JANA DEKANOVSKA
2022 HAS BEEN A WATERSHED YEAR FOR CYBERSECURITY, BUT WHAT’S NEXT? By Jana Dekanovska, Strategic Threat Advisor at CrowdStrike 2022 has been a pivotal year for cybersecurity
and New Zealand. Continued geopolitical tensions
with adversaries increasingly turning their gaze
between Canberra and Beijing and the AUKUS security
to Australia’s critical infrastructure and essential
pact further fuelled this activity in 2022. Adversaries
industries. Just when organisations were starting
attributed to the Democratic People’s Republic of
to catch up, new and novel threats emerged. In
Korea were also prolific, maintaining a dual focus
September we saw another attack on ride sharing
on financial gain and economic espionage driven by
and food delivery giant, Uber, just months after the
domestic circumstances and ongoing international
company revealed it had suffered a ransomware
sanctions that restrict the country’s access to
attack in 2016.
global markets.
Sophisticated, highly targeted and premeditated
Nor is Australia immune to financially motivated cyber
intrusion campaigns are being carried out against
attacks. Bitwise Spider dominated the eCrime scene
some of the world’s largest companies. CrowdStrike’s
throughout 2022 and continues to operate the most
OverWatch team uncovered a highly sophisticated
professionally run ransomware-as-a-service operation,
Chinese state-sponsored adversary, Aquatic Panda,
accumulating the highest number of victims to
carrying out a long-term targeted intrusion campaign
date. In June 2022, Bitwise Spider released a new
against a global technology and manufacturing
update to its program, introducing novel features and
company. China-linked adversaries such as Aquatic
techniques, and reaffirmed its focus on what we have
Panda continue to be the most active groups
named the triple extortion model: ransomware, DDoS
conducting cyber attacks for economic, diplomatic
attacks and data leaks all at the same time.
and political purposes. This activity is consistent with the criminal behaviour
82
In fact, China-linked adversaries were the most
CrowdStrike Intelligence has tracked over the
frequently observed targeting entities in Australia
course of 2022 in which adversaries move away
W O M E N I N S E C U R I T Y M A G A Z I N E
N O V E M B E R • D E C E M B E R 2022
