Clop ransomware operation's activity in February was 300 percent higher than in January.
Ransomware attacks compromised 962 organisations last month, a 126 percent increase over this time last year.
According to research from Bitdefender and featured by SiliconAngle, this was the highest number of compromises on record in terms of monthly victimisation.
Ransomware operations have also significantly modified their targeting strategies, prioritising edge network devices and software weaknesses in two-stage intrusions aimed at concealing malicious activity. Such attacks involve initial network access through automated scanning and exploitation of vulnerable devices that will be followed by weeks- or months-long infiltration before the deployment of ransomware, said researchers.
More than a third of the intrusions last month were attributed to the Clop ransomware operation — whose activity in February was 300 percent higher than in January, owing to its targeting of a pair of vulnerabilities impacting Cleo file transfer software, tracked as CVE-2024-50623 and CVE-2024-55956.
Written by
Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with 25 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 17 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Forum, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and the National Cyber Security Show, and served as editor of SC Media UK, Infosecurity Magazine and IT Security Guru. He was also an analyst with 451 Research and a product marketing lead at Tenable.
