Like a good horror film – a talented hacker will take their time building the attack. No jump scares here – just slow and methodical. Recon, probing, reverse engineering and writing exploits – the malicious hacker builds tension and anxiety as they find a small way in, establish a presence and expand – filing your network with their malevolence,
The malicious actors in the center of these webs aren’t automated tool users or button pushers. They are the 1%, the snipers, the first-round killers. The people in this tier take their time, do the hard work, and like the Black Widow – are only discovered after they bite.
Some published 2020 reports have ransomware attacks up 72% while others have them up 105% and in March and April 2020, due to companies going remote, the number of unsecured remote desktop machines rose by 40% which caused brute-force attacks to grow 400% and of course there are daily reports of many more.
These crimes can creep up on companies who have not made cybersecurity part of their regular budget and with the rise of AI and ML – speed has become relative. What is fast to you is ponderous to the massive intelligences in the cloud. And when the 1% threat actors combine their patience, dedication and skill with the computational power of the AI’s – then anything is game.
