Targeting Crises

CF: You mentioned the war in Ukraine, and also there’s economic uncertainty. There’s even natural disasters, like what’s going on with Hurricane Ian right now. What kind of impact are those types of things having on the threat landscape and the actions of cybercriminals?

JF: There’s kind of an energy crisis, which is obviously inflicted through the war in Russia. And if there’s one thing that I’ve learned from all the work that we do is that cybercriminals never cease to amaze me on how quickly they can adapt and they can do something, even if it’s just a phishing scam, to take advantage of something. And they’re so quick to do that. We saw that with COVID-19. Johns Hopkins University launched that phenomenal map (of COVID-19 cases) … and within a day there was somebody saying hey, guys, I got a version that actually has an exploit kit. So if somebody goes to my website, we can install malware and we can take advantage of it. I’m always amazed of how fast they can adapt to these things.