Wednesday, March 19, 2025

More groups, more variants, and higher ransom demands

“The cybersecurity community will find new challenges in AI-augmented attacks, expanding attack surfaces, and increasingly sophisticated social engineering. Threat actors will find not just the opportunities they seek, but also the heightened scrutiny, improved defenses leveraging AI-tools shepherded by human intelligence, coordinated law enforcement actions, and inevitable consequences that follow.“ -- Ian Gray, VP of Intelligence at Flashpoint.

Billions of credentials were stolen from businesses around the world in 2024

(Image credit: Avast)

Flashpoint report outlines a rise in stolen credentials and data breaches in 2024
Over 3.2 billion credentials were compromised in 2024
Profits from these attacks are fueling the cyber threat landscape

Over 3.2 billion credentials were compromised in 2024, new research has claimed, with these details then used to ‘fuel a number of illegal campaigns’.

Flashpoint’s Global Threat Intelligence Report said the figure represents a 33% spike year-on-year, and of these stolen credentials, an overwhelming 75% of these were obtained through information stealing malware, or ‘infostealers’ - which have now infected over 23 million devices worldwide.
The most prolific of these is Redline - infecting 9.9 million hosts in 2024.

A Global Pulse on Threat Intelligence: What You Need to Know As 2024 Unfolds | Flashpoint

Unsurprisingly, 2024 saw a rise in ransomware attacks, with Flashpoint identifying a 10% increase across all sectors, adding to the 84% increase from the previous year - reinforcing reports that 2024 was the worst year for ransomware on record.

A Global Pulse on Threat Intelligence: What You Need to Know As 2024 Unfolds | Flashpoint

A resilient market

When ransomware and infostealer groups are disrupted, the market bounces back remarkably quickly, with new groups and malware strains emerging - indicating a “highly adaptable and resilient threat landscape”.
This makes life much more difficult for security teams and law enforcement, so robust threat monitoring and adaptability will be key for cybersecurity going forward.

A key takeaway from the report is the increase in data breach activity, with 6,670 publicly reported data breaches in 2024 - responsible for the exposure of over 16.8 billion records - putting organizations, customers, and users at risk, and funding cybercriminal organizations around the world.

“We live in interesting times, where technology is both a blessing and a curse,” said Ian Gray, VP of Intelligence at Flashpoint.