Fortinet recently announced the latest semiannual FortiGuard Labs Global Threat Landscape Report. Threat intelligence from the first half of 2021 demonstrates a significant increase in the volume and sophistication of attacks targeting individuals, organizations, and increasingly critical infrastructure. The expanding attack surface of hybrid workers and learners, in and out of the traditional network, continues to be a target. Timely collaboration and partnership momentum across law enforcement as well as public and private sectors is an opportunity to disrupt the cybercriminal ecosystem going into the second half of 2021.
Highlights of the 1H 2021 report:
1) Ransomware Is About Much More Than Just Money
FortiGuard Labs data shows average weekly ransomware activity in June 2021 was more than tenfold higher than levels from one year ago. This demonstrates a consistent and overall steady increase over a year period. Attacks crippled the supply chains of multiple organizations, in particular sectors of critical importance, and impacted daily life, productivity, and commerce more than ever before. Organizations in the telecommunications sector were the most heavily targeted followed by government, managed security service providers, automotive, and manufacturing sectors. In addition, some ransomware operators shifted their strategy away from email-initiated payloads to focusing on gaining and selling initial access into corporate networks further showing the continued evolution of Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) fueling cybercrime. A key takeaway is that ransomware remains a clear and present danger for all organizations regardless of industry or size. Organizations need to take a proactive approach with real-time endpoint protection, detection, and automated response solutions to secure environments along with a zero-trust access approach, network segmentation, and encryption.
2) One in Four Organizations Detected Malvertising
Ranking the prevalence of top malware detections by malware families shows a rise in deceptive social engineering malvertising and scareware. More than one in four organizations detected malvertising or scareware attempts with Cryxos being a notable family. Although, a large volume of the detections are likely combined with other similar JavaScript campaigns that would be considered malvertising. The hybrid work reality has undoubtedly encouraged this trend in tactics by cybercriminals as they attempt to exploit it, aiming for not just a scare but also extortion. Increased cybersecurity awareness is important as ever to provide timely training and education to help avoid falling victim to scareware and malvertising tactics.
3) Botnet Trends Show Attackers Push to the Edge
Tracking the prevalence of botnet detections showed a surge in activity. At the beginning of the year, 35% of organizations detected botnet activity of one sort or another, and six months later it was 51%. A large bump in TrickBot activity is responsible for the overall spike in botnet activity during June. TrickBot originally emerged on the cybercrime scene as a banking trojan but has since been developed into a sophisticated and multi-stage toolkit supporting a range of illicit activities. Mirai was the most prevalent overall; it overtook Gh0st in early 2020 and has reigned ever since well into 2021. Mirai has continued adding new cyberweapons to its arsenal, but it is likely that Mirai’s dominance at least still partially stems from criminals seeking to exploit Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices used by work-from-home or learning-from-home individuals. Gh0st is also noticeably active, which is a remote access botnet that allows attackers to take full control of the infected system, capture live webcam and microphone feeds, or download files. More than a year into remote work and learning shifts, cyber adversaries continue to target our evolving daily habits to exploit the opportunity. To protect networks and applications, organizations need zero-trust access approaches to provide least access privileges to secure against IoT endpoint and devices entering the network.
4) Disruption of Cybercrime Shows Reduced Threat Volumes
In cybersecurity not every action has an immediate or lasting effect, but several events in 2021 show positive developments specifically for defenders. The original developer of TrickBot was arraigned on multiple charges in June. Also, the coordinated takedown of Emotet, one of the most prolific malware operations in recent history, as well as actions to disrupt the Egregor, NetWalker, and Cl0p ransomware operations represent significant momentum by cyber defenders, including global governments and law enforcement to curb cybercrime. In addition, the level of attention that some attacks garnered spooked a few ransomware operators to announce they were ceasing operations. FortiGuard Labs’ data showed a slowdown of threat activity following the Emotet takedown. Activity related to TrickBot and Ryuk variants persisted after the Emotet botnet was taken offline, but it was at a reduced volume. This is a reminder of how hard it is to eradicate cyberthreats or adversary supply chains immediately, but these events are important achievements regardless.
5) Defensive Evasion and Privilege Escalation Techniques Favored by Cybercriminals
Studying higher resolution threat intelligence reveals valuable takeaways about how attack techniques are evolving currently. FortiGuard Labs analyzed the specific functionality inherent to detected malware by detonating the samples to observe what the intended outcome was for cyber adversaries. The result was a list of negative things malware would have accomplished if the attack payloads had been executed in target environments. This shows cyber adversaries sought to escalate privileges, evade defenses, move laterally across internal systems, and exfiltrate compromised data, among other techniques. For example, 55% of observed privilege escalation functionality leveraged hooking and 40% utilized process injection. A takeaway is that there is an obvious focus on defense evasion and privilege escalation tactics. Although these techniques are not novel, defenders will be better positioned to secure against future attacks, armed with this timely knowledge. Integrated and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven platform approaches, powered by actionable threat intelligence, are essential to defend across all edges and to identify and remediate shifting threats organizations face today in real time.
Partnership, Training, and AI-powered Prevention, Detection, and Response Is Vital
While government and law enforcement agencies have taken actions relative to cybercrime in the past, the first half of 2021 could be a game-changer in terms of the momentum for the future. They are working with industry vendors, threat intelligence organizations, and other global partnership organizations to combine resources and real-time threat intelligence to take direct action against cyber adversaries. Regardless, automated threat detection and AI remain essential to enable organizations to address attacks in real time and to mitigate attacks at speed and scale across all edges. In addition, cybersecurity user awareness training is as important as ever with anyone being a target of cyberattacks. Everyone needs regular instruction on best practices to keep individual employees and the organization secure.
Michael Joseph, Director System Engineering, India & SAARC, Fortinet, said, “We are seeing an increase in effective and destructive cyberattacks affecting thousands of organizations in a single incident creating an important inflection point for the war on cybercrime. Now more than ever, everyone has an important role in strengthening the kill chain. Aligning forces through collaboration must be prioritized to disrupt cybercriminal supply chains. Shared data and partnership can enable more effective responses and better predict future techniques to deter adversary efforts. Continued cybersecurity awareness training as well as AI-powered prevention, detection, and response technologies integrated across endpoints, networks, and the cloud remain vital to counter cyber adversaries.”
This latest Global Threat Landscape Report is a view representing the collective intelligence of FortiGuard Labs, drawn from Fortinet’s vast array of sensors collecting billions of threat events observed around the world during the first half of 2021. Similar to how the MITRE ATT&CK framework classifies adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures with the first three groupings spanning reconnaissance, resource development, and initial access, the FortiGuard Labs Global Threat Landscape Report leverages this model to describe how threat actors find vulnerabilities, build malicious infrastructure, and exploit their targets. The report also covers global and regional perspectives as well.
