Last Updated on December 30, 2018
I have just publish the second timeline of March (the first is here), so I can now compile the statistics for this month.
As I mentioned, this month has seen for the first time in 2018, a decreasing trend in the number of events: this is clearly visible from the Daily Trend of Attacks chart, which shows a clear drop in the second half of the month.
But the month of March has also seen a sharp drop of the events motivated by Cyber Crime. Despite they rank on top of the Motivations Behind Attacks chart as usual, this category experienced a slide to 76.5% from 86.4% in February. The ten point went probably to Cyber Espionage, whose event rose to 19.4% from 9.1% in February. Cyber Warfare also rose to 3.1% from 0.8, while Hacktivism recorded a single event, leading to a modest 1%.
Malware confirms its leadership of the Attack Vectors chart with 39.8%, showing a slight increase from 31.8% recorded in February. Account Hijackings are stable at number two with 18.4% (it was 24.2% in February), whereas targeted attacks confirm their increasing trend with 16.3%, up from 2.1% of February. It is interesting to notice that unlike, the previous months, only five categories of attacks have been recorded this month.
Single Individuals lead the Distribution of Targets chart once again with 22.4% (it was 28% in February). Multiple targets rank at number two with 15.3% (it was 13.6% in February), ahead of Public Administration (11.2% vs 12.9% in March) and Finance. It is interesting to notice that the first three categorise
As always, bear in mind that the sample refers exclusively 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, 2015, 2016, and 2017 (regularly updated). You may also want to have a look at the Cyber Attack Statistics, and 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).
