16-31 May 2021 Cyber Attacks Timeline

The second timeline of May is finally out confirming the decreasing trend (at least in terms of recorded events) that we have seen in the last few months. In fact, in this timeline I have collected 85 events, with an average rate of 5.32 events per day, which sets the minimum value for 2021. Unfortunately the “simple” number of breaches does not tell the whole story: the list of high-profile targets hit by ransomware especially continue to grow with disruptions that, unavoidably, cross the boundaries of cyber space.

Ransomware continues to dominate the threat landscape causing outages and disruptions worldwide (and yes, not even the pork meat is immune). In this timeline it has characterized, directly or indirectly one out of three events (precisely 34.12%). We are not at the same value of the previous timeline (around 45%), but the value remains high. And as I always point out, the real number could be even higher since too many organizations do not completely disclose the root cause of  unspecified outages or disruptions tracked as the outcome of a generic “cyber attack”.

The season of mega breaches continues with more and more records leaked. Omiai (Japan’s biggest dating app – 1.71 million users), DailyQuiz (13 million users) and most importantly, the Indonesian Social Security Administrator for Health (200 million records) are just few example.

Another trend that does not seem to slow down is the exploitation of vulnerabilities, which equally continues to characterize the threat landscape. And it does not matter whether the target is a remote access technology, or an application server or even a mobile phone: generic cyber criminals or state-sponsored actors continue to take the maximum advantage from this opportunity.