Cybercriminals certainly had a habit of churning out headline-worthy attacks in 2016 — from the Mirai botnet’s infamous distributed-denial-of-service attacks on domain directory Dyn and the DNC hack to hackers targeting the SWIFT interbank system.
With these and other high-profile cases, the world became acutely aware of vulnerabilities in the digital realm.
As it turns out, while cybercriminals are constantly inventing ways to maliciously compromise the security of private data, they also have a soft spot for the classics.
This coming from the recent research report published by the Threat Lab of digital security hardware and solutions provider WatchGuard.
The team examined the most prevalent network and malware trends in the fourth quarter of 2016 leveraging threat analytics from its globally distributed Firebox product, said WatchGuard CTO Corey Nachreiner.
We have firsthand, acute insight into the evolution of cyberattacks, Nachreiner said, and how threat actors are behaving.
Tellingly, WatchGuard’s inaugural Internet Security Report found that some 30 percent of malware in Q4 was new, or “zero day.” (Not to be confused with zero-day exploits.) In other words, one-third of malware identified wouldn’t be caught by legacy antivirus solutions.
