April 2015 Cyber Attacks Statistics

Last Updated on May 30, 2015

Even if I am little late, I can finally publish the statistics derived from cyber attacks timelines of April (Part I and Part II).

Something new happened in the Country Distribution chart. I am not obviously referring to the large red circle labeled US (a consolidated trend that is far to be overturned), but rather to Israel which, for the first time, ranks on top of the countries hit by attacks motivated by hacktivism. Clearly a consequence of the multiple actions perpetrated against this country in name of the so-called “OpIsrael” (even if, in reality, the damages inflicted were not so relevant).

This spree of attacks against Israel is not immediately visible in the Daily Trend of Attacks chart. In theory OpIsrael was planned for April 7th, however the attacks have been distributed around that day (actually the actions have continued for the first three weeks of April). The only noticeable peak is on April 14th, but the contribute of OpIsrael to that is nearly negligible.

The shadow of OpIsrael also affects the Motivations Behind Attacks chart. Cyber Crime ranks on top, but its percentage plummets to 55.2% from 69% of March. On the other hand, Hacktivism grows accordingly, jumping to 32.2% (was 20.7% on March). The events related to Cyber Espionage and Cyber Warfare also report a small growth (respectively 9.2% and 3.4% in contrast to 8% and 2.3% of the previous month).

SQLi ranks on top of the Attack Techniques chart, but the real surprise of the month is the staggering 11.5% that places targeted attacks at the 4th place among the known ones. We have been used to see SQLi, Defacement and DDoS swapping their positions in the podium on a regular basis, but a similar value for targeted attacks has never been recorded, as far as I can remember.

For the eighth month in a row, industry ranks on top of the Distribution of Targets chart with 29.9%, a value slightly increasing, but comparable with 28.7% of March. Governmental targets rank at number two with 14.9%, whereas educational targets close the podium with 10.3%, just above the organizations out of the top three with a “modest” 9.2%.

The Industry Drill Down chart confirms E-Commerce sites on top, despite the most noticeable finding of April is probably the though period for targets belonging to TV Broadcast, Hospitality and Online Gambling, which collected together one third of the “unwelcome attentions” of attackers. well above the other categories. On the other hand, the Organization Drill Down chart places Software organizations on top, as reported in the corresponding Drill Down chart.

As usual, the sample must be taken very carefully since it refers only to discovered attacks included in my timelines, aiming 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, 2013, 2014 and now 2015 (regularly updated). You may also want to have a look at the Cyber Attack Statistics.

Of course follow @paulsparrows on Twitter for the latest updates, and feel free to submit remarkable incidents that in your opinion deserve to be included in the timelines (and charts).