PRESS RELEASE
Boston, MA – January 24, 2023 – Black kiteleader in third-party cyber risk intelligence, today launched the industry’s first monthly magazine ransomware dashboard, with crucial insights for security teams, media, analysts and other industry leaders. The resource provides data, charts, trends and key insights from Black Kite’s threat intelligence team on the top ransomware groups, their victims and attack patterns. Black Kite also analyzes key ransomware indicators to identify common vulnerabilities exploited by active ransomware groups, and using data and machine learning, Black Kite’s Ransomware Susceptibility Index (RSI) paints a complete picture of the industry-specific cyber risks facing them organizations face every month.
In December alone the research team tracked over 360 victims. The most common indicators of compromise were MX and DNS misconfigurations that enabled spoofing and phishing attacks (266), and services and products in use with highly exploitable vulnerabilities (233). Additionally, 49% of victims had publicly visible open RDP or PMI ports. The research also revealed that while LockBit continues to dominate the landscape, an emerging ransomware group, WereWolves, has entered the top three for the first time.
“Since recently entering the scene, the WereWolves ransomware group has targeted 26 victims across the United States, Europe and Russia,” said Ferhat Dikbiyik, head of research at Black Kite. “The group is unusual because it has a comprehensive website that recruits new members and offers a bounty program for security vulnerabilities. It is also unusual to see ransomware groups targeting Russian companies, something we have only witnessed since short-lived ransomware groups. .”
The monthly dashboard highlighted trends over the past six months, including:
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LockBit has the largest share in this set of victims with 21% of the victims published by the group.
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Exploitation of vulnerabilities has become the most common method.
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New groups, including WereWolves, While Play, 8base and Akira, are taking top spots with increasing numbers of victims.
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The United States continues to be the most targeted country. However, in some countries, such as Russia, Bulgaria, Iran and Israel, unusual spikes have occurred due to various political conflicts.
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Manufacturing remained one of the top targeted industries and saw an increase in attacks in the second half of the year.
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There has been an increase in attacks on the healthcare and information sectors.
“Ransomware gangs are constantly evolving their tactics and operating at an increasing scale to extract more profits from their victims,” Dikbiyik said. “As there is no sign of these attacks slowing down, it is important to understand the motivations and actions of these gangs to have smarter security strategies to prevent attacks. This is why we have created a free resource and will continue to monitor the landscape for trends with industry-wide impact.”
As these groups become increasingly sophisticated, it is critical that companies understand the risks they face and are equipped with the tools to make informed decisions about their security strategies. Black Kite’s monthly report dashboard provides critical visibility to help connect the dots between ransomware groups’ patterns and their victims so bad actors are no longer operating in the shadows.
To view the latest data on Black Kite ransomware, visit the site December report landing pageor view data for the last six months on Ransomware reports page.
About the black kite
Black Kite gives businesses a comprehensive, real-time view of cyber ecosystem risk so they can make informed risk decisions and improve business resilience by continuously monitoring multiple vendors, partners and suppliers in an ever-changing digital landscape.
Through an automated process and a combination of threat, business and risk intelligence, Black Kite provides cyber risk insights that go beyond a simple risk score or classification.
Black Kite serves more than 1,500 customers across a wide range of industries and has received numerous industry awards and prizes recognition from customers.
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