Acronis, its 2020 Acronis Cyberthreats Report, released recently laid out an in-depth review of the current threat landscape and projections for the coming year.

The report states that 1,168 malware detections were encountered per 1,000 clients in a month. Maze ransomware detections were reported at 7.8 per cent in Q3 2020 and remote workers and manager service providers were cyberattackers, and data exfiltration outpaces data encryption, both in India and across the globe.

Based on the protection and security challenges that were amplified by the shift to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic, Acronis warns 2021 will bring aggressive cybercrime activity as criminals pivot their attacks from data encryption to data exfiltration.

Ransomware continues to be the leading threat in India with Maze ransomware accounting for nearly half of all known cases in 2020. Yet the Acronis Cyberthreats Report points to a growing trend of cybercriminals trying to maximize their financial gain. Not content to collect ransoms to decrypt infected data, they steal proprietary – and sometimes embarrassing – data before encrypting it. They then threaten to publicly release the stolen files if the victim doesn’t pay up.

Acronis’ analysts found evidence that more than 1,000 companies globally had their data leaked following a ransomware attack in 2020 – a trend that is expected to accelerate in the coming year, overtaking encryption as the criminals’ primary tactic.

“More than any year in recent memory, 2020 posed a tremendous number of challenges to IT professionals, organizations, and the service providers who support them,” noted Stas Protassov, Acronis co-founder and Technology President. “What we’ve seen is how quickly bad actors are adjusting their attacks to the new IT landscape. By analyzing the activity, attacks, and trends we’ve detected and clearly presenting our findings, we hope to empower our partners and help the IT community at large prepare for the threats on the horizon.”

“When it comes to existing solutions and strategies, the current trends in cyberattacks all show that traditional cybersecurity is failing – globally and in India, it’s usually because of weak technologies and human error, which are both avoidable,” said Rajesh Chhabra, Global Business Development Leader of InsideSales at Acronis. “Just as cybercriminals are evolving their attacks, organizations in India need to advance their protection and security. Comprehensive cyber protection solutions offer the integration and automation that eliminate complexity, optimize performance, and streamline recovery when a successful attack inevitably occurs.”

Among the other notable findings in the Acronis Cyberthreats Report include:
• Attacks against remote workers will increase. While 31 per cent of global and Indian companies reported daily cyberattacks in 2020, the frequency of attacks targeting their remote workers is projected to increase in 2021, since the defences for systems outside of the corporate network are more easily compromised, giving bad actors access to that organization’s data
• Ransomware will look for new victims, become more automated. Rather than continuing to cast a wide net, ransomware attackers will focus on targets that provide a bigger return on their efforts. Breaking into one network to steal data from several companies is more profitable than attacking individual organizations. So, while small businesses will still be targeted, cloud environments and organisations such as managed service providers will become more valued targetsbecause their systems can provide access to the data of multiple clients.

Legacy solutions struggle to keep up. Blocking the new malware has rendered traditional antimalware solutions obsolete, as they cannot keep pace with the increased sophistication and frequency of new threats. The average lifespan of a malware sample in 2020 was just 3.4 days. As attackers continue to utilize automation, the number of malware samples will continue to climb. Organisations will need to find new approaches to protection that are agile and designed to stay ahead of new threats. Simple standalone security and backup solutions will no longer be enough.

The recent Cyber Readiness Report 2020 released by Acronis unveiled that 56 per cent of the companies in India reported that their IT costs having increased significantly to counter attacks in the past months – exactly two times the global average. Moreover, India demonstrated the highest rates of video conferencing attacks with 66 per cent of local companies reporting having encountered videoconferencing attacks. India also reported twice as many attacks as any other country, followed by the US and the UAE and 62 per cent of companies in India reported struggling with phishing attempts.

Acronis has been a pioneer in cyber protection, which is the integration of data protection, cybersecurity, and endpoint management. To protect all data, applications and systems, Acronis solutions are designed to address the Five Vectors of Cyber Protection – safety, accessibility, privacy, authenticity, and security (SAPAS).

The Acronis Cyberthreats Report 2020 is based on examining attack and threat data collected by the company’s global network of Acronis Cyber Protection Operations Centers (CPOCs), which monitor and research cyberthreats 24/7. Malware data was collected by more than 100,000 unique endpoints around the world running Acronis Cyber Protect, which launched in May 2020, and covers attacks targeting endpoints detected between June and October. The full report provides in-depth insights into the top security/threat trends the CPOCs observed in 2020, a review of malware families and related statistics, a deep dive into ransomware’s most dangerous groups, the vulnerabilities that contribute to successful attacks, and Acronis’ complete security forecast and recommendations for 2021.
 
Acronis unifies data protection and cybersecurity to deliver integrated, automated cyber protection that solves the safety, accessibility, privacy, authenticity, and security (SAPAS) challenges of the modern digital world. With flexible deployment models that fit the demands of service providers and IT professionals, Acronis provides superior cyber protection for data, applications, and systems with innovative next-generation antivirus, backup, disaster recovery, and endpoint protection management solutions. With award-winning AI-based antimalware and blockchain-based data authentication technologies, Acronis protects any environment – from cloud to hybrid to on-premises – at a low and predictable cost.

Founded in Singapore in 2003 and incorporated in Switzerland in 2008, Acronis now has more than 1,500 employees in 33 locations in 18 countries. Its solutions are trusted by more than 5.5 million home users and 500,000 companies, including 100 per cent of the Fortune 1000, and top-tier professional sports teams. Acronis products are available through 50,000 partners and service providers in over 150 countries in more than 40 languages.

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What makes this malware the most dangerous is its ability to extract credentials and credit card information from over 300 apps such as email, e-commerce apps, social media apps, besides banking and financial apps, the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), India said in an advisory.

“It is reported that a new Android malware strain dubbed ‘BlackRock’ equipped with datastealing capabilities is attacking a wide range of Android applications.

“The malware is developed using the source code of Xerxes banking malware which itself is a variant of LokiBot Android Trojan,” the advisory said.

CERT is the national technology arm to combat cyber attacks and create a safe Indian cyber space.

The ‘attack campaign’ of this ‘Trojan’ category virus is active globally, said CERT –In.

The predominant feature of this malware is that its target list contains 337 applications including banking and financial applications, and also non-financial and well-known commonly used brand name apps on an Android device that focus on social, communication, networking and dating platforms.

What makes it even more dangerous is its capability to “deflect” majority of anti-virus applications.

Counter-measures

The federal cyber security agency suggested some counter-measures:

1. Do not download and install applications from suspicious sources and use reputed application market only;
2. Always review the app details, number of downloads, user reviews and check ‘additional information’ section before downloading an app from play store.
3. Use device encryption or encrypt external SD card
4. Avoid using unsecured, unknown Wi-Fi networks among others.
5. When it comes to downloading banking apps one should use the official and verified version and
6. Users should make sure they have a strong AI-powered mobile antivirus installed to detect and block this kind of tricky malware.

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According to the report, Fakesky sends users fake text messages thereby prompting the victims to click on a malicious link. This link directs them to download an app. Once the users download this app, then the fake app will get full access to a user’s personal details in the device including the bank related apps and can also steal login information.

Experts claim that the Chinese group ‘Roaming Mantis’ is behind the operation of this app in Asia. This malicious group steals confidential information of the users like phone numbers, device models, telecom providers, OS versions, banking information, IMEI numbers and IMSI numbers. “Our analysis shows that the threat actor behind the FakeSpy malware is a Chinese-speaking group, commonly referred to as “Roaming Mantis”, a group that is known to have launched similar campaigns in the past,” researchers wrote in their analysis

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