a '' hypervisor'' or ''virtual machine monitor''. Hardware virtualization is not the same as hardware emulation. Hardware-assisted virtualization facilitates building a virtual machine monitor and allows guest OSes to be run in isolation. Deskt ...
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Wine (software)
Wine is a free and open-source compatibility layer to allow application software and computer games developed for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems. Developers can compile Windows applications against WineLib to help port them to Unix-like systems. Wine is predominantly written using black-box testing reverse engineering, to avoid copyright issues. No code emulation or virtualization occurs, except on Apple Silicon Mac computers, where Rosetta 2 is used to translate x86 code to ARM code. Wine is primarily developed for Linux and macOS. In a 2007 survey by desktoplinux.com of 38,500 Linux desktop users, 31.5% of respondents reported using Wine to run Windows applications. This plurality was larger than all x86 virtualization programs combined, and larger than the 27.9% who reported not running Windows applications. History Bob Amstadt, the initial project leader, and Eric Youngdale started the Wine project in 1993 as a way to run Windows applicati ...
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Conti (ransomware)
Conti is malware developed and first used by the Russia-based hacking group "Wizard Spider" in December, 2019. It has since become a full-fledged Ransomware as a service, ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation used by numerous threat actor groups to conduct ransomware attacks. The Conti malware, once deployed on a victim device, not only encrypts data on the device, but also spreads to other devices on the network, obfuscates its presence, and provides a remote attacker control over its actions on the objective. All versions of Microsoft Windows are known to be affected. The United States government offered a reward of up to $10 million for information on the group in early May 2022. Description RaaS model According to leaked playbook core team-members of a Conti operation manage the malware itself, while recruited affiliates are tasked with exploitation of victim networks and encryption of their devices. Conti's ransomware as a service model varies in its structure fro ...
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Cybercrime
Cybercrime encompasses a wide range of criminal activities that are carried out using digital devices and/or Computer network, networks. It has been variously defined as "a crime committed on a computer network, especially the Internet"; Cybercriminals may exploit vulnerabilities in computer systems and networks to gain unauthorized access, steal sensitive information, disrupt services, and cause financial or reputational harm to individuals, organizations, and governments. In 2000, the tenth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders classified cyber crimes into five categories: unauthorized access, damage to computer data or programs, sabotage to hinder the functioning of a computer system or network, unauthorized interception of data within a system or network, and computer espionage. Internationally, both state and non-state actors engage in cybercrimes, including espionage, financial theft, and other cross-border crimes. Cybercrimes c ...
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Hacker Groups
Hacker groups are informal communities that began to flourish in the early 1980s, with the advent of the home computer. Overview Prior to that time, the term ''hacker'' was simply a referral to any computer hobbyist. The hacker groups were out to make names for themselves, and were often spurred on by their own press. This was a heyday of hacking, at a time before there was much law against computer crime. Hacker groups provided access to information and resources, and a place to learn from other members. Hackers could also gain credibility by being affiliated with an elite group. The names of hacker groups often parody large corporations, governments, police and criminals; and often used specialized orthography An orthography is a set of convention (norm), conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, Word#Word boundaries, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and Emphasis (typography), emphasis. Most national .... See also * List o ...
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