Cyberattack Trends
Trend #1: Use of AI
One of the defining features of 2023 was the rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in cyber security. ChatGPT had a public launch in the final few months of 2023 and was seen as groundbreaking and unique. Within a few months, there were hundreds or thousands of new tools and projects applying generative AI and large language models (LLMs) to a variety of different tasks.
In the cybersecurity space, generative AI has numerous potential applications. These tools have already been applied to dramatically increase the quality of social engineering attacks and develop novel malware, including infostealers, keyloggers, and ransomware.
While companies such as OpenAI have attempted to build defenses into their tools, they have met with limited success. Research has demonstrated that these restrictions can be easily bypassed, allowing cybercriminals to leverage these tools to increase the scale and sophistication of their attacks.
Trend #2: Ransomware
Ransomware has been a leading cybersecurity threat for several years, and ransomware attacks have only become more sophisticated, common, and costly for companies.
One of the main drivers behind its enduring success is the constant evolution of the ransomware threat. Rivalry between ransomware groups has resulted in ransomware that encrypts faster, evades defenses, and targets more operating systems. Ransomware has also shifted from data encryption to data theft, defeating backups as a potential defense against paying ransoms.
Ransomware operators have also used various techniques to scale their attacks. In 2023, exploitation of supply chain and zero-day vulnerabilities have enabled large-scale, simultaneous attacks against many companies by the CL0P and LockBit ransomware groups.
Trend #3: Hacktivism
Hacktivists perform cyberattacks with political motivations. While groups such as Anonymous have performed such attacks for years, 2022 and the first half of 2023 have seen a dramatic uptick in state-affiliated hacktivist attacks.
These attacks commonly employ distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks to disrupt operations at organizations located in a particular nation-state. For example, the Russian-affiliated Killnet has targeted Western healthcare organizations, while the pro-Islamic Anonymous Sudan has attacked Scandinavian Airlines, US healthcare organizations, and Microsoft.
Trend #4 Mobile Threats
In recent years, mobile device usage has increased dramatically in the workplace. This trend is driven by the growth of remote work and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies.
As a result, cybercriminals have focused their efforts on compromising these mobile devices, and the quantity and quality of mobile malware have grown dramatically. Recent mobile malware campaigns like FluHorse target two-factor authentication (2FA) codes on mobile devices, while FakeCalls generates fraudulent voice calls impersonating financial applications. The Triangulation campaign underscores the changing iOS security landscape as cybercriminals exploit zero-click vulnerabilities in devices previously believed to be much more secure than their Android counterparts.
Cyberattacks in the News
Russia/Ukraine conflict
Check Point Research (CPR) has released information on cyber attacks that have been seen in the context of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict. In the first three days of battle, cyber attacks on Ukraine’s government and military sector increased by an astounding 196%. The number of cyber attacks on Russian businesses has climbed by 4%.
Phishing emails in East Slavic languages grew sevenfold, with a third of those malicious phishing emails being sent from Ukrainian email addresses to Russian receivers.
Apache Log4j Vulnerability
A severe remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in the Apache logging package Log4j 2 versions 2.14.1 and below was reported on December 9th 2021 (CVE-2021-44228). With over 400,000 downloads from its GitHub repository, Apache Log4j is the most popular java logging package. It is used by a large number of enterprises throughout the world and allows users to log in to a variety of popular applications. It’s easy to exploit this flaw, which allows threat actors to take control of java-based web servers and perform remote code execution assaults.
SolarWinds Sunburst Attack
The world is now facing what seems to be a 5th generation cyber-attack – a sophisticated, multi-vector attack with clear characteristics of the cyber pandemic. Named Sunburst by researchers, we believe this is one of the most sophisticated and severe attacks ever seen. The attack has been reported to impact major US government offices as well as many private sector organizations.
This series of attacks was made possible when hackers were able to embed a backdoor into SolarWinds software updates. Over 18,000 companies and government offices downloaded what seemed to be a regular software update on their computers, but was actually a Trojan horse. By leveraging a common IT practice of software updates, the attackers utilized the backdoor to compromise the organization’s assets enabling them to spy on the organization and access its data. For more information visit our Sunburst attack hub.
Ransomware Attacks
The resurgence of ransomware has been growing. Small local and state government agencies, mainly in the southeastern part of the U.S., have been victimized. Digital transformation is eroding traditional network perimeters with the adoption of cloud computing, cloud-based subscription services, and the ubiquity of mobile devices. This increased expansion of vectors means more ways to attack an organization.
In Q3 2020 Check Point Research saw a 50% increase in the daily average of ransomware attacks, compared to the first half of the year, Organizations worldwide were under a massive wave of ransomware attacks, with healthcare as the most targeted industry
As these attacks continue to mature both in frequency and intensity, their impact on business has grown exponentially. The Top ransomware types were Maze and Ryuk
Types of Cyberattacks
Cyber threats of generation V and VI are now a reality for businesses. Cybercriminals are aware of recent advancements in company cybersecurity and have adapted their attacks to circumvent and defeat traditional safeguards. To avoid detection, modern cyber attacks are multi-vectored and use polymorphic code. As a result, detecting and responding to threats is more challenging than ever.
Cybercriminals’ primary target and an organization’s first line of defense in the remote work world is the endpoint. Securing the remote workforce necessitates an understanding of the most common cyber risks that employees experience, as well as endpoint security solutions capable of detecting, preventing, and resolving these assaults.
Cyberattacks come in a variety of different forms. Cybercriminals use many different methods to launch a cyber attack, a phishing attack, an exploitation of compromised credentials, and more. From this initial access, cybercriminals can go on to achieve different objectives including malware infections, ransomware, denial of service attack, data theft, and more.
A Cyberattack is Preventable
Despite the prevalence of cyber attacks, Check Point data suggests that 99 percent of enterprises are not effectively protected. However, a cyber attack is preventable. The key to cyber defense is an end-to-end cyber security architecture that is multilayered and spans all networks, endpoint and mobile devices, and cloud. With the right architecture, you can consolidate management of multiple security layers, control policy through a single pane of glass. This lets you correlate events across all network environments, cloud services, and mobile infrastructures.
In addition to architecture, Check Point recommends these key measures to prevent cyber attacks:
- Maintain security hygiene
- Choose prevention over detection
- Implement the most advanced technologies
Learn more about recent cyber attack trends by checking out Check Point’s 2024 Cyber Security Report. You’re also welcome to learn how to protect against modern cyber threats by signing up for a free demo of Check Point Harmony Endpoint.
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