Last Updated on November 11, 2020
After the cyber attacks timelines (part I, and part II), it’s time to publish the statistics for August. If you believe that the Summer could slow down the criminal business, you will be disappointed. In August I have analyzed a total of 197 events, the highest value so far and an increase compared to July (184 events analyzed).
The Daily Trend chart is characterized by a peak on August 10. The week-end cycle is clearly visible, but the overall activity level high throughout the month.
Ransomware pushes cyber crime on top of the Motivations Behind Attacks chart with 86.8%, at the same level of July (87%). Cyber Espionage accounts for 9.6% from 8.7% of July. Hacktivism is stable at 2.5% (it was 2.2% in July).
The Attack Techniques chart says that Malware is still on top with 38.1% (it was 36.4% in July). Account hijackings are again at number two among the known attack techniques with 17.3% (it was 14.7% in July). Finally, similarly to July, targeted attacks rank at number three with 11.7%, up from 8.2% of July. It is also particularly interesting to not that Vulnerabilities and Misconfigurations rank at number four and five among the known techniques, respectively with 8.1% and 5.1%.
Once again, attacks against multiple targets lead the Distribution of Targets chart with 23.9% (from 21.2% of July). Educational targets rank at number two with 14.7% (it was 9.8% in July), ahead of healthcare targets at number three with 12.2%.
As always bear in mind that the sample refers exclusively to the attacks included in my timelines, available from public sources such as blogs and news sites. Obviously the sample cannot be complete, but only aims to provide an high level overview of the threat landscape.
Finally, please support my work, sharing the content, and of course follow @paulsparrows on Twitter for the latest updates. Also feel free to submit remarkable incidents that in your opinion deserve to be included in the timelines (and charts).
Hola buenos dias, estuve leyendo el informe y revisando las estadisticas quincenales y no cuadran la cantidad de eventos ya que al sumar las dos quincenas dan 200 eventos y aqui en el informe general solo reportas 197 eventos.
Gracias
Jorge,
there are two factors that might affect the number:
1) The timelines of the month could include some events occurred in a previous period (outside the considered interval), which I don’t take into consideration in the statistics since they do not refer to the same month.
2) I might decide to split some events when creating the statistics.
Hope this helps.
Paolo.