"Over 85% of Attacks Hide in Encrypted Channels"

Security researchers at Zscaler have found that the vast majority of cyberattacks over the past year have used TLS/SSL encryption to hide from security teams.  The researchers analyzed 24 billion blocked threats during the period October 2021–September 2022 to compile their new "2022 State of Encrypted Attacks Report." The researchers found that over 85% of attacks are now HTTPS-based in a bid to stay hidden from security tools, a 20% increase on the previous year.  The researchers argued that although legacy firewalls support packet filtering and stateful inspection, it's resource intensive to do this scale, meaning many encrypted threats go unchecked.  The researchers noted that this is why certain sectors are more impacted than others, with manufacturing seeing a 239% increase in attacks over the period, followed by education (132%).  The researchers stated that the US (155%), India (87%), and Japan (613%) recorded the biggest increases in encrypted attacks over the past 12 months.  South Africa became a member of the top five list of countries most targeted by HTTPS-based attacks, alongside the US, India, the UK, and Australia.  The researchers noted that malicious scripts and payloads, including ransomware, accounted for the vast majority (90%) of these attacks.  On the positive side, The researchers noted that government organizations and retailers both saw the number of encrypted attacks fall by 40% and 63%, respectively.

Infosecurity reports: "Over 85% of Attacks Hide in Encrypted Channels"