American Computer security software McAfee has released a security report for 2Q 2018 which says that ‘fileless’ cyber attacks are on the rise in 2018 and they are leveraging the trusted Windows executable to invade systems and breach corporate networks.
Note- A fileless cyber attack also called as zero footprint attack, macro attack or non-malware attack works by taking advantage of applications that are already installed on the infected PC. The malware is virtual and is seen taking advantage of the in-memory until the system gets rebooted in most cases.
According to the global security report of McAfee Labs, CactusTorch proved the most notorious of the fileless threats which uses the ‘DotNetToJScript’ technique which loads and executes malicious .NET assemblies straight from memory. As both corporate, as well as individuals, have fallen prey to this threat the surge was observed to be over 432% than in 2017.
And as expected the said attacking technique could bypass antivirus software and corporate firewalls without being detected as it takes the advantage of the trust factor between security software and genuine signed Windows applications.
McAfee says the only way to protect the networks against such attacks is to invest in primary security protections like a high end to end encryption, 2-factor authentication, and installation of latest efficient anti-virus solutions which are being updated on a regular note. Having controlled and efficient administrative access also plays a vital part in securing a business from attacks.
Educating the staff and the C-level management about the existing and upcoming security threats could play a vital role in nullifying all variants of detrimental fileless attacks on an organization.
