• Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
MUST READ

IT Worker arrested for selling access in $100M PIX cyber heist

 | 

New Batavia spyware targets Russian industrial enterprises

 | 

Taiwan flags security risks in popular Chinese apps after official probe

 | 

U.S. CISA adds Google Chromium V8 flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

 | 

Hunters International ransomware gang shuts down and offers free decryption keys to all victims

 | 

SECURITY AFFAIRS MALWARE NEWSLETTER ROUND 52

 | 

Security Affairs newsletter Round 531 by Pierluigi Paganini – INTERNATIONAL EDITION

 | 

North Korea-linked threat actors spread macOS NimDoor malware via fake Zoom updates

 | 

Critical Sudo bugs expose major Linux distros to local Root exploits

 | 

Google fined $314M for misusing idle Android users' data

 | 

A flaw in Catwatchful spyware exposed logins of +62,000 users

 | 

China-linked group Houken hit French organizations using zero-days

 | 

Cybercriminals Target Brazil: 248,725 Exposed in CIEE One Data Breach

 | 

Europol shuts down Archetyp Market, longest-running dark web drug marketplace

 | 

Kelly Benefits data breach has impacted 550,000 people, and the situation continues to worsen as the investigation progresses

 | 

Cisco removed the backdoor account from its Unified Communications Manager

 | 

U.S. Sanctions Russia's Aeza Group for aiding crooks with bulletproof hosting

 | 

Qantas confirms customer data breach amid Scattered Spider attacks

 | 

CVE-2025-6554 is the fourth Chrome zero-day patched by Google in 2025

 | 

U.S. CISA adds TeleMessage TM SGNL flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

 | 
  • Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Cyber warfare
  • APT
  • Data Breach
  • Deep Web
  • Digital ID
  • Hacking
  • Hacktivism
  • Intelligence
  • Internet of Things
  • Laws and regulations
  • Malware
  • Mobile
  • Reports
  • Security
  • Social Networks
  • Terrorism
  • ICS-SCADA
  • POLICIES
  • Contact me
  • Home
  • Cyber Crime
  • Malware
  • Security
  • FireEye report on advanced cyber attacks landscape

FireEye report on advanced cyber attacks landscape

Pierluigi Paganini April 27, 2013

FireEye report on the evolution of sophisticated cyber threats and their diffusion on global scale

FireEye security firm has published another interesting report, titled “FireEye report -The Advanced Cyber Attack Landscape”, that provides an overview of advanced cyber attack landscape, these events are a widespread global activity and during 2012.

FireEye report Global Scale impact

 

FireEye experts detected  12 million malware communications seeking instructions, or callbacks, across hundreds of thousands of infected enterprise hosts, capturing details of advanced attacks as well as more generic varieties.

The cyber threats are becoming even more sophisticated and able to evade traditional defenses, following the opinion of  FireEye CEO David DeWalt:

“The threat landscape has evolved, as cyber threats have outpaced traditional signature-based security defences, such as antivirus, and permeated around the world, enabling cyber criminals to easily evade detection and establish connections inside the perimeter of major organizations,”   

FireEye report is based on data collected by its appliances deployed around the globe that automatically gather threat intelligence associated with the new breed of cyber attacks.

Let’s consider that one of the most important components during a cyber attack are Command & Control servers that are used to manage the infected machines instructing them with necessary information to conduct the offensive and to evade detection.

Malware activities are detected everywhere in the world, analyzing the callback to C&C servers the researchers observed that the number of countries involved is 184,  42 % increase respect the data collected in 2010, the two regions most interested were Asia (China, South Korea, India, Japan, and Hong Kong) and Eastern Europe (Russia, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Kazhakstan, and Latvia).

FireEye report - Regional CallBack Volume

FireEye report revealed that attackers tend to send initial callbacks to control servers within the same nation in which the target resides to improve evasion techniques and analyze which countries could be hit. United States is considerable top country for attacks, analyzing APT hosting countries is possible to note that for APT attacks, C&C servers were mainly hosted in the US 66 percent of the time, the data is not surprising because US has high concentration of intellectual property and digitized data. Another country with high value of intellectual property is Japan, 87 percent of callbacks originated from the country remain confined in the national perimeter.

The majority of Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) callback activities relates to APT tools of Chinese origin (89%), one of most used malware is the popular Gh0st RAT used many times against Chinese dissidents and oppositions.

The FireEye report states that highest rate of APT callback activities interested the technology organizations  as reported in the study due relevance of intellectual property associated.

“ … some industries are much more frequently attacked than others. In 2012, technology companies experienced the highest rate of callback activity associated with next-generation cyber attacks. Whether the objectives criminal initiatives, it is clear that technology companies are prominent and consistent targets”

FireEye report - advanced-threat-ATP_Hosting_Countries

FireEye report highlighted that methods for disguising callback communications are evolving to avoid detection of malicious traffic, for example in many cases attackers used social networking platforms for communicating with infected machines.

The reports revealed also that attack patterns vary substantially globally, South Korea has emerged within those countries that host C&C servers due an efficient internet infrastructure meanwhile callback exit rates for Canada and the U.K. were the highest at 99 and 90 percent respectively indicating that attackers are unconcerned about detection.

The report demonstrated that scope, frequency, and nature of attacks is very different for different organization’s industry and location, the assessment of callback information could give interesting information on the evolution of sophisticated cyber threats … good read.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Security)


facebook linkedin twitter

advanced cyber attacks APT botnet FireEye Gh0st RAT malware Russia social networking platforms Verizon

you might also like

Pierluigi Paganini July 08, 2025
IT Worker arrested for selling access in $100M PIX cyber heist
Read more
Pierluigi Paganini July 07, 2025
Taiwan flags security risks in popular Chinese apps after official probe
Read more

leave a comment

newsletter

Subscribe to my email list and stay
up-to-date!

    recent articles

    IT Worker arrested for selling access in $100M PIX cyber heist

    Cyber Crime / July 08, 2025

    New Batavia spyware targets Russian industrial enterprises

    Uncategorized / July 07, 2025

    Taiwan flags security risks in popular Chinese apps after official probe

    Security / July 07, 2025

    U.S. CISA adds Google Chromium V8 flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

    Hacking / July 07, 2025

    Hunters International ransomware gang shuts down and offers free decryption keys to all victims

    Cyber Crime / July 06, 2025

    To contact me write an email to:

    Pierluigi Paganini :
    pierluigi.paganini@securityaffairs.co

    LEARN MORE

    QUICK LINKS

    • Home
    • Cyber Crime
    • Cyber warfare
    • APT
    • Data Breach
    • Deep Web
    • Digital ID
    • Hacking
    • Hacktivism
    • Intelligence
    • Internet of Things
    • Laws and regulations
    • Malware
    • Mobile
    • Reports
    • Security
    • Social Networks
    • Terrorism
    • ICS-SCADA
    • POLICIES
    • Contact me

    Copyright@securityaffairs 2024

    We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept All”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent.
    Cookie SettingsAccept All
    Manage consent

    Privacy Overview

    This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities...
    Necessary
    Always Enabled
    Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
    Non-necessary
    Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
    SAVE & ACCEPT