Threat Management

Russia, Ukraine ransomware attacks show value of threat intelligence

More covert foreign cyberespionage efforts enabled by increasingly undetected ransomware attacks between Russia and Ukraine have prompted Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 Senior Vice President Wendi Whitmore to stress the importance of threat intelligence, SiliconAngle reports. "Were under the landscape of a major war going on between Russia and Ukraine of ransomware attacks. Thats one of the key reasons why having threat intelligence is so important. It's become even more important now, because these groups switch teams more frequently than NFL trades," said Whitmore. Ransomware attacks have also become more threatening amid increasingly advanced extortion techniques employed by threat actors, noted Whitmore, who added that attackers have been leveraging traditional cyberespionage and intellectual property theft. Whitmore also noted the expansion of nation-state actor attacks to corporate targets. "Traditionally, if we looked at a nation-state actor, like China or Russia, they were very specific about the types of victims. Now what we're seeing actually is those same attackers going towards a much larger supply chain. SolarWinds is a great example of that, the Hafnium attacks towards Microsoft Exchange Server last year," Whitmore said.

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