Cyberattacks fueled by geopolitical tension are increasing

Billions of personal records were stolen in 2018, unearthed in breaches that successfully targeted household names in government, technology, healthcare, travel and hospitality. Compounding the problem has been increased geopolitical tension between western democracies and countries like Russia, China and North Korea.

Modern cyberattacks appear to increasingly be fueled by geopolitical tension and reveal how clever attackers have become in evolving to remain undetected — using techniques such as lateral movement, island hopping and counter incident response to stay invisible, according to Carbon Black.

Key findings

• The top five industries targeted by cyberattacks in 2018, according to Carbon Black’s global threat data, were: Computers/Electronics, Healthcare, Business Services, Internet/Software, and Manufacturing
• As 2018 came to a close, CB TAU saw several cyberattacks targeting global governments that included indicators of compromise attributable to North Korea
• Approximately $1.8 billion of cryptocurrency related thefts occurred in 2018
• Nearly 60% of attacks now involve lateral movement
• Half of incident response engagements now involve instances of counter incident response
• Half of cyberattacks today use the victim primarily for island hopping
• IR firms are encountering destructive attacks during 32% of investigations.