According to the report, adversaries are evolving their methods and techniques from phishing to put a greater emphasis on vulnerability abuse. As these adversaries shift tactics, LockBit has dominated the ransomware landscape, from Q4 2021 to Q2 2023, with 39% of total victims – more than triple the number of victims of the second-highest ranked ransomware group. Further analysis shows that the CL0P ransomware group is aggressively developing Zero-Day vulnerabilities, growing its victims by 9x year over year.
Of all vertical industries, manufacturing saw a 42% increase in total victims between Q4 2021 and Q4 2022, underscoring the potential threat to global supply chains. LockBit was responsible for 41% of overall manufacturing attacks. The healthcare vertical saw a 39% increase in victims during the same period, and was targeted primarily by the ALPHV (also known as BlackCat) and LockBit ransomware groups.
Other key findings of Ransomware on the Move: Exploitation Techniques and the Active Pursuit of Zero-Days include:
“Adversaries behind ransomware attacks continue to evolve their techniques and strategies striking at the heart of organizations by exfiltrating their critical and sensitive information,” said Pavel Gurvich, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise Security at Akamai. “It’s critical that organizations understand the techniques and tools deployed by adversaries in order to shield their critical assets, preserve trust in their brand and ensure business continuity.”
For additional information, the security community can access, engage with, and learn from Akamai’s threat researchers by visiting the Akamai Security Hub and following the team on Twitter at @Akamai_Research. Visit Akamai at BlackHat in Las Vegas at booth #2420.
The ransomware data used throughout this report was collected from the leak sites of approximately 90 different ransomware groups. It is typical of these groups to report details of their attacks, such as timestamps, victims names, and victim domains. It is important to note that these reports are subject to whatever each ransomware group has a desire to publicize. The successfulness of these reported attacks was not included in this research.
This research focused instead on the victims who were reported. For each analysis, the number of unique victims within each grouping was measured. This victim data was joined with data obtained from ZoomInfo to provide additional details about each victim, such as location, revenue range, and industry. All data was within the 20-month time frame of October 1, 2021 through May 31, 2023.
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