Vivek Ramachandran to discuss cyber threats in Singapore

Vivek Ramachandran, Founder of SquareX and an experienced cybersecurity expert, will deliver a presentation at the Black Hat Asia Financial Services Summit concerning the evolving cyber threats facing financial institutions.

The talk titled "The War Against State Actors: Bleeding Edge Techniques Targeting Financial Services" is scheduled for 2nd April 2025 at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. His presentation will focus on the tactics used by nation-state attackers to penetrate financial systems and circumvent enterprise security mechanisms.

Ramachandran plans to delve into recent high-profile cyberattacks. Among these are Russia's Midnight Blizzard RDP exploit, North Korea's remote IT worker scams, and China's Storm-0940 campaigns, which focus on password spraying. He will explain how these entities utilise trusted binaries and host them on verified domains, employing sophisticated data exfiltration methods to evade the safeguards of Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE/SSE), and endpoint Data Loss Prevention (DLP) systems.

"Financial institutions remain one of the most highly targeted industries, with state-backed actors leading the pack when it comes to developing new attack techniques," said Vivek Ramachandran, Founder and CEO of SquareX. "Thus, it is absolutely critical to understand what state-backed threat actors are doing to comprehend how the threat landscape is evolving. Over the past year, we have witnessed multiple scenarios of state-backed attacks bypassing SASE/SSEs and EDRs with novel browser-native techniques, and it is only a matter of time before other attackers follow suit," he added.

The Financial Services Summit provides a platform for security professionals to examine the evolving threats impacting the financial sector. Ramachandran's session will include case studies of incidents that have caused millions of dollars in damage to organisations, accompanied by strategies on how to bolster defences against such emerging threats.

Vivek Ramachandran's credentials in cybersecurity are well-documented. He has founded SquareX, focusing on a browser-native security product aimed at detecting, mitigating, and threat-hunting web attacks impacting enterprises and consumers. Before establishing SquareX, he founded Pentester Academy, which was acquired in 2021 after training countless experts from government and enterprise clients.

Ramachandran's contributions to the field include the discovery of the Caffe Latte attack, uncovering the flaws in WEP Cloaking, and conceptualising enterprise Wi-Fi Backdoors. As an author, his books on offensive cybersecurity have been highly rated and translated into several languages worldwide.

Additionally, Ramachandran has delivered speeches and training sessions at leading security events including Black Hat USA, DEFCON, and others. His research and expertise have been cited in media outlets like Forbes and TechCrunch. In recognition of his contributions, he has been accorded the honorary title of Regional Director of Cybersecurity by Microsoft and has served on the Black Hat Arsenal Review Board.

Ramachandran's long-standing engagement with cybersecurity continues through his work with SquareX, a company focusing on defending against web-based threats to enterprise systems. SquareX has pioneered multiple browser security techniques and remains committed to addressing vulnerabilities through its Year of Browser Bugs initiative.