The Russia-Ukraine war has caused humans to take their agendas into cyber space and cyber threats, polarizing the world further
In a review of its cybersecurity intelligence data collected between January and June 2022, Check Point Research (CPR), has released a mid-year report of the global cyber threat landscape.
Offering its operational statistics on industry and regional cyberattacks, as well as advice and predictions for the remainder of 2022, the report presents an integrated view of the various disruptions that have caused real harm to civilians and netizens in the first half of this year.
Based on what its operational data shows, the firm has forecast four trends for H2 2022:
- The ransomware ecosystem will become much more fragmented
Threat groups have become more structured and now operate like regular businesses with set targets to meet. Therefore, instead of a few large ransomware threat groups, the ecosystem may gravitate to comprise many small- to medium- sized groups that can hide in plain sight more effectively. - Email infection chains will become more diverse
Due to the implementation of internet macros being blocked by default in Microsoft office, the more sophisticated malware families will accelerate the development of new infection chains as sophisticated social engineering attacks increase. They will leverage different file types that are password protected to prevent detection. - Hacktivism will continue to evolve
The ongoing Russia-Ukraine and other geopolitical situations will cause more hacktivist groups to continue to align their attacks with the agenda of their chosen nation. - Continued attacks on decentralized blockchain networks
With major blockchain incidents such as the Rarible marketplace vulnerability or ApeCoin Airdrop vulnerability, hackers are trending toward breaching and hijacking crypto assets. Smart contract vulnerabilities are expected to become exploited in the Metaverse.
According to the firm’s Vice President of Research, the war in Ukraine has had a dramatic impact in cyber space in both scope and scale: “Unfortunately, this will only get worse, especially with ransomware now being the number one threat to organizations. However, with the right expertise, strategy and cybersecurity solutions in place, (organizations can) prevent attacks from happening.”
