Intelligent CISO Issue 17 | Page 24

threat updates US The Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) announced a ransomware attack against more than 20 entities across Texas, the majority of which were smaller local governments. In a statement, the DIR stated that evidence gathered indicated the attacks came from one single threat actor. However, at the time of going to press, investigations were ongoing, with response and recovery a priority. It appears all entities that were actually or potentially impacted have been identified and notified, with 22 entities having been confirmed as impacted. Responders were working with these entities to bring their systems back online. The State of Texas systems and networks were not impacted. GLOBAL Cloud Atlas, an advanced persistent threat (APT), also known as Inception, has updated its attack arsenal with new tools which allow it to avoid detection through standard Indicators of Compromise. This updated infection chain has been spotted in the wild in different organisations in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Russia. Cloud Atlas is a threat actor that has a long history of cyber- espionage operations targeting industries, government agencies and other entities. It was first identified in 2014 and has been active ever since. Recently, Kaspersky researchers have seen Cloud Atlas targeting the international economics and aerospace industries as well as governmental and religious organizations in Portugal, Romania, Turkey, Ukraine, Russia, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan among other countries. 24 Issue 17 | www.intelligentciso.com