CYBERCRIME HITS THE UNEXPECTED

Bitcoin- and PoS-System-Related Attacks Trouble Users



Money is money, no matter where it’s found. In the first quarter of 2014, cybercriminals closed in on places with untapped potential and unusual targets then transformed them into lucrative sources of money.

This report discusses how and why cybercriminals hit the unexpected. We saw how this became a trend with news of several high-profile breaches hitting retailers’ point-of-sale (PoS) systems and multimillion-dollar attacks against Bitcoin exchanges.

These cases piled up on top of still-growing concerns on the cybercrime and cybercriminal underground, mobile, targeted attack, and digital life and Internet of Everything (IoE) threat landscapes. The following highlights how the entire threat landscape has evolved this quarter:



 •     Online banking malware introduced new routines amid a rise in volume as we found 116,000 new variants this quarter, indicating a 3% increase from the same quarter last year.



 •     13-year-old preventive cure against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks via IP spoofing compelled the release of a fix, as attackers targeted the Network Time Protocol (NTP).



 •     2 million mobile malware and high-risk apps now exist, including exploits for device and platform bugs, as the mobile threat landscape continued to mature.



Go through each section to get more insights on this quarter’s largest threats and see how unusual targets provided new avenues for cybercriminals to pursue.