An ongoing analysis into an up-and-coming cryptocurrency mining botnet known as KmsdBot has led to it being accidentally taken down.
KmsdBot, as christened by the Akamai Security Intelligence Response Team (SIRT), came to light mid-November 2022 for its ability to brute-force systems with weak SSH credentials.
The botnet strikes both Windows and Linux devices spanning a wide range of

An ongoing analysis into an up-and-coming cryptocurrency mining botnet known as **KmsdBot** has led to it being accidentally taken down.

KmsdBot, as christened by the Akamai Security Intelligence Response Team (SIRT), came to light mid-November 2022 for its ability to brute-force systems with weak SSH credentials.

The botnet strikes both Windows and Linux devices spanning a wide range of microarchitectures with the primary goal of deploying mining software and corralling the compromised hosts into a DDoS bot.

Some of the major targets included gaming firms, technology companies, and luxury car manufacturers.

Akamai researcher Larry W. Cashdollar, in a new update, explained how commands sent to the bot to understand its functionality in a controlled environment inadvertently neutralized the malware.

"Interestingly, after one single improperly formatted command, the bot stopped sending commands," Cashdollar said. "It's not every day you come across a botnet that the threat actors themselves crash their own handiwork."

This, in turn, was made possible due to the lack of an error-checking mechanism built into the source code to validate the received commands.

Specifically, an instruction issued without a space between the target website and the port caused the entire Go binary running on the infected machine to crash and stop interacting with its command-and-control server, effectively killing the botnet.

The fact that KmsdBot doesn't have a persistence mechanism also means that the malware operator will have to re-infect the machines again and re-build the infrastructure from scratch.

"This botnet has been going after some very large luxury brands and gaming companies, and yet, with one failed command it cannot continue," Cashdollar concluded. "This is a strong example of the fickle nature of technology and how even the exploiter can be exploited by it."

Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter __ and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.

Researchers 'Accidentally’ Crash KmsdBot Cryptocurrency Mining Botnet Network

Elon Musk-owned Starlink, WhiteHouse.gov, and the Prince of Wales were targeted by Killnet in apparent retaliation for its support of Ukraine.

Killnet and its band of hacker collaborators are claiming they were able to pull off a trio of symbolic distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks aimed at punishing some of the most critical supporters of Ukraine against the Russian invasion — Elon Musk's Starlink satellite broadband service and the websites of the White House in the US and the Prince of Wales in the UK. 

Researchers at Trustwave were able to find evidence corroborating the Russian-backed threat group's claims. 

Killnet claimed it took down Starlink service on Nov. 18, which has been critical for providing the Ukraine war effort with Internet connectivity. Indeed, Trustwave found Starlink customers on Reddit on the same day complaining they couldn't log in to their accounts for several hours. 

"You've been waiting for this comrades," Killnet posted on Telegram, according to Trustwave. "Collective DDoS attack on Starlink! No one can log into Starlink." 

Other threat groups, and known past Killnet collaborators, also claimed they were involved in the Starlink and other DDoS takedowns, including Anonymous Russian, Msidstress, Radis, Mrai, and Halva. 

**White House, Prince of Wales' Websites Targeted **

Besides Starlink, Killnet also bragged that it was able to successfully run "30 minutes of a test attack" on the White House's website on Nov. 17. 

"Of course, we wanted to take longer, but did not take into account the intensity of the request filtering system," Killnet added. "But!!! The White House was banged up in front of everyone!" 

Trustwave added that the White House uses military-grade protection against DDoS attacks from Automattic. 

Days later, on Nov. 22, the group launched yet another DDoS attack, this time against the Prince of Wales' site, and warned that the UK healthcare system would be next, the Trustwave team reported. Killnet also threatened future attacks against the London Stock Exchange, the British Army, and more. 

Along with its claim of the UK DDoS attack, Killnet added ominously, "today it does not work, perhaps this is due to the supply of high-precision missiles to Ukraine!" 

Although the targets are ambitious, Trustwave said Killnet and its cybercrime cohort aren't advanced enough to pull off more than basic DDoS attacks. 

"We should expect to see more of these low skill attacks from Killnet targeting an ever-growing list of targets that it considers to be in opposition to Russian interests," Trustwave said in its Tuesday report on the Killnet DDoS attacks. "However, it remains to be seen whether the group can graduate to attacks that cause damage, exfiltrate data, or do more than take down a website for a short period of time."

Killnet Gloats About DDoS Attacks Downing Starlink, White House

**SINGAPORE, Nov. 29, 2022 /PRNewswire/ —** CDNetworks, the global-leading CDN (Content Delivery Network) and Edge Service Provider, released its annual State of Web Security Report for H1 2022. The Security Report notes that distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), bot, and Application Programming Interface (API) attacks increased at an alarming rate in H1 2022. Web application attacks also increased over the same period, but at a much slower rate than DDoS attacks. CDNetworks believes this trend shows that security tools focusing on single attacks are no longer effective against today's multiple cyber threat landscape. Leveraging a comprehensive security solution has never played a more important role for businesses and individuals.

**Surging Trend for All Types of Attacks:**

Of particular note are the following indicators noted in the Security Report:

*   The level of DDoS attacks topped 2.09 TBPS, which broke the record level of traffic-induced DDoS attacks.
*   The number of web application attacks increased by 12.56% over the same period last year, reaching 62.8875 million per day.
*   Malicious bot attacks surged 2.27 times over the same period in 2021, with 77.366 billion incidents recorded.
*   The number of API attacks had a 168.80% increase over the same period in 2021, with 9.0865 million API attacks blocked daily in H1 2021.

The Security Report goes on to say that data generated by the CDNetworks' security platform shows that risks of data breaches continue to escalate. This risk stems from the fact that increasing amounts of data and devices are being exposed to the network, making them vulnerable to the dual threat of external attacks and internal breaches. At the same time, API security threats continue to rise at breakneck speed, and the security challenges they present exceed those of traditional webpages. The end result is confirmation that the cybersecurity environment continues to change dramatically.

"As enterprises shift their business to the cloud, we found that some traditional web-protection rules no longer offer the capabilities they once did in combatting today's complex and virulent cyberthreats. What enterprises actually need are security solutions that address cloud and hybrid environments holistically in a comprehensive and systematic security architecture." said Doyle Deng, head of Global Marketing and Product of CDNetworks. "For this reason, we strongly recommend that enterprises adopt CDNetworks' WAAP services to secure their data and their business with more beyond rule-based web protections. Features such as web application firewall, DDoS protection, bot management, and API management capabilities empower enterprise users of our WAAP services to establish a comprehensive cornerstone that has been proven effective in combatting API and web application attacks."

The Security Report also monitored security associated with telecommuting within today's enterprises. As the long-term global impact of COVID-19 takes hold, organizations are starting to accept remote a remote workforce and cloud-based applications as an alternative to on-premise workers. The Security Report compared policies governing centrally managed corporate devices to policies aimed at Bring Your Own Devices (BYODs), which allow employees to use their own devices — phone, laptop, tablet, or other device — to access business applications and data, rather than forcing employees to use company-provided devices for that purpose. The Security Report found that BYOD rules generally lack a clear security management policy, making them vulnerable to targeted hacking attacks. To address this, CDNetworks recommends that enterprises select Enterprise Secure Access (ESA), our zero-trust access solution, to establish a secure, efficient, and easy-to-use hybrid networking environment.

Click here to download State of Web Security Report for H1 2022 or visit at www.cdnetworks.com.

**About CDNetworks  
**As a global-leading CDN (Content Delivery Network) and Edge Service provider, CDNetworks delivers fully integrated cloud and edge computing solutions with unparalleled speed, ultra-low latency, rigorous security and reliability. Our diverse products and services include web performance, media delivery, enterprise applications, cloud security, and colocation services — all of which are designed to spur business innovation.

CDNetworks Releases State of Web Security H1 2022: Attacks Against API Services Surged 168.8%

For 6 months, the infamous Emotet botnet has shown almost no activity, and now it's distributing malicious spam. Let's dive into details and discuss all you need to know about the notorious malware to combat it.

**Why is everyone scared of Emotet?**

Emotet is by far one of the most dangerous trojans ever created. The malware became a very destructive program as it grew in scale and sophistication. The victim can be anyone from corporate to private users exposed to spam email campaigns.

The botnet distributes through phishing containing malicious Excel or Word documents. When users open these documents and enable macros, the Emotet DLL downloads and then loads into memory.

It searches for email addresses and steals them for spam campaigns. Moreover, the botnet drops additional payloads, such as Cobalt Strike or other attacks that lead to ransomware.

The polymorphic nature of Emotet, along with the many modules it includes, makes the malware challenging to identify. The Emotet team constantly changes its tactics, techniques, and procedures to ensure that the existing detection rules cannot be applied. As part of its strategy to stay invisible in the infected system, the malicious software downloads extra payloads using multiple steps.

And the results of Emotet behavior are devastating for cybersecurity specialists: the malware is nearly impossible to remove. It spreads quickly, generates faulty indicators, and adapts according to attackers' needs.

**How has Emotet upgraded over the years?**

Emotet is an advanced and constantly changing modular botnet. The malware started its journey as a simple banking trojan in 2014. But since then, it has acquired a bunch of different features, modules, and campaigns:

*   2014\. Money transfer, mail spam, DDoS, and address book stealing modules.
*   2015\. Evasion functionality.
*   2016\. Mail spam, RIG 4.0 exploit kit, delivery of other trojans.
*   2017\. A spreader and address book stealer module.
*   2021\. XLS malicious templates, uses MSHTA, dropped by Cobalt Strike.
*   2022\. Some features remained the same, but this year also brought several updates.

This tendency proves that Emotet isn't going anywhere despite frequent "vacations" and even the official shutdown. The malware evolves fast and adapts to everything.

**What features has a new Emotet 2022 version acquired?**

After almost half a year of a break, the Emotet botnet returned even stronger. Here is what you need to know about a new 2022 version:

*   It drops IcedID, a modular banking trojan.
*   The malware loads XMRig, a miner that steals wallet data.
*   The trojan has binary changes.
*   Emotet bypasses detection using a 64-bit code base.
*   A new version uses new commands:

Invoke rundll32.exe with a random named DLL and the export PluginInit

*   Emotet's goal is to get credentials from Google Chrome and other browsers.
*   It's also targeted to make use of the SMB protocol to collect company data
*   Like six months ago, the botnet uses XLS malicious lures, but it adopted a new one this time:

The Emotet's Excel lure

**How to detect Emotet?**

The main Emotet challenge is to detect it in the system quickly and accurately. Besides that, a malware analyst should understand the botnet's behavior to prevent future attacks and avoid possible losses.

With its long story of development, Emotet stepped up in the anti-evasion strategy. Through the evolution of the process execution chain and malware activity inside the infected system changes, the malware has modified detection techniques drastically.

For example, in 2018, it was possible to detect this banker by looking at the name of the process – it was one of these:

> eventswrap, implrandom, turnedavatar, soundser, archivesymbol, wabmetagen, msrasteps, secmsi, crsdcard, narrowpurchase, smxsel, watchvsgd, mfidlisvc, searchatsd, lpiograd, noticesman, appxmware, sansidaho

Later, in the first quarter of 2020, Emotet started to create specific key into the registry - it writes into the key HKEY\_CURRENT\_USER\\SOFTWARE\\MICROSOFT\\WINDOWS\\CURRENTVERSION\\EXPLORER value with the length 8 symbols (letters and characters).

Of course, Suricata rules always identify this malware, but detection systems often continue beyond the first wave because rules need to update.

Another way to detect this banker was its malicious documents - crooks use specific templates and lures, even with grammatical errors in them. One of the most reliable ways to detect Emotet is by the YARA rules.

To overcome malware's anti-evasion techniques and capture the botnet – use a malware sandbox as the most convenient tool for this goal. In ANY.RUN, you can not only detect, monitor, and analyze malicious objects but also get already extracted configurations from the sample.

There are some features that you use just for Emotet analysis:

*   reveal C2 links of a malicious sample with the FakeNet
*   use Suricata and YARA rulesets to successfully identify the botnet
*   Get data about C2 servers, keys, and strings extracted from the sample's memory dump
*   gather fresh malware's IOCs

The tool helps to perform successful investigations quickly and precisely, so malware analysts can save valuable time.

ANY.RUN sandbox has prepared incredible deals for **Black Friday 2022**! Now is the best time to boost your malware analysis and save some money! Check out special offers for their premium plans but for a limited time – from 22-29 November, 2022.

Emotet has not demonstrated full functionality and consistent follow-on payload delivery. Use modern tools like ANY.RUN online malware sandbox to improve your cybersecurity and detect this botnet effectively. Stay safe and good threat hunting!

Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter __ and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.

All You Need to Know About Emotet in 2022

For 6 months, the infamous Emotet botnet has shown almost no activity, and now it's distributing malicious spam. Let's dive into details and discuss all you need to know about the notorious malware to combat it.
Why is everyone scared of Emotet?
Emotet is by far one of the most dangerous trojans ever created. The malware became a very destructive program as it grew in scale and sophistication.

For 6 months, the infamous Emotet botnet has shown almost no activity, and now it's distributing malicious spam. Let's dive into details and discuss all you need to know about the notorious malware to combat it.

**Why is everyone scared of Emotet?**

Emotet is by far one of the most dangerous trojans ever created. The malware became a very destructive program as it grew in scale and sophistication. The victim can be anyone from corporate to private users exposed to spam email campaigns.

The botnet distributes through phishing containing malicious Excel or Word documents. When users open these documents and enable macros, the Emotet DLL downloads and then loads into memory.

It searches for email addresses and steals them for spam campaigns. Moreover, the botnet drops additional payloads, such as Cobalt Strike or other attacks that lead to ransomware.

The polymorphic nature of Emotet, along with the many modules it includes, makes the malware challenging to identify. The Emotet team constantly changes its tactics, techniques, and procedures to ensure that the existing detection rules cannot be applied. As part of its strategy to stay invisible in the infected system, the malicious software downloads extra payloads using multiple steps.

And the results of Emotet behavior are devastating for cybersecurity specialists: the malware is nearly impossible to remove. It spreads quickly, generates faulty indicators, and adapts according to attackers' needs.

**How has Emotet upgraded over the years?**

Emotet is an advanced and constantly changing modular botnet. The malware started its journey as a simple banking trojan in 2014. But since then, it has acquired a bunch of different features, modules, and campaigns:

*   2014\. Money transfer, mail spam, DDoS, and address book stealing modules.
*   2015\. Evasion functionality.
*   2016\. Mail spam, RIG 4.0 exploit kit, delivery of other trojans.
*   2017\. A spreader and address book stealer module.
*   2021\. XLS malicious templates, uses MSHTA, dropped by Cobalt Strike.
*   2022\. Some features remained the same, but this year also brought several updates.

This tendency proves that Emotet isn't going anywhere despite frequent "vacations" and even the official shutdown. The malware evolves fast and adapts to everything.

**What features has a new Emotet 2022 version acquired?**

After almost half a year of a break, the Emotet botnet returned even stronger. Here is what you need to know about a new 2022 version:

*   It drops IcedID, a modular banking trojan.
*   The malware loads XMRig, a miner that steals wallet data.
*   The trojan has binary changes.
*   Emotet bypasses detection using a 64-bit code base.
*   A new version uses new commands:

Invoke rundll32.exe with a random named DLL and the export PluginInit

*   Emotet's goal is to get credentials from Google Chrome and other browsers.
*   It's also targeted to make use of the SMB protocol to collect company data
*   Like six months ago, the botnet uses XLS malicious lures, but it adopted a new one this time:

The Emotet's Excel lure

**How to detect Emotet?**

The main Emotet challenge is to detect it in the system quickly and accurately. Besides that, a malware analyst should understand the botnet's behavior to prevent future attacks and avoid possible losses.

With its long story of development, Emotet stepped up in the anti-evasion strategy. Through the evolution of the process execution chain and malware activity inside the infected system changes, the malware has modified detection techniques drastically.

For example, in 2018, it was possible to detect this banker by looking at the name of the process – it was one of these:

> eventswrap, implrandom, turnedavatar, soundser, archivesymbol, wabmetagen, msrasteps, secmsi, crsdcard, narrowpurchase, smxsel, watchvsgd, mfidlisvc, searchatsd, lpiograd, noticesman, appxmware, sansidaho

Later, in the first quarter of 2020, Emotet started to create specific key into the registry - it writes into the key HKEY\_CURRENT\_USER\\SOFTWARE\\MICROSOFT\\WINDOWS\\CURRENTVERSION\\EXPLORER value with the length 8 symbols (letters and characters).

Of course, Suricata rules always identify this malware, but detection systems often continue beyond the first wave because rules need to update.

Another way to detect this banker was its malicious documents - crooks use specific templates and lures, even with grammatical errors in them. One of the most reliable ways to detect Emotet is by the YARA rules.

To overcome malware's anti-evasion techniques and capture the botnet – use a malware sandbox as the most convenient tool for this goal. In ANY.RUN, you can not only detect, monitor, and analyze malicious objects but also get already extracted configurations from the sample.

There are some features that you use just for Emotet analysis:

*   reveal C2 links of a malicious sample with the FakeNet
*   use Suricata and YARA rulesets to successfully identify the botnet
*   Get data about C2 servers, keys, and strings extracted from the sample's memory dump
*   gather fresh malware's IOCs

The tool helps to perform successful investigations quickly and precisely, so malware analysts can save valuable time.

ANY.RUN sandbox has prepared incredible deals for **Black Friday 2022**! Now is the best time to boost your malware analysis and save some money! Check out special offers for their premium plans but for a limited time – from 22-29 November, 2022.

Emotet has not demonstrated full functionality and consistent follow-on payload delivery. Use modern tools like ANY.RUN online malware sandbox to improve your cybersecurity and detect this botnet effectively. Stay safe and good threat hunting!

Found this article interesting? Follow THN on Facebook, Twitter __ and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.

New users and monetization methods are increasingly profitable for gaming industry, but many companies find they have to stem growth in cheats, hacks, and other fraud to keep customers loyal.

The video game industry has been booming of late — and cybercriminals are drawn to it as an expanding threat surface, seeing players as a potentially less cautious group of victims. As such, cybersecurity has risen in profile as a major business priority and differentiator for many in the industry.

There's been an influx of casual gamers drawn to new mobile platforms during the pandemic, and companies have found increasingly profitable ways of monetizing in-game items and social experiences. Gaming studios and affiliated games companies seek to keep those users playing while maintaining that growth and profitability in the post-pandemic era.

But with so much entertainment competition out there — not just from other games, but also streaming and digital platforms — it's easy enough for players hacked or cheated one too many times to drop one game and pick up another one instead. Gaming industry insiders like Jonathan Shroyer say that if gaming companies are lax in security, "their games will not succeed."

"Players of games depend on trust, credibility, and predictability when leveraging a brand's game," says Shroyer, chief CX innovation officer for Arise Gaming, a consulting firm that helps gaming companies improve customer satisfaction and gamer engagement in their platforms. "If they find out there was a hack, or fraud, or other security issues, you will see a dramatic drop in gameplay and spend."

He says this is especially true in mobile gaming as these are the least sticky and most casual games in the industry. But the impact of cyber trust is felt across console, PC, virtual reality (VR), and streaming customers as well.

**More Gamers, More Attacks & More Customer Expectations**

There's a lot of money at stake for gaming companies planning for the future. According to a recent study by PwC earlier this year, the video gaming industry will earn $235.7 billion in 2022. That's following a massive tear over the last few years, with the combination of PC, console, and casual gaming companies increasing their revenue by an astonishing 32% from 2019 through 2021. PwC says it expects gaming revenue to keep ticking up from now through 2026 by a healthy 8.4% compound annual growth rate.

As the money has been flowing into everything from eSports to hyper-casual gaming, so, too, have the attacks. Akamai reported recently that cyberattacks on player accounts and gaming companies has increased "dramatically" in the past year, with Web application attacks rising by 167%. The firm says gaming is the industry most hit by distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, making up 37% of all DDoS globally. That's double the volume of attacks lobbed at the financial sector, which is the second-most DDoS-attacked vertical industry.

Account takeovers, cheating hacks, and fraud are all growing problems, and gamers are taking note of which companies are addressing these cybersecurity issues and which aren't. A study of attitudes from 10,000 gamers worldwide that was released last week by Kaspersky showed that 70% of regular gamers think hacking is a big problem in the gaming world. Around 63% of respondents said their accounts aren't safe enough from attacks — with one in three reporting that their accounts have been hacked in the last two years. And 89% of gamers said they want game developers to pay more attention to cybersecurity issues.

These stats point to why cybersecurity is fast becoming a huge engagement pillar for game studios right alongside designing creative gameplay and immersive worlds. It's a tricky proposition for security executives in this world, because gamers also have big expectations when it comes to gameplay and the overall ambiance of a gaming environment, says Julie Tsai, a longtime cybersecurity executive with deep expertise in the gaming world.

"Users and the community expect things at a high level. They expect things to be intuitive, they expect things to be in the spirit of the gaming — and also sometimes in the spirit of the culture of the particular gamer community they're in," says Tsai, who was head of security for Roblox for the past three years prior to recently venturing on her own as a security consultant. "They're very, very passionate and attached to these things. And also for a security professional, it means that you're going to be dealing with some of the strongest attackers and the adversaries that you can think of because they're very creative and often gamers themselves."

**Today's Biggest Cyberthreats to Gaming**

Like any other vertical industry, games companies are tasked with protecting their organizations from all nature of cybersecurity threats to their business. Many of them are large enterprises with the same concerns for the protection of internal systems, financial platforms, and employee endpoints as any other firm.

"Gaming companies have the same responsibility as any other organization to protect customer privacy and preserve shareholder value. While not specifically regulated like hospitals or critical infrastructure, they must comply with laws like GDPR and CaCPA," explains Craig Burland, CISO for Inversion6, a managed security service provider and fractional CISO firm. "Threats to gaming companies also follow similar trends seen in other segments of the economy — intellectual property (IP) theft, credential theft, and ransomware."

IP issues are heightened for these firms, like many in the broader entertainment category, as content leaks for highly anticipated new games or updates can give a brand a black eye at best, and at worst hit them more directly in the financials. The industry saw this kind of fallout in full effect in September when a hack of Take-Two Interactive and subsequent public leak of Grand Theft Auto 6 resulted in a 2.3% stock drop for the firm.

Layered on top of all of those typical enterprise cybersecurity concerns are unique eccentricities in protecting gaming platforms and player ecosystems. The gaming platforms are their brands — financial and customer service engines all rolled into one. And they're supremely juicy targets for all nature of malfeasance.

Some of the most common concerns gaming companies must contend with are cheaters who seek to take advantage of technical or bugs or design flaws to their advantage, spammers finding ways to blast out links to gamers to everything from snake-oil products to porn, scammers seeking to take advantage of and steal from younger gamers. And then, of course, most common of all are the everyday cyber fraudsters cashing in on account theft.

"What you have to realize is that criminals attack games for one of three reasons: status, ideology, or cash," says Brett Johnson, chief criminal officer for Arkose Labs and a former cybercriminal who before he went straight ran ShadowCrew, the forerunner to today's Dark Web marketplaces. "Most attacks — 98% or more — are cash driven. So criminals are looking for the easiest access that gives the largest return on investment."

The black-hat ROI prospects have especially grown now that gaming companies have monetized in-game assets through means like direct purchase, voluntary advertising views, and recurring subscriptions. This presents endlessly more new ways to commit financial fraud and launder money through gaming platforms. From a gaming cyber defender's perspective, this means that cheating and hacks now not only threaten gameplay experience, but create more financial and legal risks.

"Any time real money value is tied to in game assets, you will see a spike in fraud and other bad actors," Shroyer explains.

Attackers are turning up the heat on game users and platform with credential stuffing attacks and social engineering scams to break into accounts and access in-game currency and unique items. They leverage third-party marketplaces to sell these in-game assets off the platform for real currency to other gamers who want to bolster their characters or speed up their progress. This creates an ideal situation to not only fence stolen in-game assets, but to launder money stolen elsewhere online.

A lot of this criminal activity is powered by bots and click farms to scale up the profitability of their criminal enterprise, Johnson says.

"The problem is, from an attacker point of view, it's not really worth it to me to attack people manually. If you consider most of these accounts, the dollar amounts are not high enough for me to do that," he says. "So I need to find a way to scale that without me having to manually sign on or try to take over to account. And the answer to that is bots."

**The Culture Wildcard**

Many of the criminal ploys targeting games will also play upon the emotional mindset of gamers, who just want to have as much fun as possible. It makes them more likely to maybe fall for a phishing lure in hopes of getting a sneak peek at a new feature, or go to great lengths to buy items from a third-party marketplace that could speed up their progress.

"The gamer almost immediately is not acting out of reason or logic — it's a knee-jerk type of emotional thing. They want to play that game," Johnson says. "It's much easier for me as an attacker to use that to my advantage because they're already going through that door of reacting emotionally."

This highlights the big balancing act that gaming companies generally have to manage when it comes to protecting their platforms and their users. They've got to design better technical controls and more cyber resilience in their systems without damaging player experience or the vibrancy of the gaming culture built up around their brands and their gaming titles.

As Tsai alluded, gamers are passionate and they're also often curious hackers by nature. That includes the creative and benign type, but also the black hats.

The game industry has always been a place where everyone from script kiddies to budding cybercriminals have come to cut their teeth. For the most part, though, the cohort is usually mostly made up of customers who want to be able to develop and share their custom mods and who are willing to spend a lot of engaged time and money on their games, building up a community that buoys up successful games and studio brands.

This means that a lot of the work of security executives is in detangling the malicious elements from that creative and loyal group of gamers. This takes user education and outreach, foresight in design, and engineering work.

**Engineering Good Choices for Gamers**

On the latter front, some of the easiest and most low-hanging fruit can come through layered protection measures that just make it more expensive for attackers to run roughshod over platform with automated bot attacks.

"If a security product can increase the cost of the attack, the chances of the criminal staying on that platform, not very good," Johnson says. "That criminal's going to find someplace else where they can profit easier and not have to have the investment to get the attack to be successful."

According to Shroyer, the industry is in a lot better place now with moderating and managing mods and curbing cheating because there's more technical measures available to developers.

"Gaming brands now have more tools in their toolkit to prevent these activities," he says. "A few examples are unique online accounts that  require the latest software update to play games, new tech and security placed in gaming data centers that make hacking more difficult, and the ability to turn off access via games online if bad behaviors are noticed. These don't eradicate the issues, but similar to how Netflix and Hulu curbed illegal movie downloading, these tools have had a similar effect in the gaming space."  

More fundamentally at the design level, though, Tsai says that security teams and gaming developers also have to work to create player journeys and experiences less hackable. This doesn't mean shutting off the faucet for mods and other beneficial hacking in the platform. Instead, it means doing better threat modeling of platforms, locking down the riskiest areas and providing guardrails for user "developers" almost in the same way that a DevSecOps team would do so for internal developers.

"There's a saying in engineering with regards to user centricity, which is 'Make me make good choices,'" she says. "And so in that respect, you want to create technology that either encourages or only allows users to make good choices."

This kind of effort takes significant effort and a security-first mentality for game development. However, it's an investment that has a definite ROI for gaming firms, she says.

"Security ties to how users in the community think of your integrity and trust you. These are long-term assets," she says. "If you gain credibility over the years, it can absolutely be a business value-add."

For Gaming Companies, Cybersecurity Has Become a Major Value Proposition

By Habiba Rashid
The DDoS attack took place moments after the European Parliament voted to declare the Russian government a state sponsor of terrorism.
This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: Killnet Hits European Parliament Website with DDoS Attack

Staying true to its reputation of being known for relying majorly on DDoS attacks, the pro-Kremlin hacking group Killnet has struck again and this time, their target was the European Parliament website.

This DDoS attack took place after the governing body voted to declare the Russian government a state sponsor of terrorism. 

The distributed denial-of-service attack or DDoS attack took place on Wednesday afternoon European time and the website stayed down for a few hours before becoming operational again. 

It is worth noting that the DDoS attack came just days after Killnet claimed responsibility for targeting government sites in the United Kingdom and vowed to target more in the coming days.

Killnet members quickly claimed the credit for the attack shortly after and posted screenshots showing the European Parliament website was unavailable in 23 countries on Telegram. Furthermore, the text accompanying the images included a homophobic remark toward the legislative body. 

“Strap-on shelling of the server part of the official website of the European Parliament!” the group posted to its Telegram channel.

Screenshot shared by Killnet in its Telegram group.

The attacks against the European Parliament came hours after the agency adopted a resolution officially identifying Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. It was adopted by the member states with 494 votes in favor, 58 against, and 44 abstentions.

Members of the European Parliament “highlight that the deliberate attacks and atrocities committed by Russian forces and their proxies against civilians in Ukraine, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and other serious violations of international and humanitarian law amount to acts of terror and constitute war crimes,” the declaration stated. “In light of this, they recognize Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism and as a state that ‘uses means of terrorism.’”

Since the Russo-Ukraine war began in February, Killnet has launched 76 attacks against countries supporting Ukraine. 

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I am a cyber security writer and one of my favourite games is Minecraft. I also really like obscure cat memes and during my free time, if I'm not found hanging around in Discord voice channels with my friends, I'm probably cycling and taking pictures of random cats on the street.

Killnet Hits European Parliament Website with DDoS Attack

By Habiba Rashid
On Telegram, Killnet declared that “all medical institutions, government services, and online services” could soon be attacked.
This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: Pro-Russian Killnet group hits UK organizations with DDoS attacks

On November 22nd, in the early hours of the morning, Prince William’s website was reportedly attacked by a Russian hacking group Killnet. In a message posted on Telegram, Killnet stated the reason for the attack to be UK’s continued support for Ukraine.

Killnet said it had conducted the attack “due to the supply of high-precision missiles to Ukraine.”

Killnet on Telegram (Screenshot shared with Hackread.com by Check Point cyber security firm)

Although the website is now functioning, there are additional security checks on the connection by Cloudflare (the company that provides secure web connections) which were not present before. 

The attack appeared to be a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) which causes a server to be overwhelmed by numerous bogus requests, usually from bot servers – something Killnet is well known for. However, this information has not been confirmed. 

Killnet also declared in a message on Telegram that “all medical institutions, Government services, and online services” could soon be attacked as well. In further posts, the group said it was targeting the websites of the London Stock Exchange, the British Army, and the Bankers’ Automated Clearing System (Bacs).

Currently, all three websites are functional however, the British Army website displayed undergoing “planned maintenance” message on Tuesday, November 22nd.

Killnet on Telegram claiming responsibility for series of DDoS attacks (Screenshot shared with Hackread.com by Check Point cyber security firm)

In a conversation with Hackread.com, Muhammad Yahya Patel, Security Evangelist at Check Point Software said “Killnet is a prolific political pro-Russian hacking group that moves targets every few weeks based on geopolitical developments. As a major player in the hacktivism space, they also suggest and define the targets for other pro-Russian groups. We have seen a 42% global increase in cyberattacks since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, with a significant rise in state-sponsored groups. These DDoS attacks are the latest efforts from hacktivists to disrupt high-profile websites, including those of the Royal household, as part of their political agenda.”

DDoS attacks are unlikely to compromise data or systems because they simply flood the web server with too many requests so that it cannot respond in time. During the attack, the loss of connection is likely to be short-lived since web operators can identify numerous IP connections originating from the same block.

Therefore, threat actors employing this technique are unlikely to achieve any real damage because this technique is not very successful these days and most companies nowadays employ technologies to offset such attacks. 

This is not the first time Killnet has taken it upon itself to wage a cyber war due to the ongoing political situation between Ukraine and Russia. Previously, they tried to take down the Eurovision song contest. Due to not being invited, they tried to cause chaos in Italy (the host nation) but were thwarted and Ukraine went on to win the competition. 

The group also attempted to take down the online voting servers throughout the final but was unable to break through the “wide range of security measures” that Eurovision officials promised. Instead, they chose to attack several Italian institutions in the semi-final and final in Turin. 

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I am a cyber security writer and one of my favourite games is Minecraft. I also really like obscure cat memes and during my free time, if I'm not found hanging around in Discord voice channels with my friends, I'm probably cycling and taking pictures of random cats on the street.

Pro-Russian Killnet group hits UK organizations with DDoS attacks

By Waqas
The most prominent CMS today is WordPress which is being used by over 455 million across the globe.
This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: Step-by-Step Security Guide for WordPress

As the internet becomes increasingly integral to daily life, website security is more important than ever. Hackers can gain access to sensitive information, like credit card numbers and social security numbers, through websites with weak security. This can lead to identity theft and financial fraud.

Your website’s CMS (content management system) works as the backbone of your entire setup. The most prominent CMS today is WordPress which is being used by over 455 million across the globe. Naturally, WordPress is a lucrative target for cybercriminals and highlights the fact why WordPress security should never be ignored.

WordPress or another other CMS, while 100% security may be a myth, there are a few things you can do to ensure your website is secure from external and internal threats.

**Secure Hosting**

A website is a powerful tool that can help businesses of all sizes reach new customers and grow. However, a website is only as secure as the hosting provider that it uses. That’s why it’s important to choose a secure website hosting provider when setting up your website. Here are two things to look for in a secure website hosting provider:

**1. Industry-Leading Security Measures:** A good web hosting provider will have industry-leading security measures in place to protect your website from hackers and other online threats. This includes things like firewalls, DDoS protection, and malware scanning.

**2. Regular Backups:** In the event that your website is hacked or compromised, regular backups will ensure that you can quickly restore your site to its previous state. A good web hosting provider will perform regular backups of your site automatically.

**Strengthening Login Credentials**

According to studies, around 8 percent of hacked WordPress websites are due to weak passwords. However, as the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, WordPress has a responsibility to its users to keep their information safe. One way it does this is by natively offering two-factor authentication (2FA).

Two-factor authentication is an extra layer of security that requires not only a username and password but also something that the user has on them, like a phone. This makes it much harder for someone to hack into a WordPress account, even if they have the login credentials.

WordPress offers 2FA through several different methods, including SMS text messages, email, and authenticator apps. Which method you choose is up to you, but we recommend using an authenticator app like Authy or Google Authenticator.

**Updated Plugins**

The reason why WordPress powers millions of websites and blogs is its user-friendliness and free plugins. Although WordPress is good at adding new features and constantly issues security patches, zero-day vulnerabilities can be a calamity.

Therefore, always keep your plugins up to date because newer versions of plugins often fix security vulnerabilities that older versions had. Outdated plugins can cause compatibility issues with other plugins or with WordPress itself.

Additionally, newer versions of plugins usually have new features and improvements that can make your site run better. So next time you see a plugin update available, don’t ignore it – go ahead and update!

**Hiding WordPress Login URL**

There are a few reasons webmasters might want to change the default WordPress login URL. By doing so, you can help keep your site more secure from hackers and bots who try to gain access by brute force. Additionally, it can also deter casual users from trying to snoop around areas of your site they shouldn’t be.

If you’re running a membership site or online community, you may also want to change the login URL to something more branded and memorable for your users. By making it easy for them to find and login, you can reduce frustration and increase adoption.

Whatever your reason for wanting to change the WordPress login URL, it’s actually quite easy to do. There are a few different methods you can use, including plugins and editing code directly.

**Login Limit Plugin**

As a website owner, it’s important to make sure that your site is secure. One way to do this is by using a WordPress login limit plugin. This type of plugin will help to protect your site by limiting the number of failed login attempts.

There are many benefits of using a WordPress login limit plugin. By limiting the number of failed login attempts, you can help to prevent hackers from gaining access to your site. Additionally, this plugin can also help to improve the security of your password.

If you’re looking for a way to improve the security of your website, then we recommend that you consider using a WordPress login limit plugin.

**Security Plugins**

Using a security plugin is a must. There are many security plugins available for WordPress, but not all of them are created equal. Do some research and find a plugin that suits your needs. (We recommend looking into Wordfence or Sucuri.)

Once you’ve found a plugin, install it and activate it. Follow the instructions on the plugin’s settings page to configure it properly.

Most security plugins will offer features like blocking IP addresses, two-factor authentication, malware scanning, and more. Choose the features that are most important to you and make sure they’re enabled.

Keep your security plugin up to date by installing new versions when they’re released.

**Sharing Admin Access**

If you’re planning on giving someone else access to your WordPress admin panel, there are a few security precautions you should take first.

For starters, be sure to create a separate user account for the person to whom you’re granting access. That way, if their account is ever compromised, your main admin account will remain safe.

Next, be sure to set strong passwords for both your main admin account and the new user account. Use a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols to make it as difficult as possible for hackers to guess.

**Take Away**

Malicious actors are continuously coming up with new ways to use a company’s online presence against them, while cyber security specialists are always coming up with new ways to resist them.

This is the never-ending cycle of cybersecurity, and we’re all trapped in its center. Your WordPress site is just like any other website on the internet when it comes to cyber-attacks. However, by following the above-recommended tips and hacks, you can secure your WordPress website from cyber criminals or at least reduce the risk of being attacked. 

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