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According to Microsoft’s annual Digital Defense report, 52% of hacking attempts, which occurred between July 2019 and June 2020, were from Russia.
The report, published by the British newspaper “Daily Mail”, confirmed that a quarter of the cyber attacks that took place during that time period were from Iran, 12% from China and the remaining 11% from North Korea and other countries. .
Cyber attacks have targeted global events, including elections and people associated with political campaigns, as well as the Olympics and the current pandemic.
According to the company, every country in the world has witnessed at least one attack related to the virus (Covid-19), since the beginning of the epidemic, and the number of successful attacks has increased with the outbreak of the virus and the increase in fear. and the desire for information.
“Cybercriminals are opportunists and have exploited the interest and fear associated with the Covid-19 pandemic and other disruptive events,” said Mary Jo Shrad of Microsoft’s Asia Digital Crime Unit.
He indicated that hackers seek to exploit by adding drives or changing the nature of attacks, and have focused on targeting their ransomware-related activities towards entities that cannot do without Internet connection or access to records during critical periods of the epidemic such as hospitals and medical research institutions.
“The concerted efforts of organizations, governments and corporations are key to addressing these pervasive threats on the Internet,” Shrad said.
13 thousand notifications
Microsoft sends a notification (NSN) to the customer, which is compromised as a result of a cyber attack, as the company said it has issued 13,000 notifications related to international hacking attempts to its customers in the last two years.
The report noted that Russia is the worst “criminal” in the cyber world, and has a history of launching disruptive and potentially destructive attacks “in response to perceived anti-Russian actions in international sport.”
Before the 2016 and 2018 Olympics, Russia-based hackers stole and leaked athletes’ confidential medical data and disrupted the servers that support the Olympics business.
As the world prepared for the Summer Olympics in Tokyo this year, which were postponed due to “Covid-19,” at least 16 national and international sports organizations to combat doping on three continents were targeted by cyber attacks.
The United States was the main target of most international cyber attacks in the last year, followed by the United Kingdom, according to Microsoft intelligence.
More than two-thirds (69%) of notifications were sent by Microsoft to customers in the United States, while Microsoft sent 19% of notifications to customers in the United Kingdom, 5% to Canada, 4% to Korea. South and 3% to Saudi Arabia.
Iran, which launched the second-highest number of hacking attempts after Russia, was the source of the surge in state-backed cyber activity.
In a 30-day period between August and September, Microsoft observed Iran-based hackers attacking 241 Microsoft customer accounts.
The accounts targeted were linked to a US presidential campaign, current and former US government officials, journalists covering world politics, and eminent Iranian expats.
With the upcoming US presidential election on November 3, 2020, Microsoft said that it is likely to see an increase in this malicious activity.
As for China, last March, a group of alleged state-backed hackers attacked accounts at a US university involved in the “Covid-19” vaccine research.
Pirates from both North Korea and Iran attacked world university experts who influence international politics on issues such as international security, nuclear weapons and human rights.
Microsoft said non-governmental organizations are the most targeted, including nonprofits, research centers and human rights organizations, with 32% of international cyberattacks targeting non-governmental organizations.
31% of the attacks were directed at the professional services sector, 13% at government organizations, 10% at international organizations, 7% at information technology companies, and another 7% of the attacks were at education. higher.
In terms of piracy linked to (Covid-19), China, the United States and Russia were the most attacked, which means that some of these countries can be both culprits and victims at the same time.
In the United States, Corona-linked cyberattacks peaked in March with the spread of American awareness of the coronavirus, and then peaked again in June.
The attacks began to increase in the United Kingdom in February and reached a peak of more than 70 thousand attacks on March 14, about a week before the start of the total blockade.
The 88-page report indicated that Microsoft detected and blocked more than 13 billion malicious and suspicious messages in 2019, including more than one billion of these URL-based phishing and threat messages, and the US company urged the organizations to inform your employees if they detect any trick. Email fraud.
The company explained that hackers focus their attacks on devices connected to the Internet or what is known as the “Internet of things”, such as refrigerators, amplifiers and surveillance cameras that exchange data over the Internet.
The new analysis is based on data from more than 1.2 billion computers, servers, and smart devices accessed through Microsoft services, as well as data from 630 billion authentication events, 470 billion emails, and more. than 18 million URLs.
