Kaspersky Anti Targeted Attack (KATA) has detected 2 million instances of hacking tools used for lateral movement within enterprise networks over a six-month period. The data indicates that attackers are increasingly bypassing traditional security measures by using legitimate system utilities to navigate through corporate infrastructures.
Cyber-espionage groups are shifting their tactics to avoid detectable malware. By blending into existing system processes, these actors can move across networks without triggering standard antivirus alerts.
This trend increases the risk for large-scale organisations, as successful lateral movement allows attackers to escalate their access from a single compromised device to sensitive administrative servers and databases.
Attackers avoid detectable malware
The recent statistics compiled from detection alerts within Kaspersky Anti Targeted Attack (KATA) show a clear preference among hackers for tools that already exist on a target’s system. This method, commonly known as living off the land, allows attackers to hide their presence by performing actions that appear to be normal administrative tasks.
Once an initial breach occurs, the goal of the attacker is to move laterally. This process involves searching for credentials, scanning the network for vulnerabilities, and jumping from one machine to another. By using built-in utilities, they can perform these actions while remaining invisible to many conventional endpoint protection tools.
The sophistication of these methods presents a growing challenge for cybersecurity teams. As enterprises in Africa and globally digitise their operations, the surface area for these attacks expands. For Nigerian businesses, particularly in the financial and telecommunications sectors, the ability to distinguish between a legitimate system administrator and a malicious actor using the same tools is becoming a critical security requirement.
The findings suggest that relying solely on signature-based malware detection is no longer sufficient. Organisations must implement advanced network security solutions that focus on monitoring behaviour and identifying anomalies within legitimate processes to prevent large-scale data exfiltration.
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