Last Updated on October 4, 2018
It’s time to publish the statistics derived from the cyber attacks timelines of August (Part I and Part II), a month particularly active from an Information Security perspective, despite the Summer time.
As always, let’s start from the Daily Trend Chart, which shows obviously an average high level of activity characterized by a spike at the beginning and the end of the month.
Cyber crime ranks on top of the Motivations Behind Attacks chart with 72.4% (exactly the same value reported in July). Hacktivism is substantially stable (13.8% vs. 13.3% in July), similarly to cyber espionage (9.5% vs. 9.2% in July). Cyberwarfare shows a small decrease ( 4.3% vs 5.1% reported in July).
For the third month in a row, account hijackings rank on top of the known Attack Vectors with 18.1% (was 14.3% in July). Targeted attacks are immediately behind with 14.7% (was 11.2% in the previous month), ahead of Dos/DDos (12.1%, was 12.2% in July).
Similarly to July, the Distribution of Targets is led by industry with 27.6% (was 31.6% in the previous month). Attacks towards single individuals (mainly due to the PoodleCorp collective) soar to number two with 20.7% (was 8.2% in July), whereas governments slide at number three with 15.5% (vs. 16.3% reported in July), ahead of organizations (9.5% vs 12.2% in June), healthcare (6.9% vs 7.1% in July) and finance (3.4%).
The wave of DDoS attacks push video games companies on top of the Industry Drill Down chart with 21.8%, ahead of hotels and hospitality (12.5%) that emerge over the other categories.
The attacks of the hacktivists against the Olympic Games of Rio 2016 push sport organizations on top of the Organization Drill Down chart.
As always, bear in mind that the sample refers solely to the 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).
