Book Image

Cybersecurity Threats, Malware Trends, and Strategies

By : Tim Rains
Book Image

Cybersecurity Threats, Malware Trends, and Strategies

By: Tim Rains

Overview of this book

After scrutinizing numerous cybersecurity strategies, Microsoft’s former Global Chief Security Advisor in this book helps you understand the efficacy of popular cybersecurity strategies and more. Cybersecurity Threats, Malware Trends, and Strategies offers an unprecedented long-term view of the global threat landscape by examining the twenty-year trend in vulnerability disclosures and exploitation, nearly a decade of regional differences in malware infections, the socio-economic factors that underpin them, and how global malware has evolved. This will give you further perspectives into malware protection for your organization. It also examines internet-based threats that CISOs should be aware of. The book will provide you with an evaluation of the various cybersecurity strategies that have ultimately failed over the past twenty years, along with one or two that have actually worked. It will help executives and security and compliance professionals understand how cloud computing is a game changer for them. By the end of this book, you will know how to measure the effectiveness of your organization’s cybersecurity strategy and the efficacy of the vendors you employ to help you protect your organization and yourself.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)
9
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10
Index

Drive-by download attacks

While phishing attacks are at the intersection of social engineering and weak, leaked, and stolen passwords, drive-by download attacks are at the intersection of social engineering and unpatched vulnerabilities. Drive-by attacks are typically performed by attackers using social engineering to trick users into visiting a malicious website. They can do this several ways, including via email, online ads, putting links to malicious sites in the comments sections of webpages and social network posts, and many other tactics. Sometimes, attackers compromise a legitimate website and use it to host drive-by download attacks; the more popular the website, the better for the attackers as it increases their chances of successfully compromising as many systems as possible.

Getting potential victims to malicious websites under the control of attackers is the first step in the attack. The next step is to exploit unpatched vulnerabilities on the victims' systems...