The continued success of social engineering as a tactic demonstrates that humans are often the weakest link in the chain, says Alex Hamerstone, advisory solutions director at TrustedSec, an Ohio-based cybersecurity firm. And guess what? The simplest, unsophisticated ways are how the threat actors are getting in: Click on this link and type in your credentials.” “Companies are spending sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars on preventative care, detection care, protection care, endpoint detection response, and so on. “It’s bonkers, says Alex Waintraub, a cyber crisis management expert at CYGNVS who has worked on hundreds of ransom cases. Scattered Spider gained entry to Caesars’ system by deceiving an employee at a third-party vendor. ALPHV reportedly bragged that it took 10 minutes to infiltrate MGM’s system after identifying an MGM tech employee on LinkedIn and then calling the company’s support desk. The preferred tactic for both ransom gangs is to use social engineering to gain access into the companies’ IT systems - and they are extremely good at it, say cybersecurity experts.
Neither MGM nor Caesars responded to Forbes’ requests for comment. ALPHV, also known as Black Cat, claimed responsibility for attacking MGM while an affiliated group that calls itself Scattered Spider hit Caesars. Both companies appear to have been targeted by known ransomware-as-a-service groups.
