Last Updated on May 24, 2015
I have been quite busy in the last few months, so, unfortunately, I was not able to keep the pace with the statistics derived from my Cyber Attacks Timelines. However, thanks to the ISMS Forum Spain (Asociación Española para el Fomento de la Seguridad de la Información), I have been invited to take part at the XV Jornada Internacional de ISMS Forum: La Sociedad Digital, entre Confianza y Ciber-riesgos (to be held on May, the 28th in Madrid).
Taking advantage of this awesome opportunity, I have been able to reorganize the data collected so far for the events recorded in 2014.
What I show below, is a synthesis of this work. Further information will be presented in Madrid, and later in my blog. Meanwhile, I hope the information provided will satisfy the readers who kindly asked for an update of the stats.
Let us start with the Daily Attack Trend Chart.
Needless to say, the crooks have started this infosec year with the brakes on. Apart from few noticeable examples (for instance the peak on the 20th of April due to the NullCrew collective), the activity is quite low in comparison with the past years (again a full analysis will be shown in Madrid).
Drilling down the Daily Attack Trend:
Shows a constant ‘bias’ of events related to Cyber Crime with some isolated peaks of Hacktivism. This is also evident from the Motivations Behind Attacks Chart.
Here the Cyber Crime dominates the chart, accounting for the 61% of the total events. Nearly twice more than Hactkivism, stuck to a ‘modest’ 31%. On the other hand Cyber Espionage and Cyber Warfare are quite stable at the values of 2013 when they were respectively at the 5% and 4% (but do not get carried away, the end of the year is far away and there is time to change along the way).
And the fall of Hacktivism finds another indirect confirm in the Distribution of Attack Techniques Chart:
Apparently fewer and fewer information is disclosed, so nearly one fifth of the recorded attacks if of uncertain origin. However both DDoS and SQLi confirmed the decreasing trend. On the other hand Account Hijacking maintains its growing trend (was 9% in 2013).
Last but not least, the Distribution of Targets chart:
Targets belonging to industry rank at number one with the nearly 30% of occurrences, well ahead of governmental targets (at number two with nearly 19%) and organizations (at number three with nearly 12%). The others are behind (luckily for them).
Well, that’s all folks… At least so far… As I said before further data will follow…
As usual, please bear in mind that the sample must be taken very carefully since it refers only to discovered attacks, published in the news, and included in my timelines. The sample cannot be exhaustive but only aims to provide an high level overview of the “cyber landscape”.
If you want to have an idea of how fragile our data are inside the cyberspace, have a look at the timelines of the main Cyber Attacks in 2011, 2012 and now 2013 (regularly updated). You may also want to have a look at the Cyber Attack Statistics, and follow @paulsparrows on Twitter for the latest updates.
Also, feel free to submit remarkable incidents that in your opinion deserve to be included in the timelines (and charts).
Related articles
