Websense Security Labs 2013 Threat Report reveals that in one year, the number of malicious cyberattacks increased by nearly 600%. “These attacks were primarily carried out on legitimate websites and challenge traditional approaches to security and reliability. The temporal and targeted nature of these advanced threats reveals a new class of sophisticated hackers working to compromise increasingly valuable targets,” said Charles Renert, vice president of Websense Security Labs.
For the executive, proactive, real-time security techniques that inspect the complete cycle of a threat are the only ones that can withstand these attacks and prevent data theft.
Highlights of the report, based on an annual comparison of threats via web, email, data, mobile and social networks:
• Every week, companies faced an average of 1,719 attacks for every 1,000 users.
• The number of malicious websites has increased by nearly 600% worldwide.
• The number of malicious websites in North America increased by 720%, and the EMEA region recorded an increase by 531%.
• 85% of the malicious websites were hosted on legitimate hosting companies.
• Half of malware that opens an Internet connection downloaded additional executable files during the first 60 seconds.
• Only 7.7% of the malware interacted with the system registry – bypassing many behavioral detection systems and antivirus solutions.
• 32% of malicious links on social networks used shortened URLs. After accessing the host, hackers usually hide their malicious pages inside the directory tree. This process generates long and complex addresses that can indicate that something is wrong. Abbreviating the links solves this problem.
• United States, Russia and Germany were the top three countries hosting malware. The Bahamas debuted on the list of the top five countries with phishing sites in second place.
• China, the United States and Russia were the top three countries hosting command and control servers.
• Only one in five emails was legitimate, and spam sent via email increased that traffic to 76%. More than 250,000 spam emails were sent per hour.
• One in ten malicious mobile apps asked for permission to install other apps, which is rare among legitimate apps.
Main Results for Latin America
• A primary indicator of global cyber threat activity is the number of malicious links that have emerged. Last year, while the number of links of this type grew by nearly 600% worldwide, the growth in the Latin American region was 491%, vastly outpacing many traditional defenses.
• ?Latin America is not represented among the top ten countries that hosted the most malware in 2012, with the majority being from European countries.
• In the regional ranking, the top ten countries "victims" of cybercrime were:
O Mexico
O Brazil
O Argentina
O Chile
O Colombia
O Peru
O Costa Rica
O Ecuador
O Guatemala
O Panama
• Brazil and Mexico are in the list of the ten countries that most use Twitter (in positions 2 and 7, respectively), being this the social network that presented in 2012 the greatest increase in the use of reduced web links to spread malicious threats.
• Facebook continues to dominate the global market for social networks, which also makes it one of the main vectors of cyberattacks. Brazil and Mexico are among the ten countries in the world that show greater use of Facebook, occupying positions 2 and 5, respectively.
• No Latin American country was in the top ten that hosted command and control (CnC) servers to carry out malware attacks in the past year.
To download the Report and watch the report highlights video: www.websense.com
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