Cyber Threat Landscape – Report on Attacks Targeted ICS Systems in the First Half of 2018

Industrial management systems (ICS/SCADA) are now the prime target for cyber attackers seeking to compromise the production base and public utilities.

Kaspersky labs released Threat Landscape for H1 2018, according to the report the attacks increased by 41% percentage targeting ICS computers attacked when compared to H1 and H2 of 2017.

The main sources of infection for computers in organizations’ industrial network infrastructure are the internet, removable media and email.

Starting from February 2018 several industrial enterprises infected cryptocurrency mining malware, the attack percentage grown sharply since April and in the first half of 2018 reached 6%, which is 4.2% more when compared to previous 6 months.

In H1 2018, Kaspersky Lab security solutions installed on industrial automation systems detected over 19.4 thousand malware modifications from 2.8 thousand different malware
families.

Massive malware attacks targeted ICS systems such as VPNFilter malware which infects more than 500,000 routers using a variety of known vulnerabilities and the Triton malware that targets emergency protection system. Top platforms used by malware Windows, Browsers, Visual basic, MSOffice, AutoCAD, Java, and PDF.

The top countries with highest percentage of ICS computers attacked are Vietnam(75.1%), Algeria (71.6%), Morocco (64.8%), Tunisia (64.6%), Indonesia (64.0%), China (57.4%), India (55.2%), Iran (55.1%). Egypt (55.0%).

The high percentages of ICS computers attacked in developing countries could have to do with these countries having had industrial sectors for a relatively short time only. According to that in nearly all of the countries where at least one-half of all ICS computers were attacked during the six months.

According to Kaspersky Lab ICS CERT as part of the industrial infrastructure of organizations, about 42% of all machines had regular or full-time internet connections in H1 2018.

Today’s these highly professional and creative cyber hackers are financed by hostile countries, crime organization or commercial entities, which are interested in causing outage damaging machinery and interrupt the peaceful life of people.

Operators of critical infrastructure must be aware of the potential harm caused by cyber attacks targeted to generate a serious threat to business operation.

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