ENISA summarizes 120 threat reports, identifies top trends

The EU’s cyber security agency ENISA has published the first Cyber Threat Landscape analysis of 2012, summarizing over 120 threat reports.

The report identifies and lists the top threats and their trends, and concludes that drive-by exploits have become the top web threat.

The report summaries 120 recent reports from 2011 and 2012 from the security industry, networks of excellence, standardization bodies and other independent parties, making the report the world’s most comprehensive synthesis presently available.

The report provides an independent overview of observed threats and threat agents together with the current top threats, and emerging threats trends landscapes. Moreover, the Threat Landscape report analyses the “cyber enemy”; identifying and also listing the top ten (out of a total of sixteen) threats in emerging technology areas.

The identified top ten threats are:

• 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.

Finally, the Agency makes a number of conclusions for industry and stakeholders on how to better fight cyber threats to business, citizens and the digital economy at large:

• 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.