According to ESET, brute-force attacks and exploitation of the ProxyLogon vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange Server were the two most popular attack during 2021. According to Q3 Threat Report ESET's (covering September to December 2021), this year was characterized by the continuous discovery of zero-day vulnerabilitiesthat were powerful enough to wreak havoc on corporate networks and systems.
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The discovery of zero-day vulnerabilities in Exchange Server and Microsoft's emergency updates to resolve security issues have been a daily occurrence for IT administrators throughout the past year.
Brute-force attacks to gain access to accounts and systems were the most common attack method, according to ESET data.
Exchange Server ProxyLogon bugs were in second place on the list of most popular attack vectors .
“Microsoft Exchange servers were again under siege in August 2021, with ProxyLogon’s “younger sibling,” ProxyShell, being exploited worldwide by multiple threat groups,” the ESET report states.
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At the end of 2021, another critical vulnerability in Log4j, causing chaos. This vulnerability became known as CVE-2021-44228 and allowed remote code execution. The vulnerability was rated 10.0 in severity, meaning it was critical and needed an immediate fix.
Cybercriminals began exploiting the vulnerability immediately, and although the issue was only made public in the last three weeks of 2021, ESET has listed the CVE-2021-44228 exploit among the top five attack methods of 2021.
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Ransomware , as expected, remains a significant threat to businesses. ESET says things were particularly bad over the past year, with numerous attacks on critical infrastructure (including the Colonial Pipeline attack) .
The research also notes a significant increase in Android banking malware, compared to 2020. According to ESET, infection rates related to Android banking Trojans, such as SharkBot, Anatsa, Vultur, and BRATA, have now reached the same levels as adware.
Source: ZDNet
