Nuspire announced the release of its 2021 Q2 Quarterly Threat Landscape Report.
Sourced from 90 billion traffic logs, the report outlines new cybercriminal
activity and tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) with additional insight
from its threat intelligence partner, Recorded Future.
In a recent Forrester podcast, security analysts discuss ransomware
attacks becoming more common and more damaging. "Critical infrastructure
organizations like hospitals or energy providers are more lucrative targets for
attackers because the impact of their shutdown is more immediate and could
threaten lives, forcing victims to pay the ransom quickly."
In Q2 2021, Nuspire security experts
witnessed a 55,239% increase in ransomware activity just a few weeks prior to the Colonial Pipeline Ransomware
attack conducted by DarkSide Ransomware group. The reason for the increase is
not known and it may not be related to Colonial Pipeline, but one can speculate
that the increase could be from the same campaign with Colonial Pipeline.
"This quarter, and even this year, we
experienced some of the most significant and disruptive ransomware attacks our
industry has ever seen," said J.R. Cunningham, Nuspire Chief Security Officer.
"The sophistication of these attacks, and the scope of what's being attacked
just shows that ransomware isn't going anywhere. Ransomware groups
continue to become more sophisticated in their attack methods, which is why
organizations need to ensure they have the proper controls in place."
Additional notable findings from Nuspire's
2021 Q2 Threat Landscape Report include:
- Malware
activity up 41.84% and continues to be driven by VBA Agent Activity and a new
addition of JS/Valkyr activity
- Botnet
activity down -50% from Q1, which is likely a result from the impact of Emotet
being removed from the space
-
-51% decrease in exploit activity from Q1, but beginning to
trend back up into Q3 as well as a large increase in SSH Bruteforce activity
that has not been seen before
Learn more about protecting your
organization from increasing cyber threats and download Nuspire's 2021 Q2
Threat Landscape Report.