National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM) is observed in October. It is a collaborative effort between government and industry to raise awareness about the importance of cybersecurity.
However, despite NCSAM’s efforts there has been an increase in the number of cyber-threats across the globe.
Earlier this week, Facebook-owned company, WhatsApp users was targeted by Pegasus—a technology developed by the Israeli cyber-security firm NSO. Through the spyware, Pegasus extracted the user’s private data, including passwords, contact lists, text messages, and even voice calls.
The Hindu has reported that the month of October has brought a variety of spooky cyberthreats. Threats from malicious malware to restricting ransom ware that haunted networks and devices of governments, enterprises and individuals around the globe, according to U.S. global computer security software company McAfee.
Raj Samani, Chief Scientist and McAfee Fellow, said October had brought a range of cyberthreats known by ‘spooky’ names, given that Halloween is around the corner. The month has seen Ghostcat Malware haunting consumers. The ‘infection’ begins when a user visits a particular website and is served a malicious advertisement. Ghostcat fingerprints the browser to collect device information and eventually leads the user to malicious content. The malware, whose goal is to hijack a user’s mobile browsing information, had recently caused some panic on the Internet.
Cyber criminals have also manipulated WAV (waveform) audio files to spread malware and cryptominers. By using a technique called stenography, malware authors can hide malicious code inside of a file that appears normal, which allows hackers to bypass security software and firewalls.
Previously, hackers have used stenography revolving around image file formats like PNG or JPEG. However, these crooks have now upped the ante by using WAV audio files to hide different types of malware. Most recently, researchers found that this technique is used to hide DLLs, or dynamic link libraries that contain code and data that can be used by more than one programme at the same time, said a cyber security advisory released by McAfee.
