Acronis released the findings of its Mid-Year Cyberthreats Report, From Innovation to Risk: Managing the Implications of AI-driven Cyberattacks. The comprehensive study, based on data captured from more than one million global endpoints, provides insight into the evolving cybersecurity landscape and uncovers the growing utilization of generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems, such as ChatGPT, by cybercriminals to craft malicious content and execute sophisticated attacks.
The biannual threat report, which also covered regions of interest in the Middle East, highlights ransomware as the dominant risk to small and medium-sized businesses. And while the number of new ransomware variants continues to decline, ransomware attacks’ severity remains significant. Equally concerning is the growing prominence of data stealers, who leverage stolen credentials to gain unauthorized access to sensitive information.
“The volume of threats in 2023 has surged relative to last year, a sign that criminals are scaling and enhancing how they compromise systems and execute attacks,” said Candid Wüest, Acronis VP of Research. “To address the dynamic threat landscape, organizations need agile, comprehensive, unified security solutions that provide the necessary visibility to understand attacks, simplify context, and provide efficient remediation of any threat, whether it may be malware, system vulnerability, and everything in between.”
According to the report, phishing is the primary method criminals use to unearth login credentials. In the first half of 2023 alone, the number of email-based phishing attacks has surged 464 per cent when compared to 2022. Over the same frame, there has also been a 24 per cent increase in attacks per organization.
In the first half of 2023, Acronis-monitored endpoints observed a 15 per cent increase in the number of files and URLs per scanned email. Cybercriminals have also tapped into the burgeoning large language model (LLM)-based AI market, using platforms to create, automate, scale, and improve new attacks through active learning.
Regionally, the number of Malware detections in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and Kuwait as of May 2023 had experienced an infection rate of 11 per cent each and a global ranking of 25 and 27 respectively. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) reported a 10 per cent infection rate over the same period, ranking globally at position 31.
Regarding blocked URLs, Kuwait topped the region at 30 per cent, ranking at position 2 globally while Egypt and KSA ranked at positions 7 and 14, having registered 15 per cent and 14 per cent, respectively. On its part, the UAE had the least number of blocked URLs, registering only 8 per cent and ranking at position 30 globally.
