{"id":24846,"date":"2019-03-20T14:50:53","date_gmt":"2019-03-20T14:50:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/?p=24846"},"modified":"2019-04-19T08:44:07","modified_gmt":"2019-04-19T07:44:07","slug":"nigerian-cybercriminals-compromising-cloud-apps-with-data-breach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/2019\/03\/20\/nigerian-cybercriminals-compromising-cloud-apps-with-data-breach\/","title":{"rendered":"Proofpoint releases Cloud Application Attack Snapshot research"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Proofpoint, a leading cybersecurity and compliance company,\u00a0has\u00a0released its\u00a0<em>Cloud Application\u00a0Attack<\/em><em>\u00a0Snapshot: Q1 2019\u00a0<\/em>research, which\u00a0examined over 100, 000 cloud application attacks\u00a0aimed at global organisations\u00a0between September 2018 and February 2019.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, targeting attempts increased by 65% during that time period with\u00a040%\u00a0originating\u00a0in Nigeria.<\/p>\n<p>Cloud application attacks use\u00a0intelligence\u00a0driven\u00a0brute-force techniques\u00a0(to crack passwords)\u00a0and sophisticated phishing methods to lure victims into clicking and revealing their authentication credentials to break into cloud applications including Microsoft Office 365 and Google G Suite.\u00a0If successful, attackers often increase their foothold in organisations by spreading\u00a0laterally\u00a0through\u00a0internal phishing messages to infect additional users, access confidential information, and fraudulently route funds.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs organisations continue to move their mission-critical business functions to the cloud, cybercriminals are\u00a0taking\u00a0advantage\u00a0of legacy protocols that leave individuals vulnerable\u00a0when using cloud applications,\u201d\u00a0said Ryan\u00a0Kalember,\u00a0Executive Vice President of Cybersecurity Strategy for Proofpoint.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese attacks are laser-focused on specific individuals, rather than infrastructure, and continue to grow in sophistication\u00a0and scope. As a best practice, we recommend that organisations establish a cloud-first approach to security that\u00a0prioritises protecting employees\u00a0and educates users\u00a0to\u00a0identify\u00a0and report these\u00a0advanced\u00a0techniques and methods.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Proofpoint found that the education sector was the most targeted of both brute-force and sophisticated phishing attempts. This industry, and students especially, are\u00a0highly\u00a0vulnerable\u00a0due\u00a0to their remote nature.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Additional Proofpoint cloud application attack research findings<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Brute-force cloud app attack findings:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>IMAP-based password spraying attacks\u00a0are\u00a0the most popular and extensive\u00a0technique used to compromise\u00a0Microsoft Office 365\u00a0accounts.\u00a0These attacks occur when\u00a0cybercriminals attempt\u00a0common or recently leaked\u00a0credentials\u00a0across many different accounts at the same time<\/li>\n<li>Most brute-force attacks originated in China (53%), followed by Brazil (39%) and the US (31%)<\/li>\n<li>Over\u00a025%\u00a0of examined Office 365 tenants\u00a0experienced unauthorised logins\u00a0and\u00a0over\u00a060%\u00a0were actively targeted. Overall, the success ratio in\u00a0Q1 2019\u00a0was 44%<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Phishing cloud app attack findings:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Most phishing cloud app attacks originate from Nigeria (63%), followed by South Africa (21%) and the United States via VPNs (11%).<\/li>\n<li>Attackers will often modify email forwarding rules or set email delegations to maintain access. They will also use conspicuous VPN services to bypass conditional access and geolocation-based authentication<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Proofpoint, a leading cybersecurity and compliance company,\u00a0has\u00a0released its\u00a0Cloud Application\u00a0Attack\u00a0Snapshot: Q1 2019\u00a0research, which\u00a0examined over 100, 000 cloud application attacks\u00a0aimed at global organisations\u00a0between September 2018 and February 2019. Overall, targeting attempts increased by 65% during that time period with\u00a040%\u00a0originating\u00a0in Nigeria. Cloud application attacks use\u00a0intelligence\u00a0driven\u00a0brute-force techniques\u00a0(to crack passwords)\u00a0and sophisticated phishing methods to lure victims into clicking and revealing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":24847,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4950,182,5,275,54,9059,13,262,9060],"tags":[510,8723,2525,8719,8718,449,388,8721,8724,8720,685,8073,8722,453,8237,8725,946],"class_list":["post-24846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-cloud","category-enterprise-security","category-intelligent-technology-newsletter","category-research","category-south-africa","category-top-stories","category-used","category-west-africa","tag-brazil","tag-brute-force-cloud-app","tag-china","tag-cloud-application-attack","tag-cloud-application-attack-snapshot","tag-cybercriminals","tag-cybersecurity","tag-google-g-suite","tag-imap","tag-microsoft-365","tag-nigeria","tag-proofpoint","tag-ryan-kalember","tag-south-africa","tag-usa","tag-vpns","tag-west-africa"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24846"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24884,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24846\/revisions\/24884"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}