Cybercrime up 245% since the start of the Iran war

"Cybercrime has skyrocketed since the start of the Iran war, according to Akamai, which reports a 245 percent increase in everything from credential harvesting attempts to automated reconnaissance traffic aimed at banks and other critical businesses."

"Most of the internet traffic Akamai has logged thus far has been infrastructure scanning and reconnaissance efforts, with botnet-driven discovery traffic jumping 70 percent and automated recon traffic up 65 percent. The firm also reported a notable uptick in widespread scanning of infrastructure and exposed services (up 52 percent), credential harvesting attempts (45 percent), and reconnaissance ahead of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks (38 percent)."

"However, not all of the malicious traffic originated from Iran. The embattled theocracy accounted for only 14 percent of the source IPs, compared to Russia (35 percent) and China (28 percent). This doesn't necessarily mean that the threat groups carrying out the cyber activities are based in these two counties."

Cybercrime activity surged dramatically following the start of the Iran war, with Akamai reporting a 245 percent increase in malicious traffic. Banking and fintech sectors bore the brunt, accounting for 40 percent of attacks, followed by e-commerce, video games, technology, and media. The majority of incidents involved infrastructure scanning and reconnaissance, including botnet-driven discovery traffic up 70 percent and automated reconnaissance up 65 percent. Credential harvesting attempts increased 45 percent, while DDoS reconnaissance activity rose 38 percent. A US financial services company blocked 13 million packets from Iran over 90 days. However, Iran accounted for only 14 percent of source IPs, with Russia at 35 percent and China at 28 percent, suggesting geopolitical hacktivists utilized proxy services across multiple countries.

Read at Theregister