Rise of the bots -- 42.3 percent of internet traffic in 2021 wasn't human
The latest Bad Bot Report from Imperva shows that bots are an increasingly significant part of the web, accounting for over 42 percent of traffic overall.
More concerning still is that bad bots accounted for a record-setting 27.7 percent of all global website traffic in 2021, up from 25.6 percent in 2020. The three most common bot attacks are account takeover, content or price scraping, and scalping to obtain limited-availability items.
Majority of Americans fear some form of cyberwarfare
The war in Ukraine has highlighted the role that the cyber world has to play in modern conflict and a new survey from NordVPN finds that 93 percent of Americans believe that another country could launch cyberwarfare against the US.
What's more, of over 1,000 consumers surveyed only 19 percent feel 100 percent confident in the government's ability to protect them, despite the fact that 70 percent rank the US as the most secure country for cyber war attacks.
IT leaders think security is lagging behind current threats
New research from Vectra AI reveals that 74 percent of respondents experienced a significant cybersecurity event in the past year.
The study surveyed 1,800 global IT security decision-makers at companies with over 1,000 employees and finds that 92 percent of respondents say that they had felt increased pressure to keep their organization safe from cyberattacks over the past year.
New platform aims to stop weaponization of phishing domains
New phishing sites are launched on a regular basis, even back in 2017 1.4 million were launching every month according to Webroot, and most of them exist for less than 24 hours.
This makes it hard for security teams to pre-empt attacks, but email and brand protection company Red Sift has come up with an answer in the launch of a new platform that proactively uncovers impersonation domains and takes them down before they can be exploited.
Evolving attack techniques target cloud-native systems
Attackers are finding new ways to target cloud-native environments according to a new report from Aqua Security's Nautilus threat research team.
While cryptominers are the most common malware observed, with increasing frequency researchers have discovered an increased usage of backdoors, rootkits and credential stealers.
Cyberattacks increase as security talent remains scarce
A new survey of more than 1,200 security leaders reveals they've seen an increase in cyberattacks while their teams are facing widening talent gaps.
According to the latest State of Security report from Splunk 65 percent of respondents say they have seen an increase in attempted cyberattacks. In addition, many have been directly impacted by data breaches and costly ransomware attacks, which have left security teams exhausted.
'RansomOps' attacks yield record returns for perpetrators
Early ransomware campaigns relied on sending out large volumes of emails in so called 'spray-and-pray' attacks.
But a new report released today by Cybereason highlights the rise of sophisticated RansomOps attacks that are allowing ransomware syndicates to reap the benefits of record profits.
Lessons the military can bring to cybersecurity [Q&A]
The ongoing struggle between good and bad actors in the cyber world has often been compared to a battle or warfare. More recently the threat of nation state attacks on critical infrastructure has led to more actual military interest in the cyber arena, as we've seen in Ukraine.
The Israel Defense Force's 8200 unit is often referred to the SEALs or SAS of cyber military units and its veterans are driving many of Israel's tech start ups.
Three-quarters of companies suffered downtime in the past year
New research from Atlas VPN shows 76 percent of companies globally have suffered service downtime in the past year.
Reasons include system crashes, human errors, and cyberattacks as the primary causes of downtime. In addition, many IT managers are concerned about increasing numbers of politically-driven cyberattacks.
Employees not fully prepared for cyberattacks say IT leaders
Over half (56 percent) of IT security leaders say that their non-technical staff are only 'somewhat' or 'not at all' prepared, for a cyberattack.
A new survey by Egress of 600 IT security leaders also shows that 77 percent of respondents have seen an increase in security compromises since going remote twp years ago, and there's a continued significant risk to organizations.
Two-thirds of ransomware victims paid up last year
A record 71 percent of organizations were impacted by successful ransomware attacks last year, according to the 2022 Cyberthreat Defense Report (CDR) from CyberEdge Group, up from 55 percent in 2017.
Of those that fell victim, almost two-thirds (63 percent) paid the requested ransom, up from 39 percent in 2017.
DDoS attacks grow in size and complexity
Though the overall number fell slightly, DDoS attacks became both bigger and more complicated in 2021 according to a new report from cloud-based managed security services platform F5 Silverline.
By the final quarter of last year the mean attack size recorded was above 21 Gbps, more than four times the level at the beginning of 2020. Last year also saw the record for the largest-ever attack broken on several occasions.
Ransomware can encrypt 100,000 files in under 45 minutes
New research from Splunk's SURGe team looks at how quickly ten major ransomware strains, including Lockbit, Revil and Blackmatter, can encrypt 100,000 files.
The research shows that the median ransomware variant can encrypt nearly 100,000 files totaling 53.93GB in 42 minutes and 52 seconds. Encryption speeds vary between ransomware variants though with individual ransomware samples ranging from four minutes to three and a half hours to encrypt the same data.
Pen testing tools increasingly used by threat actors
Legitimate penetration testing tools like Cobalt Strike, Impacket and RMM, are being used by threat actors because it's more efficient to use existing tools that are proven to be successful than to create new software.
The latest Threat Detection Report from managed detection and response firm Red Canary shows Cobalt Strike in particular has never been more popular, impacting eight percent of its customers in 2021.
Cyberwarfare plays growing role in the Russia-Ukraine conflict
As we reported last week, cyberattacks are being used on both sides of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Two new reports out today take a deeper look at how the cyber aspect of the conflict is developing.
Accenture's Cyber Threat Intelligence team has been looking at how threat actors have been dividing along ideological lines. Meanwhile Aqua Security's Team Nautilus has been analyzing the cloud technologies used in the conflict.
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