Derek Manky, chief security strategist and global vice president threat intelligence, FortiGuard Labs, said, “Disrupting cybercrime is a global effort that comprises strong, trusted relationships and collaboration across public and private sectors, as well as investing in artificial intelligence-powered security services that can help overwhelmed security teams coordinate actionable threat intelligence in real time across their organisation. Security teams cannot afford to sit idle with targeted threats at an all-time high. Fortinet’s FortiGuard Labs continues to provide innovative and actionable intelligence, like the red zone and new exploit prediction scoring system analysis, to help security teams proactively prioritise patching efforts and respond to threats faster than ever.”

Glenn Maiden, director of threat intelligence, FortiGuard Labs, Australia and New Zealand, said, “The rise in ransomware seen at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic was alarming and while we haven’t seen that same surge in activity, the number of ransomware attacks are steadily growing year-on-year, including an increase of 13 per cent so far in 2023. According to the latest Global Threat Landscape Report from FortiGuard Labs, even those cybercriminals with less experience are getting involved due to Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS), and businesses can’t relax their guard.

“There are some positive indications about a higher level of resilience in the market in defeating a ransomware attack, but we are still seeing real world systems targeted, with FortiGuard Labs finding 50 per cent of organisations faced attacks against industrial control systems and operational technology (OT). This is a key concern as a single successful attack could have far reaching, catastrophic impacts on everyday society.

“Of the 138 state-sponsored hacking groups identified, FortiGuard Labs detected activity from about 30 per cent of them. From established Russian groups like Turla to local threat actors such as OceanLotus, a suspected Vietnamese government-linked group, the pattern of state-backed espionage is multifaceted and constantly changing.

“For those of us in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), understanding our unique assets and attack surfaces is critical, especially for operators of critical infrastructure. It’s urgent that businesses implement protections now before it’s too late. It isn’t easy to do, but it’s critical that organisations stop dangerous intrusions in the first place. In the event an intrusion is missed, companies need to ensure the attack doesn’t get very far into their environments and that the organisation’s most valuable assets are shielded from theft or harm. Businesses must have tested processes in operation so employees can immediately and proactively respond to, and quickly recover from, any unusual activity detected.

“In our complicated cyber world, these strategies aren’t just nice-to-have, they’re absolutely essential to ensure that an attack doesn’t turn into a catastrophe. As Benjamin Franklin said, by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

News summary

Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT), the global cybersecurity leader driving the convergence of networking and security, has announced the latest semiannual Global Threat Landscape Report from FortiGuard Labs. In the first half of 2023, FortiGuard Labs observed a decline in organisations detecting ransomware, significant activity among advanced persistent threat (APT) groups, a shift in MITRE ATT&CK techniques used by attackers, and much more. In addition to the highlights below, readers can find the full analysis by reading the 1H 2023 Global Threat Landscape Report.

While organisations continue to find themselves in a reactive position due to the growing sophistication of malicious actors and the escalation of targeted attacks, ongoing analysis of the threat landscape in the 1H 2023 Global Threat Landscape Report helps provide valuable intelligence that can serve as an early warning system of potential threat activity and help security leaders prioritise their security strategy and patching efforts. Highlights of the report follow:

Organisations detecting ransomware are on the decline: FortiGuard Labs has documented substantial spikes in ransomware variant growth in recent years, largely fuelled by the adoption of RaaS. However, FortiGuard Labs found that fewer organisations detected ransomware in the first half of 2023 (13 per cent) compared to this time five years ago (22 per cent). Despite the overall decline, organisations must keep their guard up. This supports the trend that FortiGuard Labs has seen over the last couple of years, that ransomware and other attacks are becoming increasingly more targeted thanks to the growing sophistication of attackers and the desire to increase the return on investment (ROI) per attack. Research also found that the volume of ransomware detections continues to be volatile, closing 1H 2023 13 times higher than the end of 2022 but still on a downward trend overall when comparing year-over-year.

Malicious actors are 327 times more likely to attack top exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) vulnerabilities within seven days compared to all other common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs): Since its inception, Fortinet has been a core contributor of exploitation activity data in support of the EPSS. This project aims to leverage a myriad of data sources to predict the likelihood and when a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild. FortiGuard Labs analysed six years of data spanning more than 11,000 published vulnerabilities that detected exploitation and found that the CVEs categorised with a high EPSS score (top one per cent severity) are 327 times more likely to be exploited within seven days than any other vulnerability. This first-of-its-kind analysis can serve as the canary in the coal mine, giving chief information security officers (CISOs) and security teams an early indication of targeted attacks against their organisations. Like the red zone, introduced in the last Threat Landscape Report, this intelligence can help security teams systematically prioritise patching efforts to minimise their organisations’ risk.

The red zone continues to help CISOs prioritise patching efforts: The analysis by FortiGuard Labs around EPSS exploitation in the wild expands upon the efforts to define the red zone, which helps quantify the proportion of available vulnerabilities on endpoints that are being actively attacked. In the second half of 2022, the red zone was around 8.9 per cent, meaning that about 1,500 CVEs of the more than 16,500 known CVEs were observed under attack. In the first half of 2023, that number dropped slightly to 8.3 per cent. The delta between the 2H 2022 and 1H 2023 is minimal and would seem to be the sweet spot for malicious actors targeting vulnerabilities on endpoints. Still, it is important to note that the number of vulnerabilities discovered, present, and exploited constantly fluctuates. These variables and the effectiveness of an organisation’s patch management strategy could dramatically decrease its red zone surface. Like the EPSS analysis above, FortiGuard Labs continues to invest in more effective ways to help organisations prioritise and more quickly close vulnerabilities.

Nearly one-third of APT groups were active in 1H 2023: For the first time in the history of the Global Threat Landscape Report, FortiGuard Labs tracked the number of threat actors behind the trends. Research revealed that 41 (30 per cent) of the 138 cyberthreat groups MITRE tracks were active in the 1H 2023. Of those, Turla, StrongPity, Winnti, OceanLotus, and WildNeutron were the most active based on malware detections. Given the targeted nature and relatively short-lived campaigns of APT and nation-state cyber groups compared to the long life and drawn-out campaigns of cybercriminals, the evolution and volume of activity in this area will be something to look forward to in future reports.

Five-year comparison reveals explosion in unique exploits, malware variants and botnet persistence:

• Unique exploits on the rise: In 1H 2023, FortiGuard Labs detected more than 10,000 unique exploits, up 68 per cent from five years ago. The spike in unique exploit detections highlights the sheer volume of malicious attacks security teams must be aware of and how attacks have multiplied and diversified in a relatively short amount of time. The report also shows over a 75 per cent drop in exploitation attempts per organisation over a five-year window and a 10 per cent dip in severe exploits, suggesting that while malicious actor exploit toolkits have grown, the attacks are much more targeted than five years ago.
• Malware families and variants exploded, up 135 per cent and 175 per cent respectively: In addition to the significant uptick in malware families and variants, another surprising finding is that the number of malware families that propagate to at least 10 per cent of global organisations (a notable prevalence threshold) has doubled over the last five years. This escalation in malware volume and prevalence can be attributed to more cybercriminal and APT groups expanding operations and diversifying their attacks in recent years. A significant focus of the last Global Threat Landscape Report was the surge in wiper malware largely tied to the Russian-Ukraine conflict. That increase persisted throughout 2022 but slowed over the first half of 2023. FortiGuard Labs continues to observe wipers being used by nation-state actors, although the adoption of this type of malware by cybercriminals continues to grow as they target organisations in technology, manufacturing, government, telecommunications, and healthcare sectors.
• Botnets lingering in networks longer than ever: While the report finds more active botnets (+27 per cent) and a higher incidence rate among organisations over the last half-decade (+126 per cent), one of the more shocking findings is the exponential increase in the total number of “active days”, which FortiGuard Labs defines as the amount of time that transpires between the first hit of a given botnet attempt on a sensor and the last. Over the first six months of 2023, the average time botnets lingered before command and control (C2) communications ceased was 83 days, representing over 1,000 times increase from five years ago. This is another example where reducing the response time is critical because the longer organisations allow botnets to linger, the greater the damage and risk to their business.

Disrupting cybercrime requires an all-in approach

FortiGuard Labs’ contributions to the threat intelligence community over the last decade have made significant impacts around the globe, helping to improve protections for customers, partners, and governments in their fight against cybercrime. Breaking down silos and increasing the quality of actionable threat intelligence helps organisations reduce risk and enhances the overall effectiveness of the cybersecurity industry. Cyber defenders today currently possess access to the tools, knowledge, and support to begin altering the economics of malicious actors. Still, it’s an industrywide commitment to collaboration and intelligence sharing that will ultimately create a larger ecosystem of disruption and allow the industry to gain the upper hand against cyber adversaries.

As a leader in enterprise-class cybersecurity and networking innovation, Fortinet helps secure over half a million organisations worldwide, including global enterprises, service providers, and government organisations. Of note, Fortinet’s ongoing development of artificial intelligence (AI) applied to cybersecurity uses cases, in both our FortiGuard Labs and product portfolio, is speeding the prevention, detection, and response to known and unknown threats.

Specifically, FortiGuard AI-powered security services are utilised by security controls deployed across endpoints and applications through both network and cloud infrastructure. Purpose-built detection and response technologies that leverage AI engines and cloud analytics (including endpoint detection and response (EDR), network detection and response (NDR), and others) can also be deployed as integrated extensions of such controls. Fortinet also offers centralised response tools, such as extended detection and response (XDR); security information and event management (SIEM); security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR); digital risk protection service (DRPS); and more, that leverage different AI, automation, and orchestration to speed remediation. These can all significantly disrupt cybercrime across the entire attack surface and along the cyberattack kill chain.

Report overview 

This latest Global Threat Landscape Report is a view representing the collective intelligence of FortiGuard Labs, drawn from Fortinet’s vast array of sensors collecting billions of threat events observed around the world during the first half of 2023. Using the MITRE ATT&CK framework, which classifies adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures, the FortiGuard Labs Global Threat Landscape Report describes how threat actors target vulnerabilities, build malicious infrastructure, and exploit their targets.

Additional resources

• Read the blog for valuable takeaways from this research, or access the full report.
• Learn more about FortiGuard Labs threat intelligence and research and outbreak alerts, which provide timely steps to mitigate breaking cybersecurity attacks.
• Learn more about Fortinet’s FortiGuard security services portfolio.
• Learn more about Fortinet’s free cybersecurity training, which includes broad cyber awareness and product training. As part of the Fortinet Training Advancement Agenda (TAA), the Fortinet Training Institute also provides training and certification through the Network Security Expert (NSE) certification, Academic Partner, and Education Outreach programs.
• Read about how Fortinet customers are securing their organisations.
• Follow Fortinet on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Subscribe to Fortinet on our blog or YouTube.

About FortiGuard Labs
FortiGuard Labs is the threat intelligence and research organisation at Fortinet. Its mission is to provide Fortinet customers with the industry’s best threat intelligence designed to protect them from malicious activity and sophisticated cyberattacks. It is composed of some of the industry’s most knowledgeable threat hunters, researchers, analysts, engineers, and data scientists in the industry, working in dedicated threat research labs all around the world. FortiGuard Labs continuously monitors the worldwide attack surface using millions of network sensors and hundreds of intelligence-sharing partners. It analyses and processes this information using AI and other innovative technology to mine that data for new threats. These efforts result in timely, actionable threat intelligence in the form of Fortinet security product updates, proactive threat research to help our customers better understand the threats and actors they face, and threat intelligence to help our customers better understand and defend their threat landscape. Learn more at https://www.fortinet.com, the Fortinet blog, and FortiGuard Labs.

About Fortinet
Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT) is a driving force in the evolution of cybersecurity and the convergence of networking and security. Our mission is to secure people, devices, and data everywhere, and today we deliver cybersecurity everywhere you need it with the largest integrated portfolio of over 50 enterprise-grade products. Well over half a million customers trust Fortinet’s solutions, which are among the most deployed, most patented, and most validated in the industry. The Fortinet Training Institute, one of the largest and broadest training programs in the industry, is dedicated to making cybersecurity training and new career opportunities available to everyone. FortiGuard Labs, Fortinet’s elite threat intelligence and research organisation, develops and utilises leading-edge machine learning and AI technologies to provide customers with timely and consistently top-rated protection and actionable threat intelligence. Learn more at https://www.fortinet.com, the Fortinet blog, and FortiGuard Labs.

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