Security News > 2021 > October > Large ransom demands and password-guessing attacks escalate

Ransomware, showing three major detection spikes during T2, saw the largest ransom demands to date.

The attack shutting down the operations of Colonial Pipeline - the largest pipeline company in the US - and the supply-chain attack leveraging a vulnerability in the Kaseya VSA IT management software, sent shockwaves that were felt far beyond the cybersecurity industry.

Both cases appeared to pursue financial gain rather than cyberespionage, with the perpetrators of the Kaseya attack setting a $70 million ultimatum - the heftiest known ransom demand so far.

Password-guessing attacks seeing further growth in T2 2021.

Password-guessing attacks, which often serve as a gateway for ransomware, saw further growth in T2. Between May and August 2021, 55 billion new brute-force attacks against public-facing Remote Desktop Protocol services were detected.

Telemetry also saw an impressive increase in the average number of daily attacks per unique client, which doubled from 1,392 attempts per machine per day in T1 2021 to 2,756 in T2 2021.

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