New cyber attack techniques are on the rise

Scripting threats, including JavaScript and Visual Basic Script attacks, accounted for 68% of all malware during Q3, while total malware instances spiked by 81% this quarter over last, with more than 19 million variants blocked in Q3. The findings reinforce expectations of continued growth of new malware and various attack techniques in the coming months, further emphasising the importance of layered security and advanced threat prevention.

“Threat actors are constantly adjusting their techniques, always looking for new ways of exploiting vulnerabilities to steal valuable data,” said Corey Nachreiner, Chief Technology Officer at WatchGuard Technologies. “This quarter, we found that script-based attacks – like the fake Python library packages discovered in September – appeared 20 times more than in Q2, while overall malware attacks shot through the roof. Staying vigilant regarding these developments is half the battle. Every business can better protect themselves and their stakeholders by employing multiple layers of protection, enabling advanced security services and monitoring network logs for traffic related to the top threats mentioned in this report.”

WatchGuard’s Internet Security Report examines the modern threat landscape and delivers key data, educational guidance and in-depth research to help readers understand the latest attack trends and update their defences. Other findings from the Q3 2017 report include:

• Cross-site Scripting (XSS) attacks plague web browsers, spreading internationally. XSS attacks, which allow cyber criminals to inject malicious script into victims’ sites, continue to grow at a measured pace. Previous reports detailed XSS attacks against Spain alone, but in Q3, XSS attacks broadly affected every country.
• Legacy antivirus (AV) only missed 24% of new malware. Over the past three quarters, signature-based AV has missed malware at increasing rates, peaking at almost 47% in Q2. But this quarter was a marked improvement with only 23.77% of new or zero day malware able to circumvent AV. While this data is encouraging, behavioural detection solutions are still the most effective way to block advance persistent threats.
• Suspicious HTML iframes surface everywhere. Attackers are continuing to evolve how they leverage the HTML iframe tag to force unsuspecting victims to suspicious and often malicious sites. While potentially malicious iframes showed up everywhere, including the US and Canada, their numbers jumped significantly in both the UK and Germany.

Authentication is still a big target. Though not as prevalent as in Q2, attacks targeting authentication and credentials such as Mimikatz, returned in a big way this quarter. Aside from Mimikatz, brute force web login attempts were also highly visible, proving that attackers are continuing to target the weakest link – credentials.

WatchGuard’s Internet Security Report is based on anonymised Firebox Feed data from nearly 30,000 active WatchGuard UTM appliances worldwide, which blocked more than 19 million malware variants and 1.6 million network attacks in Q3. The complete report includes defensive strategies for responding to the latest attack trends, based on analysis of the quarter’s top malware and network threats. The report also examines the growing trend of supply chain attacks by evaluating the most notable instances from Q3 – NetSarang, Ccleaner and fake Python packages.

WatchGuard Threat Lab’s latest research project – a detailed analysis on Q3 phishing trends – is highlighted in the report as well. This project features email spam and malware data captured by the team’s ‘Artemis’ honeynet, which is now publicly available on GitHub for download and use.