The use of Cobalt Strike – the legitimate, commercially available tool used by network penetration testers – by cybercrooks has shot through the roof, according to Proofpoint researchers, who say that the tool has now “gone fully mainstream in the crimeware world.” The researchers have tracked a year-over-year increase of 161 percent in the number of real-world attacks where Cobalt Strike has shown up. They’ve witnessed the tool being used to target tens of thousands of organizations, wielded by more cybercriminals and general-commodity malware operators than by advanced persistent threat (APT) actors or by those operators who prefer general commodity malware, the researchers said in a report published on Tuesday.

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