Cyberattacks in the last quarter rose by 7% globally versus the same period last year.
India reported around an 18% rise in weekly cyberattacks in the first quarter of 2023, PTI reported citing a report by Check Point. Each organization in the country faced an average of 2,108 weekly attacks in the January-March quarter.
The report highlighted that less-skilled threat actors are making use of code-generation tools like ChatGPT to successfully launch cyberattacks. These cyber criminals also Trojanise the 3CXDesktop app, a software program used for voice and video communication, for a supply chain attack for their malicious gains.
Meanwhile, cyberattacks in the last quarter rose by 7% globally versus the same period last year, with each organization facing an average of 1,248 attacks per week. The education and research sector were the hardest hit and reported the highest number of attacks in the last quarter. The average number of attacks was around 2,507 per organization per week, a 15% increase compared to January-March last year.
This was followed by the government or military sector which witnessed almost 1,725 attacks per week, as read in The Indian Express report. Despite the most number of weekly attacks in the Education and Military sectors, the healthcare and retail/wholesale sectors are the ones who have seen the largest increase in cyber attacks compared to Q1 2022. These two sectors reported a rise in cyber attacks of 22% and 49% respectively as they are still struggling to patch vulnerabilities and secure networks, the report added.
Meanwhile, the Asia Pacific region topped the chart of cyber attacks in the last quarter. “APAC region experienced the highest YoY surge in weekly attacks, with an average of 1,835 attacks per organization, marking a 16% increase 1 out of every 31 organizations worldwide experienced a ransomware attack every week,” Check Point noted.
Cyberattacks are malicious activities that target computer systems, networks, and digital devices. With the emergence of artificial intelligence and it becoming easily accessible to all after the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, worries around its potential misuse and risks have kept various governments on their toes to study and investigate it. When we asked the ChatGPT about how cybercriminals can misuse it, the AI chatbot said that it is not designed to perform malicious activities but cybercriminals can misuse the bot in several ways like phishing attacks, social engineering, malware distribution, and spamming.
