Research shows that cybercriminals are posing threats to vulnerable IoT devices to obtain data from colossalcompanies. McAfee Labs Threats Report, August 2019 gives tremendous information on how rapidly the threat landscape is growing. The report discusses the latest trends in threats statistics in Q1 of 2019, and described the past couple of months as “the quarter of data dumps.”
Both McAfee® Advanced Threat Research team and McAfee® Labs team worked on this report.
The report asserts that there was a 118% increase in ransomware attacks in the first quarter of 2019. It also says that researchers discovered distinct ransomware families. For example, in January, they detected a ransomware family called Anatova. The primary purpose of using this was to cipher the files before sending payment requests to those they want to attack.
Besides the report also claims that the methods that attackers used were also more advanced. The researchers admit that based on the data that they gathered, they discovered that there was an enormous HTTP web exploitation traffic. On top of that, they also noticed that attackers made efforts to compromise remote devices. They found an increase of 460% in the use of PowerShell for targetting servers.
A report suggests that according to Raj Samani, McAfee fellow, and chief scientist, the effect of these threats is quite substantial. He says, “It’s important to recognize that the numbers, highlighting increases or decreases of certain types of attacks, only tell a fraction of the story. Every infection is another business dealing with outages, or a consumer-facing major fraud. We must not forget for every cyberattack there is a human cost.”
Researchers discovered that ransomware attackers had access to over 2.2 billion stolen credentials in the first quarter of 2019. And they have also come up with techniques to access WiFi-powered coffee makers.
Stealing confidential information from companies is not a new thing; ransomware attackers have been doing so for years now. A former Amazon engineer named Paige A. Thompson also stole sensitive information from millions of people in America and Canada.
Altogether, he stole confidential information from over 106 million people. Besides, he also managed to gain access to the data from over 30 firms.
McAfee Labs report claims that researchers detected 504 unique threats per minute between January to April this year. The report also states that attackers were coming up with new tools and techniques to gain access to the information.
Most attackers used spearphishing to access the information. However, some targetted remote access points to meet their needs.
Christiaan Beek, who is the lead scientist at McAfee, says “Paying ransoms supports cybercriminal businesses and perpetuates attacks. There are other options available to victims of ransomware. Decryption tools and campaign information are available through tools such as the No More Ransom project.”
Hackers are attacking IoT devices both at homes and in offices. So whether you talk about individuals or companies, if they use such machines, they must invest in strengthening their security.
Article Provided By: Accume Partners
