Cloud, IoT are sitting ducks for hackers

Malware has evolved to be more stealth-like than ever and open to almost anyone to carry out an attack. This democratization of the cybercrime ecosystem paves the way for new, unskilled attackers to enter the malware distribution arena.

New breed of hackers: Hacking as we knew it has changed. While in the beginning it was the handiwork of overenthusiastic individuals honing their cyber-skills by finding loopholes in live systems, hackers today are financially motivated and run their operations under the aegis of organized criminal organizations, according to the 2019 Security Report by Checkpoint Software Technologies Ltd, released this month. The hacker arrested by the US department of justice in September 2018 for the WannaCry ransomware attack of 2017, for instance, was part of a criminal organization called the Lazarus Group with alleged links to the North Korean government.