When it comes to the global threat landscape, the second half of 2018 could be described as the time of 'attacks on steroids'. It saw threat actors bulking up existing tactics, ?rapidly?evolving new ones and applying smart techniques to vastly accelerate?their growth rate.
This is according to Nuno Ceitil, consulting systems engineer at Netscout, who will share the findings of the company's Threat Intelligence Report at ITWeb Security Summit 2019, to be held from 27-31 May at the Sandton Convention Centre.
The report refers to the second half of 2018 and is titled "The Dawn of the Terrorbit Era". Ceitil defines the 'terrorbit era' as the point in time last year when multiple denial-of-service attacks exceeded or approached the 1TB per second traffic volume.
He says last year, Internet of things devices were attacked within five minutes of being plugged into the Web. While nation-states ramped up their advanced persistent threat activity, adversaries continued to innovate. For example, 2018 saw the first observed use of Chrome extensions to enable persistence in the Stolen Pencil campaign, which targeted academic institutions.
So what does this era mean for organisations? According to Ceitil, it has become increasingly evident that an integrated and multi-layered approach is required to deal with these cyber threats.
"This era is associated with highly sophisticated attacks that are being carried out from both state-sponsored groups and cyber criminal organisations. We are seeing an ever-increasing variety of protocols being used to cause disruption of services."
Ceitil will present a summary of the types of attacks carried out globally and locally over the second half of 2018, as well as new emerging threats.
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