Chennai: Despite overall breaches and exposed records witnessing a downfall, losses from business email compromise (BEC) doubled and cryptojacking incidents more than tripled, said a report on cyber trends.
Released by the Internet Society’s Online Trust Alliance (OTA), the report named Cyber Incident & Breach Trends Report, found the financial impact of ransomware rose by 60 per cent last year.
The data shows that cybercriminals are getting better at monetising their activities, with OTA estimating that more than two million cyber incidents in 2018 resulted in over $45 billion in losses, with the actual numbers expected to be much higher as many cyber incidents are never reported.
OTA noted a steep rise in incidents like supply chain attacks, BEC and cryptojacking. Some attack types, such as ransomware, are not new but continue to be lucrative for criminals. Others, such as cryptojacking, show that criminals are shifting their focus to new targets, said the report.
OTA has said 95 per cent of found breaches could have been easily prevented through simple and common sense approaches to improving security. Some of the top trends from the report are rise of new criminals, deceptive emails, attacks via third parties, governments under attack, issues in cloud, etc.
On rise of new cyber criminals, the report said, “In conjunction with the increasing prevalence of cryptocurrency comes the rise of cryptojacking, which tripled in 2018. This is a specific type of attack aimed at hijacking devices to harness computer power at scale to efficiently mine cryptocurrency. OTA believes these incidents are increasingly attractive to criminals as they represent a direct path from infiltration to income, and are difficult to detect.”
“Though well-known as an attack vector, BEC doubled in 2018, resulting in $1.3 billion in losses as employees were deceived into sending funds or gift cards to attackers who use email to impersonate vendors or executives. Many companies are reacting by clearly labeling all emails that originate outside the organization’s network,” the report said on deceptive emails.
On governments across the globe coming under attack, the report took the breaches targeting the cities of Baltimore and Atlanta that led to the disruption of many government services and the rebuilding of entire network structures, as examples.
“Local governments are particularly vulnerable given that they often rely on outdated technology and are running old software and operating systems,” it noted.
Supply chain attacks — wherein attackers infiltrate via third-party website content, vendors’ software or third-parties’ credentials — were not new in 2018 (similar past exploits include Target in 2013, CCleaner and Not Petya in 2017), but they continue to proliferate and morph, it said.
“The most notable 2018 attack was Magecart, which infected the payment forms on more than 6,400 e-commerce sites worldwide. The report estimated a 78 per cent increase in these types of attacks in 2018, with two-thirds of organisations having experienced an attack at an average cost of $1.1 million, and estimates that half of all cyber attacks involve the supply chain,” said the report on attacks via third parties.
It also said it is increasingly important to ensure cloud storage is secure and added that user error is one common problem.
OTA, in the report, says it also found an increase in credential stuffing in 2018, an attack type that recently gained prominence.
Given that there are now more than 2.2 billion breached credentials in play and users often rely on identical logins across services, attackers are harnessing ultra-fast computers and known username/password pairs or commonly used passwords to gain access directly to accounts across a wide range of industries, noted the report.
| Expert speak |
| “While it’s tempting to celebrate a decreasing number of breaches overall, the findings of our report are grim,” said Jeff Wilbur, technical director of the Internet Society’s Online Trust Alliance.
“The financial impact of cybercrime is up significantly and cyber criminals are becoming more skilled at profiting from their attacks. So, while there may be fewer data breaches, the number of cyber incidents and their financial impact is far greater than we’ve seen in the past.” “Our report findings indicate that cybercriminals are using their infiltration ability to focus on new, more lucrative attacks. Staying up-to-date on the latest security safeguards and best practices is crucial to preventing attacks in the future,” he said. |