E-Business
Sophos Identifies Top Ransomware Families in Africa
Cyber security vendor Sophos has identified the top ransomware families that affected Africa in 2017.
According to Sophos, the Ceber ransomware accounted for 80% of attacks in Africa, followed by WannaCry (17%), and others like Jaff (1%), Locky (1%) and Petya (0.5%).
One of the most active kinds of ransomware out there, Cerber encrypts the files of infected users and demands money in exchange for enabling access to their files. It works even if a user is not connected to the Internet, so they can’t stop it by unplugging their PC.
Cerber, sold as a ransomware kit on the Dark Web, remains a dangerous threat, says Sophos, adding the creators of Cerber continuously update the code and charge a percentage of the ransom that the “middle-men” attackers receive from victims.
Regular new features make Cerber not only an effective attack tool, but perennially available to cyber criminals, the cyber security firm notes.
“This Dark Web business model is unfortunately working and, similar to a legitimate company, is likely funding the ongoing development of Cerber. We can assume the profits are motivating the authors to maintain the code,” says Dorka Palotay, SophosLabs security researcher and contributor to the ransomware analysis in the SophosLabs 2018 Malware Forecast.
The WannaCry ransomware attack was a May 2017 worldwide cyber attack by the WannaCry ransomware cryptoworm, which targeted computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system by encrypting data and demanding ransom payments in the Bitcoin crypto-currency.
“Looking at the whole world, WannaCry was responsible for 45.3% of the ransomware attacks, while in Africa this value is only 17%,” Palotay says.
“In Africa, clearly Cerber was the biggest ransomware threat this year, since 80% of the ransomware lookups was caused by Cerber, while this number is only 44.2% if we look at the whole world. Regarding the smaller families, the results are very similar.”
The SophosLabs 2018 Malware Forecast report recaps ransomware and other cyber security trends based on data collected from Sophos customer computers worldwide from 1 April to 3 October 2017.
One key finding shows that while ransomware predominately attacked Windows systems in the last six months, Android, Linux and MacOS platforms were not immune.
“Ransomware has become platform-agnostic. Ransomware mostly targets Windows computers, but this year, SophosLabs saw an increased amount of crypto-attacks on different devices and operating systems used by our customers worldwide,” says Palotay.
She notes that for the first time Sophos saw ransomware with worm-like characteristics, which contributed to the rapid expansion of WannaCry.
“This ransomware took advantage of a known Windows vulnerability to infect and spread to computers, making it hard to control.
“Even though our customers are protected against it and WannaCry has tapered off, we still see the threat because of its inherent nature to keep scanning and attacking computers. We’re expecting cyber criminals to build upon this ability to replicate as seen in WannaCry and NotPetya, and this is already evident with Bad Rabbit ransomware, which shows many similarities to NotPetya.”
Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO has expressed concerns about the extreme risks posed by artificial intelligence (AI) falling into the hands of terrorists or rogue states.
Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO
He warned that nations such as North Korea, Iran, and Russia could adopt AI technologies to develop weapons capable of causing significant harm, including biological weapons.
Schmidt urged governments to oversee private tech companies, emphasising, “The real fears I have are not the ones most people discuss about AI, I talk about extreme risk.”
“I’m always worried about an ‘Osama Bin Laden’ scenario, where truly evil individuals take control of some aspect of modern life to harm innocent people,” he added.
With private companies driving AI advancements, he stressed the need for careful government monitoring and regulation. “It’s really important that governments understand what we’re doing and keep their eye on us,” he said.
His remarks followed a two-day AI summit in Paris, where the UK and the U.S. declined to sign a communiqué outlining the future direction of AI. The declaration on “inclusive and sustainable artificial intelligence for people and the planet” was endorsed by 57 countries, including India, China, the Vatican, the EU, and the African Union Commission.
The UK justified its decision, stating that the agreement lacked “practical clarity” on global AI governance and national security concerns.
Schmidt supports U.S. export controls restricting the sale of advanced AI microchips to certain countries, aiming to slow adversaries’ progress in AI research.
He also highlights the importance of international collaboration on AI safety, suggesting that cooperation with nations like China is essential to addressing global AI challenges.
Sam Altman, chief executive of ChatGPT-owner OpenAI, has firmly declared the company “not for sale” following a $97.4bn (£78.4bn) takeover bid from a consortium led by Elon Musk.
Elon Musk
Speaking at the AI Action Summit in Paris, Altman emphasised OpenAI’s mission to develop AGI (artificial general intelligence) for the benefit of humanity.
Marc Toberoff, attorney for Elon Musk, confirmed the bid submission on Monday.
In response, Altman humorously offered to buy Twitter for $9.74 billion on Musk’s platform.
Unlike many tech giants, OpenAI is not publicly traded but operates through a complex partnership between non-profit and for-profit entities.
Musk aims to return OpenAI to its non-profit roots, despite owning a rival firm, xAI.
Christie Pitts, a tech investor, expressed scepticism about Musk’s intentions, noting his competitive interests.
Altman echoed this sentiment, suggesting Musk’s move disregards OpenAI’s mission.
Altman, who holds no stock in OpenAI, advocates transforming the organisation into a fully for-profit company to raise more funds for AI research.
Although the board has the final say, the $97.4bn offer falls short of OpenAI’s previous $157bn valuation and rumoured $300bn in future funding talks.
Toberoff stated the consortium might increase their bid. Meanwhile, OpenAI is collaborating with Oracle, a Japanese investment firm, and an Emirati sovereign wealth fund on “The Stargate Project,” a $500 billion AI infrastructure initiative announced by President Donald Trump.
Adobe yesterday released the first public version of an artificial intelligence tool that can generate video clips and revealed how much it will charge, but said it will not set pricing for major users such as studios until later this year.
The Firefly Video Model, as Adobe is calling the service, will compete against Sora, a model developed by ChatGPT creator OpenAI, and startup Runway, both of which currently offer video-generation services. Facebook owner Meta Platforms has also developed a video-generation AI model but has not given a timeline for when it will be released.
Adobe’s model differs from its rivals because it is geared toward generating clips that will fit into how film and television studios use Premiere Pro, its flagship video editing software.
To that end, many of the features that Adobe is emphasizing revolve around feeding existing shots into the video model and asking it to generate clips that fix or expand on shots that were taken on a real production set but that did not come out quite right.
Adobe said the service will generate five-second clips at 1080p resolution. While that is shorter than the clips of up to 20 seconds generated by OpenAI’s service, Adobe executives said the majority of individual clips in most productions are only three seconds.
Adobe said a user can generate 20 clips per month for $9.99 and 70 clips for $29.99. That compares with 50 videos for $20 per month with OpenAI’s plan at lower resolution and a $200 OpenAI plan that can handle longer, higher resolution videos.
Adobe is also working on a “Premium” pricing plan for studios and other high-volume video users and will release those pricing details later this year. Alexandru Costin, Adobe’s vice president of generative AI, said the company is working to generate 4K video and will remain focused on quality rather than longer clips.
“We actually think that great motion, great structure, great definition scheme, making the actual clip look like it was film, is more important than making a longer clip that’s unusable,” Costin told Reuters.
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