OpenText’s 2021 Webroot BrightCloud Threat Report reveals that instances of phishing attacks increased manifold during the COVID days in 2020
OpenText, one of world’s leading enterprise information management solutions companies, has released the 2021 Webroot BrightCloud Threat Report. Webroot’s sixth generation machine learning security platform provides unique data insights into the timing, tactics and technologies that threat actors used over the past year.
According to the report, phishing activity increased significantly in the first few months of 2020, taking advantage of pandemic-induced product shortages and increased usage of streaming services. For the first time, eBay topped the list of brands most targeted for impersonations, with 31.1 percent of all phishing attacks in the month of February impersonating eBay. In March, phishing activity surged among streaming services YouTube (3,064 percent), Netflix (525 percent) and Twitch (337 percent).
“Gathered from over 285 million real-world endpoints and sensors, and leveraging the extensive BrightCloud network of industry-leading partners, this year’s Threat Report clearly shows how cybercriminals are willing and able to evolve their tactics to exploit collective human interest and current events,” said Prentiss Donohue, Executive Vice President, SMB/C Sales, OpenText. “The findings underscore the need for users and businesses of all sizes to enact a multi-layered approach to data security and protection given the persistent creativity of cybercriminals”, added Donohue.
Key findings
Phishing attacks increased 510 percent from January to February alone. The top five phishing targets of the year were eBay, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google. By the end of 2020, 54 percent of phishing sites used HTTPs. Use of HTTPS varies considerably based on the industry being targeted and is most heavily used when spoofing cryptocurrency exchanges (70 percent of the time), ISPs (65 percent), and gaming (62 percent). Based on reported data, health care and social assistance (down 41.4 percent from the YoY average) led in terms of industries with the lowest infection rates, while the highest industry infection rates were seen by wholesale trade, mining, oil & gas and manufacturing.
- 1 percent of malware is unique to a single PC
- 83 percent of Windows malware hides in one of four locations
- At 2.3 percent, Japan had the lowest PC infection rate per region, followed by the United Kingdom (2.7 percent), Australasia (3.2 percent) and North America (3.7c percent)
- In Europe, home devices were more than three times as likely to encounter an infection as business devices (17.4 percent versus 5.3 percent)
- Of the total threats detected on Android devices in 2020, Trojans and malware accounted for 95.9 percent, an increase from 92.2 percent in 2019
- Outdated operating systems accounted for nearly 90 percent of Android infections
- Malware for Android-based IoT devices is increasing, underscoring the importance of securing all Android devices beyond just smartphones and tablets
Qaisar
