Essential Facts About Nation-State Cyberattacks You Should Be Aware Of
In the digital age, the threat landscape has expanded to include nation-state actors, groups of people or organizations utilising technology skills for hacking, sabotage, theft, misinformation, and other operations on behalf of a country. These actors, often backed by the "big 4" sponsors – Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran – pose a significant risk to both consumers and enterprises worldwide.
The Growing Menace of Nation-State Cyberattacks
The cost of an average nation-state-backed cyberattack is estimated to be around $1.6 million per incident. With a 100% rise in significant nation-state incidents between 2017 and 2021, the financial impact is substantial.
Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups, nationalist cybercrime outfits with sophisticated levels of expertise and significant resources, are at the forefront of these attacks. Researchers have found that APTs are targeting various sectors, with the most common being technology, government, and defence.
Techniques Used by Nation-State Actors
Nation-state actors employ a variety of tactics to infiltrate systems. Phishing attacks, where victims are persuaded to disclose sensitive information or accomplish objectives such as infesting a system with ransomware, are common. Backdoor attacks, where threat actors intrude into an organization's systems and establish a back door for future access, are also prevalent.
Ransomware attacks, where files are encrypted, devices are locked, and data is stolen to disrupt production lines, among other purposes, are the preferred weapon of these cybercriminals. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, used to make technology-dependent resources unavailable by flooding their servers or systems with an unmanageable amount of web traffic, are another tool in their arsenal.
Protecting Against Nation-State Threats
In the face of these threats, solutions like Graphus offer a line of defence. Graphus is an email security solution that uses AI to automatically keep phishing emails away from user inboxes, offering powerful protection against various email-related threats at a budget-friendly price.
Graphus's patented technology, TrustGraph, analyses incoming messages and spots illegitimate messages quickly and efficiently before they land in anyone's inbox. Furthermore, Graphus's machine learning capabilities continuously refine protection and learning without human intervention by adding information to its knowledge base with every analysis it completes.
The Prevalence of Nation-State Threats
86% of organisations believe they have been targeted by a nation-state threat actor, highlighting the widespread nature of these attacks. In recent years, the nations most frequently associated with conducting state-sponsored cyberattacks include Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. These countries have been repeatedly identified by cybersecurity experts and intelligence agencies as major sources of sophisticated nation-state cyber operations targeting various industries and governments worldwide.
Infrastructure attacks, attempts by nation-state actors to damage a country's adversary by disrupting critical services, are a growing concern. As the digital world continues to evolve, staying vigilant and equipped with effective security measures is more important than ever.
