Cyber Attacks From Las Vegas Spiked During Black Hat, Defcon: Imperva
Posted on August 22, 2014 by Kara Dunlap in Security
The days when the Black Hat USA and Defcon conferences are ongoing are two times when surfing the Internet in Las Vegas can be a gamble all on its own.
According to Imperva, there was a spike in malicious activity emanating from Sin City two weeks ago when the conferences were under way.
“I decided to test for attack traffic originating in Las Vegas during BlackHat and Defcon, and a month prior to that in order to correlate to baseline,” blogged Barry Shteiman, Imperva’s director of security strategy. “In order to do that, we collected all of the security events during that time period from our Community Defense system, mapped Geo IPs for Nevada state, and Las Vegas specifically, then we queried the Community Defense data set for all source IPs that were in the US. Finally, we summarized by date and where the city itself is Las Vegas.”
Here’s what the company found. Typically, it detects roughly 20 attacks originating from Las Vegas on a normal day. However, during the conferences that number peaked at 2,612. There was a significant drop off as Black Hat began winding down. On Aug. 6, the conference’s second to last day, there were just 20 detected attacks. The start of Defcon – which is also the final day of Black Hat – erased that decline however and the number of attacks shot back up to 1,916 on Aug. 7.
On the final day of Defcon, Aug. 10, the number of detected attacks fell to 7.
Imperva also noted a jump in attack volume during the NAACP conference in July, which indicates one of a few possibilities: either a large crowd in a conference-scale event causes a growth in attack volume due to malware on computers, or attackers are attending the conference and performing their attacks from there, Shteiman wrote. As for Black Hat and Defcon, they are not exactly typical conferences, he added.
“They have some of the brightest security/hacking minds in the world attending,” he blogged. “Those guys who read every link before they click, run custom operating systems in cases and are generally very aware to security and therefore are less likely to be drive-by victims of hacking – for that reason, seeing numbers that high is more substantial at a hacker conference than in other conferences.”
Brian Prince is a Contributing Writer for SecurityWeek.
Tags:
Imperva Names Former Coverity Chief as New CEO
Posted on August 19, 2014 by Kara Dunlap in Security
Redwood Shores, California-based Imperva announced on Monday that it has appointed Anthony J. Bettencourt as the company’s new president and chief executive officer. Bettencourt replaces Shlomo Kramer, Imperva founder and CEO, who will continue to serve as chairman of the company’s board and serve as Chief Strategy Officer.
Bettencourt came to Imperva from Coverity Inc., where he recently served as chief executive officer, leading the company through its acquisition by Synopsys for roughly $ 375 million in February 2014. Prior to Coverity, Bettencourt served as CEO of Verity, a provider of enterprise search solutions, leading the company through its acquisition by Autonomy Corp. in 2005.
Bettencourt currently serves on the boards of Proofpoint, Blinkx and Formation Data Systems.
“I am very pleased to be joining Imperva, and look forward to capitalizing on the opportunities at Imperva for Imperva shareholders, employees and partners,” Bettencourt said. “Imperva has established a strong leadership position in the data center security market and has a proven track record of success and innovation. I am excited to be working with the Imperva executive team, board of directors and employees to grow the company to its highest potential.”
“We are very excited to welcome Anthony to Imperva. He was chosen for his distinguished track record of executive leadership, as well as his ability to build highly effective organizations. Anthony has demonstrated an ability to drive shareholder value in competitive market segments and he brings experience driving technology excellence and global growth,” Kramer commented, “I look forward to working with Anthony and am confident that he is the right person to lead Imperva on the next stage of growth.”
Earlier this year, Imperva announced its plans to acquire two security firms and assets from another, in a move that will help extend its data center security strategy across the cloud.
In its most recent quarter, Imperva (IMPV) posted revenues of $ 38.40 million, up 22.7% year-over-year, beating analysts’ estimates by $ 3.98 million. Within services revenue, overall subscription revenue grew 110% to $ 5.3 million, compared to the second quarter of 2013. Combined product and subscriptions revenue was $ 21.8 million compared to $ 18.2 million in the second quarter of 2013. The company said that during the second quarter of 2014, it booked 88 deals with a value over $ 100,000 compared to 76 deals during the second quarter of last year.
As of July 31, the company said it has over 3,300 customers in more than 75 countries around the world.
Managing Editor, SecurityWeek.
Tags:
