Trend Micro says it will stop 146 billion cyber threats in 2022. That’s a 55% increase for him year-over-year, and evidence that cybercriminals are expanding their efforts to companies of all sizes and sectors.
Global security vendors have put together an annual round-up report. rethinking tacticsthreat intelligence generated across mobile, IoT, PC and server endpoints, email, web and network layers, OT networks, cloud, home networks, vulnerabilities, consumers, enterprises and governments around the world.
It revealed a 242% increase in the number of malicious files blocked and an 86% increase in backdoor malware detections. The latter indicates that the attackers gained initial access to more targeted networks, the report claims.
To do this, they target remote services such as telnet, SSH, and VNC, then use valid accounts obtained through credential dumping to expand their footprint in the network, Trend Micro said. Added.
Vulnerability exploitation was also a key tactic in the 2022 cybercrime arsenal. Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) published his record 1,706 advisories last year. bug detection.
The number of critical vulnerabilities will double in 2022, and two of the top three reported CVEs were related to Log4j. In 2021, all three were Microsoft Exchange bugs.
Overall, Webshell was the top malware detected, up 103% from the 2021 figure, with the resurgent Emotet in second place. LockBit and BlackCat were the top ransomware families of 2022.
The report also warns that ransomware groups are increasingly rebranding to come under the scrutiny of researchers and law enforcement, and have spread out into adjacent areas to boost profits. increase.
“The transition to monetizing stolen data is easy for ransomware groups. Many of today’s RaaS organizations can leverage the tools they already have,” said Trend Micro.
“In the future, we expect the group to also adopt other criminal business models to monetize initial access, such as stock fraud, business email compromise (BEC), money laundering and cryptocurrency theft.”
Trend Micro’s surge of 55% in malware detections is significantly higher than that of SonicWall, which said last week that its overall detections increased by only 2% in 2022 year-over-year.
