I'm leading a team of IT technicians, and I just received an alert from our security team regarding one of my team members' laptops. They flagged several issues, including a honeytoken alert, three instances of basic malware, two cracking keygens, and a change in a system file name. We took immediate steps by resetting the password, deleting sessions, and resetting multi-factor authentication. I've also reached out to the security team to investigate any login attempts in Azure. I'm curious about how this might have happened initially and would appreciate any advice on how to manage this situation effectively.
2 Answers
They probably downloaded something they shouldn't have. It's often the easiest explanation. Sometimes, it might not even be intentional; even one compromised ad, website, or email can set everything off.
It could be as simple as a trojanized version of a tool like WinDirStat. Malicious actors are out there distributing weaponized versions of popular software or paying to have their links appear at the top of search results. Unfortunately, sysadmins are prime targets since they hold high-level access with minimal effort required to exploit.
Yeah, definitely! It’s surprising how quickly someone can get infected just by clicking the wrong link or downloading a shady file.