Summary
This chapter required a lot of research. I tried to provide you with a unique long-term view of the threat landscape and some useful context. Now I’ll try to summarize the key takeaways from this chapter.
Malware uses the Cybersecurity Usual Suspects to initially compromise systems; these usual suspects are unpatched vulnerabilities, security misconfigurations, weak, leaked, and stolen passwords, insider threat, and social engineering. Of these, social engineering is attackers’ favorite tactic, as evidenced by the consistent prevalence of malware categories that leverage it. Malware can also be employed after the initial compromise to further attackers’ objectives.
Some successful malware families impact systems around the world quickly after release, while others start as regional threats before growing into global threats. Some threats stay localized to a region because they rely on a specific non-English language to trick users into installing...
