The EU security agency, ENISA, releases the first Cyber Threat Landscape report, a summary of over 120 threat reports from 2011 and 2012 from the security industry, standardisation bodies and other independent parties.
According to the agency the report provides an overview of observed threats and theat agents, as well as current top threats and emerging threat trend landscapes within mobile computing, social media, critical infrastructure, trust infrastructures, cloud and big data.
The report identifies the "cyber enemy" with an analysis and listing of the top ten (out of 16) threats. These are as follows:
- Drive-by exploits (malicious code injects to exploit web browser vulnerabilities)
- Worms/trojans
- Code injection attacks
- Exploit kits (ready to use software package to automate cybercrime)
- Botnets (hijacked computers that are remotely controlled)
- (Distributed) Denial of Service attacks (DDoS/DoS)
- Phishing (fraud mails and websites)
- Compromising confidential information (data breaches)
- Rogueware/scareware
- Spam
ENISA also has a number of conclusions on how one can better fights cyber threats:
- Use a common terminology within threat reports
- Include the end-user perspective
- Develop use cases for threat landscapes
- Collect security intelligence of incidents including starting point and target of an attack
- Perform a shift in security controls to accommodate emerging threat trends
- Collect and develop better evidence about attack vectors (methods) so as to understand attack workflows
- Collect and develop better evidence on the impact reached by attackers
- Collect and maintain more qualitative information about threat agents
"I am proud that the Agency undertakes this important work to better understand the composition of the current cyber threats," ENISA director Prof. Udo Helmbrecht says. "This is the first and most comprehensive Cyber Threat Analysis available to date and a point of reference for all cyber security policy makers, and stakeholders."