2022 breaks records for cyber threat activity
The final quarterly analysis of 2022's threat landscape from Nuspire confirms that last year saw the most threat activity in history.
While Q4 saw dips across all three sectors Nuspire monitors -- malware, botnets and exploits -- the net sum for the year shows a marked increase, especially in the case of exploits, which nearly doubled.
"We saw some normal ebbs in threat activity over the year, but the surges were stunning, delivering a volume of attacks we've never seen before," says J.R. Cunningham, chief security officer at Nuspire. "While many of the methods focused on securing quick wins, like phishing and exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities, we also saw a rise in more coordinated threat group attacks on large organizations and critical infrastructure. Expect 2023 to have more of this activity, as well as adversaries' increased attention toward attacking consumer IoT devices."
The report shows that exploit activity grew by 105 percent in Q4 2022, with total 2022 exploits nearly doubling over 2021. Brute forcing being the most popular tactic, increasing by nearly 400 percent over Q3 2022.
Malware jumped nearly 35 percent in Q4, with its year-on-year increase reaching 6.85 percent. Nuspire attributes this relatively smaller increase to the positive effects of Microsoft's decision to block Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros by default for Office files.
Botnets also saw a 30 percent jump in 2022, with banking trojan Torpig Mebroot comprising more than 40 percent of all botnet activity throughout the year.
"If 2022 showed us anything, it's that threat actors are not only increasingly adept at finding ways to circumnavigate established cybersecurity defenses, but also, they bring a level of agility that lets them quickly course correct when a vector loses viability," says Craig Robinson, research VP for security services at IDC. "We've seen the emergence of new security technologies aimed at thwarting a more creative and sophisticated adversary population, but no specific technology can replace the value of targeted threat intelligence to understand what's out there, how they're doing it and what you can do to protect yourself."
The full report is available from the Nuspire site.
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