Trend Micro Reveals that Powerful Cyber Attacks Surged in Q2-2015

SCMagazine.com reported on 18th August, 2015 stating that Threat Report of Trend Micro's Q2 2015 hit on many issues in the security space including those that pose an actual physical threat to public, a series of powerful attacks on government bodies and an increase in attacks by lone wolf operators.

Hackers are implementing planned methods, refining their approach and targeting increasingly selective victims to enhance their infection rates. This is mirrored by the exponential rise in the use of many conventional methods of attack including a 50% rise in the amalgamation of the Angler EK (exploit kit), an increase of 67% in general exploit kit-related threats and CryptoWall ransomware becoming extensively targeted with 79% of infections happening in US.

Moreover, government bodies have felt the full brunt of cyberattacks during Q2-2015 with huge data breaches on both the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) in May and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) system of US during June. The data breach of OPM was the biggest of its kind till date leaking personally identifiable information of around 21 million individuals. Other government agencies were impacted by targeted operations with the help of macro malware, fresh command and control (C&C) servers and the continued employment of newly exploited flaws and zero-days Pawn Storm.

When you look at the landscape of Q2 threat as a whole, you will find US as a major player in both deploying and receiving different attacks with major presence of spam, malicious links, ransomware and C&C servers.

One type of attack which might have fallen slightly out of favor with cyber criminals is point-of-sale (PoS) malware. Trend Micro discovered only 183 cases during the second quarter of the year which identified less than 259 cases in the previous quarter.

Trend Micro pointed out that single operators can cause issues regionally using PoS and ransomware attacks although attacks by single individual might not be as productive as those operated by larger groups. Trend Micro said that a Canadian operator stole and sold personal information of the company Frapster and a Brazilian sold banking malware.

Although criminals made life very difficult for security officials but the report revealed many successful laws enforcement efforts.

» SPAMfighter News - 8/25/2015