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In April, May and June 2022, commodity malware surpassed ransomware for the first time in more than a year, accounting for 20 percent of observed threats, according to leading private threat intelligence team Cisco Talos.
Commodity malware threats are followed by ransomware, phishing, business email compromise (BEC), and advanced persistent threats.
The quarter was dominated by an increase in commodity malware threats, widely available for purchase or download. This type of malware is generally not customized and is used by various actors to deliver additional threats and/or deliver additional threats at various stages of their operations. Cisco Talos also observed an ongoing Qakbot campaign that leverages thread hijacking to allow threat actors to use compromised email accounts to insert malicious replies into the middle of existing email conversations.
Ransomware was a smaller percentage than previous years, accounting for 15% of all threats, compared to 25% in the previous quarter. The decline was attributed to a variety of factors, including shutting down several ransomware groups, either by their own will or by the actions of law enforcement agencies and governments around the world.
Target Industry:
The most closely watched industry continues to be telecommunications, which is trending to be one of the most followed in Q4 2021 and Q1 2022, followed by organizations in the education and healthcare industries.
Other targeted verticals include financial services, local government, food services, retail, automotive, information technology, production and manufacturing. Meanwhile, the United States remains the largest target country, followed by Europe, Asia, North America and the Middle East.
Commenting on the report’s findings, Fady Younes, Director of EMEA Service Providers and MEA Cybersecurity, said: “Organizations in Middle East and African countries hold large amounts of sensitive data that are vulnerable to cyber threats and need to be protected. As cyber attacks become more The more complex, the need for comprehensive cybersecurity solutions is increasing.”
He added: “Cisco is uniquely positioned to support governments and businesses of all sizes and across industries in our region, addressing the cybersecurity challenges they face and helping them increase their security resilience.”
To defend against these threats, Cisco strongly recommends that organizations implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) on all critical services, such as Cisco Duo. Endpoint detection and response solutions such as Cisco Secure Endpoint are also key to detecting malicious activity across machines and networks.
Cisco Secure Firewall helps protect against commodity Trojans and malware such as Qakbot, while Cisco Secure Email and Secure Malware Analytics help protect users from targeted phishing and business emails commonly used by attackers this quarter . – arab trade news agency
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