Top fastest spreading cyber threats in early 2018

Reported by Bitdefender Intelligence, from September 2017 until February 2018,
​Ransomware reports have followed a descending curve, while coin miner reports have increased by 130 percent by January 2018. Interestingly, cryptojacking is currently one of the fastest spreading cyber threats, already outranking ransomware’s exposure by a factor of 1 to 100 according to Bitdefender’s intelligence, and is recently displaying targeted behavior, by leveraging fileless techniques and exploits to infiltrate organizations and spread laterally.

Cryptocurrency mining is a very recent attack wave that spurred in September 2017 and has since been ranked the single biggest cyberthreat of the moment. Crypto jacking is currently one of the fastest spreading cyber threats, already outranking ransomware’s exposure by a factor of 1 to 100 according to Bitdefender’s intelligence, and is recently displaying targeted behavior. Attacks such as WannaMine leverage file less technique and exploits to infiltrate organizations and spread laterally, and even to the point of reaching critical infrastructures.

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Ransomware has been notoriously causing serious security concerns, especially when weaponized using government-developed cyber weapons, such as the WannaCry incidents, generating billions of dollars in revenue for cybercriminals.
While cryptocurrency was the main currency for ransomware, everything changed when Bitcoin’s value surged up to $20,000 per unit, making threat actors think of new ways of mining for virtual currencies, as it was more profitable that ransomware. The emergence of browser-based mining clients, such as CoinHive, has spurred a new frenzy of threats, as cybercriminals identified a new, more efferent, and more profitable way generate review.

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While the common belief is that only endpoints are facing this mounting threat, threat actors in need of increased computing power and resources have been gunning for data center, as they are more lucrative from a mining point of view. A successful attack on a data center in terms of successfully planning cryptocurrency mining software, can generate a huge revenue for threat actors even it lasts for a mere couple of hours before being detected.

Unfortunately, new cryptojacking attacks embed stealth tactics, which means it takes a long time for them to be detected, while they can cause a huge surge in bills for companies that rely use infrastructure-as-a-service offerings with automatic resource provisioning, such as Azure, AWS or Google Cloud Platform services.

For more information about how ransomware and coin miners have evolved over the past couple of months and how data centres are affected, check out the latest “Cryptocurrency Mining Craze Going for Data Centers” whitepaper.

To understand the rapid evolution of mining attacks and what risks they can pose for your businesses and infrastructure, particularly if you are running a data center or cloud instances, please watch this webinar hosted by IDC and Bitdefender. Hosted by Alexei Proskura, Program Director, Security, IDC CEE and Liviu Arsene, Senior Global Cyber Security Analyst, Bitdefender, you’ll also gain insights on how to protect your organization from cryptojacking. Sing up for the webinar!

News sourced from Bitdefender