State-sponsored hackers are diversifying tactics, report says

Some of the world’s most skilled nation-state cyber adversaries are diversifying tactics to inflict more harm, a report by consulting firm Accenture said. These ransomware gangs are deploying an arsenal of new open-sourced tools, actively exploiting corporate email systems and using online extortion to scare victims into paying ransoms, Accenture stated in the ‘2020 Cyber Threatscape Report’. It observed that the group used legitimate Windows functions and freely available exploitation tools like Mimikatz for credential dumping. The criminals behind Maze, Sodinokibi and DoppelPayner ransomware strains are the pioneers of the growing tactics, which is delivering bigger profits and resulting in a wave of copycat actors and new ransomware peddlers.