Asia-Pacific Was The Most Attacked Region In 2022: IBM Report

IBM Security on Wednesday released its annual X-Force Threat Intelligence Index that found the Asia-Pacific region retained the top spot as the most attacked region in 2022 for the second consecutive year, accounting for 31 per cent of all incidents remediated worldwide. 

According to the 2023 report, last year the deployment of backdoors, which allow remote access to systems, emerged as the top action by attackers (31 per cent of cases) followed by Ransomware (13 per cent of cases). 

The majority of the backdoor attempts observed globally were failed ransomware attempts, where defenders were able to detect the backdoor before ransomware was deployed. The uptick in backdoor deployments can be partially attributed to their high market value. 

X-Force observed threat actors selling existing backdoor access for as much as USD 10,000, compared to stolen credit card data, which can sell for less than USD 10 today. 

In a statement, Viswanath Ramaswamy, Vice President, Technology, IBM India & South Asia said, “Businesses in Asia-Pacific including India will continue to face growing number and sophistication of cyber threats as bad actors take advantage of economic and geopolitical disruptions. Hence, it is imperative that business leaders take immediate action to prepare and secure against these malicious threats. This includes a holistic approach of understanding and reducing their attack surfaces, preparing for the specific threat actors and techniques that target their industry or geography, and performing regular offensive testing to detect attack paths into their environments.”

Some of the key global findings in the 2023 report include:

•Extortion: Threat Actors Go-to Method. The most common impact from cyberattacks in 2022 was extortion, which was primarily achieved through ransomware or business email compromise attacks. 

•Cybercriminals Weaponize Email Conversations. Thread hijacking saw a significant rise in 2022, with attackers using compromised email accounts to reply within ongoing conversations posing as the original participant. X-Force observed the rate of monthly attempts increase by 100 per cent compared to 2021 data. 

•Legacy Exploits Still Doing the Job. The proportion of known exploits relative to vulnerabilities declined 10 percentage points from 2018 to 2022, due to the fact that the number of vulnerabilities hit another record high in 2022. The findings indicate that legacy exploits enabled older malware infections such as WannaCry and Conficker to continue to exist and spread.