Cisco admits being hacked by ransomware gang

By Kirsten Doyle for ITWeb
Thursday, August 11, 2022

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Networking giant Cisco disclosed yesterday that its corporate network was accessed by bad actors in May after a staff member’s personal Google account was compromised, and a list of files accessed during the breach appeared on the dark Web.

Vendors in the cross hairs

Ilia Kolochenko, founder of ImmuniWeb and a member of the Europol Data Protection Experts Network, says these days, cyber security and technology vendors are commonly targeted by sophisticated threat actors for a variety of interconnected reasons.

“Firstly, vendors usually have privileged access to their enterprise and government customers and thus can open doors to invisible and super-efficient supply-chain attacks,” he adds.

Next, he says, vendors frequently have invaluable cyber threat intelligence, and bad actors are highly motivated to conduct counter-intelligence operations, aimed at finding out where law enforcement and private vendors are with their investigations and upcoming police raids.

Finally, he says some vendors are highly attractive targets because they possess the most recent digital forensics and incident response tools and techniques used to detect intrusions and uncover cyber criminals, while some other vendors may have exploits for zero-day vulnerabilities, or even source code of sophisticated spyware, which can later be used against new victims or sold on the dark Web.

Kolochenko says the industry needs to prepare for a continually growing volume and sophistication of cyber attacks targeting technology companies, particularly security vendors. Read Full Article