Dark Reading: How Cybercriminals Choose Their Targets And Tactics

Targeted attacks are becoming pervasive. Here's a look at how those targets are chosen -- and how your organization might avoid being one of them

Jan 13, 2013
By Randy George

[Excerpted from "How Cybercriminals Choose Their Targets and Tactics," a new, free report posted this week on Dark Reading's Advanced Threats Tech Center.]

When police officers go undercover, they must successfully blend into an environment that few of us would ever willingly choose to live in. Good undercover officers know the tactics of traditional criminals because they live in the criminals' world. They study the criminals' tactics, tools and psyches, and can thus anticipate certain behaviors because they understand the end goals.

In some respects, staying a step ahead of cybercriminals is much more difficult than staying ahead of your average street criminal. You won't catch black-hat hackers with traditional surveillance, because they can inflict as much damage in their pajamas as they could if they got dressed and robbed a bank.

Cybercriminals often fit no specific profile. They can effectively hide their tracks through proxies and spoofing. They change their tactics often, and they are adept at hiding tools and other malicious code through obfuscation. Good cybercriminals understand the digital trails they leave, and how easy or hard it is for big-business security tools to detect those activities.

And unlike many security pros, good cybercriminals can code. Talented black hats enjoy decompiling a piece of commercial software for fun, or coding a new botnet with a feature set that is a security admin's worst nightmare.

So how do you defend yourself against an ever-evolving, nameless, faceless enemy that adapts to your defenses as quickly as you can deploy them? The unfortunate reality is that you can never fully defend yourself against a truly skilled cybercriminal, but you can certainly make your organization a more difficult target by deploying the right tools and implementing the right best practices.

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