Feb 2016 ICIT published a profile of 40 Threat Actors

Know you enemy 2.0 publication 

According to ICIT report the top three countries hosting these Threat Actors are Russia, China and USA. 14 of them form Russia, 9 from china, and 5 from USA.

Most of these actors are well organized groups some sponsored by national states. Motivation behind the actors include crime, defense, theft, common cause and others.

“The conglomeration of hacktivists, state sponsored hackers and cyber mercenaries are continuously targeting American corporations, organizations, Universities and government Networks. American industry as a whole is an easy target because seasoned adversaries are breaching virtually defenseless networks.”  ICIT.

Refer the following link for detail of the report

http://icitech.org/know-your-enemies-2-0/

Cyber Security Research and Development (R&D) Showcase and Technical Workshop

On Feb. 17-19, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate will host a Cyber Security Research and Development (R&D) Showcase and Technical Workshop, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. The event will provide an opportunity for cybersecurity technology investors, integrators and IT companies to learn about S&T-funded research and development on technologies, tools and techniques that can be used to strengthen the cyber security posture of the nation.

Interested in learning more? Read the full S&T Press Release.

Popularity of Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDos)

According to HACKMAGEDDON Information Security Timelines and Statistics biweekly report, hackers carried out 52 attacks from January 13^th to January 31st targeting different entities including corporates, governments and individuals. This report is only based on one source. There should be many that might not be reported or HACKMAGEDDON didn’t find out. Looking at this and many recent incidents – the popularity of DDoS is getting attracts my attention. Out of the 52 incidents 13 of them were DDoS.

As defined on Wikipedia, a denial-of-service (DoS) attack is an attempt to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users, such as to temporarily or indefinitely interrupt or suspend services of a host connected to the Internet .A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) is where the attack source is more than one–and often thousands of-unique IP addresses. It is analogous to a group of people crowding the entry door or gate to a shop or business, and not letting legitimate parties enter into the shop or business, disrupting normal operations.

Government related sites are the one mostly suffering from DDoS, and the common responsibility takers are Anonymous hacktivists. Yesterday, January 7^th is the latest DDoS attack I found from the hackers associated with the Anonymous collective on North Korean state websites in response to the country’s latest satellite launch. Retailers, Financial Institution, Airports, Hospitals, Satellite Station controllers have suffered from DDoS – Isn’t it Scary!

Source

http://europe.newsweek.com/anonymous-hackers-target-north-korea-response-satellite-launch-424030?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

http://www.hackmageddon.com/2016/02/08/16-31-january-2016-cyber-attacks-timeline/