Last Updated on January 9, 2019
And after the timelines (part I and part II), it’s time to publish the last statistics post for 2018, related to December, a month that has seen a slight decrease in the level of activity (oh the Christmas atmosphere). I have collected 106 events, 20 less than November.
According to the Daily Trend of Events chart, December has seen virtually no activities during the weekends (and yes, the Christmas Day as well!).
As always, Cyber Crime ranks on top of the Motivations Behind Attacks chart, but it has fallen below 80% (79.2% vs 82.5% in November). The three points have gone to Cyber Espionage (thanks China!), at 16% vs 12.7% in November. The operations in Italy were not enough, so Hacktivism slides to 2.8% from 3.2%, whereas Cyber Warfare rises to 1.9% from 1.6% in November.
Obviously malware is stable on top of the Attack Vectors chart, but its percentage drops to 25,5% from 31%, and most of all, it’s very close to that of account hijackings (24.5% from 19.8% in November). Targeted attacks rank at number three (like November) back at 14.2% from 12.7% (it was 14.2% in October). For the second month in a row, unknown attack vectors rank at number four.
Governments rank on top of the Distribution of Targets chart with 17.9%, ahead of multiple targets (15.1%) and single individuals (13.2%).
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).
Most importantly… Stay tuned as I will soon publish the summary with the statistics for the whole 2018.
