On October 1, Spanish police announced the arrest of the suspected leader of the cybercriminal gang KillSec. The group was linked to roughly 1,000 suspected attacks on organizations worldwide, including hospitals and government offices, encrypting their files and demanding payment to restore access. It ran like a small business, with a boss, a programmer, a ransom negotiator, and paying cybercriminal customers. Those customers logged into a website and used KillSec’s ready-made tools. They then used AI to find easy victims, usually organizations that hadn’t installed software updates or had left their online files poorly protected.
Europol, the European police agency, says the KillSec leader is 16 years old. He isn’t old enough to drive legally in Spain, yet he’s accused of running an international extortion ring. Today, cybercriminals don’t necessarily need advanced technical skills. They can rent ready-made attack tools for a monthly fee, much like signing up for Netflix!
Email scams work the same way. In May, the FBI warned about Kali365, a service that gives cybercriminals ready-made phishing tools. Victims can be tricked into entering a code on a legitimate Microsoft verification page, unknowingly giving criminals access to their Microsoft 365 accounts, including email, Teams chats, and online files, without needing their passwords. They then quietly read emails, wait for bills to come due, and then send a message asking the victim to pay a “new” bank account. Scammers stole more than $3 billion from Americans this way in 2025.
Software updates, login protections, and staff training can prevent many attacks. But with sophisticated tools increasingly available to criminals with little technical experience, prevention alone isn’t enough. Detecting and containing an attack quickly can be just as important.
With our 1-MDR service, our security team watches over your computers and email 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including the weekends and holidays when criminals like to strike. If we spot an infected computer, we automatically cut it off from the rest of your network so the problem can’t spread. If we detect a hacked email account, we automatically lock it before a fake bill goes out. Afterward, our team helps you figure out what happened and get back to normal.
What you can do to keep cybercriminals out of your accounts and email:
- Never approve a login request or enter a code you didn’t ask for. If one pops up unexpectedly, report it.
- Speak up quickly. If you clicked something you shouldn’t have, tell us right away. The sooner we know, the smaller the problem.
- Don’t work around a lockout. If your computer suddenly loses network access or you can’t get into your email, call us. It may be a sign that our security tools have detected a threat and taken action.
Today, a teenager can run an international hacking gang, and criminals with little technical experience can rent tools to break into business accounts. We can’t make attacks impossible, but we can work to catch them quickly and stop them from spreading, day or night.
To learn more about 1-MDR and our around-the-clock protection, email [email protected].
