In today’s hyper-connected world, it is no longer a question of, if you will be attacked—but when. Symantec’s (Nasdaq: SYMC) Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR), Volume 20 exposes a tactical shift by cyberattackers: They are infiltrating networks and evading detection by hijacking the infrastructure of major corporations and using it against them.
“Attackers don’t need to break down the door to a company’s network when the keys are readily available,” said Tarun Kaura, Director – Technology Sales, India, Symantec. “We’re seeing attackers trick companies into infecting themselves by Trojanizing software updates to common programs and patiently waiting for their targets to download them—giving attackers unfettered access to the corporate network.”
In a record-setting year for zero-day vulnerabilities, Symantec research reveals that it took software companies an average of 59 days to create and roll out patches—up from only four days in 2013. Attackers took advantage of the delay and, in the case of Heartbleed, leapt to exploit the vulnerability within four hours. There were 24 total zero-day vulnerabilities discovered in 2014, leaving an open playing field for attackers to exploit known security gaps before they were patched.
Globally, advanced attackers continued to breach networks with highly-targeted spear-phishing attacks, which increased a total of eight percent in 2014. What makes last year particularly interesting is the precision of these attacks which used 20 percent fewer emails to successfully reach their targets and incorporated more drive-by malware downloads and other web-based exploits.
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