No environment immune to cyber attacks: Check Point

Be it supply chain, email, mobile or the Cloud, no environment is immune to cyber attacks as threat actors continue to develop new tool sets and techniques, thus targeting corporate assets stored on Cloud infrastructure, individuals' mobile devices, trusted third-party supplier applications and even popular mail platforms, a new report by cyber security firm Check Point Software said on Friday.

"Be it Cloud, mobile or email, no environment is immune to cyber attacks. In addition, threats such as targeted Ransomware attacks, DNS attacks and Cryptominers will continue to be relevant in 2019, and security experts need to stay attuned to the latest threats and attack methods to provide their organisations with the best level of protection," Maya Horowitz, Director, Threat Intelligence and Research, Products, Check Point, said in a statement.

According to Check Point Software's "Cyber Attack Trends: 2019 Mid-Year" report, with over 50 per cent increase in attacks when compared to 2018, banking malware has evolved to become a very common mobile threat.

Today, banking malware is capable of stealing payment data, credentials and funds from victims' bank accounts, and new versions of these malware are ready for massive distribution by anyone that's willing to pay.

Email scammers have started to employ various evasion techniques designed to bypass security solutions and anti-spam filters such as encoded emails, images of the message embedded in the email body, as well as complex underlying code which mixes plain text letters with HTML characters.

The growing popularity of public Cloud environments has led to an increase in cyber attacks targeting enormous resources and sensitive data residing within these platforms.

The lack of security practices such as misconfiguration and poor management of the Cloud resources remains the most prominent threat to the Cloud ecosystem in 2019, subjecting Cloud assets to a wide array of attacks.

Threat actors are extending their attack vectors such as focusing on the supply chain. In software supply chain attacks, the threat actor typically instils a malicious code into legitimate software by modifying and infecting one of the building blocks the software relies upon.

( With inputs from IANS )