🎭 Meet Your Cyber Villains: Nation-State Hackers & Cybercriminal Gangs

Ah yes, the ever-growing roster of cyber troublemakers-nation-state hackers with way too much government backing and cybercriminals who think your IT budget is their personal ATM. This week, we take a sarcastic-yet-serious look at who's trying to ruin your day, how they do it, and how to shut them down before they turn your supply chain into a cyber dumpster fire.

🤖 Nation-State Attackers: When Governments Get Bored Who are they?

Think James Bond villains but with laptops instead of secret lairs. These government-funded groups aren't just hacking for fun-they're here for espionage, disruption, and general chaos. If you're in critical infrastructure, finance, or tech, congrats! You're on their VIP target list.

Rogue's Gallery:

✔ APT29 (Cozy Bear) — Russia — Hacked SolarWinds like it was their personal playground.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cozy_Bear

✔ APT41 (Double Dragon) — China — Moonlights as both a spy agency and a side hustle cybercrime gig.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Dragon_(hacking_group)

✔ Lazarus Group — North Korea — The OG Bitcoin bandits funding a country's missile program, one heist at a time.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_Group

✔ Charming Kitten — Iran — Fancy a nation-state phishing attack? These folks have you covered.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charming_Kitten

Their Favorite Tricks:

🎭 Weaponized Software Updates — Because nothing says "surprise" like a malicious backdoor in your trusted software.

🎯 Zero-Day Bonanza — They love finding vulnerabilities before you do.

📬 Phishing & Credential Theft — Trick a few developers into giving up their passwords, and boom-access granted.

How to Make Their Lives Miserable:

✅ Lock down developer accounts — If "password123" is still a thing, it's time to rethink life choices.

✅ Understand your use of open-source packages — Is your software supply chain more like Fort Knox, or like that pillow fort your kids made to avoid bed time?

✅ Invest in Intelligent Remediation — If only scanning for vulnerabilities was enough…

💰 Cybercriminal Syndicates: The Digital Mafia Who are they?

Unlike nation-state hackers who hack for "patriotic" reasons (🙄), these folks just want your money. They run ransomware businesses, exploit open-source projects, and generally act like the digital version of loan sharks.

Hall of Shame:

✔ FIN7 — A hacking group that treats cybercrime like a Fortune 500 company.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIN7

✔ REvil — Ransomware kings who made headlines by extorting everyone from hospitals to billion-dollar corporations.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REvil

✔ DarkSide — Infamously shut down Colonial Pipeline, because why not?

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DarkSide_(hacker_group)

✔ Lapsus$ — A bunch of teens proving you don't need a degree to wreak havoc.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapsus$

Their Favorite Tricks:

💰 Ransomware-as-a-Service — Yes, you can now subscribe to extortion like it's Netflix.

🐍 Poisoned Open-Source Libraries — Upload something useful, wait for people to adopt it, and then, boom-backdoor city.

🔑 Buying Stolen Credentials — Because why hack when you can just buy access?

How to Ruin Their Business Model:

✅ Vet every third-party dependency — Open-source is great until it isn't.

✅ Change your passwords… often — Your IT security guy isn't nagging you for fun.

✅ Use AI-powered threat detection — Because cybercriminals don't take holidays.

🔑 Action Plan: Don't Be Their Next Headline 🚀 3 Things to Do Before Hackers Make You Famous:

1️⃣ Watch developer accounts like a hawk — If Dave from IT suddenly logs in from Russia at 3 AM, maybe investigate.

2️⃣ Know what open-source packages are in your pipelines — Because you can't fix what you can't find💡

3️⃣ Invest in Intelligent Remediation — Because vulnerability reports only go so far.

📰 Coming Next Week…

🔜 The Business Cost of Software Supply Chain Attacks: How Much $$$ You'll Lose if You Ignore This Stuff.

🔒 Stay paranoid,

EPG

Originally published at https://securingthebackbone.com.