Vulnerability attacks increased by 23 percentage points compared to last year
Number of credential information leaks in 2019,
8.5 billion outflows, a 200% increase from the previous year


On the 12th, IBM released its annual report, the '2020 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index.' According to the report, cybercrimes utilizing existing software vulnerabilities and stolen credentials accounted for 60% of all cybercrimes in 2019.

IBM announced that vulnerability scanning and exploits accounted for 30% of security incidents observed in 2019, a 22 percentage point increase from 2018. Hackers exploited numerous old vulnerabilities in previously known MS Office and Windows Server Message Block.

In the case of phishing, it accounted for half of all security incidents in 2018, but decreased significantly to 31% in 2019. Conversely, the rate of software vulnerability scanning and vulnerability attacks increased from 8% in 2018 to 30% in 2019.

Credential theft accounted for 29% in 2019 with over 8.5 billion records leaked, a 200% increase from 2018. Approximately 85% of the leaked information, or 7 billion records, was found to be caused by configuration errors in cloud servers and other systems, indicating that companies are still struggling with cloud security.

Along with this, as ransomware attacks evolve, it has been revealed that no industry is safe from ransomware. Large-scale ransomware attacks have frequently occurred in industries with high vulnerabilities due to the use of outdated technology or large amounts of valuable data, such as retail, manufacturing, and transportation. Additionally, more than 100 U.S. government agencies were affected last year.

According to IBM, 80% of ransomware attacks were found to exploit vulnerabilities in the Windows Server Message Block. IBM projected that damages from ransomware attacks exceeded $7.5 billion in 2019 and would continue in 2020.

Other key details are as follows.

The number of attacks on the professional services sector ranked 5th in 2019, dropping two places from the previous year. However, the number of records leaks was the highest, accounting for more than 75% of the total records leaks worldwide.

In 2019, attacks on Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and Operational Technology infrastructure increased significantly, including a 2,000% increase in targeted Operational Technology (OT) attacks compared to the previous year. The most frequently observed types of attacks included combinations of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and ICS hardware vulnerabilities, and password dissemination.

It was found that North America and Asia were the regions most concentrated in cyber attacks. North America and Asia recorded 5 billion and 2 billion data breaches, respectively, marking the highest number of attacks as well as the highest number of data breaches last year.

Wendi Whitmore, Global General Manager of IBM X-Force Incident Response and Intelligence Services (IRIS), said, “With large-scale data breaches, cybercriminals are now able to confidently log into networks with stolen credentials and launch attacks,” adding, “Companies must consider adopting protection technologies such as multi-factor authentication and single sign-on (SSO) more than ever.”

Meanwhile, the IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index is based on data collected and analyzed from an average of over 70 billion threat events per day occurring in more than 130 countries, based on X-Force Incident Response and Intelligence Service (IRIS), X-Force Red, IBM Managed Security Service, and other public sources.