SonicWall's weekly Cybersecurity News and Trends.

Cybersecurity News & Trends

By

Curated cybersecurity news and trends from the industry’s leading bloggers and news outlets, for you from SonicWall.

We’re nearing the end of February, and SonicWall is still receiving positive press. Cyber Security Intelligence looked to SonicWall for data on higher education. CRN discussed SonicWall’s plans for 2023 and some of the features of the NSa 5700. Utah Pulse discusses our data on healthcare and education.

In industry news, Dark Reading reported on a U.S. military email server being exposed and Google bug bounty programs setting records. Hacker News has the scoop on the spam and phishing attacks at NPM. Bleeping Computer covered Activision’s phishing attack as well as a multi-year breach at GoDaddy.

Remember to keep your passwords close and your eyes peeled — cybersecurity is everyone’s responsibility.

SonicWall News

Cybersecurity Predictions for 2023 – Things You Should Know

Utah Pulse, SonicWall News: SonicWall reports a 328% YoY increase in healthcare ransomware attacks in 2022, and healthcare and education are expected to be among the most targeted sectors in 2023. The expanding IoT footprint in these sectors is predicted to make them more vulnerable to digital attacks, increasing the risk to critical infrastructure.

The 20 Coolest Network Security Companies Of 2023: The Security 100

CRN, SonicWall News: Key offer­ings from SonicWall in the realm of next-gener­ation firewalls include the SonicWall NSa 5700, which utilizes a scalable hardware architecture designed to fit in a single rack-mountable unit. The high port density of the NSa 5700 includes multiple 10-Gigabit Ether­net and 1-Gigabit Ethernet fiber and copper interfaces.

CEO Outlook 2023

CRN, SonicWall News: One of the biggest opportunities we will be tackling with our partners is providing a broader set of unified and cost-effective solutions that fully secure the evolving network perimeter. For many of our partners and customers, 2023 will represent a period of cautious and informed investment in IT and security – customers will demand more bang for their security buck.

Universities Targeted with Ransomware

Cyber Security Intelligence, SonicWall News: According to research carried out by threat analysts at SonicWall there was a 51% increase in ransomware attacks within the education sector in 2022. They predicted the education sector to be among the most targeted by cyber criminals in 2023. This is certainly proving to be true so far.

Ransomware Attacks Aimed at Manufacturing Grew By 50pc in 2022

SiliconRepublic, SonicWall News: In recent cybersecurity predictions for 2023, Spencer Starkey of SonicWall predicted that healthcare and education will be among the sectors most targeted by cyberattacks this year.

Genie Out of The Bottle: ChatGPT Has Shaken Up the AI Sector

SiliconRepublic, SonicWall News: In recent AI predictions for 2023, experts such as Immanuel Chavoya of SonicWall said new software will give threat actors the ability to quickly exploit vulnerabilities and reduce the technical expertise required “down to a five-year-old level.”

Stolen MTU Data Appears on Dark Web Following IT Breach

SiliconRepublic, SonicWall News: In recent cybersecurity predictions for 2023, Spencer Starkey of Sonicwall predicted that healthcare and education will be among the sectors most targeted by cyberattacks this year.

Ryuk, Conti Ransomware Members Hit with UK Sanctions in Latest Crackdown

ITPro, SonicWall News: In 2020 – the third year of it being considered a major strain – security firm SonicWall revealed it was behind a third of ransomware attacks worldwide for the year.

Global Hacker Attack May Reach Brazil but Risk Is Limited, Says Experts

GQ Brasil, SonicWall News: Arley Brogiato, director for Latin America and the Caribbean of the multinational security company SonicWall, does not exclude the possibility of these attacks reaching Brazilian companies, but says he is surprised by the alerts and the dissemination of the news, which on the morning of last Monday (6) competed with football game calendars and the price of cooking gas in Manaus the most sought after Google Trends.

SonicWall’s Jason Carter and Matt Brennan Earn 2023 CRN Channel Chief Recognition

SonicWall Blog, SonicWall News: SonicWall Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) Jason Carter and Vice President Americas Channel Sales Matt Brennan have been named to CRN’s 2023 Channel Chiefs list. Every year, CRN honors the IT channel executives who drive the channel success and evangelize the importance of channel partnerships within the IT industry.

Challenges For Startups in The IoT Sector
TechToday, SonicWall News: According to a report by SonicWall, 2.8 billion malware attacks were registered, up 11% in the first half of 2022, marking the first increase in global malware volume in over three years.

JD Sports Cyber Attack: Why Online Retail Is Vulnerable and What Can Be Done?

Charged Retail, SonicWall News: The JD Sports incident is yet another example of the rise in cyberattack incidents, with the retail industry experiencing a 90% increase in ransomware attacks last year, according to a report from SonicWall.

Industry News

Activision Breached Following Phishing Attack

Gaming giant Activision revealed that they were the victim of a data breach in December 2022 exposing employee and game info. According to Bleeping Computer, hackers gained access to their systems by using a phishing SMS that successfully tricked an employee. No source data or player info was exposed in the leak. A research group called VX-Underground claims that sensitive employee information as well the companies release schedule up to November 2023 was stolen in the attack. Insider Gaming reported that the compromised employee was in the human resources department which netted the attackers access to large amounts of sensitive employee data.

Google Bug Bounties Break Records

Last year, Google awarded more than $12 million to ethical hackers and researchers for bug bounties while addressing over 2,900 vulnerabilities in its products. According to Dark Reading, that total eclipses the previous years dollar amount of $8.5 million. Bug bounties in the Android ecosystem alone netted white hats $4.8 million. Google released their annual Vulnerability Reward Program (VRP) report, and it showed multiple segments of their VRP set records in 2022.

U.S. Military Emails Exposed Due to Password Mishap

A cloud-based email server for the Department of Defense spent two weeks without password protection leaving it wide open to the public. A security researcher spotted the server and noticed sensitive information in the emails. According to Dark Reading, the email server appeared to be configured improperly. It’s not known if anyone aside from the security researcher found the exposed data during the two-week period it was unprotected. There was no classified data leaked from the server.

NPM Repository Attacked with Spam and Phishing Links

An attack on the widely used JavaScript package manager NPM has resulted in one of its repositories being flooded with over 15,000 spam packages. The threat actors were attempting to distribute phishing links on the open-source platform. According to Hacker News, the fake packages were attempting to pass off as free goodies. Some of the packages were called things like “free-tiktok-followers,” or “free-xbox-codes.” The attackers used automation to post a large number of packages quickly.

GoDaddy Reveals They Suffered Multi-year Breach

Popular web hosting company GoDaddy has been the victim of a multi-year breach that has resulted in their source code being stolen. GoDaddy says currently unknown attackers placed malware on their servers after infiltrating them. The attack was discovered in December 2022 when some GoDaddy users reported that their domains were now being redirected to random websites. While it was only discovered in December, GoDaddy revealed that the attackers had access to their networks for multiple years. According to Bleeping Computer, the breaches that GoDaddy experienced in November 2021 and March 2020 are related to this multi-year breach. GoDaddy has enlisted the help of external cybersecurity experts and law enforcement to investigate the cause of the incident.

SonicWall Blog

SonicWall Recognizes Bill Conner for Transition of Business, Impact on Cybersecurity Industry – Bret Fitzgerald

SonicWall’s Jason Carter and Matt Brennan Earn 2023 CRN Channel Chief Recognition – Bret Fitzgerald

Can You Catch All the Phish? Take Our New Phishing IQ Quiz and Find Out! – Ken Dang

Celebrating 2023 With Expanded “3 & Free” – Matt Brennan

The Art of Cyber War: Sun Tzu and Cybersecurity – Ray Wyman

Talking Boundless Cybersecurity at the Schoolscape IT 2022 Conference – Mohamed Abdallah

SonicWall Included on the Acclaimed CRN Edge Computing 100 List for 2022 – Bret Fitzgerald

A New Era of Partnering to Win – Robert (Bob) VanKirk

Multiply Your Security with Multifactor Authentication – Amber Wolff

Jordan Riddles
Junior Copywriter | SonicWall
Jordan Riddles is a Junior Copywriter for SonicWall. He has a background in content creation and editing, and he lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Jordan is a graduate of Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, with a focus in English and creative writing. In his spare time, he loves reading, cooking and disc golfing.