Threat Actors are Spoofing One Another to Mask Their Identity, Researchers Say

• Threats actors have become more sophisticated with the adoption of new techniques to mask their identity and evade detection, which includes impersonating each other.
• The most targeted sectors include retail, healthcare, government, and financial institution.

What’s the matter?

Researchers from Optiv Security have published a new report titled ‘2019 Cyber Threat Intelligence Estimate (CTIE)’. This report highlights that threat actors are impersonating and spoofing each other in order to mask their identity and confuse investigators and researchers.

What’s the purpose of this research?

The purpose of this research is to help organizations understand the ever-evolving threat ecosystem and better mitigate the risks by improving their cybersecurity and risk management programs.

“Business and security leaders can learn from this report and use it to strengthen their security programs. Cybersecurity can be an existential threat for organizations, but that only highlights the importance for guidance,” said Anthony Diaz, division vice president and general manager at Optiv.

Key findings

Researchers have concluded their findings after evaluating the latest cyber threats and investigating statistics from various vertical industries. The findings include,

• The most targeted sectors include retail, healthcare, government, and financial institution.
• Threats actors have become more sophisticated with the adoption of new techniques to mask their identity and evade detection.
• The new technique used by the so-called ‘hybrid threat actors’ includes masquerading each other to avoid detection.
• Traditional attack vectors such as phishing, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), malware and botnet continues to be persistent.
• However, new and modern attack vectors such as cryptojacking and ransomware are gaining momentum.

“Cyberspace has become more hostile. Hackers are more organized and sophisticated in 2019, and we’re seeing malicious attackers increase their counter measures to avoid detection,” said Tom Kellermann, Chief Cybersecurity Officer at Carbon Black.