Thousands attacks spread around the globe—many targeting the US.
How do you where these hackers were located? The Internet is based on Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. Every country has different IP addresses and every place, every organization has some connection via an IP address.
By checking international IP codes, we can trace incoming and outgoing network traffic over a network. Because there are so many computers linked in cyberspace nowadays, it’s easy for a single hacker to infect thousands or even hundreds of thousands of computers with one attack.
While major cities are big targets, we find that many are aimed in your neck of the woods!
So where are these attacks coming from?
Well, there are actually some geographic patterns to attacks:
Nigerian Prince—I’m sure you’ve come across some form of Nigerian catfishing scam. Basically, people in many African countries try to snare a victim into giving them money with some sort of prospect- African treasures and gold, for instance. Why these low-bandwidth and low tech scams are coming from Africa? Basically this boils down to two major resource components: available bandwidth and access to talented hackers in an area. Most of these crimes are rooted out of local third world cyber cafes.
Crimeware—Eastern Europe has become the notorious source of many Malware-As-A-Service (MAAS) crimes. Since many countries in the region lack strong laws preventing malicious code activities, a lot of hackers in Eastern European countries are able to send out attacks relatively easily—they even do this from public data centers! Given that Eastern Europeans have access to advanced higher education—mathematics and computer engineering for instance—these countries are well-equipped for cyber attacking! Many of the attacks you’ve probably come across lately have been developed in a Russian-speaking country.
Cyber Army?—Several attacks originating from Asia are in fact acts of cyber espionage sponsored by government agencies. Often China is to blame when it comes to data breaches. Essentially China has established a ‘leapfrog’ style of innovation—where the government seeks to acquire foreign innovation to catch up to the West.
In Our Own Backyard?—Westerners, especially in the U.S., shouldn’t be too harsh to judge other global threats as being the cause of their hacking woes… There are equally potent threats in our own backyard. In fact, the most hacking, phishing, spyware and malware attacks directed at US businesses have domestic origins. The U.S. is particularly riddled with hacks used for surveillance. And the more people that talk like us, understand us and can relate to us, the more vulnerable we are when it comes to hacks and attacks on our businesses!
And the internet knows no borders. The United Nations found that the majority of cybercriminal organizations are small—90% of crime rings comprise less than 20 people!
That means that you have to worry about thousands of small crime rings with technological capabilities to attack thousands of businesses each day! Tens of thousands of people seeking to find your network vulnerabilities in hopes to steal from your business.
So to wrap up, there are many kinds of cybercriminals—they are not one flavored. And there are MANY attacks aimed at you and your competitors—every hour of every day, someone is trying to crack the code—find a weak link in your organization—be it someone on your team or simply some vulnerability in your network (un-updated patches, for instance).
Each cybersecurity player may have slightly different intent to get into your system. But ALL are serious threats to you, your team and your business. Please reach out to Cheryl Gholson on our team today to set up a cybersecurity planning session. If you think the attacks today are bad, you can only imagine how bad they might get tomorrow if you ignore the problem!
