Sectrio

Weekly threat monitor – May 25th

Critical infrastructure continues to bear the brunt of growing hacker activity around the world. This week saw a 17 percent increase in cyberattacks on critical infrastructure as APT groups and individual hackers stepped up attacks on CI worldwide. Regional tensions in the Middle East also led to an increase in attacks on CI in the region.

The increase in cyberattacks in the last few weeks has yielded rich dividends for hackers. As companies and governments are made aware of cyberattacks on their infrastructure, news reports of data loss, theft of IP and, loss of capacity are increasing. Many countries haven’t fully returned from lockdown yet and thus it will be difficult to ascertain the full impact of the attacks executed by hackers in the last 120 days using the Covid-19 pandemic as a cover.

Hackers are now looking beyond traditional targets such as Industrial control systems, routers, video surveillance systems. Attacks on utility infrastructure, research labs, government agencies, and maritime infrastructure are also growing. On average, attacks on traditional targets grew 32 percent while attacks on new ones grew by a staggering 51 percent in May. This is an area of concern and we need to intervene immediately to stem these attacks.

Weekly advisory

We expect the attacks on critical infrastructure to grow this week along with attacks on these sectors:

  • Healthcare
  • Utility entities
  • Financial services
  • Healthcare research labs
  • Control systems connected with critical infrastructure
  • Government – especially lawmakers and government agencies connected with internal/homeland security

IoT projects in the transport sector especially vehicle tracking systems.

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