How to Exploit SQL Server Using OLE Automation

As part of the Imperva Research Labs we have the opportunity to examine various security scenarios. In this post, we will consider database security on SQL Server. One standard method that security practitioners use to protect databases is deploying honeypots and waiting for hackers to take the...

The Struggle is Real

We’ve all heard the phrase, “We live in a male dominated world.” This phrase is most often delivered with a negative connotation when someone perceives that they’re getting an unfair chance, at the mercy of men. What if we could live in a world where everyone’s unique contributions were equally...

2025 Imperva Bad Bot Report: How AI is Supercharging the Bot Threat

Bad bots continue to target organizations across every industry and geography, but the rise of Artificial Intelligence AI is fueling bot attacks, making them more intelligent and more evasive than ever before. For over twelve years, Imperva has been dedicated to helping organizations manage and...

Securely Managing Entitlement of S3 Resources

Here we’ll talk about securely managing entitlements of S3 resources including managing access control to S3 objects and utilizing audit logging to keep track of the usage of shared resources. Amazon’s AWS services allow for accounts to grant access to resources from other accounts on AWS. This...

A Cybersecurity and Cloud Innovator – and a Great Partner

Imperva has long been a cybersecurity leader, recognized by the likes of Gartner and Forrester Research for the capabilities of our application and data security solutions. For more than 6,000 business customers, we are their champion in the daily fight to secure data and applications. To ensure...

The top 3 OWASP risks to the financial services sector in 2021 and how to mitigate them

The Open Web Application Security Project OWASP is a non-profit organization that helps security experts protect web applications from cyber attacks. OWASP counts 32,000 volunteers worldwide who perform security assessments and conduct research on cybersecurity threats about which the larger...

Why Banks Are Still A Top Target For DDoS Attacks

The financial services sector is still a prime target for cyber criminals and it has been widely reported that in 2020 financial institutions came under attack more than ever before. According to Boston Consulting Group research, financial service firms are up to 300 times more likely to experien...

Imperva recognized as a ‘Leader’ in The Forrester Wave™: DDoS Mitigation Solutions, Q1 2021 Report

We are delighted to share that Imperva has been named a leader in The Forrester Wave: DDoS Mitigation Solutions, Q1 2021 report, a trusted source for technology buyers which helps security and risk professionals select the right vendor for their needs. You can download a copy of the report here...

Dynamic Content Acceleration in Imperva CDN Improves Enterprise Website Performance

Today we introduced a new dynamic content acceleration network enhancement feature designed to improve response times to the origin server by up to 30%. Clients using the Imperva content delivery network CDN service are now able to more fully leverage the high-quality connectivity between PoPs in...

5 Things We’ve Learned About CVE-2021-44228

Over the last week, Imperva Threat Research observed interesting data points related to CVE-2021-44228. Despite new variants being discovered and patched by our team, we wanted to share five interesting things that we’ve learned from analyzing a subset of our overall global network traffic. Attac...

New Research From Imperva Bot Management Tracks Gift Card Abuse

Researchers at Imperva Bot Management formerly Distil Networks have been tracking online bots that target the e-commerce gift card systems of major online retailers. The threat actors they’ve studied show remarkable resourcefulness and adaptability. In a recent podcast, Imperva Bot Management’s...

The Ping is the Thing: Popular HTML5 Feature Used to Trick Chinese Mobile Users into Joining Latest DDoS Attack

DDoS attacks have always been a major threat to network infrastructure and web applications. Attackers are always creating new ways to exploit legitimate services for malicious purposes, forcing us to constantly research DDoS attacks in our CDN to build advanced mitigations. We recently...

Protecting Your Data from Cyber Extortion: Lessons from the Latest Mega-hack

At the end of last year, enterprise firewall company Accellion was the victim of a two-phase SQL injection attack that resulted in significant sensitive data breaches over the last number of months. This attack is important for several reasons. It underscores the rise in frequency of incidents...

Securing Healthcare Data and Applications

The healthcare industry is quickly growing as a sweet spot for hackers to steal large amounts of patient records for profit. The US Department of Health and Human Services breach tool reports over 340 data breaches in 2017 impacting more than 3 million individuals, and 176.5 million individuals...

New Docker-based Dev Pipeline: Microservice Projects Just Got A ‘Speed-Boost’

A bulwark of software engineering projects, the development pipeline is an automated process used to deliver changes from development through to production; enabling near real-time updates. The dev pipeline is a critical time saver as it enables you to: Avoid mistakes and wasted time as a result...

Log4j: One Year Later

One year ago, the Log4j remote code execution vulnerability known as Log4Shell CVE-2021-44228 was announced. The critical severity level vulnerability in a logging framework used across virtually all Java environments quickly set the internet on fire when it was released and exploited. It’s...

Two New Trends Make Early Breach Detection and Prevention a Security Imperative

Key signs to look for in today’s complex data threat landscape Introduction The most vulnerable data repositories are the ones deep in your organization’s infrastructure. Everyone assumes they are safe, but as with your home, organizations must invest in security at entry points. Otherwise, the...

Adopting a Risk-Based Approach to Cybersecurity in the Financial Services Industry

Today’s financial organizations face many different risks in volatile and uncertain business environments, but the ever-present threat of cyberattacks and data breaches is now impossible to ignore. For this reason, managing these cyber-risks now has to simply be considered one of the many costs o...

Imperva Wins CRN 5-Star Partner Program 3rd Year in a Row. Here are Some Stats Behind Why.

A lot goes into building a good IT channel program. A truly-effective program should meet the vendor’s needs while also delivering attractive benefits to our partners. A successful channel program should deliver a number of key elements, including: partner profitability partner self-service acces...

A Deep Dive into Database Attacks [Part II]: Delivery and Execution of Malicious Executables through SQL commands (SQL Server)

An organization’s database servers are frequently the prime target of attackers. We recently started a new research project we named StickyDB to learn more about database hacking, primarily to understand common database attacks, tools and techniques engaged by attackers. To conduct this research,...

Detecting Account Takeover Botnets

A botnet is a network of compromised computers - known as bots - usually controlled by a command and control computer, that work together in coordination for a malicious purpose. In this blog post, we’ll discuss how to detect botnets used for account takeover ATO, an attack used to obtain the val...

CrimeOps of the KashmirBlack Botnet – Part I

Introduction Being in a research team exposes us to a variety of attacks on different platforms, of different types, scope, and volume. It also gives us the opportunity to select particularly interesting attacks that target our customers and to analyze them. This blog will give you a taste of the...

A New Chapter in Bot Management Begins Today [Video]

I am excited to share that we have closed the acquisition of Distil Networks, the pioneer and leader in Bot Management. Over the past few weeks, we have been welcoming Distil’s employees into the Imperva family and have started integrating their powerful, analyst-recognized Bot Management solutio...

Shifting from reCAPTCHA to hCaptcha

We are adding another CAPTCHA vendor and helping our customers migrate from Googles reCAPTCHA to hCaptcha. Why We Are Making This Change We continuously evaluate our security measures to ensure they align with the evolving landscape of threats. After carefully evaluating several different CAPTCHA...

Mitigate Http/2 continuations with Imperva WAF

As the threat landscape continues to grow, with new breaches being announced every day, Imperva continues to stay one step ahead of attackers. HTTP/2 exploits seem to be growing every quarter as more attackers use this vulnerability in new ways. We previously wrote about how Imperva protected its...

Imperva Detects Undocumented 8220 Gang Activities

Imperva Threat Research has detected previously undocumented activity from the 8220 gang, which is known for the mass deployment of malware using a variety of continuously evolving TTPs. This threat actor has been known to target both Windows and Linux web servers with cryptojacking malware. In...

Drupal, Phishing and A New Cryptomining Botnet

It’s a well-known fact that security solutions must quickly adapt to new attack methods. There are several ways to achieve this goal, regularly applying security patches and updates, relying on threat intelligence and more. At Imperva, we use pattern anomaly detection as one of the tools to...

Every Second Counts When You’re Under Attack — Imperva Provides 3 Second DDoS Mitigation, Stops Account Takeovers & Protects your APIs

Let’s be blunt: cybersecurity is a never-ending arms race between bad actors and IT and security teams. Lately, attackers have surged. Armed with powerful, inexpensive hacking tools and deep knowledge gleaned from successful breaches, attackers are organizing sprawling botnets, probing soft targe...

New Imperva Java SDK: Greasing The Wheels for Active Directory Coding Projects

According to StackOverflow’s 2018 Developer Survey, Java remains one of the world’s most popular coding languages, universally liked for its versatility and ease of adoption. Even so, working under the pressures developers often do, a bit of help always goes a long way. To that end, we’ve put...

Database Activity Monitoring: Configuring a Cluster in Four Easy Steps

Imperva SecureSphere Database Activity Monitoring DAM offers multiple deployment modes, including managing your gateways in a cluster. There are four steps to configuring a gateway cluster and we’ll be discussing them in this post. But first, let’s review the advantages of using a cluster: High...

Why Attackers Target the Gaming Industry

Key Takeaways: The gaming industry is a common target for cyberattacks due to its financial success and vast user base. Volumetric DDoS attacks can disrupt service, distract from more serious attacks, and cause financial damage, especially on sites that offer online multiplayer games or real-time...

Attackers Quick to Weaponize CVE-2023-22527 for Malware Delivery

On January 16, 2024, Atlassian disclosed a critical vulnerability affecting Confluence Data Center and Confluence Server, tracked as CVE-2023-22527. The vulnerability is an unauthenticated OGNL injection bug, allowing unauthenticated attackers to execute Java expressions, invoke methods, navigate...

Cloud Template Tool – The only way for Imperva On-Premises deployment on AWS

For the last six years, Imperva’s customers have been able to deploy our On-Premises product on AWS and enjoy the many advantages of cloud deployment including flexibility, cost-effectiveness, scalability, accessibility and many others. But using Imperva On-Premises on AWS wasn’t always easy, and...

No One is Safe: the Five Most Popular Social Engineering Attacks Against Your Company’s Wi-Fi Network

Your Wi-Fi routers and access points all have strong WPA2 passwords, unique SSIDs, the latest firmware updates, and even MAC address filtering. Good job, networking and cybersecurity teams! However, is your network truly protected? TL;DR: NO! In this post, I’ll cover the most common social...

Imperva and Amazon Partner to Help Mitigate Risks Associated With Cloud Migration

Helping our customers reduce the risks associated with migrating to the cloud, and preventing availability and security incidents, has been a major development focus for Imperva over the last several years. Why the partnership matters Although cloud service providers take a host of IT management...

New Sysrv Botnet Variant Makes Use of Google Subdomain to Spread XMRig Miner

Sysrv is a well-documented botnet first identified in 2020, with the main payload being a worm written in Golang. It drops a cryptominer onto infected hosts before attempting to propagate itself using various methods, including network vulnerabilities. Over the past few years, the botnet has...

Four Key Findings from the 2022 Cyberthreat Defense Report

For the ninth year, Imperva is proud to sponsor CyberEdge Group’s annual Cyberthreat Defense Report. In this report, CyberEdge Group delivers a detailed accounting of how IT security professionals perceive cyberthreats today and reveals actionable insights into how they plan to defend their...

What we know about VMWare CVE-2022–31656 and CVE-2022–31659

Takeaways: VMWare Workspace ONE vulnerabilities CVE-2022-31656 and CVE-2022-31659 work in tandem to allow a remote attacker with network access to conduct remote code execution on the server. Imperva Threat Research has seen a sharp rise in attacks since a POC was published on August 9, mostly...

How Account Takeover Botnets Outsmart Traditional Security Controls

Account Takeover ATO describes when an online account is accessed and/ or used by someone other than its legitimate owner, usually for malicious purposes. Account Takeover attacks happen when an attacker is trying to get unauthorized access to an account or when the account has already been...

Imperva Increases Self-Service Capability Fourfold with Custom Security Rules

Back in 2014, we introduced Rules previously IncapRules to give our customers advanced control over their application security. Today we’re putting even more of this custom tuning power in the hands of our customers by quadrupling the number of filters available via self-service. Rules Basics Rul...

Imperva Blocks Our Largest DDoS L7/Brute Force Attack Ever (Peaking at 292,000 RPS)

Imagine you’re a developer building a new web application. You’ve followed all of the security best practices, hired a reputable penetration testing company before launch, and gone through extensive bug fixing to remove any vulnerabilities. However, would you be confident that your application...

Web Security Leader Rapidly Expands by Partnering with AWS and Imperva

Companies try to plan and pace their growth. Those plans go out the window when a merger or acquisition happens, as it did to DigiCert Inc. DigiCert, based in Lehi, Utah, had long been a leading Certificate Authority CA, providing electronic documents that verify and authenticate the identities o...

Survey: 44% of Security Professionals Spend More than 20 Hours a Week Responding to Alerts

As the global cybersecurity climate continues to heat up, so too do the subsequent levels of alert fatigue IT security professionals have to deal with. A recent survey by Imperva reveals that nine percent of UK security teams battle with over five million alerts each week. Five million, just let...

Effortless certificate management with automated CNAME validation

Imperva customers who properly utilize the managed certificate feature can experience a robust, interruptions-free, and fully automated certificate management process that requires no effort for domain validations and renewals. In todays digital landscape, security is of paramount importance. One...

Read: New Attack Analytics Dashboard Streamlines Security Investigations

Attack Analytics, launched this May, aimed to crush the maddening pace of alerts that security teams were receiving. For security analysts unable to triage this avalanche of alerts, Attack Analytics condenses thousands upon thousands of alerts into a handful of relevant, investigable incidents...

Imperva Recognized as a 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant WAF Leader, Five Years Running

Gartner has named Imperva as a Leader in the 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Application Firewalls WAF -- for the fifth year in a row! Our combination of on-premises appliances, cloud WAF, shared threat intelligence and flexible licensing once again cement us as the best choice for companies ...

NEW: Vulnerability and Assessment Scanning for Your AWS Cloud Databases

Scuba is a free and easy-to-use tool that uncovers hidden security risks. Scuba is frequently updated with content from Imperva’s Defense Center researchers. With Scuba you can: Scan enterprise databases for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations Identify risks to your databases Get recommendation...

Analysis of Ronggolawe Ransomware and How to Block It

In the last few years ransomware attacks have been significantly on the rise. This infamous trend began by targeting end point users’ machines, such as personal desktop and laptops. Later, it evolved and broadened the attack surface to target mobile phones and servers. Web Servers Not Immune to...

APIs Ease Customer Interaction — and External Attacks. Here’s how to Protect Them.

To deliver seamless service experiences to our customers, businesses now rely heavily on application programming interfaces APIs. These are a non-negotiable aspect of the way we streamline the interactions and conversations we have with our customers, both internal and external. APIs are now so...

CVE-2023-34362 – MOVEit Transfer – An attack chain that retrieves sensitive information

MOVEit Transfer is a popular secure file transfer solution developed by Progress, a subsidiary of Ipswitch. At the moment, there are more than 2,500 MOVEit Transfer servers that are accessible from the internet, according to Shodan. On May 31, 2023, Progress released a security advisory affecting...