"1.7 Million Cyber Attacks in Q1... Terror Targeting Remote Work"

[Asia Economy Reporter Buaeri] SK Infosec announced on the 6th that the number of cyber attacks detected in the first quarter of this year reached 1.7 million.

According to SK Infosec, its security control center, the Secudium Center, detected and blocked an average of 580,000 attack attempts per month from January to March. This is about a 21% increase compared to the average of 480,000 in the first quarter of last year.

In terms of attack types, many attacks aimed to hijack user accounts or target management servers to install ransomware malware in order to seize system privileges. The reason for attacking management servers is to spread malware to multiple systems and expand the damage.

In March, there were also cases of attacks exploiting the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) situation. Taking advantage of the relatively weak security system in remote work environments compared to inside the company, attackers hijacked user accounts and infiltrated key corporate systems. Additionally, there were many cases where corporate mail servers were abused to send spam emails or internal servers were exploited for cryptocurrency mining.

SK Infosec forecasted that attacks targeting the changed working environment of companies due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic will continue to increase. To prepare for this, they recommended strengthening access control and authentication to safely connect to internal systems from external environments such as remote work, and carefully checking for security vulnerabilities caused by externally introduced software like video conferencing and collaboration tools that were rapidly adopted within existing security frameworks.

Lee Jae-woo, head of the Platform Business Group at SK Infosec, emphasized, "Hacking attacks exploiting social issues like the current COVID-19 have always existed," and added, "We must prepare to prevent greater damage from cyber attacks even under difficult circumstances."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.