Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 20 | Page 24

INFOGRAPHIC INFOGRAPHIC IoT devices in the home are latest target for cryptojacking Fortinet’s latest Global Threat Landscape Report reveals cybercriminals are becoming smarter and faster in how they leverage exploits to their advantage. F ortinet, a global leader in broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, has announced the findings of its latest Global Threat Landscape Report. The research reveals cybercriminals are becoming smarter and faster in how they leverage exploits to their advantage. They are also maximising their efforts by targeting an expanding attack surface and by using iterative approaches to software development facilitating the evolution of their attack methodologies. Phil Quade, Chief Information Security Officer, Fortinet, said: “Cyber-adversaries are relentless. Increasingly, they are automating their tool-sets and creating variations of known exploits. Of late, they are also more precise in their targeting, relying less on blanket attempts to find exploitable victims. Urgently, organisations must pivot their security strategy to address these tactics. Organisations should leverage automated and integrated defences to address the problems of speed and scale, utilise high-performance behaviour- based detection and rely on AI-informed threat intelligence insights to focus their efforts on patching vulnerabilities that matter.” Highlights of the report are as follows: Virtually no firm is immune from severe exploits Analysis focused on critical and high-severity detections demonstrates an alarming trend with 96% of firms experiencing at least one severe exploit. Almost no firm is immune to the evolving attack trends of cybercriminals. In addition, nearly a quarter of companies saw cryptojacking malware and only six malware variants spread to over 10% of all organisations. FortiGuard Labs also found 30 new zero-day vulnerabilities during the quarter. Cryptojacking moves to IoT devices in the home Botnet trends demonstrate the creativity of cybercriminals Mining for cryptocurrency continues. Cybercriminals added IoT devices, including media devices in the home, to their arsenals. They are an especially attractive target because of their rich source of computational horsepower, which can be used for malicious purposes. Attackers are taking advantage of them by loading malware that is continually mining because these devices are always on and connected. In addition, the interfaces for these devices are being exploited as modified web browsers, which expands the vulnerabilities and exploit vectors on them. Segmentation will be increasingly important for devices connected to enterprise networks as this trend continues. 24 INTELLIGENTCIO Data on botnet trends gives a valuable post-compromise viewpoint of how cybercriminals are maximising impact with multiple malicious actions. WICKED, a new Mirai botnet variant, added at least three exploits to its arsenal to target unpatched IoT devices. VPNFilter, the advanced nation-state-sponsored attack that targets SCADA/ICS environments by monitoring MODBUS SCADA protocols, emerged as a significant threat. It is particularly dangerous because it not only performs data exfiltration but can also render devices completely inoperable, either individually or as a group. The Anubis variant from www.intelligentcio.com