Sophos, a cybersecurity firm, has said that ransomware remains the biggest threat to small and medium businesses (SMBs), stressing that they are deployed to steal information.
In its 2024 Sophos Threat Report, the firm noted that in 2023, nearly 50 per cent of malware detections for SMBs were keyloggers, spyware and stealers, malware that attackers use to steal data and credentials.
It noted that attackers subsequently use this stolen information to gain unauthorized remote access, extort victims, deploy ransomware, and more.
The Sophos report also analysed initial access brokers (IABs)—criminals who specialise in breaking into computer networks.
As seen in the report, IABs are using the dark web to advertise their ability and services to break specifically into SMB networks or sell ready-to-go access to SMBs they’ve already cracked.
Director of Sophos X-Ops research, Christopher Budd, said the value of ‘data,’ as currency has increased exponentially among cybercriminals, and this is particularly true for SMBs, which tend to use one service or software application, per function, for their entire operation.
“For example, let’s say attackers deploy an infostealer on their target’s network to steal credentials and then get hold of the password for the company’s accounting software.
“Attackers could then gain access to the targeted company’s financials and can funnel funds into their accounts. There’s a reason that more than 90 per cent of all cyberattacks reported to Sophos in 2023 involved data or credential theft, whether through ransomware attacks, data extortion, unauthorized remote access, or simply data theft.”
The report noted that while the number of ransomware attacks against SMBs has stabilised, it continues to be the biggest cyber threat to small businesses. The report observed that out of the SMB cases handled by Sophos Incident Response (IR), which helps organisations under active attack, LockBit was the top ransomware gang wreaking havoc. It said Akira and BlackCat were second and third, respectively.
SMBs studied in the report also faced attacks by lingering older and lesser-known ransomware, such as BitLocker and Crytox.
Sophos said ransomware operators continue to change tactics, including leveraging remote encryption and targeting managed service providers (MSPs).
It disclosed that between 2022 and 2023, the number of ransomware attacks that involved remote encryption—when attackers use an unmanaged device on organizations’ networks to encrypt files on other systems in the network—increased by 62 per cent.
In addition, this past year, Sophos’s Managed Detection and Response (MDR) team responded to five cases involving small businesses that were attacked through an exploit in their MSPs’ remote monitoring and management (RMM) software.
Following ransomware, Sophos said business email compromise (BEC) attacks were the second highest type of attacks.
These BEC attacks and other social engineering campaigns contain an increasing level of sophistication. Rather than simply sending an email with a malicious attachment, attackers are now more likely to engage with their targets by sending a series of conversational emails back and forth or even calling them.
In an attempt to evade detection by traditional spam prevention tools, attackers are now experimenting with new formats for their malicious content, embedding images that contain malicious code or sending malicious attachments in OneNote or archive formats.
