Sophos, the global leader in next-generation innovation and cyber security, today released its 2023 Threat Report. The report highlights how criminals are turning cybercrime into a means of making money. Even criminals are taking their threats to such a level that organizations are forced to compromise with them.
The report shows how ransomware operators are coming up with new tactics to extort what is one of the biggest cybercrime threats to organizations. At the same time, their demand for such work is increasing.
Criminal underground marketplaces like Genesis have long bought malware and malware deployment services (‘malware-as-a-service’), as well as selling stolen credentials and other data in bulk. Over the last decade, ransomware has emerged in the economy as a full-fledged ‘ransomware-as-a-service’ with its growing popularity. In 2022, this ‘as a service’ model has expanded and almost every aspect of the cybercrime toolkit has become more accessible, including ways to evade detection from initial infection.
With the expansion of the ‘as-a-service’ economy, underground cybercriminal markets are increasingly becoming a commodity and operating just like mainstream businesses. Cybercrime ‘vendors’ are not only advertising their services but also offering to hire individual skilled attackers. As the cybercrime infrastructure has expanded, so has ransomware become extremely popular and profitable.
Over the past year, ransomware operators have been working to increase their potential attack services to target platforms other than Windows. It has even begun adapting new languages like Rust and Go to make them undetectable in these cases. Some groups, notably Lockbit 3.0, have diversified their operations and are developing more ‘innovative’ ways to extort victims.
The growing underground economy has not only fueled the growth of the ransomware and ‘as-a-service’ industries, but also increased the demand for credential theft. Credential theft has become one of the easiest ways for new or inexperienced criminals to gain access to underground marketplaces and start their ‘careers’.
