Authors:
Alexander Ivanyuk — Senior Director, Technology
Irina Artioli — Cyber Protection Evangelist, TRU Researcher
The Acronis Cyberthreats Update covers current cyberthreat activity and trends, as observed by Acronis Threat Research Unit (TRU) and sensors. Figures presented here were gathered in March of this year and reflect threats that we detected as well as news stories from the public domain. This report represents a global outlook and is based on more than one million unique endpoints distributed around the world.
Incidents of the month
Since 2017, a significant Windows vulnerability, identified as ZDI-CAN-25373, has been actively exploited by at least 11 state-sponsored hacking groups from countries including North Korea, Iran, Russia and China. This flaw resides in the handling of Windows Shortcut or Shell Link (.LNK) files, allowing attackers to execute arbitrary code on targeted systems without user awareness. Despite its severity and prolonged exploitation, Microsoft has opted not to release a security patch, stating that the issue "does not meet the bar for servicing."
March malware detections
In March, Acronis Cyber Protect blocked over one million malware threats on endpoints — a 15% increase from February.
The below tables show the percentage of Acronis clients that had at least one malware threat blocked at the endpoint, as well as the normalized percentage of clients with at least one malware detection. The higher the percentage, the higher the risk of a workload in that country being attacked by malware.
Protection
The aforementioned threats can be detected and mitigated with solutions from Acronis.
Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud protects against both known and never-before-seen threats through a multilayered protection approach. This includes behavior-based detection, AI- and ML-trained detections and anti-ransomware heuristics, which can detect and block encryption attempts and roll back any tampered files automatically without any user interaction.
Additional advanced email security and URL filtering can help you protect against social engineering threats. And, your Acronis #CyberFit Score helps you quickly identify systems that need attention, while the integrated patch management makes updating your software to the latest versions simple.
Advanced Security + Extended Detection and Response (XDR) for Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud brings the visibility needed to understand attacks while simplifying the context for administrators and enabling efficient remediation of any threats.
