Information-Stealing Machine Behind Theft Of 1.8 Billion Credentials
Global Threat Intelligence Index Reveals Information-Stealing Machine In Action
The latest analysis from the threat intelligence team at Flashpoint has just been published, and it makes for some very disturbing reading indeed. It's hard to know where to start when it comes to the alarming statistics that cover just the first six months of the year. The 235% surge in data breaches, two-thirds of them in the U.S., it must be said, exposing a staggering 9.45 billion records, is bad enough. But this is dwarfed by the 800% rise that has been observed in stolen credentials, with 1.8 billion compromised by information-stealers. The two sets of numbers are, however, intrinsically linked: unauthorized access accounted for nearly 78% of all reported data breach incidents. No wonder infostealers are the initial access weapon of choice for so many criminal hackers.
The rise of identity as a primary attack vector is, without a shadow of a doubt, fueled by infostealers. 'They enable initial access that can cascade into significant data breaches across organizations and their supply chains,' the report warned, and have 'gained traction due to their low cost, accessibility, and ability to provide threat actors with deeper access than many other initial access vectors.'
It can surely be no coincidence that Flashpoint has reported a 179% increase in ransomware incidents during the same time period as the information-stealing machine activity has spiked. "With ransomware up 179% and data breaches surging 235%, the sheer scale of malicious activity is undeniable,' Ian Gray, Flashpoint's vice president of cyber threat intelligence operations, said. The report recommended that organizations 'implement a two-pronged approach' that combines the use of compromised credential dataset intelligence alongside alerting based on specific affected domains.
You might also want to consider switching to a stronger credentials technology than passwords and basic 2FA, by which I am referring to passkeys, of course. Why make things easy for the information-stealing machine, after all?
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Bloomberg
31 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Apple's Vision Pro Is Suffering From a Lack of Immersive Video
Apple has slow-walked the release of immersive video, creating a conundrum for the Vision Pro. Also: The company's AI and smart home road maps are revealed; Meta prepares to sell its display glasses for under $1,000; and blood-oxygen tracking returns to Apple devices in the US. Last week in Power On: Apple's AI voice control system will change the way people use their iPhone.
WIRED
31 minutes ago
- WIRED
This $150 'Digital Super 8' Gives the Lo-Fi Camera Craze a Moving Picture Upgrade
The Camp Snap CS-8 doesn't care about frame rates, bit rates, or whether your footage is stabilized to unerring levels of steadiness. It doesn't want to replace your iPhone or compete with your mirrorless camera setup. What it offers instead is something far simpler and more deliberate: the feeling of shooting video for the sake of it. Much like Camp Snap's point-and-shoot still camera from 2023 (the company's only other major product), it's a throwback to when cameras didn't think for you and when you didn't expect to review the images you just captured until later—sometimes much later. Inspired by the Super 8 camcorders introduced in the 1960s, the CS-8 is unapologetically retro in both appearance and function. The body is mostly plastic, with faux-metal detailing and leatherette texture meant to evoke the mechanical era rather than mimic it convincingly. It's chunky and solid in the hand, albeit in a distinctly toylike way. If you're looking for authenticity, you're not going to find it here: There's a fake cold shoe up top and imitation screws at the base of the pistol grip. But that's not the point—this isn't Kodak's $5,000 Super 8 revival but rather a $199 camera meant to live in the real world and get passed around at parties, slung into backpacks for day trips, and used without a second thought. Lights, Camera, Action Photograph: Sam Kieldsen There's no screen, no playback, and no Delete button. Here, what you shoot is what you get. The settings and options are stripped back, with one dial for selecting aspect ratio (4:3, 16:9, 1:1, or 9:16) and another for the video effect. These include standard color, monochrome, and three lo-fi filters, including one that simulates the grainy, jerky look of 8-mm film. I found that last one, labeled Analogue, was the star of the show. It drops the frame rate to 20 fps (it's 30 fps with the other modes) and sprinkles in digital scratches, resulting in footage that's imperfect in the most deliberate way. The rest of the filters feel a little flat by comparison, though the monochrome setting can conjure up its own punchy charm in the right lighting. Using the CS-8 is refreshingly physical: Power it on by flicking a dial, press your eye to the rubber-cupped viewfinder, and squeeze down the trigger to record. There's no focusing to worry about here. The 8X zoom is handled with buttons labelled 'W' and 'T' for wide and telephoto, though it's digital-only, and resolution drops off quickly when you push in too far.
The Verge
31 minutes ago
- The Verge
The one feature that keeps me from recommending flip phones
I carry a lot of different phones around, and I rarely get questions about them because most people stopped talking about which phone they own around 2017. I could be using an unreleased iPhone 18 Pro Max Air Ultra to pay for my coffee and nobody would raise an eyebrow (present company excepted, of course). To the majority, a phone is a phone; no matter who makes it or what software it runs, they're all roughly the same size and shape. Unless that phone happens to be a flip phone. Flip phones attract attention from the kind of people who have seen every type of phone in existence, which makes sense: they're very obviously different. During the rise of the smartphone, there was a time when manufacturers tried a lot of other form factors. Physical keyboards, swiveling screens, pop-up cameras — anything was fair game. But over the past decade, the industry converged around one design to rule them all: the form factor that we now know as the slab phone. And it remained more or less unchallenged until Samsung started folding screens in half. Before the new flip phones, book-style foldables came first. And Samsung's debut effort was kind of a fiasco. Within days of receiving review units, testers started experiencing problems with the inner screen. The Verge's own Dieter Bohn was one of them; he noticed a small bulge in the inner screen along the crease, as if a very small particle was pressing up into the screen from inside the hinge. Something similar happened to CNBC's review unit. Elsewhere, creators and reviewers at other outlets experienced similarly catastrophic screen deaths by peeling up the factory-installed protector on the inner screen, which was meant to stay permanently adhered. If this was not obvious to people who look at phones all day, you can be damn sure it wouldn't have been obvious to the average phone user. Even though dust wasn't the confirmed offender here — and Samsung clearly had more than one kind of problem on its hands — the message was clear: the inner screen of a folding phone was just one wrong move away from failure. The first modern flip phones weren't exactly bangers, either. Motorola's revived Razr kind of sucked, and Samsung's first Flip wasn't much better, even though it was the first to offer a better-feeling glass folding screen rather than plastic. Both phones came with too many tradeoffs, too many durability concerns, and too high of a price to justify buying one for the novelty. But things changed when Motorola took a good look at its Razr design and said, 'You know what? To hell with this. Big outer screen.' The 2023 Motorola Razr Plus was the first flip-style phone that truly felt like something different. The outer 3.6-inch screen sounds tiny, and I guess it is tiny, but it was the biggest one offered on a flip phone at that point. And it made a difference. Instead of just triaging notifications, you could actually do things. Reply to texts, browse your Spotify library, even run full apps — so much more became possible. Samsung followed suit, and even though it took a couple of tries to get rid of the file-folder-shaped screen and embrace the full front panel, its flip phone became imminently more useful with a proper cover display. I love flip phones. Lots of you love flip phones, too. Those little specks of dust still loom large. Despite substantial improvements to the screens and hinges, and the addition of water resistance, flip phones (and their fold-style siblings) still lack dust resistance. Both Motorola and Samsung's latest foldables come with an IP48 rating, which only guarantees protection against very small particles, meaning anything smaller than a millimeter could still potentially work its way into the phone and wreak havoc. Sure, plenty of people own folding phones and never experience problems with dust, which is great! But when every other slab-style phone at the same price point comes with a full IP68 rating, it's hard to tell the average person to go ahead and spend $1,000 on a flip phone. Fun only goes so far. I had a burning question for Samsung's head of smartphone planning, Minseok Kang. Maybe it even bordered on a plea. 'Is a dustproof foldable even possible?' I asked following Samsung's most recent Unpacked. 'I don't think that it's not possible,' he said. 'But it is difficult.' Whispers of foldables with the elusive IP68 rating have cropped up around most of the recent folding phone launches, ultimately fizzling when the full specs have been revealed. But the rumors are firing up again, suggesting that the Google Pixel 10 Pro might come with dust resistance. That, frankly, would rule. But I've gotten my hopes up one too many times this year, and I don't have the energy to do it again, so I'll consider it a nice surprise if it arrives with dust resistance. But I haven't given up hope — I have it on good authority that it's not impossible, after all. This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on all things phones and consumer tech, follow Allison Johnson. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Allison Johnson Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Column Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Gadgets Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Phones Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Tech Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All The Stepback
