The Most Common Root Causes of Attacks Were Unpatched Vulnerabilities and Compromised Credentials, While Ransomware Continues to Be the Most Common “End Game”

Dwell Time—Time From the Start of an Attack to When it’s Detected—Decreased From 15 to 10 Days

OXFORD, U.K. — 四月 25, 2023 —

Sophos, a global leader in innovating and delivering cybersecurity as a service, today released its Active Adversary Report for Business Leaders, an in-depth look at the changing behaviors and attack techniques that adversaries used in 2022. The data, analyzed from more than 150 Sophos Incident Response (IR) cases, identified more than 500 unique tools and techniques, including 118 “Living off the Land” binaries (LOLBins). Unlike malware, LOLBins are executables naturally found on operating systems, making them much more difficult for defenders to block when attackers exploit them for malicious activity.

In addition, Sophos found that unpatched vulnerabilities were the most common root cause of attackers gaining initial access to targeted systems. In fact, in half of investigations included in the report, attackers exploited ProxyShell and Log4Shell vulnerabilities—vulnerabilities from 2021—to infiltrate organizations. The second most common root cause of attacks was compromised credentials.

“When today's attackers aren't breaking in, they're logging in. The reality is that the threat environment has grown in volume and complexity to the point where there are no discernible gaps for defenders to exploit. For most organizations, the days of going at it alone are well behind them. It truly is everything, everywhere, all at once. However, there are tools and services available to businesses that can alleviate some of the defensive burden, allowing them to focus on their core business priorities,” said John Shier, field CTO, Sophos.

More than two-thirds of the attacks that the Sophos IR team investigated (68%) involved ransomware, demonstrating that ransomware is still one of the most pervasive threats for companies. Ransomware also accounted for nearly three-quarters of Sophos’ IR investigations over the past three years.

While ransomware still dominates the threat landscape, attacker dwell time decreased in 2022, from 15 to 10 days, for all attack types. For ransomware cases, the dwell time decreased from 11 to 9 days, while the decrease was even greater for non-ransomware attacks. The dwell time for the latter declined from 34 days in 2021 to just 11 days in 2022. However, unlike in past years, there was no significant variation in dwell times between different sized organizations or sectors.

“Organizations that have successfully implemented layered defenses with constant monitoring are seeing better outcomes in terms of attack severity. The side effect of improved defenses means that adversaries have to speed up in order to complete their attacks. Therefore, faster attacks necessitate earlier detection. The race between attackers and defenders will continue to escalate and those without proactive monitoring will suffer the greatest consequences,” said Shier.

The Sophos Active Adversary Report for Business Leaders is based on 152 incident response (IR) investigations spanning the globe across 22 sectors. Targeted organizations were located in 31 different countries, including the U.S. and Canada, the U.K., Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Finland, Belgium, Sweden, Romania, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, India, Thailand, the Philippines, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Somalia, Nigeria, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. The most represented sectors are manufacturing (20%), followed by healthcare (12%), education (9%), and retail (8%).

The Sophos Active Adversary Report for Business Leaders provides organizations with actionable threat intelligence and insights needed to optimize security strategies and defenses.

To learn more about attacker behaviors, tools and techniques, Everything Everywhere All At Once: The 2023 Active Adversary Report for Business Leaders on Sophos.com.

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Sophos 是全球领先的先进安全解决方案提供商和创新者,全面安全解决方案涵盖托管式侦测与响应 (MDR) 和事件响应服务,以及广泛的端点、网络、电子邮件和云安全技术。作为最大的纯网络安全厂商之一,Sophos 为全球超过 600,000 家企业和超过 1 亿用户提供防御主动攻击对手、勒索软件、网络钓鱼、恶意软件等威胁的保护。Sophos 的服务和产品通过 Sophos Central 管理控制台连接,并得到公司内部的跨领域威胁情报部门 Sophos X-Ops 的支持。Sophos X-Ops 情报优化整个 Sophos Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem 自适应网络安全生态体系,包括一个中央数据湖,为客户、合作伙伴、开发人员和其他网络安全与信息技术供应商提供一组丰富的开放 API。Sophos为需要完全托管的安全解决方案的组织提供网络安全即服务。客户还可以直接利用 Sophos 的安全运行平台管理其网络安全,或者采用混合方法,为内部团队补充 Sophos 服务(包括威胁追踪与修复)。Sophos 通过世界各地的经销商合作伙伴和托管服务供应商 (MSP) 销售。Sophos 总部位于英国牛津。如欲了解更多信息,请访问 www.sophos.com