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Indonesia, June 2024 - 210 critical government agencies were crippled in one fell swoop. Immigration services were in disarray; customs officers locked out of critical systems and travellers left stranded in airport and ferry terminals facing delays that would continue for a full week.

The culprit? Brain Cipher, a ransomware group barely a week old, which demanded a huge sum of $8M from Indonesia’s National Data Centre, bringing local government services to their knees. The chaos that followed lingers as a potent reminder of the widespread disruption across an entire nation that can stem from a single attack.

Join Group-IB’s Gary Ruddell and Nick Palmer as they talk to Jennifer Soh, Cyber Investigation Lead for APAC at Group-IB, exploring what motivates cyber criminals to target national infrastructure, and what happens when the pillars that hold up our modern digital society - from government and defence to energy- are struck by cyber-attacks.

Episode links:
Group-IB's Top 10 Masked Actors
Deciphering the Brain Cipher Ransomware
Patch or Peril: A Veeam vulnerability incident

By understanding who these actors are and how they operate, you can better anticipate threats and protect yourself in an increasingly hostile digital world.

Subscribe to Group-IB's Masked Actors now — and stay one step ahead in the fight against cybercrime.

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Cyber criminals are masters at exploiting human vulnerability and trust. In Uzbek folklore, there's a creature known for causing chaos, preying on humans, lurking in the dark and changing its face to trick its victims before it pounces.

In December 2023, it lent its name to a sophisticated Android malware campaign using the same tactics that emerged in the digital underworld. The banking malware masqueraded as legitimate applications, leaving users confused – like its folklorish namesake – and surfaced from the dark to steal everything they had. Its codename: Ajina.

Join Group-IB’s Gary Ruddell and Nick Palmer as they speak with Amy Grieveson, Director of Security and Behaviours at Monzo Bank, revealing the tricks used by financial fraudsters to get victims to hand over their most sensitive information. They discuss sophisticated social engineering deployed by cyber criminals, as well as how to flip the narrative around cyber defence from fear, to empowering consumers with the awareness and routines needed to maintain vigilance in a landscape rife with scams.

Episode links:
Group-IB's Top 10 Masked Actors
Ajina attacks Central Asia: Story of an Uzbek Android Pandemic

By understanding who these actors are and how they operate, you can better anticipate threats and protect yourself in an increasingly hostile digital world.

Subscribe to Group-IB's Masked Actors now — and stay one step ahead in the fight against cybercrime.

FOLLOW GROUP-IB

• Group-IB Threat Intelligence on X: https://www.x.com/GroupIB_TI
• Group-IB on X: https://www.x.com/GroupIB
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As digital infrastructure becomes the backbone of global economies, cyber espionage has quietly evolved into one of the most powerful tools in modern statecraft.

Behind the scenes, nation-backed threat groups like MuddyWater and OilRig operate sophisticated campaigns that blend malware, phishing, and social engineering to infiltrate governments, defence contractors, and critical industries. But these Advanced Persistent Threat groups aren’t motivated by fame or by fortune. They’re after insights on matters of national security, looking for long-term access to strategic intelligence, and preparing tactical disruption of their adversaries.

In this episode, Group-IB’s Gary Ruddell and Nick Palmer speak with Mansour Alhmoud, a cyber threat intelligence analyst at Group-IB responsible for tracking APT groups, to unearth how these groups operate and what organizations and governments should be doing to protect themselves against state-sponsored threats.

Episode links:
Group-IB's Top 10 Masked Actors
Catching fish in muddy waters
ClickFix: The Social Engineering Technique Hackers Use to Manipulate Victims
SimpleHarm: Tracking MuddyWater’s infrastructure
"We find many things that others do not even see"
Mapping the Infrastructure and Malware Ecosystem of MuddyWater

By understanding who these actors are and how they operate, you can better anticipate threats and protect yourself in an increasingly hostile digital world.

Subscribe to Group-IB's Masked Actors now — and stay one step ahead in the fight against cybercrime.

FOLLOW GROUP-IB

• Group-IB Threat Intelligence on X: https://www.x.com/GroupIB_TI
• Group-IB on X: https://www.x.com/GroupIB
• Group-IB on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/group-ib
• Group-IB on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groupibHQ/
• Group-IB on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/groupibhq/...