According to IT Pro, A new report has found that global ransomware activity dropped throughout the third quarter as the order of dominant groups in the landscape shifted, but that businesses should expect a surge by threat actors in Q4 to exploit consumer trends. The number of ransomware attacks in Q3 2022 was down 10.5% on Q2, according to the latest report by cyber security firm Digital Shadows. This was driven in part by the sudden cessation of activity by the Conti group, as well as a reorganisation of leading groups over July and August. Around 39% of all attacks across Q3 were made against victims within the United States, reflective of the consolidation of wealthy companies within the country. France and Spain followed, with the UK the fourth most targeted in the same period, accounting for 4.8% of victims. This marks a fall from the UK’s third place in Q2, and appears to have been driven by a surge in attacks in France and Spain, including Hive’s attack on French telco giant Altice in August. Digital Shadows forecasts a rise in activity in Q4 2022. This is not unusual, as commercial events such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday often coincide with an increase in malicious activity online, while online shopping around Christmas is exploited by threat actors with phishing campaigns.
Holding data to ransom by stealing it instead of encrypting it has become a favourite tactic used by threat actors and it is leaving companies even more worried than with traditional ransomware. Organisations have wised up to the restoration of networks taken offline and learnt the ability to withstand big ransomware attacks using lessons learnt from peers being caught. Many criminal groups have adopted newer methods by micro targeting companies rather than casting a phishing net out to encrypt all when multiple businesses get caught up in the fire similar to what we have experienced in recent years. However, once this bespoke targeting has slowed down this year, we are likely to see smaller businesses targeted with data theft and being released or simply caught up in larger scale campaigns like we have seen before.