O que é um ciberataque?

Tendências de ataques cibernéticos

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.

Tipos de ataques cibernéticos

As ameaças cibernéticas das gerações V e VI são agora uma realidade para as empresas. Os cibercriminosos estão cientes dos recentes avanços na segurança cibernética das empresas e adaptaram os seus ataques para contornar e derrotar as salvaguardas tradicionais. Para evitar a detecção, os ciberataques modernos são multivetoriais e usam código polimórfico. Como resultado, detectar e responder a ameaças é mais desafiador do que nunca.

O principal alvo dos cibercriminosos e a primeira linha de defesa de uma organização no mundo do trabalho remoto é o endpoint. Proteger a força de trabalho remota requer uma compreensão dos riscos cibernéticos mais comuns que os funcionários enfrentam, bem como soluções de segurança de endpoint capazes de detectar, prevenir e resolver esses ataques.

Os ataques cibernéticos ocorrem em um variedade de formas diferentes. Os cibercriminosos usam muitos métodos diferentes para lançar um ciberataque, um ataque de phishing, uma exploração de credenciais comprometidas e muito mais. A partir desse acesso inicial, os cibercriminosos podem atingir diferentes objetivos, incluindo infecções por malware, ransomware, ataques de negação de serviço, roubo de dados e muito mais.