Prevalence of Cryptomining Malware Jumped to 28%, Impacting a Quarter of ANZ Organisations
Jon McGettigan, Fortinet’s regional director for ANZ
“We face a troubling convergence of trends across the cybersecurity landscape. Malicious cyber actors are demonstrating their efficiency and agility by exploiting the expanding digital attack surface, taking advantage of newly announced zero-day threats, and maximising the accessibility of malware for bad intent. In addition, IT and OT teams often don’t have the resources necessary to keep systems appropriately hardened or protected. However, implementing a security fabric which prioritises speed, integration, advanced analytics, and risk-based decision making can enable comprehensive protection at machine speed and scale.”
Jack Chan, Network and Security Strategist, Fortinet ANZ
“In Australia/New Zealand, trends from previous quarters show no sign of slowing. Earlier this year we saw cryptojacking on the rise, and have found another 30 per cent jump in this report. We also continue to see certain organisations more susceptible to attack, such as healthcare, education and local government, with specific ransomware, SamSam, targeted towards them. With threats continuing to rise, following best practice and tracking, monitoring, automating patching and applying the necessary security controls is essential for local enterprises,”
News Summary:
Fortinet has announced the findings of its latest Global Threat Landscape Report. The research reveals cybercriminals are evolving their attack methods to increase their success rates and to accelerate infections. While ransomware continues to impact organisations in destructive ways, there are indications that some cybercriminals now prefer hijacking systems and using them for cryptomining rather than holding them for ransom. For a detailed view of the findings and some important takeaways for CISOs read the blog. Highlights of the report follow:
Cybercrime Attack Methods Evolve to Ensure Success at Speed and Scale
Data indicates that cybercriminals are getting better and more sophisticated in their use of malware and leveraging newly announced zero-day vulnerabilities to attack at speed and scale. While the number of exploit detections per firm dropped by 13 per cent in Q1 of 2018, the number of unique exploit detections grew by over 11 per cent, and 73 per cent of companies experienced a severe exploit.
- Spike in Cryptojacking: Malware is evolving and becoming more difficult to prevent and detect. The prevalence of cryptomining malware more than doubled from quarter to quarter, growing from 13 per cent to 28 per cent. Cryptomining malware is also showing incredible diversity for such a relatively new threat as it continues to grow in the ANZ region. Cybercriminals are creating stealthier fileless malware to inject infected code into browsers with less detection. Despite the drop in cryptocurrency popularity in recent months, miners are also targeting multiple operating systems as well as different cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Dash, and Monero. They are also fine-tuning and adopting delivery and propagation techniques from other threats based on what was successful or unsuccessful to improve future success rates.
- Targeted Attacks for Maximum Impact: The impact of destructive malware remains high, particularly as criminals combine it with designer attacks on high-profile events, such as the Olympics or Commonwealth Games. For these types of more targeted attacks, criminals conduct significant reconnaissance on an organisation before launching an attack, which helps them to increase success rates. Afterwards, once they penetrate the network, attackers spread laterally across the network before triggering the most destructive part of their planned attack. The Olympic Destroyer malware and the more recent SamSam ransomware are examples of where cybercriminals combined a designer attack with a destructive payload for maximum impact.
- Ransomware Continues to Disrupt: The growth in both the volume and sophistication of ransomware continues to be a significant security challenge for organisations. Ransomware continues to evolve, leveraging new delivery channels such as social engineering, and new techniques such as multi-stage attacks to evade detection and infect systems. GandCrab ransomware emerged in January with the distinction of being the first ransomware to require Dash cryptocurrency as a payment. BlackRuby and SamSam were two other ransomware variants that emerged as major threats during the first quarter of 2018.
- Multiple Attack Vectors: Although the side channel attacks dubbed Meltdown and Spectre dominated the news headlines during the quarter, some of the top attacks targeted mobile devices or known exploits on router, web or Internet technologies. 21 per cent of organisations reported mobile malware, up 7 per cent, demonstrating that IoT devices continue to be targeted. Cybercriminals also continue to recognise the value of exploiting known vulnerabilities that haven’t been patched along with recently discovered zero-days for increased opportunity. Microsoft continued to be the number one target for exploits, and routers took the number two spot in total attack volume. Content Management Systems (CMS) and web-oriented technologies were also heavily targeted.
- Cyber Hygiene – More Than Just Patching: Measuring how long botnet infections persist based on the number of consecutive days in which continued communications are detected reveals that hygiene involves more than just patching. It is also about cleanup. Data showed that 58.5 per cent of botnet infections are detected and cleaned up the same day. However, 17.6 per cent of botnets persist for two days in a row and 7.3 per cent last three days. About 5 per cent persist for more than a week. As an example, the Andromeda botnet was taken down in Q4 2017 but data from Q1 found it continued to show up prominently in both volume and prevalence.
- Attacks Against Operational Technology (OT): While OT attacks are a smaller percentage of the overall attack landscape, the trends are concerning. This sector is increasingly becoming connected to the Internet, with serious potential ramifications for security. Currently, the vast majority of exploit activity is directed against the two most common industrial communication protocols, primarily because they are so widely deployed. Data shows that in Asia ICS exploit attempts appear to be somewhat more prevalent when compared to ICS exploit activity across other regions.
Fighting Evolving Cybercrime Requires Integrated Security
The threat data in this quarter’s report reinforces many of the prediction trends unveiled by the Fortinet FortiGuard Labs global research team for 2018 demonstrating that the best defense against intelligent and automated threats is an integrated, broad, and automated security fabric. A highly aware and proactive security defense system is needed to keep pace with the next generation of automated and AI-based attacks.
Report Methodology
The Fortinet Global Threat Landscape Report is a quarterly view that represents the collective intelligence of FortiGuard Labs drawn from Fortinet’s global array of sensors during Q1 2018. Research data covers global, regional, industry sector, and organisational perspectives. It focuses on three central and complementary aspects of that landscape, namely application exploits, malicious software, and botnets. It also examines important zero-day vulnerabilities. To complement the report, Fortinet publishes a free, subscription-based Threat Intelligence Brief that reviews the top malware, virus, and web-based threats discovered every week, along with links to valuable FortiGuard Labs threat research.
Additional Resources
- Read our blog for more information about the research or to access the full threat report.
- Sign up for the weekly FortiGuard Threat Intelligence Briefs or the FortiGuard Threat Intelligence Service.
- Read more about the Fortinet Security Fabric or the Third Generation of Network Security.
- Follow Fortinet on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.
About Fortinet
Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT) secures the largest enterprise, service provider, and government organisations around the world. Fortinet empowers its customers with intelligent, seamless protection across the expanding attack surface and the power to take on ever-increasing performance requirements of the borderless network – today and into the future. Only the Fortinet Security Fabric architecture can deliver security without compromise to address the most critical security challenges, whether in networked, application, cloud, or mobile environments. Fortinet ranks #1 in the most security appliances shipped worldwide and more than 340,000 customers trust Fortinet to protect their businesses. Learn more at http://www.fortinet.com, the Fortinet Blog, or FortiGuard Labs.
