Security Reports

Introduction

In 2019, Attackers continued to embrace malware distribution via URL While the distribution of banking trojans remained popular in 2019, we also saw a notable spike in ransomware as a secondary stage of infection. Attackers continued to evolve and improve their distribution methods and have begun widely embracing Living of the Land techniques to lend validity to their malicious campaigns.

Spearphishing attacks such as Business Email Compromises (BECs) continued to hit below the belt in 2019 as they leveraged large volumes of compromised credentials to gain enough data to launch highly personalized attacks which netted attackers billions of dollars over the course of the year. Impersonation attacks continued their upward trajectory in 2019. These attacks attempt to exploit identity to gain individual trust in order to divert funds and sensitive data into attackers’ coffers.

Large data breaches continued to dominate 2019 headlines on a semi-daily basis. If you weren’t learning of another breach you were hearing of another devastating ransomware event. These caused countless businesses as well as state and local municipalities to come to a standstill for days on end while they scrambled to recover. Late in the year, Ransomware distributors ratcheted up their attacks to a new level by adding the new wrinkle
of stealing sensitive data before encrypting files putting even more pressure on the victims to pony up the
ransom payment.