Technology organisations are among the most frequently attacked by hackers, according to the latest ‘Advanced Cyber Attack Landscape’ report and interactive maps by FireEye.
The report and maps provide detailed insight into the global nature of malware communication activity related to sophisticated cyber attacks.
According to the report, 89% of advanced persistent threats (APTs) are associated with tools developed and disseminated by Chinese hacker groups.
FireEye also found that command and control (CnC) servers are hosted in 184 countries – a 41 percent increase when compared to the 130 countries in 2010.
CnC servers are used heavily during the life cycle of an attack to maintain communication with an infected machine by way of callbacks, enabling the attacker to download and modify malware to evade detection, extract data, or expand an attack within a target organisation.
“The threat landscape has evolved, as cyber threats have outpaced traditional signature-based security defenses, such as anti-virus, and permeated around the world, enabling cybercriminals to easily evade detection and establish connections inside the perimeter of major organisations,” said David DeWalt, CEO, FireEye.
“The FireEye research puts in proper perspective the global pandemic of this new breed of advanced cyber attacks.”
The report draws from blocking more than 12 million callback events from 184 countries logged by the FireEye platform across thousands of end-user appliances during 2012.
