The Security Skeptic

My Interisle colleagues and I today published our 2024 Cybercrime Suppy Chain study. We analyzed 16 million cybercrime events to expose a dramatic rise in criminal exploitation of name, address, hosting, and financial supply chains. Our year-over-year findings show that cybercriminals exploit lax policies to easily and cheaply obtain resources for phishing, malware, and spam campaigns. In our report, we provide actionable insights for those aiming to curb cybercrime. Among the major findings in the study, Interisle reports that: The total number of malware, phishing, and spam attacks grew year-over-year by nearly 54%, to nearly 16.3 million attacks. Spam doubled,...

Malware quarterly reports for July-September 2024 is now posted at the Cybercrime Information Center. For the period... Malware identified as targeting endpoint devices increased 277% over the prior period. WordPress blog sites used for malware accounted for nearly all the malicious documents reported for this period. We continue to see an uptick in malicious scripts. IPv4 addresses reported for exhibiting characteristics of attackware and traffic injectors increased 38% to just under 1 million. ASNs in China and India again have the most IPv4 addresses reported for hosting malware. More malware trends for the period at https://www.cybercrimeinfocenter.org/malware-trends-july-september-2024. For historical reporting of...

Our Interisle team today announced the publication of an industry report, Phishing Landscape 2024, A Study of the Scope and Distribution of Phishing. Interisle’s fourth annual study examines nearly four million phishing reports collected from May 2023 to April 2024 and provides historical measurements using over 15 million phishing reports collected at the Cybercrime Information Center over a four year period. Findings from the study: • The total number of phishing attacks grew to ~1.9 million incidents worldwide. • Phishing attacks hosted at subdomain providers increased by 450,000+ reported names, representing 24% of all phishing attacks. • The use of...

2024 began with a rise in domain names reported for hosting malware unlike any we have seen since we began measuring malware attacks in 2021. The 1Q2024 Top 20 TLDs included 10 new gTLDs, 6 ccTLDs, and 4 legacy gTLDs. Only three TLDs remained in the top 5 TLDs (COM, NET, INFO) from the prior quarter. The ORG and BR TLDs were replaced by SHOP (over 3,000% increase) and TOP (over 700% increase). All but one registrar in 1Q2024’s Top 20 registrar ranking showed increases of 100% or more. Several registrars had 4- and 5-figure percentage increases in domains reported....

2024 began with a rise in domain names reported for hosting malware unlike any we have seen since we began measuring malware attacks in 2021. The 1Q2024 Top 20 TLDs included 10 new gTLDs, 6 ccTLDs, and 4 legacy gTLDs. Only three TLDs remained in the top 5 TLDs (COM, NET, INFO) from the prior quarter. The ORG and BR TLDs were replaced by SHOP (over 3,000% increase) and TOP (over 700% increase). All but one registrar in 1Q2024’s Top 20 registrar ranking showed increases of 100% or more. Several registrars had 4- and 5-figure percentage increases in domains reported....