Increased number of automated cyber attacks – help.ORF.at

After new data analysis, criminal hackers are increasingly relying on automated mass attacks for cyber attacks. In contrast, targeted attacks in which hackers remain personally on the computer are rare, according to the new “Cybercrime Report” of British company Lexisnexis.

Accordingly, between January and June, botnet-assisted automated attacks increased 41 percent to an estimated 1.2 billion individual cases, nearly half of which were affected by businesses in the financial services sector. Bot attacks are attacks from networked computers that are controlled remotely. Malicious bots are mostly used to send spam or steal user data. Non-automated hacker attacks have decreased by nearly 30 percent.

Most bot attacks come from the USA

According to the report, the United States is still the country where most bot attacks originated. Growth in automated cyber attacks was strongest in the Asia Pacific and Latin America regions. In contrast, the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East and Africa) recorded the smallest increase.

According to its own information, Lexisnexis evaluated data from corporate customers for the report – this includes, among other things, 20 billion logins and nearly five billion payment transactions. The company is part of the London-based Relx Group, an international provider of databases, including security software for digital identification.