I have aggregated the statistics created from the cyber attacks timelines published in the fourth quarter of 2023. In total I have collected 1029 events (11.31 events/day), a 7.1% decrease compared to the 1108 events (12.18 events/day) of the previous quarter.

Cyber crime continued to lead the Motivations chart with 77.1% down from 79.7% of the previous quarter. On the other hand, events driven by Cyber Espionage decreased slightly to 9.3% from 9.7% of the previous quarter.

Malware continued to lead the Attack Techniques chart with 38.5%, up from 33.8% of the previous quarter). It is important to point out that the real numbers could be much higher since in too many cases unconfirmed ransomware attacks are indicated as generic outages, and they fall into the Unknown category). Once again vulnerabilities rank at number two but their percentage plummets to 11.5% from 25.5% of the previous quarter (but once again, it is worth to mention that the two attack vectors are tightly related since, the exploitation of vulnerabilities is aimed, in almost all cases, to install malware.

The Target Distribution chart confirms Multiple industries at the first place with 18.9%, exactly one point up from 17.9% of the previous quarter, once again followed by organizations in the healthcare sector.

The statistics are also available as an infographic.