Damaging cyberattacks surge ahead of 2018 U.S. midterm elections

Carbon Black released its Quarterly Incident Response Threat Report (QIRTR) aggregating key findings from IR partner investigations during the last 90 days.

Key findings

• Destructive cyberattacks are on the rise. IR firms said that victims experienced destructive attacks 32% of the time
• Of 113 investigations Carbon Black partners conducted in the third quarter, 41 percent stemmed from Russia and China
• Two-thirds of IR professionals interviewed believe cyberattacks will influence the upcoming U.S. elections.

“Our research found that today’s attackers are increasingly punitive, sophisticated and confident,” said Tom Kellermann, Chief Cybersecurity Officer for Carbon Black and one of the report’s authors. “And because of the dark web, they have access to complex tools and compromised infrastructures, including voter databases. This allows attackers to exploit new security vulnerabilities and operate at a higher level of sophistication than before.”

Voter databases available for purchase

Researchers also found 20 different state voter databases available for purchase on the dark web, several from swing states. Critical information in these offerings include voter IDs, full names, current / previous addresses, genders, phone numbers, and citizenship status, among other information.

According to the research, the dark web also offers hacking and influence campaigns targeting social media sites, as well as hackers for hire, who offer to target government entities for the purposes of database manipulation, economic/ corporate espionage, DDoS attacks and botnet rentals.