Media Coverage

Somewhat interestingly, the individual conducting the chat conversation did not appear to know the ransom amount that the victim was being asked to pay and appeared reliant on the honesty of the victim to provide that information. “That’s because they haven’t built a channel to upload data from the victim to the ‘call center,’” says Christopher Budd, global threat communications manager at Trend Micro.

“The benefit is the user doesn't get infected, so the likelihood that they won't report the issue to the website owner is higher than if malware was used to infect them,” Trend Micro Senior Global Marketing Manager Jon Clay told SCMagazine.com. “This allows their scam to run longer than normal.”

FastPOS doesn't care about this aspect, and Trend Micro says the malware sends any stolen data to the C&C server as soon as it can get its hands on it.

While analyzing the threat, researchers with security firm Trend Micro observed that it was designed to target Windows XP 64-bit computers and that it can also run on more recent versions of Windows such as Windows 7 and 8.

“Most targeted attacks take minutes or seconds for the initial compromise,” explains Ed Cabrera, VP of Cyber Security Strategy at Trend Micro. “But it takes months or years to detect them.”

Software security vendor Trend Micro is promoting a layered approach to defending against the increasing threat of ransomware and malware.

After TeslaCrypt's authors publicly released the ransomware's master decryption key last week, Trend Micro researchers spotted cyber crooks jumping to CryptXXX.

Trend Micro recommends a layered protection approach involving a combination of web/email gateway, endpoint, server and network security. The firm said it stopped a massive 99 million ransomware threats for its customers between October 2015 and April 2016 – although admitted the actual figure for real infections globally is likely to be many times this number.

"Mac OS X and iOS are platforms that Trend Micro's security researchers look at," Christopher Budd, global threat communications manager at Trend Micro, told eWEEK. "As far as our Zero Day Initiative soliciting vulnerabilities from researchers for Mac OS X and iOS for possible vulnerabilities, Mac OS is one of the platforms of focus for Pwn2Own 2016."

Although cybercriminals have been turning out specialized hacking and attack tools at a rapid pace, terrorists are often using legitimate, consumer-focused technologies, according to a new Trend Micro report.

Trend Micro also supports the new policy, saying: "These changes were made in response to Trend Micro and other VirusTotal contributors seeing more and more companies that do not materially contribute to VirusTotal benefit from the data and analysis of those of us who do contribute on an ongoing basis."

Ed Cabrera, VP of Cyber Security Strategy at Trend Micro, advises a “3, 2, 1” rule for backups: three copies, in two different formats, with one held offsite. He describes it as a more resilient way to store backup files, while having offsite copies protects both the backups and infrastructure.

“It was never meant to enable new companies to use it as a shortcut by silently relying on, and benefitting from, the service without a corresponding investment,” said Trend Micro Chief Technology Officer Raimund Genes, one of many old-line tech executives who pushed for the shift.

A new report from Trend Micro has lifted the lid on the homegrown and commercial tools used by terrorists to communicate and spread propaganda – with many of them also used by cyber-criminals.

The free, mobile chatting service Telegram -- which is anonymous and encrypted -- is used by 34% of jihadists whose communications were the subject of a study by cybersecurity firm Trend Micro.

Of course Cyber Command has the resources to go far beyond what cybercriminal groups are capable of, which means the possibility of more complex, multi-layered attacks, says Ed Cabrera, vice president of cybersecurity strategy for Trend Micro.

The security software company Trend Micro issued a warning this monthdescribing two “critical vulnerabilities” in QuickTime for Windows and advised users to uninstall Apple’s abandoned program immediately. The Homeland Security Department posted a warning based on Trend Micro’s findings and also recommends that PC owners remove QuickTime from their systems.

Trend Micro Vice President of Cloud Research Mark Nunnikhoven told SCMagazine.com via emailed comments that the study “is interesting because of the gap it shows between the perception and reality for most organization's database security.”

“He made it very easy,” Jon Clay, of the security firm Trend Micro, told International Business Times. “It had its own administrative console that would track everything for you; you could pick and choose what components you wanted to install and utilize.”

Last week, researchers discovered two new security holes that could allow bad guys to create malicious files to launch within Apple’s media player. Trend Micro, the security research firm that found the vulnerability, said that it hasn’t yet found any evidence of exploits. But now that the findings are public, without promise of a fix from Apple, the risks are rising.

Security company TrendMicro blogged about the QuickTime vulnerability in a post titled "Urgent call to action." TrendMicro said it is unaware of any attacks that were made as a result of the QuickTime security bug, but it recommended deleting the program anyway.

The U.S. government has recommended that Windows PC users uninstall Apple Inc's QuickTime video player after security software maker Trend Micro Inc said on Thursday it had discovered two new bugs in the software.

"We will see much more successful attacks in other industries," said Ed Cabrera, vice president of cybersecurity strategy at Trend Micro.

Japanese security software maker Trend Micro Inc. said that it had warned Adobe that it had seen attackers exploiting the flaw to infect computers with a type of ransomware known as 'Cerber' as early as March 31.

“The problem is that hospitals aren't very mature when it comes to cybersecurity and dealing with robust, sophisticated online attacks,” Eduardo Cabrera, vice president for cybersecurity strategy at the security company Trend Micro Inc. in Irving, Texas. “A hospital needs health data in order to treat its patients. Hackers know there [are] major consequences if they don't act quickly.”