Last Updated on December 30, 2018
After the two timeline of August (Part I and Part II), it’s time to publish the corresponding statistics.
August has been a month with two faces, with a first half quite lazy, and a tail of events in the second half. In any case, all in all I have collected 80 events, which seem quite few compared to the 130 of July.
So as I mentioned in the introduction, the Daily Tend of Attacks chart shows a first part of the month quite lazy, and a pronounced ramp-up starting from the 19th.
Even if Cyber Crime leads the Motivations Behind Attacks as usual, its percentage drops below the physiological threshold of 80%, something that did not happen since March (77.5% vs 81.5% in July). The difference is all in favor of Cyber Espionage that jumps to 18.8% from 14.6% in July). Cyberfare is stable at 2.5% (was 2.3% in July), while Hacktivism closes the chart with 1.3% (it was 1.5% in July).
Malware is stable on top of the Attack Vectors chart with 35%, up from 29.2% of July, once again ahead of Account Hijackings nearly with the same value of July (18.8% vs 18.5%) and targeted attacks down to 12.5% from 14.6 in the previous month. Once again, unknown attack vectors rank at number four.
Single Individuals rank on top of the Distribution of Targets chart with 22.5% (slightly up in comparison with the 20% of July). Public Administrations this month rank at number two with 17.5% (considerably up from the 12.3% if July when they ranked at number four). Multiple Industries confirm their third place with the same value of July (13.8%).
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”.
In any case, 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).
