Trend Micro says Australia and New Zealand are seeing an alarming increase in AI-driven cybercrime, ranking them as top global targets for various kinds of cyberattacks in the first half of 2024.
In the mid-year roundup report from the cybersecurity firm, Australia was listed as one of the top ten countries with 21.6 million detections of URL victims, or 2.5% of all URL victims worldwide. Along with notable router attack activity, the nation ranked 7th in this category and achieved a high rank in mobile app detections, placing 8th internationally. Additionally, Australia saw 72 million email threats this year.
1,450 ransomware instances and 2.4 million blocked email threats were reported in New Zealand. The island nation was reported to have a high percentage of malicious URLs—5.4 million were found and blocked—which highlighted the region’s pervasive threat trends.
“Trend Micro blocked over 75.46 billion threats for customers in the first half of the year, but there’s no time for complacency. As malicious actors begin to embrace AI as a tool, the industry must respond in kind by designing security strategies to take account of evolving threats. This is an arms race we can’t afford to lose,” stated Mick McCluney, the ANZ Field CTO at Trend Micro.
Law enforcement has recently made efforts, but cybercriminals are still developing new strategies. Not even major efforts like Operation Endgame against dropper malware networks, Operation Cronos targeting LockBit, and Operation Morpheus addressing the unauthorized usage of Cobalt Strike have been able to discourage hackers. Trend Micro has noted that the use of AI in cybercrime has become increasingly common.
According to Trend Micro, cyber actors are using illegal Large Language Models (LLMs), disguising malware inside of reputable AI programs, and even offering jailbreak-as-a-service to take advantage of generative AI bots for social engineering and malware creation. The cybercrime ecosystem is becoming more sophisticated and innovative, as evidenced by this trend.
Additionally, there was a spike in the usage of deepfake technology for various illegal operations in the first half of 2024. These include targeted Business Email Compromise (BEC) impersonation schemes, virtual kidnapping scams, and exploiting biometric data stolen from victims to evade Know Your Customer (KYC) checks.
LockBit is still the most common ransomware family, even after many disruptions by law enforcement. The emergence of LockBit-NG-Dev, a new version, further demonstrates the adaptability and persistence of these cyber threats.
Cybercriminals have used national elections and important events like the Olympics to launch targeted attacks, and complex APT operations have taken advantage of geopolitical sensibilities, particularly those pertaining to China-Taiwan relations, with efforts like Earth Lusca. It has been observed that state-aligned actors employ sophisticated methods to breach routers that are visible to the internet, thereby masking their intended attacks.
Additionally, a number of groups have taken advantage of cloud environments, applications, and services by misusing credentials that are available, configuration flaws, and vulnerabilities in tools that are genuine.
Also read: Unveiling the Ethical Imperatives: Navigating the Intersection of AI and Cybersecurity
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