Asia remains among the leaders in the number of cyber attacks – Kommersant

Kommersant got acquainted with the study by Positive Technologies on current cyber threats to Asian countries in 2023. The study was presented at the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF 2023) on September 12 and focuses on the cyber threat landscape in the Asian region. The analysis covers China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia and other neighboring countries.

The researchers concluded that the Asia-Pacific region became the most attacked region in 2022: it accounted for 31% of the global number of attacks. At the same time, in the second quarter of 2023, the average number of attacks per week in the Asia-Pacific region increased by 22% compared to 2022.

The targets of attackers in Asia from the beginning of 2022 to the middle of 2023 most often were government agencies (22% of all attacks), industrial companies (9%), IT companies (8%) and financial organizations (7%), 6% cyber attacks occurred on educational institutions.

Cyber ​​espionage and data leakage remain among the most pressing threats for Asian countries in 2023 – in 49% of successful attacks on organizations, confidential information, such as user data and trade secrets, was compromised. Thus, in 2023, the hacker group BlackCat (aka ALPHV) stole 2 terabytes of data from the servers of the Indian company Solar Industries Limited (specialized chemical production). Among the stolen data were technical details of manufactured weapons and explosives, drawings, information on weapons supplies, etc.

Encryptors also pose a threat: industrial enterprises became their victims, accounting for 34% of successful attacks. Positive Technologies associates hackers’ interest in Asia with the high level of digitalization in the region as a whole and the concentration there of the world’s leading IT companies, whose data is valuable to attackers. The study also provides data from IBM, CheckPoint and other international companies operating in the Asian market.

Tatiana Isakova