- Let's go over what are threat actors?
Right. So threat actors, bad actors
or malicious actors, you know, all these are
different names that basically mean the same thing.
Other folks actually call them attackers
but the industry is actually standardizing
in the word or the, you know, name, threat actor.
So the threat actors are individuals
or a group of individuals that perform an attacks
or responsible for a acute scene incident
that impacts or actually has the potential
of impacting an organization or an individual, right?
So there are several types of threat actors
and here are actually including,
you know, a few examples.
First one is actually script kiddies,
And these are people who uses assistance scripts
you know, thus, the words, script kitties,
or, you know
different tools to actually hack into computers
and to networks.
And actually, you know
they actually lack the expertise, right.
To write their own software, their own exploits.
So basically actually use somebody else's
and you see these very often for either,
you know, kids, you know
nowadays actually launching the denial service attacks
you know, and using specific tools or, you know
individuals that are somewhat
quote unquote amateurs, right.
That, that, that they actually want to perform,
you know either malicious or, you know
an illicit activity using somebody else's script
right?
Now we also have organized crime groups.
Right. And the main purpose
of these groups is actually to steal information,
scam people, and make money, right?
And there are many different organized crime
groups that are, you know cyber threat actors
that make a lot of money nowadays.
And this is actually an unfortunate reality that the cyber
you know, economy, what we call the cyber economy
you know, scamming people, stealing information.
This means, you know, credit card information
medical records, social security numbers
identity of people, and many others, you know
this is actually a huge business nowadays.
Even with the now very popular, you know
set of exploits at malware called ransomware.
right?
So these organized crimes actually making a lot of money
and there's also state sponsor and governments,
right.
And these are interested in of course stealing data
including intellectual property
and research and developing data from many major government
agencies, manufacturers, and defense contractors.
Right.
And we also have hactivists
which are the people that actually carry
out cybersecurity attacks, aimed
at promoting a social or political cause.
Right.
So basically these are protesting against something
right.
For political or, you know, social motives.
Right. And then we have the terrorist groups
and they're motivated by political
and or religious beliefs as well.