Attending the BCAware Security Conference

Meeting Brian Krebs at the BCAware Conference

One of the most exciting parts of the BCAware conference was getting to meet Brian Krebs live in person!

During his talk he shared some interesting topics such as how cyber criminals are using websites similar to https://haveibeenpwned.com/  

Except, that these “other” websites will actually list out the users leaked password(s) in plaintext. And, with this method attackers can now attack various social media, banking and other commonly used services online to possibly find valid emails/passwords to accounts.

Another topic was related to how cyber criminals determine how much money to ask for during a ransomware attack. The typical amount seems to point at about 10% of total revenue a business makes from the previous year. This way, they do not ask for too much or too little. It gets close to an amount that the organization can afford, and finds would be cheaper than to recover from backups or rebuilding the environment.