Book Image

Cybersecurity Threats, Malware Trends, and Strategies - Second Edition

By : Tim Rains
3 (2)
Book Image

Cybersecurity Threats, Malware Trends, and Strategies - Second Edition

3 (2)
By: Tim Rains

Overview of this book

Tim Rains is Microsoft's former Global Chief Security Advisor and Amazon Web Services’ former Global Security Leader for Worldwide Public Sector. He has spent the last two decades advising private and public sector organizations all over the world on cybersecurity strategies. Cybersecurity Threats, Malware Trends, and Strategies, Second Edition builds upon the success of the first edition that has helped so many aspiring CISOs, and cybersecurity professionals understand and develop effective data-driven cybersecurity strategies for their organizations. In this edition, you’ll examine long-term trends in vulnerability disclosures and exploitation, regional differences in malware infections and the socio-economic factors that underpin them, and how ransomware evolved from an obscure threat to the most feared threat in cybersecurity. You’ll also gain valuable insights into the roles that governments play in cybersecurity, including their role as threat actors, and how to mitigate government access to data. The book concludes with a deep dive into modern approaches to cybersecurity using the cloud. By the end of this book, you will have a better understanding of the threat landscape, how to recognize good Cyber Threat Intelligence, and how to measure the effectiveness of your organization's cybersecurity strategy.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
13
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14
Index

Post compromise – botnets and DDoS attacks

Once systems have been initially compromised via one of the Cybersecurity Usual Suspects, like unpatched vulnerabilities and/or social engineering as we discussed in this chapter, any information of value is siphoned from victims’ systems to be sold or traded. At this point, attackers have full control of the systems they have compromised. Many times, victims’ systems are enlisted into botnets and used to perform whatever illicit projects their operators desire, including DDoS attacks.

There’s a lot that can be written about botnets, how they operate, and the projects they are typically employed on. In fact, entire books have been dedicated to botnets. I won’t try to duplicate those here. But I do want to briefly mention a few things on this topic.

It goes without saying that botnets have garnered a lot of attention over the years. When I worked at Microsoft, the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit (DCU...