While the world tried to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, behind the scenes cybercriminals were taking advantage of “fear, concern and curiosity” to perpetrate a record-setting increase in social engineering attacks, according to a new report from CrowdStrike.
A solid majority of cyberattacks (79%) resulted from hands-on-keyboard techniques, which means a human being was involved, according to the 2021 CrowdStrike Global Threat Report. Such attacks, the report says, have increased fourfold in the past four years.
Healthcare continues to be a favorite target, even after some threat actors vowed to stay away from patient-treatment facilities during the pandemic. Some attacks targeted at healthcare, the report says, involved nation-state hacker groups attempting to steal information on COVID-19 vaccines and government responses to the pandemic.
These trends are bound to continue through 2021, the report cautions. “Cyber actors are getting bolder and more astute day-to-day,” according to Adam Meyers, senior vice president of intelligence at CrowdStrike. “As such, it’s critical to employ comprehensive cloud-native technology for increased visibility and prevention capabilities, including threat intelligence and expert threat hunting to stay one step ahead of modern day attacks.”
Big Game Hunting
Cyber attackers deployed various new methods to evade detection, according to the report. A prevalent method is big game hunting (BGH) ransomware campaigns, which focus on high-value targets. In fact, the report says, BGH “dominated the ecosystem of eCrime enablers in 2020.”
In addition to the usual disruptions caused by ransomware attacks, BGH attacks exfiltrate data from networks before actually executing the ransomware. BGH attacks targeted organizations of all types, including healthcare.
Attacks on healthcare organiza ..
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