First is the news related to a hacking group named Mustang Panda and based in China. Highly placed sources report that the said group of cyber criminals funded by Chinese intelligence can compromise internal networks of companies operating in Indonesia.
Cybersecurity firm Insikt Group, a sub-unit of Recorded Future, was the first to break the news into the world. And researchers from the said security firm state that the hacking group has already compromised the network of Badan Intelijen Negara (BIN) that is the main intelligence unit of Indonesia.
Mustang Panda operates with a single motive and that is to conduct espionage on its victims and, using a PlugX malware, send communication to remote servers about the victim’s data repository details that included metadata details as well.
Second, The Australian Cyber Security Centre( ACSC) has issued a public statement that companies operating in healthcare, food distribution and energy sector are super-vulnerable to sophisticated cyber attacks that could end up in information steal.
Data Security analysts state that the bad guys could have sniffed a vulnerability in the critical infrastructure of companies, forcing them into deep digital disruption of essential services, loss of revenue and, in some situations, may also lead to death.
So, ACSC is asking companies to raise their defense-line against all future cyber threats that are and will exist in near future.
Third, is news related to ransomware, where data security firm Sophos has disclosed that 1 in 4 global financial services firm was targeted by a ransomware attack that yielded an average $2m loss to the victimized firm.
UK based Sophos released a State of Ransomware in Financial Services 2021 report in which it specified that over 34% of firms serving financial sector hit by ransomware in 2020 with half of them admitting the fact that the hackers blocked their database from access with the help of encryption until a ransom was paid.
What’s concerning about the Sophos study is that over 62% of organizations could not recover their data from backups as the recovery costs were much higher than the average across all the industry verticals.
