- January 9, 2024
Artificial Intelligence to enhance potency of social engineering attacks | India News – Times of India
BENGALURU: Ransomware attacks nearly doubled to around 4,200 last year as compared to 2,200 in 2022, showed threat intelligence firm Cyble’s Threat Landscape Report 2023-24.
The report said proliferation of AI technology is expected to significantly enhance the potency of social engineering attacks. AI-driven advancements enable attackers to craft highly-personalised and convincing social engineering tactics. The US suffered the highest number of attacks from ransomware groups and other threat actors. Following the US, the government, law enforcement agencies (LEA), and banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) sectors in India were targeted the most.
Professional services, manufacturing, and construction remained the most attacked sectors throughout last year. Even though 2023 saw a rise in ransomware attacks against all industry sectors – healthcare, transportation & logistics, and energy & utilities faced some of the most brutal attacks.
The report said ransomware groups like Lockbit, ALPHV, and CL0P were responsible for over 42% of ransomware attacks this year. Ransomware attacks spread across 117 countries around the world last year, with the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, and Italy-based organisations accounting for 65% of total ransomware attacks.
Cyble’s research showed brand sustainability for ransomware groups is increasingly becoming more challenging due to declining ransom payments, increased enforcement actions by LEA, the cost of continued innovation to remain pertinent and evade detection, the disintegration of affiliate networks to launch their own services, and the emergence of small and stealthy groups that are ready to settle for less.
Deception-based attacks have seen a notable increase through the use of SEO (search engine optimisation) poisoning, malvertising, QR codes, and open-source package supply chain attacks.
QR fraud generally refers to fraudulent activities or scams that involve the use of QR codes. Scammers use “quishing” tactics, sending phishing emails with QR codes to deceive recipients. Pretending to represent reputable companies, these emails falsely claim issues like failed online payments, urging victims to scan QR codes to re-enter credit card details.
In 2023, threat actors expanded their toolkit to include languages such as Rust, Go, and Nim – diverging from the more conventionally used languages such as Microsoft Visual C++, C# .Net, and Java.
The report said proliferation of AI technology is expected to significantly enhance the potency of social engineering attacks. AI-driven advancements enable attackers to craft highly-personalised and convincing social engineering tactics. The US suffered the highest number of attacks from ransomware groups and other threat actors. Following the US, the government, law enforcement agencies (LEA), and banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) sectors in India were targeted the most.
Professional services, manufacturing, and construction remained the most attacked sectors throughout last year. Even though 2023 saw a rise in ransomware attacks against all industry sectors – healthcare, transportation & logistics, and energy & utilities faced some of the most brutal attacks.
The report said ransomware groups like Lockbit, ALPHV, and CL0P were responsible for over 42% of ransomware attacks this year. Ransomware attacks spread across 117 countries around the world last year, with the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, and Italy-based organisations accounting for 65% of total ransomware attacks.
Cyble’s research showed brand sustainability for ransomware groups is increasingly becoming more challenging due to declining ransom payments, increased enforcement actions by LEA, the cost of continued innovation to remain pertinent and evade detection, the disintegration of affiliate networks to launch their own services, and the emergence of small and stealthy groups that are ready to settle for less.
Deception-based attacks have seen a notable increase through the use of SEO (search engine optimisation) poisoning, malvertising, QR codes, and open-source package supply chain attacks.
QR fraud generally refers to fraudulent activities or scams that involve the use of QR codes. Scammers use “quishing” tactics, sending phishing emails with QR codes to deceive recipients. Pretending to represent reputable companies, these emails falsely claim issues like failed online payments, urging victims to scan QR codes to re-enter credit card details.
In 2023, threat actors expanded their toolkit to include languages such as Rust, Go, and Nim – diverging from the more conventionally used languages such as Microsoft Visual C++, C# .Net, and Java.
