Trend Micro: Ransomware attacks on banks grow 14 times

Over 7.3 million ransomware threats were detected in the first six months of 2021, which is almost half the number of detections we found in the same period in 2020, reads the report by Trend Micro “Attacks from All Angles: 2021 Midyear Cybersecurity Report,” Report informs.

“In terms of targeted industries, ransomware actors focused on many of the same sectors as last year. The most affected organizations were in banking, government, and manufacturing. We saw a surge in ransomware attempts on banking groups,” reads the report.

According to the report, the biggest increase in attacks worldwide accounted for the banking sector - an increase of 1,318 percent compared to the first half of 2020.

Early in 2021, Earth Vetala – MuddyWater34 threat actors launched a campaign against organizations in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Azerbaijan. The sectors that they targeted include government agencies, academia, and tourism.

The attackers used legitimate remote administration tools (RATs) to distribute their malicious payloads, specifically, the applications ScreenConnect and RemoteUtilities. These tools have broad capabilities such as file and directory browsing, downloading and uploading files, executing and terminating processes, grabbing screenshots, and others.