Chinese Hackers Are the Main Users of Zero-Day Vulnerabilities
Last week, Google Project Zero experts reported on last year’s zero-day bugs, and now the cybersecurity company Mandiant has released its own statistics. According to their analysts, the number of zero-day vulnerability exploits is increasing, and most of these attacks are carried out by Chinese hackers.
Mandiant’s report states that 80 cases of zero-day vulnerability exploitation were recorded last year, which is 18 more than in 2020 and 2019 combined. Most of these attacks were related to cyber espionage by “government hackers” from various countries, but every third attacker also had financial motives.
China was the most active in exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities, topping the list with eight zero-day exploits used in attacks in 2021. Mandiant ranks Russia second with two exploits, and North Korea third with one exploit in its arsenal.
The most notable activity by Chinese hackers, according to researchers, was the series of attacks by the Hafnium hacking group, which used four zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange to access the email accounts of Western organizations. In addition, Mandiant notes a rise in ransomware programs that exploit zero-day vulnerabilities to breach company networks and then deploy encrypting malware. A prominent example of this tactic was the HelloKitty hacker group, which used a zero-day bug in SonicWall SMA 100 VPN devices.
Vendors Targeted by Zero-Day Exploits
Mandiant analysts predict that the situation will only get worse in 2022:
“We expect that large-scale campaigns based on zero-day vulnerability exploitation will become more accessible to a wider range of government and financially motivated attackers. This is happening in part due to the growing number of vendors selling exploits, as well as sophisticated ransomware campaigns whose operators may be able to develop custom exploits.”
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