Dubai, United Arab Emirates - Wednesday, 18. January 2023
Between
July and October, Acronis found that the proportion of phishing attacks
has risen by 1.3x, accounting for 76% of all attacks – an 18% increase
from a previous Acronis report released earlier this year
Acronis, a global leader in cyber protection, released its latest cyberthreats and trends report for the second half of 2022
which found that phishing and the use of MFA fatigue attacks, an
extremely effective method used in high-profile breaches, are on the
rise. Conducted by Acronis’ Cyber Protection Operation Center, the
report provides an in-depth analysis of the cyberthreat landscape
including ransomware threats, phishing, malicious websites, software
vulnerabilities and a security forecast for 2023.
Of note, the
report found that threats from phishing and malicious emails have
increased by 60% and the average data breach cost is expected to reach
US$5 million by next year. The research team who authored the report
also saw social engineering attacks jump in the last four months,
accounting for 3% of all attacks. Leaked or stolen credentials, which
allow attackers to easily execute cyberattacks and ransomware campaigns,
were the cause of almost half of reported breaches in H1 2022.
“The
last few months have proven to be as complex as ever – with new threats
constantly emerging and malicious actors continuing to use the same
proven playbook for big payouts,” said Candid Wüest, Acronis VP of Cyber
Protection Research. “Organizations must prioritize all-encompassing
solutions when looking to mitigate phishing and other hacking attempts
in the new year. Attackers are evolving, using some of the tools, like
MFA, that we rely on to protect our employees and businesses against
us.”
Middle East and Africa Cybersecurity Landscape
As
the Middle East region continues to grow its digital ecosystem, solid
cybersecurity strategies remain a top priority on the back of heightened
data breaches. According to security analysts, breaches reported in the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for example, could reach an average of US$7
million as the country continues to report one out of five attacks to be
ransomware.
With the average cost of ransomware attacks
increasing every year, factors such as weak credentials, phishing
emails, and unpatched vulnerabilities remain the top cyber-attacking
vectors. In the UAE, targeted organizations lost over US$1.4 million in
ransomware, forcing over 40% of the impacted companies to shut down.
Following this worrying trend, the UAE Cyber Security Council announced
the adoption of stringent cybersecurity standards to safeguard the
country’s digital space.
Ranked as the sixth-most dense region
for cybercrime in the world, cybercrime victims in South Africa surged
from 14.1 victims per one million internet users in 2019 to 50.8 victims
in 2020. Most recently, the country enacted its cybersecurity act,
which clearly defines cybercrimes in a bid to effectively regulate and
prosecute them.
In Kenya and Nigeria, financial phishing attempts
rose significantly in Q1 and Q2 of 2022 as banks, online payment
systems, and e-commerce websites were targeted. In Kenya, over 100,000
financial phishing attacks were detected – a 201% increase compared to
Q1 and Nigeria has reported over 61,000 financial phishing attacks,
representing an increase of 79% compared to Q1.
Report Highlights: Threat Landscape Sees New Challenges
As
security tactics and the technologies associated with them evolve, so
do the threat actors trying to break into organizations and their
ecosystems. The constant feed of ransomware, phishing and unpatched
vulnerabilities demonstrates how crucial it is for businesses to
reevaluate their security strategies.
Ransomware Continues to Worsen:
Ransomware continues to be the number one threat to enterprises and
businesses including government, healthcare and organizations in other
sectors.
Each month in the second half of this year, ransomware gangs were adding 200-300 new victims to their combined list.
The market of ransomware operators was dominated by 4-5 players. By the
end of Q3 the total number of compromised targets published for the
main operators in 2022 were as follows:
LockBit - 1157
Hive - 192
BlackCat - 177
Black Basta – 89
576 publicly mentioned ransomware compromises in Q3, a slight increase from Q2.
The number of ransomware incidents decreased slightly in Q3, after a
high during the summer months. From July to August, Acronis saw a 49%
increase in blocked ransomware attacks globally, followed by a decrease
of 12.9% in September and 4.1% in October.
There is a shift
towards more data exfiltration as the main actors are continuing to
professionalize their operations. Most of the large players have
expanded to MacOS and Linux and are also looking at the cloud
environment.
Phishing and Malicious Emails Remain Successful for Threat Actors:
The most-attacked countries in terms of malware per user in Q3 of 2022 were South Korea, Jordan and China.
An average of 7.7% of endpoints tried to access some malicious URLs in Q3 2022, slightly reduced from 8.3% in Q2.
The country with the most clients experiencing malware detections in
October 2022 was the United States with 22.1%, followed by Germany with
8.8% and Brazil with 7.8% which are very similar to the Q2 numbers,
except for US and Germany which had a small increase, especially in
financial trojans.
Spam rates have increased by over 15% — reaching 30.6% of all inbound traffic.
Email-borne attacks are targeting virtually all industries. By
analyzing the top 50 most attacked organizations, it seems that the most
attacked industries are:
Construction
Retail
Real estate
Professional Services (Services and computers & IT)
Finance
Between July and October 2022, the proportion of phishing attacks has
risen by 1.3x reaching 76% of all email attacks (up from 58% in H1
'2022). This rise is at the expense of the proportion of malware
attacks.
Unpatched Vulnerabilities Prove Fruitful into the Second Half of the Year:
Acronis continues to see and warn businesses and home users that new
zero-day vulnerabilities and old unpatched ones are the top vector of
attack to compromise systems.
While software vendors try to keep
up and release patches regularly, quite often it is still not enough -- a
lot of attacks succeed due to unpatched vulnerabilities.
Microsoft:
Another phishing campaign targeting Microsoft did impersonate "the
Microsoft team" and tried to bait the recipients into adding their memo
text onto an online memorial board "in memory of Her Majesty Queen
Elizabeth II" when she passed away in September.
Another
large-scale phishing campaign was spotted targeting credentials for
Microsoft’s M365 email services. It is aimed at fin-tech, lending,
accounting, insurance, and Federal Credit Union organizations in the US,
UK, New Zealand, and Australia.
Download a copy of the full
Acronis End-of-Year Cyber Threats Report 2022 here:
https://www.acronis.com/en-us/lp/cyberthreats-report-2022-end-year.
About Acronis
Acronis
unifies data protection and cybersecurity to deliver integrated,
automated cyber protection that solves the safety, accessibility,
privacy, authenticity, and security (SAPAS) challenges of the modern
digital world. With flexible deployment models that fit the demands of
service providers and IT professionals, Acronis provides superior cyber
protection for data, applications, and systems with innovative
next-generation antivirus, backup, disaster recovery, and endpoint
protection management solutions powered by AI. With advanced
anti-malware powered by cutting-edge machine intelligence and
blockchain-based data authentication technologies, Acronis protects any
environment - from cloud to hybrid to on-premises - at a low and
predictable cost.
Founded in Singapore in 2003 and incorporated
in Switzerland in 2008, Acronis now has more than 2,200 employees in 40
locations in 19 countries. Acronis Cyber Protect solution is available
in 26 languages in over 150 countries and is used by over 20,000 service
providers to protect over 750,000 businesses.
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Contacts
Melwyn Abraham - melwyn@matrixdubai.com