Exploit Leaks Led to Over Five Million Attacks in Q2 2017

PRESS RELEASE

Woburn, MA – Kaspersky Lab found that exploit packages in-the-wild became the game changer of the cyber threat landscape in Q2 2017. In just three months, Kaspersky Lab products have blocked more than five million attacks that involved exploits from archives leaked on the web. According to the findings of its Q2 Malware report, the growth peaked at the end of the quarter, indicating the unrelenting scale of this cyber threat.

Attacks conducted with the help of exploits are among the most effective as they generally do not require any user interaction, and can deliver their dangerous code without the user suspecting anything. As a result, these tools are widely used, both by cybercriminals seeking to steal money from private users and companies, and in sophisticated targeted attacks hunting for sensitive information.

The second quarter of 2017 experienced a massive wave of these in-the-wild vulnerabilities due to a number of exploits being leaked on the web, which caused a notable change in the cyber threat landscape. The findings show that 82 percent of all attacks within the quarter were detected in just the last 30 days. The major kick-off was the Shadow Brokers’ publication of the “Lost in Translation” archive, which contained a large number of exploits for different versions of Windows. Despite the fact that most of these vulnerabilities were not zero-day vulnerabilities and were patched by the Microsoft security update a month before the leak, the publication led to disastrous consequences.

The damage from malware that used exploits from the archive as well as the number of infected users is overwhelming, with ExPetr and WannaCry pandemics being the most notable examples. Another example is the CVE-2017-0199 vulnerability in Microsoft Office, discovered in early April. Despite the fact that it was patched in the same month, the number of attacked users peaked at 1.5 million.

“The threat landscape of Q2 provides yet another reminder that a lack of vigilance is one of the most significant cyber dangers,” said Alexander Liskin, security expert at Kaspersky Lab. “While vendors patch vulnerabilities on a regular basis, many users don’t pay attention to this, which results in massive-scale attacks once the vulnerabilities are exposed to the broad cybercriminal community.”

Other online threat statistics from the Q2 Malware Report include:  

To reduce the risk of infection, Kaspersky Lab advises to:

·        Use robust security solutions and make sure they keep all software up to date.

·        Regularly run a system scan to check for possible infections.

Read the full version of the Kaspersky Lab’s Malware Report on Securelist.com