Observations, Evolving trends, and Predictions

Cyble Research & Intelligence Labs (CRIL) has charted the rise and evolution of various cyber threats across the Surface, Deep & Dark Web.  

As technology continues to evolve, so do the methods used by Threat Actors (TAs). In this report, you can find our observations for cyber threat activities across 2022, our predictions for emerging threats, and what we can expect from them in 2023 and beyond. 

With increasing scrutiny from Law Enforcement Agencies and governing bodies, we have seen TAs rapidly adapt their Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) to the current threat landscape. This ensures that they are still dangerous, increasingly hard to detect and analyze, and capable of overcoming any cybersecurity measures or exploiting any security vulnerabilities to continue to carry out cyberattacks against their intended targets. 

Some notable insights from this report are: 

• 2022 saw the highest number of vulnerabilities in the last six years, with the highest number of known exploitable vulnerabilities reported. 
• Ransomware Groups continued to remain active, adopting novel encryption techniques to evade detection, with new players such as BianLian and others making a name for themselves with notable attacks.  
• Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups are adopting more sophisticated techniques in order to evade detection, maintain persistence, and so on.   
• Stealer Malware continues to pose a serious threat, with new stealers like Loli and Mini Stealer entering the scene and going after high-profile targets. 
• The Banking sector is still under siege from a wave of Banking Trojans, such as ERMAC and Zanubis, primarily targeting the Android platform.  
• Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and Operational Technology (OT) were prime targets for threat groups to deploy malware and compromise these critical sectors’ productivity, security, and efficiency.  
• Observed a massive rise in phishing attacks in 2022 than 2021, with increasing adoption of spear-phishing campaigns after the conflict in Ukraine began in 2022.