The Specops research team has analyzed passwords being used to attack FTP ports over the past 30 days, in live attacks happening against real networks. Our team have found the most common passwords being used in brute force attacks,... Read More
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DragonForce: Inside the Ransomware-as-a-Service group
The popularity of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has exploded over the past decade. The benefits for organizations are obvious – SaaS is scalable, cost-effective, and doesn’t need complex installation or maintenance. Gartner expects global spending on SaaS to reach $3 billion... Read More
Scattered Spider service desk attacks: How to defend your organization
Scattered Spider is a disparate hacking collective that has surged to prominence by using sophisticated social engineering tactics. One of their key tactics is exploiting people – specifically, corporate service desks. They’ve recently hit the headlines by allegedly duping... Read More
M&S ransomware hack: Active Directory & Service Desk security lessons
M&S (Marks and Spencers) are a cornerstone of British retail with over 64,000 employees – so it was a shock for many to see them laid low by a ransomware attack in April 2025. The retail giant fell victim... Read More
Could the Spain and Portugal blackout have been a cyber-attack?
‘Cyber-attack’ was the phrase on many people’s minds when large parts of Spain and Portugal were recently plunged into a blackout. Authorities are investigating the root cause, with early reports suggesting a technical malfunction caused by a ‘rare atmospheric... Read More
AI vishing: Mastering the art of voice deception
Picture an Italian entrepreneur receiving a phone call from their country’s Defense Minister, Guido Crosetto. The politician has an important but challenging ask – he needs the wealthy individual to wire around €1 million to a Hong Kong-based bank... Read More
Post-quantum cryptography: Password security in the quantum era
Quantum mechanics is the study of physics at the level of incredibly small things – smaller than atoms. Anyone who’s looked into theories like wave-particle duality and entanglement, knows things can get confusing (and weird) very quickly. But it’s... Read More
ALIEN TXTBASE data-dump analysis: Dangerous or junk?
Specops researchers have been digging into the ALIEN TXTBASE data-dump, which was recently merged into the HaveIBeenPwned (HIBP) dataset by Troy Hunt. After some analysis of the over 200 million passwords in this dataset, we estimate about 20 million... Read More
[New research] Which passwords are attackers using against RDP ports right now?
The Specops research team has been analyzing 15 million passwords being used to attack RDP ports, in live attacks happening against networks right now. Our team have found the ten most common passwords attackers are using and analyzed their... Read More
How cyber-realistic is Netflix’s Zero Day thriller?
The idea of an entire country being shut down by cyberattack is a scary thought. In Netflix’s recent thriller ‘Zero Day’, this is the reality faced by former president (played by Robert de Niro). To find out how realistic... Read More