Cybersecurity

Cyber espionage warning: The most advanced hacking groups are getting more ambitious

The most advanced hacking groups are becoming bolder when conducting campaigns, with the number of organisations targeted by the most biggest campaigns rising by almost a third.

A combination of new groups emerging and threat actors developing successful strategies for breaking into networks has seen the average number of organisations targeted by the most active hacking groups rise from 42 between 2015 and 2017 to an average of 55 in 2018.

The figures, detailed in Symantec's annual Internet Security Threat Report suggest that the top twenty most prolific hacking groups are targeting more organisations as the attackers gain more confident in their activities.

Groups like Chafer, DragonFly, Gallmaker and others are all conducting highly-targeted hacking campaigns as they look to gather intelligence against businesses they think hold valuable information.

Once attackers might have needed the latest zero-days to gain access to gain entry into corporate networks, but now it's spear-phishing emails laced with malicious contents which are most likely provide attackers with the initial entry they need.