Cybercrime is increasing and evolving every day at an alarming rate. Cybercriminals and threat actors are transforming and developing their tactics and attack methods to dupe the enterprises and individuals.
Mimecast, a specialized company in cloud-based email management, has hinted how the threat actors are unfolding their perilous intentions, through its latest threat landscape report. Citing an anecdote, Mimecast experts have claimed, threat actors are increasingly using compressed and audio files as new weapons to launch a savage attack.
Why ZIP files?
Compressed files, popularly known as ZIP files are used for binding and compressing many files together and is an accessible format used in file-sharing utilities. Mimecast claims, compressed files let threat actors leverage severe, complex and multi-malware payload.
"The ZIP format of file compression dominated detections throughout the quarter; this has also been an ongoing trend throughout 2019 and is consistently the most commonly detected format used for attack. It is highly likely that any permutation of a compression-related file format will feature prominently in future campaigns, and that continued use of any available form of file compression format will remain the most attractive to threat actors," the report claims.
The report added that adversaries will also increasingly use voicemail service for delivering malicious payloads and launch phishing attacks. To justify its claim, the company cited a horror story experienced by a UK based energy company, who lost £200,000 in a phishing attack. The attacker used a spoofed voicemail, pretending as the head honcho of the company and was crafted using AI.
The future is dark
Mimecast claimed, transportation, financial & banking sector, storage & delivery, and the professional industries, including legal services the most vulnerable sectors who will supposedly face a deluge of attacks in 2020.
The popularity of connected gadgets and 5G connectivity will also increase the number of cyberattacks in the coming year. The widespread adoption of 5G connection will offer companies and governments to transfer data in high volume, which will increase the opportunities for more significant data breaches. The report also hinted that mobile technology will become more prone to lethal attacks in 2020.
