Security News > 2022 > August > Malicious deepfakes used in attacks up 13% from last year, VMware finds

VMware found a quarter of all ransomware attacks included double-extortion techniques, with top methods including blackmail, data auction and name and shame The use of deepfakes also shot up this year, by 13 percent to 66 percent of respondents reporting they had featured in an attack.

65 percent of respondents noted that cyberattacks had increased since Russia invaded Ukraine and 62 percent said they'd been on the receiving end of zero-day exploits.

VMware cybersecurity strategist Karen Worstell noted, "Lateral movement has always been with us," but went on to note that as hypervisors run more and more workloads, traffic did not move through the network as it once did.

"Dual-use tools - system tools and legitimate software that can be abused by attackers - leveraged for this purpose went up across the board," said VMware.

49 percent of those attacks were using script hosts while 46 percent went with file storage and synchronization tools.

Security teams are apparently getting better at fighting the tide of incursions, with 75 percent of organizations employing virtual patching as an emergency mechanism and 90 percent of respondents reckoning they were up to disrupting the activities of a miscreant.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/08/09/vmware_malware/