- Last modified: April 22, 2025
In December 2024, Cyber Crime continued to lead the Motivations chart with 70% slightly down from 72%, of November. Operations driven by Cyber Espionage ranked at number two with 16% up from 11% and once again ahead of Cyber Warfare with 3% and hence slightly up from 2.8% and Hacktivism with 2% at the same level (and rank) of the previous month.
In December (as always), Malware led the Attack Techniques with 32% (up from 26.8%) followed by Account Takeovers with 14% and Targeted Attacks with 13% slightly up from 12%.
Once again Phishing Emails led the Initial Access vectors with 18% up from 15%, once again ahead of Supply Chain Compromises soaring at 11% from 6.8% and the exploitation of Vulnerabilities in publicly exposed apps up to 6% from 4%.
The Distribution of Targets was led again by Multiple Organizations with 29% (it was 26%), ahead of Governments with 11%, up from 9%), which swapped their position with Individuals at number three wiht 11%, the same value of the previous month.
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.
Daily Trend of Attacks - December 2024
HACKMAGEDDON.COM
Motivations - December 2024
HACKMAGEDDON.COM
Attacks - December 2024
HACKMAGEDDON.COM
Initial Access - December 2024
HACKMAGEDDON.COM
Targets - December 2024
HACKMAGEDDON.COM
Breakdown of Motivations By Sector - December 2024
HACKMAGEDDON.COM
Breakdown of Attacks By Sector - December 2024
HACKMAGEDDON.COM
Geo Map - December 2024
HACKMAGEDDON.COM
No Data Found
Check out the interactive charts and the statistics, immediately after the infographic. And please support my work, sharing the content, and of course connect on Linkedin, or even follow @paulsparrows on X (formerly Twitter), psparrows.bsky.social on Bluesky, or @ppasseri@Infosec.exchange on Mastodon for the latest updates.
BE NOTIFIED OF NEW BLOG POSTS: SUSCRIBE!
SUPPORT MY WORK, MAKE A DONATION!
Mega Breaches in 2026Here’s a collection of the main mega breaches (that is data breaches with more than one million records compromised and possibly leaked) during 2026. The information is derived from the cyber attacks timelines that I published, normally, on a bi-weekly basis.
October 2026 Cyber Attacks TimelineA live view of the month's vetted cyber incidents, updated as new events are confirmed. Explore the timeline, filter by attack type, and see motivations, techniques, initial access methods, targeted sectors and target countries on an interactive map.
Rogue AI AgentsAI agents are escaping sandboxes, misusing credentials and acting without authorization. This live dashboard tracks every reported incident on a horizontal timeline, with charts showing which AI companies and agents are involved, the techniques used and how they got in. It updates automatically as new ...
Exploited Security Vendor Vulnerabilities in 2026Security vendors were prime targets in the first half of 2026, with 55 confirmed exploitation incidents involving 66 CVEs across the main vendors. Explore the full interactive timeline and charts.
AI-Assisted Malicious CampaignsIn this blog post I am collecting the campaigns that show evidence of being AI-generated, or make use of AI tools to increase their impact. As always I will continue to update the list as soon as new campaigns emerge.
