Organizations, such as credit unions, send and receive thousandsof emails, messages, and files weekly, vehicles that cybercriminalshitchhike upon – sometimes using weaponized PDFs – toinfiltrate systems and steal personal information.

To combat these threats Campbell, Calif.-based cyberfrauddefense firm Barracuda Networks introduced a free, global advisoryplatform that it said offers detailed real-time threat intelligenceand security risk information to help organizations, includingcredit unions and banks, consumers and ITprofessionals remain aware of current global cyberthreats.

Barracuda Security Insight works by analyzing large volumes ofglobal threat intelligence from several sources and presents thisin the form of easy to read threat trends, detailed information onattack campaigns and an aggregated threat score.

By analyzing data collected from its endpoints globally,Barracuda Security Insight helps determine the currentcybersecurity threat level based on email, network, and web trafficflows. It provides summaries and detailed views of current threatcampaigns that Barracuda tracks in real-time.

Some of the recent threat trends revealed by Barracuda Insightinclude:

• PDF files represent the highest volume ofweaponized file types transmitted through observed attack surfacesbecause of their simple construction and easy transmittableabilities. PDFs scanned in the last three months showed nearly 41million were part of an attack. PDFs often contain links to badsites and active scripts.
• The most sophisticated attacks with thehighest efficacy ride over embedded scripts such as JavaScript andVisualBasic. Recent findings revealed that over 75 percent of thesescripts are malicious with JS often embedded in HTML, or other richdocument formats such as rich text format and Office. A sample of70 million Office documents scanned in the last three months foundmore than 4.7 million malicious or suspicious.
• Compressed files are an increasingly popularway for criminals to transmit disguised attacks and hidenon-malware infections such as PowerShell scripts. An example ofthis took place in September of 2017 when Barracuda detected andblocked a massive ransomware campaign with over 27 million emailsreaching customers in less than 24 hours.

Barracuda Security Insight expects these threat trends tocontinue with extensive use of weaponized file types to carry outmassive attacks. In addition, the Equifax breach, which exposed sensitiveinformation of some 145.5 million Americans, and othercybersecurity events have resulted in the significant loss ofpersonally identifiable information. Barracuda anticipates anincreased use of this information for both mass phishing andtargeted spear phishing attacks.

“Organizations often become aware of vicious cyberattacks afterthe damage has already been done,” Fleming Shi, SVP of Technologyat Barracuda said. “By offering a free global advisory platformlike Barracuda Security Insight, we can help heighten securityawareness by proactively identifying the most current threats thatshould be on everyone's radar. Those who use the platform canultimately gain a better understanding of the threat landscape inreal-time — an awareness that can lead to an overall improvedsecurity posture.”

Barracuda Security Insight includes real-time activity seen fromthe following traffic: email-borne attacks containing maliciouslinks and attachments, malware, ransomware, and botnets; networkperimeter, including zero hour vulnerability exploits, brute forceattacks, DDoS, spyware, and spam; web access and browsing attacksinvolving ransomware, malware, and vulnerability exploits in thewild; and endpoints: such as malware, persistent spyware, botnets,ad and click fraud, IoT malware, and compromised dead apps.

Barracuda Security Insight is available via the Barracudawebsite and also provides an open API integration into applicationsfrom common web portals and dashboards, and digital assistants suchas Alexa.