Modern Malware is Increasingly Leveraging Evasive Behaviors

Modern malware is increasingly leveraging evasive behaviors, a new report by VMware Carbon Black released at RSA Conference 2020 has revealed. The report uncovers the top attack tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) seen over the last year and provides specific guidance on ransomware, commodity malware, wipers, access mining and destructive attacks.

Among some of the key findings from the report:

Defense evasion behavior was seen in more than 90 percent of the 2,000 samples they analyzed
Ransomware has seen a significant resurgence over the past year. Defense evasion behaviors continue to play a key role with ransomware (95 percent of analyzed samples).
The top industries targeted by ransomware over the past year have been: Energy and Utilities, Government and Manufacturing, suggesting that ransomware’s resurgence has been a nefarious byproduct of geopolitical tension.
Ransomware’s evolution has led to more sophisticated Command and Control (C2) mechanisms and infrastructure for attackers. Cyber criminals continue to leverage standard application protocols in network deployments to operate under the radar and blend in with standard business traffic. They are also deploying secondary C2 methods on sleep cycles, allowing them to wake up a new method of C2 upon discovery or prevention of their primary method.