CrowdStrike releases its 2023 Global Report

CrowdStrike has released the 2023 CrowdStrike Global Report, tracking the activities of 200+ adversaries, including 33 new adversaries identified in the past year alone. The report found a surge in identity-based threats, cloud exploitations, China-nexus espionage and attacks that re-weaponized previously patched vulnerabilities.

The annual report is created by the world-renowned CrowdStrike Intelligence team, leveraging data from trillions of daily events from the CrowdStrike Falcon platform and insights from CrowdStrike Falcon OverWatch.

The Report includes:

● 71% of attacks detected were malware-free and interactive intrusions

increased 50% in 2022. 112% year-over-year increase in access broker advertisements on the dark web – Illustrating the value of and demand for identity and access credentials in the underground economy.

● Cloud exploitation grew by 95% and the number of cases involving ‘cloud conscious’ threat actors nearly tripled year-over-year. 33 new adversaries introduced the biggest increase CrowdStrike has ever observed in one year including the highly prolific SCATTERED SPIDER and SLIPPY SPIDER behind many recent high profile attacks on telecommunication, BPO, and technology companies.

● Adversaries are re-weaponizing and re-exploiting vulnerabilities.

● eCrime actors moving beyond ransom payments for monetization.

● China-nexus espionage surged across all 39 global industry sectors and 20 geographic

regions tracked by CrowdStrike Intelligence.

● CrowdStrike saw a jump in Russia-nexus adversaries employing intelligence gathering tactics and even fake ransomware, suggesting the Kremlin’s intent to widen targeting sectors and regions where destructive operations are considered politically risky.

● An uptick in social engineering tactics targeting human interactions.

Adam Meyers, Head of Intelligence at CrowdStrike said, “The past 12 months brought a unique combination of threats to the forefront of security. Splintered eCrime groups re-emerged with greater sophistication, relentless threat actors sidestepped patched or mitigated vulnerabilities, and the feared threats of the Russia-Ukraine conflict masked more sinister and successful traction by a growing number of China-nexus adversaries. Today’s threat actors are smarter, more sophisticated, and more well resourced than they have ever been in the history of cybersecurity. Only by understanding their rapidly evolving tradecraft, techniques and objectives and by embracing technology fueled by the latest threat intelligence - can companies remain one step ahead of today’s increasingly relentless adversaries.”