New report looks at how scammers are getting access to email accounts, how they’re using compromised accounts and how businesses can protect against these attacks
Barracuda, a trusted partner and leading provider of cloud-enabled security solutions, today released key findings about the ways cybercriminals are attacking and exploiting email accounts. The report, titled Spear Phishing: Top Threats and Trends Vol. 4 - Insights into attacker activity in compromised email accounts, reveals a specialised economy emerging around email account takeover and takes an in-depth look at the threats organisations face and the types of defense strategies you need to have in place.
Over the past year, Barracuda researchers teamed up with leading researchers at UC Berkeley to study the end-to-end lifecycle of a compromised account. Examining 159 compromised accounts that span 111 organisations, they looked at how the account takeover happens, how long attackers have access to the compromised account, and how attackers use and extract information from these accounts.
Barracuda’s research found fresh insights into these widespread and dangerous attacks, how cybercriminals behave in compromised accounts, and how that should inform your organisation’s defense strategies. Highlights from the report include:
More than one-third of the hijacked accounts analysed by researchers had attackers dwelling in the account for more than one week.
20% of compromised accounts appear in at least one online password data breach, which suggests that cybercriminals are exploiting credential reuse across employees’ personal and organisation accounts.
In 31% of these compromises one set of attackers focuses on compromising accounts and then sells account access to another set of cybercriminals who focus on monetising the hijacked accounts.
78% of attackers did not access any applications outside of email.
“Cybercriminals are getting stealthier and finding new ways to remain undetected in compromised accounts for long periods of time so they can maximise the ways they can exploit the account, whether that means selling the credentials or using the access themselves,” said Don MacLennan, SVP Engineering, Email Protection at Barracuda.
“Being informed about attacker behaviour will help organisations put the proper protection in place so they can defend against these types of attacks and respond quickly if an account is compromised.”
Resources:
Download the full report: Spear Phishing: Top Threats and Trends Vol. 4 - Insights into attacker activity in compromised email accounts
Read the blog post: http://cuda.co/40984
Read Vol. 1 - Best Practices to Defeat Evolving Attacks
Read Vol. 2 - Email account takeover and defending against lateral phishing attacks
Read Vol. 3 - Defending against business email compromise attacks
About Barracuda
At Barracuda we strive to make the world a safer place. We believe every business deserves access to cloud-enabled, enterprise-grade security solutions that are easy to buy, deploy, and use. We protect email, networks, data, and applications with innovative solutions that grow and adapt with our customers’ journey. More than 200,000 organisations worldwide trust Barracuda to protect them — in ways they may not even know they are at risk — so they can focus on taking their business to the next level. For more information, visit barracuda.com.