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Ransomware has become a highly coordinated and pervasive threat, and traditional defenses are increasingly struggling to neutralize it. Today's ransomware attacks initially target your last line of defense — your backup infrastructure. Before locking up your production environment, cybercriminals go after your backups to cripple your ability to recover, increasing the odds of a ransom payout. Notably, these attacks are carefully engineered takedowns of your defenses. The threat actors disable backup agents, delete snapshots, modify retention policies, encrypt backup volumes (especially those that are network accessible) and exploit vulnerabilities in integrated backup platforms. They are no longer trying just to deny your access but erase the very means of recovery. If your backup environment isn't built with this evolving threat landscape in mind, it's at high risk of getting compromised. How can IT pros defend against this? In this guide, we'll uncover the weak strategies that lea...

If you are backing up your data using iCloud Backup , then you need you watch your steps NOW! In government fight against encryption, Apple has positioned itself as a staunch defender of its user privacy by refusing the federal officials to provide encryption backdoors into its products. When it comes to Apple's iMessage service, the company claims that it can't read messages sent between its devices because they use end-to-end encryption, which apparently means that only you and the intended recipient can read it. Moreover, in case, if the federal authorities ask Apple to hand over messages related to any of its users, there is nothing with Apple to offer them. "If the government laid a subpoena to get iMessages, we can't provide it," Apple CEO Tim Cook told Charlie Rose back in 2014. "It is encrypted, and we do not have a key." But Wait! There are still hundreds of Millions of Apple users whose data are stored on Apple'...

A well known iPhone hacker and forensic scientist has unearthed a range of undocumented and hidden functions in Apple iOS mobile operating system that make it possible for a hacker to completely bypass the backup encryption on iOS devices and can steal large amounts of users' personal data without entering passwords or personal identification numbers. Data forensics expert named Jonathan Zdziarski has posted the slides ( PDF ) titled " Identifying Backdoors, Attack Points, and Surveillance Mechanisms in iOS Devices " showing his findings, from his talk at the Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE X) conference held in New York on Friday. Jonathan Zdziarski, better identified as the hacker " NerveGas " in the iPhone development community, worked as dev-team member on many of the early iOS jailbreaks and is also the author of five iOS-related O'Reilly books including " Hacking and Securing iOS Applications ." The results of his overall research on the iOS...

One thing is clear. The " business value"  of data continues to grow, making it an organization's primary piece of intellectual property. From a cyber risk perspective, attacks on data are the most prominent threat to organizations.  Regulators, cyber insurance firms, and auditors are paying much closer attention to the integrity, resilience, and recoverability of organization data – as well as the IT infrastructure & systems that store the data. What Impact Does This Have On The Security Of Storage & Backup Systems? Just a few years ago, almost no CISO thought that storage & backups were important. That's no longer the case today.  Ransomware has pushed backup and recovery back onto the IT and corporate agenda. Cybercriminals, such as Conti, Hive and REvil, are  targeting storage and backup  systems, to prevent recovery. Some ransomwares – Locky and Crypto, for example – now bypass production systems altogether, and directly target backups. ...

SonicWall on Wednesday disclosed that an unauthorized party accessed firewall configuration backup files for all customers who have used the cloud backup service. "The files contain encrypted credentials and configuration data; while encryption remains in place, possession of these files could increase the risk of targeted attacks," the company said . It also noted that it's working to notify all partners and customers, adding it has released tools to assist with device assessment and remediation. The company is also urging users to log in and check for their devices. The development comes a couple of weeks after SonicWall urged customers to perform a credential reset after their firewall configuration backup files were exposed in a security breach impacting MySonicWall accounts. The list of impacted devices available on the MySonicWall portal has been assigned a priority level to help customers prioritize remediation efforts. The labels are as follows - Active –...

In an effort to secure users' data while maintaining privacy, Google has announced a new security measure for Android Backup Service that now encrypts all your backup data stored on its cloud servers in a way that even the company can't read it. Google allows Android users to automatically backup their essential app data and settings to their Google account, allowing them to simply restore it when required, instead of re-configuring all the apps after formatting or switching to a new phone. However, until now your backup data was not encrypted and visible to Google, and now the company is going to change its storage procedure. Starting with Android Pie, Google is going to encrypt your Android device backup data in the following way: Step 1: Your Android device will generate a random secret key (not known to Google), Step 2: The secret key will then get encrypted using your lockscreen PIN/pattern/passcode (not known to Google), Step 3: This passcode-protected ...

Ransomware isn't just a buzzword; it's one of the most dreaded challenges businesses face in this increasingly digitized world. Ransomware attacks are not only increasing in frequency but also in sophistication, with new ransomware groups constantly emerging. Their attack methods are evolving rapidly, becoming more dangerous and damaging than ever. Almost all respondents (99.8%) in a recent survey said they are concerned about the risk of identity information, session cookies and other data being extracted from devices infected with malware, activities highly correlated to a future ransomware attack. [1] The harsh reality is that ransomware threats aren't going away anytime soon. Despite organizations' best efforts to prevent these attacks, breaches still happen. As such, backup and disaster recovery become your critical last line of defense against these growing threats. However, many organizations overlook essential disaster recovery (DR) practices, leaving them vulnerable to cybe...

With IT outages and disruptions escalating, IT teams are shifting their focus beyond simply backing up data to maintaining operations during an incident. One of the key drivers behind this shift is the growing threat of ransomware, which continues to evolve in both frequency and complexity. Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) platforms have made it possible for even inexperienced threat actors with less or no technical expertise to launch large-scale, damaging attacks. And these attacks don't just encrypt data now. They exfiltrate sensitive information for double and triple extortion, alter or delete backups, and disable recovery infrastructure to block restoration efforts. This is especially critical for small and midsize businesses (SMBs), which are increasingly targeted due to their leaner defenses. For an SMB generating $10 million in annual revenue, even a single day of downtime can cost $55,076 , without factoring in the long-term impact on customer trust and brand reputation. While...

Doing conversations with your friend on iMessage and thinking that they are safe and out of reach from anyone else other than you and your friend? No, it's not. End-to-end encryption doesn't mean that your iMessages are secure enough to hide your trace because Apple not only stores a lot of information about your iMessages that could reveal your contacts and location, but even share that information with law enforcement via court orders. According to a new document obtained by The Intercept , Apple records a log of which phone numbers you typed into their iPhone for a message conversation, along with the date and time when you entered those numbers as well as your IP address, which could be used to identify your location. Actually, every time a user type a phone number into their iPhone for a message conversation, iMessage contacts Apple servers to find out whether to route a given message over the iMessage system. "Apple records each query in which your phone c...

WhatsApp on Friday  announced  it will roll out support for end-to-end encrypted chat backups on the cloud for Android and iOS users, paving the way for storing information such as chat messages and photos in Apple iCloud or Google Drive in a cryptographically secure manner. The optional feature, which will go live to all of its two billion users in the coming weeks, is expected to only work on the primary devices tied to their accounts, and not companion devices such as desktops or laptops that simply mirror the content of WhatsApp on the phones. The development marks an escalation in the growing tussle over encryption technology and meeting law enforcement needs, wherein privacy-preserving technologies have created impenetrable barriers to comply with legal demands to access vast swathes of digital information stored on smartphones and the cloud — a phenomenon referred to as the "going dark" problem. While the Facebook-owned messaging platform flipped the switch on end-...

Imagine a sophisticated cyberattack cripples your organization's most critical productivity and collaboration tool — the platform you rely on for daily operations. In the blink of an eye, hackers encrypt your emails, files, and crucial business data stored in Microsoft 365, holding it hostage using ransomware. Productivity grinds to a halt and your IT team races to assess the damage as the clock ticks down on a ransom demand that threatens to destroy your data forever. How did this happen, and more importantly, how can you prevent it from happening? Microsoft 365 (M365) is the lifeblood of countless organizations worldwide, offering a seamless, cloud-based platform for communication, collaboration and data management. Over 400 million users rely on Microsoft 365 for everything from document creation and management to video conferencing 1 . While M365 has empowered businesses to undergo digital transformation and remain competitive with its support for distributed, hybrid and remote w...