Home
News
Reviews
- Consumer
- SMB
Resources
Tools
- RAID Calculator
Trivia
Slack

Search

Home
News
Reviews
- Consumer
- SMB
Resources
Tools
- RAID Calculator
Trivia
Slack

Home Trivia Trivia: In Cyber Security, What is an APT?

Trivia: In Cyber Security, What is an APT?

By

-

February 6, 2021

TRIVIA

In Cyber Security, What is an APT?

An Advanced Persistent Threat is a cyberattack in which the threat actors gain unauthorized access to a network for a long time. Confusingly, the perpetrators are also called an APT. More correctly, they are an APT group. Having a backdoor into a network that they can return to again and again allows the APT group to observe and record network and user activity, to exfiltrate documents, and to maintain surveillance for as long as they need to. This isn't a small undertaking. The resources required to maintain the deception, avoid detection by the network owners, and having human resources to explore and monitor the network are significant. It requires a lot of manpower and top-tier cyber-offensive skills. Historically, state-sponsored hacking groups and other collectives supported by nation-states were the only organizations capable of mounting an APT attack. There are many such organizations around the world. In fact, most developed and developing countries have some sort of cyber-offensive capability, using mainstream military groups and other unofficial external groups. Part of the success of an APT attack is being able to mask their identity and to avoid exposure. This avoids repercussions and embarrassment for the sponsoring nation-state. However, one of the phases of dealing with a cyber attack is attribution. By studying the methods employed in the attack, the digital fingerprint of any malware that was deployed, tracing connections, and other intelligence techniques it is often possible to identify a particular APT as the culprit, to within a very small margin of error. And we see the handiwork of the same culprits again and again.

Previous articleQNAP QHora 301W WiFi 6, 10Gbps Router Review: Fast, Affordable, Lots of Virtualization, Weak NAS

Next articleTrivia: What Was the Biggest Data Breach of the Past Ten Years?

Dave McKay has over 30 years of experience in the IT industry. He has been a freelance programmer, the manager of an international software development team, an IT services project manager, and a Data Protection Officer. He is now a technology journalist and independent Data Protection and Compliance consultant.

RELATED ARTICLES MORE FROM AUTHOR

Trivia: What Was the Biggest Data Breach of the Past Ten Years?

Trivia: Who Was The First Hacker To Make The FBI’s Most Wanted List?

Trivia: Which Cyber Attacks Use SMS Text Messages to Dupe the Victim?

ITEnterpriser Newsletter

Subscribe to stay updated with the latest news on data storage, network security, and surveillance.

Latest posts

Neatly stacked shipping containers

Securing Kuburnetes with StackRox

Dave McKay - May 21, 2021

StackRox integrates with Kubernetes to secure clusters of containers by scanning container images during the creation, deployment, and runtime phases. Real-time alerting, dashboards, and...

QNAP NAS in the initial physical setup process

How to Delete a Folder From File Station on a QNAP NAS

Marshall Gunnell - May 9, 2021

You may occasionally want to do some housekeeping on your QNAP NAS, and deleting folders may be a big part of it. Here's how...

World map with pins and strings connecting cities

ExpressVPN Review: How Does It Perform (and How to Install) on Ubuntu?

Dave McKay - May 3, 2021

ExpressVPN is considered one of the top-tier VPN products. We install it on Ubuntu 21.04 and use it from the command-line and from within...

Diskashur M2 Secure SSD Review: IP68, FIPS 140-2 Level 3 (soon) and a Good...

Jon L. Jacobi - April 30, 2021

iStorage's Diskashur M2 is stylish, stealthy and a pretty decent bargain as far as secure flash drives are concerned. More importantly, it's a good...

Seagate IronWolf 510

Seagate IronWolf 510 Review: A Long-lived NVMe Caching SSD Specifically for NAS

Jon L. Jacobi - April 29, 2021

Seagate's IronWolf 510 NVMe SSD is a fast reader with an excellent endurance rating, but it's a very slow, albeit hyper-steady writer. When I...

ABOUT US

ITEnterpriser is an independent online authority in the world of data storage, network security, and surveillance in both enterprise and consumer sectors.

FOLLOW US

About
Contact
Ethics
Sponsorship
Slack
Terms of Use
Privacy Policy
Subscribe

© 2020 ITEnterpriser, LLC. All rights reserved.