Brendan Smith

Brendan Smith has spent over 15 years knee-deep in cybersecurity, chasing down malware from the gritty reverse-engineering of old-school trojans all the way to wrangling full-blown incident responses for small-to-medium businesses that couldn’t afford a full-blown breach. Over at Gridinsoft, he’s the guy piecing together those double-checked guides on nasty stuff like AsyncRAT, a remote access tool used in malware campaigns—helping readers make sense of the threat and work through cleanup without the extra headache.
Cybersecurity Analyst
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726 Articles

Storm-2570 Uses Four Ransomware Brands—and the Same Access Tools

Microsoft links Storm-2570 to four ransomware families. Repeated remote access, credential theft…

Brendan Smith

CLOSEDQUORUM: Windows Malware Puts Its Next Move to a Vote

Talos found a Windows implant designed to take votes from four AI…

Brendan Smith

Trojan:PowerShell/Boxter!MTB: Remove It and Check Repeat Alerts

Check a Trojan:PowerShell/Boxter!MTB alert, remove detected threats, and distinguish new PowerShell activity…

Brendan Smith

AWS Quarantined a Leaked Key in 10 Seconds. The Response Wasn’t Over.

Unit 42 measured AWS quarantining a public GitHub key leak in 10…

Brendan Smith

Diagnostic Policy Service High CPU: Find What Keeps It Busy

Trace Diagnostic Policy Service CPU spikes to their trigger. Check the host…

Brendan Smith

Service Host Network Service High Network Usage: Find the Download

Identify the service behind heavy Windows network traffic, separate downloads from peer…

Brendan Smith

State Repository Service High CPU: Find the App Behind It

Trace State Repository Service high CPU to an app, update or Windows…

Brendan Smith

PAYLOAD Turns Windows Group Policy Into a Ransom Demand

PAYLOAD attackers used domain policy to display ransom notes without encrypting Windows…

Brendan Smith

Three Exploited Linux Kernel Flaws: Check Your Patch Track

CISA lists three exploited Linux kernel flaws. Check the exact Ubuntu kernel…

Brendan Smith

AgentCore Harness Test Exposes a Service Token Through Memory

Unit 42 demonstrated AgentCore credential theft through a support ticket. See why…

Brendan Smith

LeakySensey Rents Out Hacked Routers as a Proxy Network

LeakySensey turned weak VPN logins into rented proxies. What the exposed server…

Brendan Smith

Settra Ransomware Leaves a Defender Log Intact After a Typo

Huntress found that Settra misspelled a Defender event-log name. What survived, how…

Brendan Smith

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