Check Point Launches New Research Online Platform and Releases Mid-Year Cyber Attack Trends Report

Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd. launched a new online platform, Check Point Research, providing cyber threat intelligence insights to the greater community. Check Point Research is a platform to inform the threat intelligence community on original Check Point research, top trends in the cyber security space, and details on the current threat landscape.

Coinciding with the launch of this new online research platform, Check Point also released its Cyber Attack Trends: Mid-Year Report. The report provides a comprehensive overview of the malware landscape in the top categories of ransomware, banking and mobile threats – based on threat intelligence data drawn from Check Point’s ThreatCloud World Cyber Threat Map between January and June 2017.

Astonishingly, the research finds that in the first half of 2017, 23.5% of organizations were impacted by the RoughTed malvertising campaign, and that 19.7% of organizations were impacted by the Fireball malware. In addition, ransomware attacks in the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) were nearly double that detected in the same timeframe last year.

The report highlights a number of key trends during the period:

• Mutation of adware: The Fireball malware has led to a major change in the approach to stop adware, especially adware owned by massive, seemingly-legitimate organizations. In parallel, mobile adware botnets also continue to expand and dominate the mobile malware arena.
• Nation-state cyber weapons: The leak and consequent availability of key nation-state hacking tools, zero-day vulnerabilities, exploits and attack methods now enables any potential hacker to carry out sophisticated attacks.
• Evolution of macro-based downloaders: During the past six months, new methods for exploiting Microsoft Office files have been detected. Those methods no longer require victims to open the door for the attackers by enabling macros.
• A new wave of mobile bankers: The perpetrators combined open-sourced banking malware code with complex obfuscation techniques to successfully and repeatedly bypass protections, making it difficult to detect.
• Ransomware Surge: The percentage of ransomware attacks in all three regions, Americas, EMEA and APAC, almost doubled in the first half of 2017 compared to the first half of 2016—from an average of 26% to an average of 48% of the three main attack categories worldwide.

“Organizations are struggling to effectively counteract the abundance of threats now in play. Hackers are making malware more sophisticated, and so the ability for unskilled hackers to inflict damage has risen dramatically,” said Maya Horowitz, Threat Intelligence Group Manager at Check Point. “With all the cyber threats in circulation, many organizations still do not have the right security defenses in place, and are focusing on a detection approach rather than implementing a proactive prevention solution that would block the attacks in the first place.”

The Check Point research team collects and analyzes global cyber attack data stored on Check Point’s Threat Cloud to keep hackers at bay. Check Point Research publications, such as the Cyber Attack Trends Report, fuel a conversation around new cyber threats, trends and additional threat security insights. Check Point Research is designed to be a resource for organizations to better understand the threat landscape and protect themselves against cyber threats.