Attackers Target Small Manufacturing Firms

Attackers Target Small Manufacturing Firms
The most common tactics include credential stuffing using valid accounts, various forms of deception, and vulnerabilities in third-party software, Rapid7 says in its latest quarterly threat report.

Cybersecurity incidents targeting the manufacturing sector rose significantly in the second quarter of 2020, accounting for more than a third of detected attacks, up from 11% in the first quarter of the year, cybersecurity-services firm Rapid7 states in its latest threat report.


About three-quarters of the incidents affecting manufacturers targeted seven small firms, which Rapid7 did not name in its report. The only other sector where the majority of attacks targeted smaller firms was finance. The attacks do not seem to be state-sponsored espionage attacks but mainly attempts to infect a manufacturing firm's network with ransomware, says Wade Woolwine, principal security researcher at Rapid7.


"These are confirmed active threats ... that we discover through our threat hunting," he says. "For the most part, [manufacturers] are easy to target because they have antiquated systems and a less, how should I put it, less cyber-aware staff."


The data, based on detection reports sent to clients by Rapid7's Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service, found that 35% of attacks included some form of account compromises, while a third of attacks used malware, and 29% of attacks used a compromised program, or Trojan. 


The significant increase in attacks against small manufacturers likely means that a certain subset of the segment is being targeted by cybercriminals, says Woolwine. Rapid7 has not seen any changes in its customer base that would cause such an outsized increase in attack data.


"[W]e hypothesize that the significant number of organizations with 15 incidents or more in the manufacturing industry is likely related to the heightened targeting of that industry," Rapid7 attackers target small manufacturing firms