And finally I have aggregated all the data collected in 2023 from the cyber attacks timelines. In the past year I collected 4,128 events, a 35% increase compared to the number of 3,074 events collected over the course of 2022. The massive exploitation of vulnerabilities characterized the past year, mainly due to MOVEit CVE-2023-34362 flaw.

Cyber crime continued to lead the Motivations chart with 79%, slightly up from 76.8% of 2021. Cyber Espionage was slightly down to 9.5% from 10.4%), like Hacktivism to 6.0% from 7.1%.

Malware continued to lead the Attack Techniques chart with 35.9% up from 34.7%. The exploitation of vulnerabilities soared to 16.3% from 7.8%. Account Takeovers slid to 9.2% from 15.5% from 13% and Targeted Attacks went slightly down to 7% from 8%. Curiously DDoS attacks were stable to 3.8%, the same value of 2022.

Once again, multiple industries led the Target Distribution chart with 19.6%, down from 22.3%. The Healthcare sector remained among the preferred targets of ransomware gangs, and this explains the second place, for three years in a row, but with 11.1% down from 12.5%. Governments jumped at number three with 9.4% down from 11.8%.

The statistics are also available as an infographic, so enjoy the read and spread my work to raise awareness!