Cybersecurity firm ESET released a report warning a sudden rise in attacks RDP (Remote desktop protocol) endpoints, besides this Nobelium gang has also been active against European government organisations. ESET data tells that attacks on RDP servers went upto 103.9% in its T1 June reports that ESET publishes three times a year. The report shows total number of identified brute force attacks to be 55 billion, owing to a hacking campaign targeting Spanish victims. From the T1 2021 ESET report, one would assume that RDP attacks would go down.
However, it came as a surprise when RDP related attacks were found again. The pattern suggests a potential increase in hacking attempts, especially a stark one in T3, it being the busiest time of 2021. The RDP attacks notice a small increase in some parts, but there was a huge uptick in RDP attacks against the Spanish targets. ESET data suggests that the total number of attacks against the Spanish targets in August accounts for one third globally. In addition to Spain, the US, Germany and Italy were also in the list. A similar pattern was noticed in SQL password guessing incidents.
Meanwhile there was a 200% increase in RDP related attacks, cryptocurrency attacks noticed a slight downside.
ESET experts believe that there might be a relation between cryptocurrency attacks and cryptocurrency price, especially in matters of cryptomining. ESET says "our report even mentions PayPal's and Twitter's announcements which sent the prices of major cryptocurrencies up following this increase (visible in the trend toward the end of T2). If there are more high-profile adoptions/announcements supporting cryptocurrencies in the coming months, we expect their prices to grow and cryptomining to follow."
Even though ransomware attacks observed a single digit deficit (ESET also linked it to fall in cryptocurrency prices), the company is sure that the problem still persists. It wasn't possible to keep a full account of ransomware attacks in T2 as it was too busy, however, some incidents couldn't be ignored. "The attack shutting down the operations of Colonial Pipeline – the largest pipeline company in the US – and the supply-chain attack leveraging a vulnerability in the Kaseya IT management software, sent shockwaves that were felt not only in the cybersecurity industry," says ESET.
