New SonicWall 2020 Research Shows Cyber Arms Race at Tipping Point

Threat actors weaponizing cloud storage, advanced cloud-based tools to create record ransomware attack effectiveness, volume

• Ransomware soars with 62% increase since 2019
• Office files preferred by cybercriminals, surpass
  PDFs, roughly 1 in 4 malicious
• Never-before-seen’ malware variants up 74%
  year-over-year
• Cryptojacking shows three-year high with 28% year-over-year
  increase
• IoT malware rises 66% as criminals continue to
  leverage COVID-19 pandemic
• Retail, healthcare and government face mounting
  ransomware volume

SINGAPORE – Media OutReach – 17 March 2021 – The pandemic’s
work-from-home reality resulted in an unprecedented change for organisations as
they fought to defend exponentially greater attack surfaces from cybercriminals
armed with powerful cloud-based tools, cloud storage and endless targets. As
working environments evolved, so did the methods of threat actors and other motivated
perpetrators, as detailed in the latest 2021 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report. 

“2020 offered a perfect storm for cybercriminals and a critical tipping point
for the cyber arms race,” said SonicWall President and CEO Bill Conner. “The
pandemic — along with remote work, a charged political climate, record prices
of cryptocurrency, and threat actors weaponizing cloud storage and tools —
drove the effectiveness and volume of cyberattacks to new highs. This latest
threat intelligence offers a look at how cybercriminals shifted and refined
their tactics, painting a picture of what they are doing amid the uncertain future
that lies ahead.”

The 2021 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report highlights how COVID-19 provided threat
actors with ample opportunity for more powerful, aggressive and numerous
attacks, thriving on the fear and uncertainty of remote and mobile workforces navigating
corporate networks from home.

“There is no code of conduct when it comes to cybercriminals,
their methods of attacks and the selection of their targets,” said Conner.
“Technology is moving at an unprecedented rate. Threats that were once thought
to be two or three years away are now a reality, with do-it-yourself, cloud-based
tools creating an army of cybercriminals armed with the same devastating force
and impact of a nation-state or larger criminal enterprise. Organisations must
remain vigilant and proactive in hardening their cybersecurity posture.”

Debasish Mukherjee, Vice President,
Regional Sales adds “As more organisations are adopting to digital
transformation, it is imperative to have strategies in place to plan
mitigation, build resilience and respond to anomalies. With the increase
in data breach and leaked information, organisations are now more susceptible
to threats and need to be more prepared than ever in combating cyber attacks.”
He continues “The findings in the 2021 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report reveals
great insights into the latest threats, including those in Asia Pacific and how
organisations can better prepare for security optimisation.”

The 2021 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report goes inside the stories
that headlined 2020, and takes a closer look at new and disruptive cyber
threats to provide insight into the evolving cyber threat landscape. Major
findings of the new in-depth SonicWall report include:

• Ransomware
  reaches new heights with increasingly targeted attacks: A 62% increase in ransomware globally, and 158%
  spike in North America, points to cybercriminals using more sophisticated
  tactics and more dangerous variants, like Ryuk, to earn an easy payday.
• Ryuk
  ransomware rises from obscurity, sees astronomical increase: First identified in August 2018, Ryuk did not
  appear outside of North America, Europe or Asia as late as January 2020. The
  following month, Ryuk began climbing the charts, eventually overtaking
  top-ranking Cerber ransomware. With 109.9 million cases detected worldwide, Ryuk
  was logged nearly every eight seconds in September alone.
• More
  ‘never-before-seen’ malware variants identified: SonicWall’s newly patented Real-Time Deep Memory
  Inspection™ (RTDMI), a component of the company’s Capture Advanced Threat
  Protection (ATP) sandbox service, discovered 268,362 ‘never-before-seen’
  malware variants in 2020, a 74% year-over-year increase. RTDMI™ is proven to
  proactively detect and block unknown mass-market malware, including malicious
  Office, and PDF file types.
• Malicious Office
  files surpass last year’s preferred PDFs: SonicWall research shows the shift to employees working from home
  full-time could be directly linked to the increased utilization of Office files
  and PDFs as malicious vehicles armed with phishing URLs, embedded malicious
  files and other dangerous exploits. New SonicWall data indicates a 67%
  increase in malicious Office files in 2020, while malicious PDFs dropped 22%.
• Cryptojacking
  returns as cryptocurrency breaks records: Once thought to be a dying attack vector after the industry’s major
  mining operation boarded its online service, cryptojacking is back thanks to
  rising cryptocurrency values and its appeal of concealed payouts. Total
  cryptojacking for 2020 set records with 81.9 million hits, a 28% increase from
  last year’s 64.1 million total.
• IoT malware increases
  as pandemic creates potential network of disruption: In March 2020, masses of employees packed their personal
  office belongings and equipment to work from home for months on end,
  simultaneously creating an explosion of new attack vectors. In 2020, SonicWall
  Capture Labs threat researchers recorded 56.9 million IoT malware attempts, a
  66% increase that showed shifting tactics for lurking cybercriminals.
• Intrusion
  attempts up as attack patterns change: The
  distribution of intrusion attacks took on an entirely new character as a result
  of the changes brought on by the pandemic. In 2020, Directory Traversal tactics
  (34%) took over the top spot after a tie with remote code execution (21% for
  both) in 2019.
• Retail,
  healthcare and government face mounting ransomware volume: Industry-specific ransomware data reflects the
  impact cybercriminals had on retail (365%), healthcare (123%) and government
  (21%) sectors over the course of the pandemic.

The annual 2021 SonicWall
Cyber Threat Report arms enterprises, small- and medium-sized business, government
agencies and other organisations with actionable threat intelligence collected by the SonicWall Capture Labs threat research team. In-house researchers
work collectively with other industry experts, over 50 industry collaboration
groups, research teams and freelance security researchers.

Data for the report is
gathered from over 1.1 million sensors strategically placed in over 215
countries and territories around the world as well as cross-vector, threat related
information shared among SonicWall security systems, including firewalls, email
security devices, endpoint security solutions, honeypots, content filtering
systems and the SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) multi-engine
sandbox.

To download the complete 2021
SonicWall Cyber Threat Report, please visit www.sonicwall.com/ThreatReport.