Cybercriminals adopting new techniques, assaults: Trend Micro

• Corporate data the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for cybercriminals
• Govt agencies remain the top attack targets, but attacks spiking against others too

IN 2014, and increasingly moving forward into 2015, corporate data is now a huge gold-mine that cybercriminals are looking to harvest, according to Trend Micro Inc’s Targeted Attack Trends 2014 Annual Report.
 
Occurring via a mix of seemingly state and non-state sponsored cyber-attacks, targeted attacks – otherwise known as advanced persistent threats (APTs) – have intensified over the past year, alongside newly identified techniques, the company said in a statement.
 
Trend Micro’s research analysed various forms of APTs, along with the agenda behind these rising assaults, and monitored attack-related command and control (C&C) infrastructure which poses great threats to the computing public.
 
“Cybercriminals are adopting techniques more commonly associated with targeted attacks because these prove to be effective in increasing their financial gain,” said Dhanya Thakkar, managing director, Trend Micro Asia Pacific.
 
“To fight back, organisations need to remain vigilant and adopt effective solutions to adapt to the changing cyber-landscape.
 
“They need to reinforce a custom defence strategy, which uses advanced threat detection technologies and shared intelligence, to detect, analyse, and respond to attacks that are invisible to standard security products.”
 
According to the report, targeted attacks remained hard to tackle because their threat actors proactively cover their traces in targeted networks. With the aim to gather intelligence and exfiltrate confidential data, targeted attack tactics continued to push the envelope with newly identified techniques.
 
Targeted attacks also remained to be a global problem, with the United States, Russia and China no longer being the only favoured targets for C&C server attacks.
 
Based on cases monitored in 2014, Australia, Brazil, China, Egypt, and Germany were among the list of countries that hosted targeted attack C&C servers.
 
With government agencies remaining the top attack targets, Trend Micro also saw a spike in attacks targeting hardware/ software companies, consumer electronics manufacturers, and healthcare providers.
 
For a copy of the Attack Trends 2014 Annual Report, click here.
 
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