Breach, Critical Infrastructure Security, Data Security, Network Security

Breach risk assessment reveals attackers’ favorite techniques

SS8 2016 Threat Rewind Report

A recent breach risk assessment of more than 20 organizations running large enterprise networks found that 100 percent showed signs of traffic tunneling, DNS-related exfiltration and malformed protocols in outbound traffic – all indicators of attackers using evasion and exfiltration techniques.

Breach detection firm SS8 conducted the assessment and announced its findings Thursday in its 2016 Threat Rewind Report. The report offers readers a window into cyberattackers' top evasion and exfiltration techniques, based on the company's analysis of over 5 billion network activity records from organizations operating in key sectors including critical infrastructure, education and retail.

Moreover, SS8 found that 77 percent of the participating organizations' networks had at least one device beaconing out to a remote server, 70 percent had compromised non-essential devices on the network, 65 percent had applications built on top of bittorrent platforms, and 30 percent were infected with audio-recording malware.

Bradley Barth

As director of multimedia content strategy at CyberRisk Alliance, Bradley Barth develops content for online conferences, webcasts, podcasts video/multimedia projects — often serving as moderator or host. For nearly six years, he wrote and reported for SC Media as deputy editor and, before that, senior reporter. He was previously a program executive with the tech-focused PR firm Voxus. Past journalistic experience includes stints as business editor at Executive Technology, a staff writer at New York Sportscene and a freelance journalist covering travel and entertainment. In his spare time, Bradley also writes screenplays.

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