Small companies are a major goal for cybercrime, as we highlighted in our final annual report. Lots of the legal threats we coated in that report remained a serious menace in 2024, together with ransomware–which stays a main existential cyber risk to small and midsized organizations.
Ransomware circumstances accounted for 70 p.c of Sophos Incident Response circumstances for small enterprise clients in 2024—and over 90 p.c for midsized organizations (from 500 to 5000 workers). Ransomware and knowledge theft makes an attempt accounted for practically 30 p.c of all Sophos Managed Detection and Response (MDR) tracked incidents (by which malicious exercise of any kind was detected) for small and midsized companies.
Whereas ransomware assaults general have declined barely 12 months over 12 months, the price of these assaults general has risen, based mostly on knowledge from Sophos’ State of Ransomware report. And although most of the threats noticed in 2024 have been acquainted in type, different data-focused threats proceed to develop, and new ways and practices have emerged and advanced:
- Compromised community edge units—firewalls, digital personal community home equipment, and different entry units—account for 1 / 4 of the preliminary compromises of companies in circumstances that might be confirmed from telemetry, and is probably going a lot increased.
- Software program-as-a-service platforms, which have been broadly adopted by organizations in the course of the COVID pandemic to help distant work and to enhance general safety posture, proceed to be abused in new methods for social engineering, preliminary compromise, and malware deployment.
- Enterprise electronic mail compromise exercise is a rising proportion of the general preliminary compromises in cybersecurity incidents—leveraged for malware supply, credential theft, and social engineering for quite a lot of legal functions.
- One of many drivers of enterprise electronic mail compromise is the phishing of credentials with adversary-in-the-middle multifactor authentication (MFA) token seize, a always evolving risk.
- Fraudulent functions carrying malware, or tied to scams and social engineering by means of SMS and messaging functions, result in cell threats for small and midsize companies.
- Different less-technical threats leveraging the community proceed to be a risk to small companies, once more with evolving patterns of scams.
This report focuses on the tendencies seen in cybercriminal assault patterns confronted by small and midsized organizations. Particulars of malware and abused software program most often encountered in endpoint detections and incidents is offered in an appendix to this report, which will be discovered right here.
Desk of Contents
A phrase about our knowledge
The information utilized in our Annual Menace Report evaluation comes from the next sources:
- Buyer reviews—this consists of detection telemetry from Sophos endpoint software program operating on clients’ networks, which supplies a broad view of threats encountered, and analyzed inside SophosLabs (on this report, known as endpoint detection knowledge)
- Incident knowledge—this consists of each knowledge gathered in the midst of escalations pushed by detection of malicious exercise on MDR clients’ networks, knowledge gathered by MDR Incident Response from buyer incidents, and knowledge gathered by Sophos Incident Response from incidents on buyer networks for organizations of 500 workers or fewer the place there was little or no managed detection and response safety in place. These datasets are handled as a mixed set of incident knowledge on this report.
- SecureWorks incident and detection knowledge shouldn’t be included on this report, because it was based mostly on pre-acquisition telemetry.
- All knowledge is from the 2024 calendar 12 months, until in any other case famous.
Buyer report knowledge is a firehose of all detections from endpoints, which typically lead to malware being blocked. Incident knowledge, however, contains knowledge collected from any occasion the place malicious exercise was detected on an MDR buyer community or uncovered as a part of an Incident Response case, and gives a considerably deeper image in lots of circumstances of the intent of exercise and connections to different risk intelligence.
This report focuses on knowledge particular to small and midsized organizations. Deeper dives on the info gathered from Sophos Incident Response and Sophos MDR Operations, together with knowledge on bigger organizations, will be present in our Lively Adversary Report (AAR) collection.
Damaged Home windows (and gateways)
Whether or not merely misconfigured, utilizing weak credential insurance policies, or operating on susceptible software program or firmware, techniques on the community edge are the preliminary level of compromise for over a 3rd of all incidents involving intrusion into smaller organizations. As Sophos CEO Joe Levy identified not too long ago, out of date and unpatched {hardware} and software program constitutes an ever-growing supply of safety vulnerabilities, a phenomenon he known as “digital detritus.”
Whereas zero-day assaults on vulnerabilities are comparatively uncommon in cybercrime concentrating on small and medium companies, revealed vulnerabilities will be in a short time weaponized by entry brokers and different cybercriminals. This was the case when the backup software program supplier Veeam launched a safety bulletin on CVE-2024-40711 in September 2024—inside a month, cybercriminals had developed an exploit for the vulnerability, and paired it with gaining preliminary entry by means of VPNs.
The Veeam vulnerability and related documented vulnerabilities that remained unpatched by clients—a few of them current, however some over a 12 months outdated—performed a job in practically 15 p.c of the circumstances Sophos MDR tracked involving malicious intrusions in 2024. In practically all circumstances, the vulnerabilities have been reported for weeks if not longer earlier than they have been exploited by attackers, often in connection to ransomware assaults. In different circumstances, they have been used to realize preliminary entry by cybercriminals for different functions—together with having access to doubtlessly promote to ransomware actors.
Prime revealed vulnerabilities as noticed in Sophos MDR / IR intrusion incidents
| CVE | Description | % of intrusions exploited |
Date of CVE publication* |
| CVE-2024-1709 | ConnectWise ScreenConnect authentication bypass | 4.70% | 2024-02-21 |
| CVE-2023-4966 | Citrix NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway buffer overflow vulnerability |
2.78% | 2023-10-10 |
| CVE-2023-27532 | Veeam Backup & Replication Cloud Join unauthenticated entry to encrypted credentials saved within the configuration database |
2.35% | 2023-03-10 |
| CVE-2024-3400 | Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS command injection vulnerability, permits an unauthenticated attacker to execute instructions with root privileges on the firewall |
1.28% | 2024-04-12 |
| CVE-2024-37085 | VMware ESXi accommodates an authentication bypass vulnerability | 0.85% | 2024-06-25 |
| CVE-2024-40711 | Veeam deserialization of knowledge vulnerability, permits distant code execution |
0.85% | 2024-09-07 |
| CVE-2023-48788 | Fortinet FortiClient EMS SQL injection vulnerability, permits an unauthenticated attacker to execute instructions as SYSTEM |
0.64% | 2023-03-12 |
| CVE-2024-27198 | JetBrains TeamCity accommodates an authentication bypass vulnerability that permits an attacker to carry out admin actions | 0.43% | 2024-03-04 |
| CVE-2024-21762 | Fortinet FortiOS out-of-bound write vulnerability, permits a distant unauthenticated attacker to execute code or instructions by way of HTTP requests |
0.43% | 2024-02-09 |
| CVE-2021-34473 | Microsoft Trade Server accommodates an unspecified vulnerability that permits for distant code execution | 0.21% | 2021-07-14 |
| Complete | 14.53% |
* Vulnerability dates from cvedetails.com
Determine 1: Prime revealed vulnerabilities as noticed in Sophos MDR / IR intrusion incidents
In some circumstances, even when patches have been deployed for recognized vulnerabilities, units could stay susceptible as a result of they’ve already been compromised. For instance, net shells or different strategies of post-exploit entry malware could have been deployed earlier than the vulnerability was patched. In different circumstances, the patching course of could haven’t been absolutely accomplished. In a single Sophos MDR case, a Citrix Netscaler gateway was used to ascertain preliminary entry by an attacker by exploiting classes that weren’t reset after the “Citrix Bleed” patch was deployed.
Lots of the intrusions to which Sophos MDR and IR responded concerned different kinds of vulnerabilities not essentially coated by the Frequent Vulnerabilities and Exposures database: default configurations, misconfigurations, weak two-factor authentication (identify and password), and different points with internet-facing units that go away them susceptible to assault, in addition to vulnerabilities that will have been fastened in later updates by distributors however have been by no means assigned CVE identifiers. Others have been doubtlessly associated to a lot older vulnerabilities in unpatched or end-of-life’d units that had been left in service.
Community edge units particularly—together with digital personal community (VPN) home equipment, firewalls with VPN capabilities, and different remote-access home equipment—are a serious contributor to cybercrime incidents. These units collectively account for the biggest single supply of preliminary compromise of networks in intrusion incidents tracked by Sophos MDR.
These figures don’t embody incidents the place ransomware execution or knowledge exfiltration by no means occurred due to blocking of C2 and different post-exploitation instruments.
These statistics spotlight the necessity for even small organizations to deploy MFA for all consumer accounts, and particularly these with distant entry rights by way of a VPN or different means. In addition they present the need of auditing units used for distant connection to networks and updating their software program or firmware recurrently—and changing software program and working techniques that not obtain common safety replace help.
STACs: Packaged playbooks, ways, instruments and procedures
Somewhat than monitoring “risk teams,” Sophos MDR focuses on figuring out particular patterns of conduct to trace a set of actors throughout a number of incidents. These embody instruments, ways and procedures (TTPs), help infrastructure, and different traits that mirror the usage of a shared playbook or set of scripted instruments. We refer to those as Safety Menace Exercise Clusters (STACs) and monitor their exercise as campaigns.
STACs signify not only a single set of actors, however a shared playbook—ways, instruments, and procedures (TTPs), together with assault scripts and related strategies for concentrating on victims. These playbooks could have been packaged to be used by a number of associates of a ransomware group, bought on underground marketplaces, or outright stolen by people shifting from one legal exercise to a different.
For instance, whereas looking for threats leveraging the Veeam vulnerability CVE-2024-40711, Sophos MDR Menace Intelligence recognized a selected risk exercise cluster utilizing it, together with VPN exploitation, and practically equivalent TTPs. The cluster is tracked as STAC5881. On this marketing campaign, the Veeam vulnerability was used to create identically named administrator accounts (named “level”). Nonetheless, the ransomware deployed in these circumstances assorted: Akira, Fog, and a brand new ransomware named Frag.
Frag seems to be a “junk gun” ransomware—crudely coded, low-cost ransomware produced as an alternative choice to ransomware-as-a-service, and both developed by the cybercriminals themselves or obtained from an underground market at a median value of $375.
Essentially the most energetic STAC campaigns tracked by Sophos MDR in 2024 have been ransomware-related in all however one case—and that marketing campaign was the long-running malware-as-a-service platform DanaBot, which could be a precursor to ransomware assaults.
Most energetic safety risk exercise clusters in 2024
| STAC4265 | DanaBot marketing campaign utilizing Fb social engineering, with hyperlinks to “unclaimed cash” websites that redirect to ship malware that makes an attempt to steal browser knowledge and exfiltrate it by way of the Tor anonymizing community |
| STAC4529 | Authentication bypass utilizing RCE of ConnectWise Display screen Join previous to 23.9.8 |
| STAC4556 | Crytox ransomware deployed, uTox messenger software dropped, use of a deployed susceptible kernel driver to disable EDR software program. The attackers within the cluster additionally used professional “twin use” instruments: Superior Port Scanner for community discovery, and Mimikatz and Lazagne instruments for credential discovery and dumping |
| STAC6451 | Mimic ransomware associates, utilizing Cloudflare to masks command and management domains, exploiting Microsoft SQL Server for unauthorized entry, and deploying Impacket for backdoor creation with widespread credentials. In addition they exhibit proficiency in community evasion by redirecting probing domains to professional websites and exfiltrating knowledge by way of well-known file switch companies. |
| STAC5881 | A cluster leveraging Akira, Fog, and Frag ransomware assaults, exploiting VPNs and CVE-2024-4071 (described above) |
| STAC5464 | A ransomware-related cluster linked to Hunters Worldwide, utilizing the identical SFTP exfiltration server throughout incidents in addition to NTDS credential dumping and use of community proxying by means of Plink, SystemBC malware, and different instruments |
| STAC5397 | A risk actor or set of actors related to Akira and Fog ransomware. Creates backdoor accounts with a typical password. The cluster has been noticed deploying “twin use” professional instruments: AnyDesk for execution and lateral motion, and Rclone and FileZilla for knowledge exfiltration. |
| STAC4663 | A ransomware-related cluster that makes use of customized, obfuscated malware to carry out intrusions. The group usually makes use of CVE-2023-3519 to use Citrix NetScaler home equipment for preliminary entry, and makes use of the professional OpenSSH library for community visitors tunneling in sufferer environments. |
| STAC5304 | A RansomHub ransomware affiliate first recognized in summer time 2024 that has reused exfiltration IP addresses throughout a number of incidents, leveraging professional instruments (Atera Agent distant machine administration software program, FileZilla for knowledge exfiltration) and a script named HideAtera.bat for protection evasion |
Determine 5: Most energetic safety risk exercise clusters in 2024 ordered by variety of incidents
Tendencies in cybercrime strategies, ways and practices
Distant ransomware continues to develop
Whereas the general variety of incidents in 2024 was barely down—partly due to higher defenses and the disruption of some main ransomware-as-a-service operators—ransomware-related crime shouldn’t be fading away. If something, the ways of ransomware actors are evolving to be sooner on the assault and extra keen to extort the sufferer over stolen knowledge once they fail to encrypt sufferer’s recordsdata. Generally the attackers don’t even hassle attempting to encrypt the recordsdata.
When attackers do run ransomware, it’s usually achieved from exterior of the detection vary of endpoint safety software program—that’s, from an unmanaged system both remotely or straight linked to the focused community. These “distant” ransomware assaults use community file-sharing connections to entry and encrypt recordsdata on different machines, so the ransomware by no means executes on them straight. This may conceal the encryption course of from malware scans, behavioral detection, and different defenses.
Sophos X-Ops present in an examination of telemetry that use of distant ransomware elevated 50 p.c in 2024 over final 12 months, and 141 p.c since 2022.
Social engineering by way of Groups vishing
Within the second half of 2024, and notably within the fourth quarter, we noticed the adoption of a mixture of technical and social engineering assaults utilized by risk actors to goal organizations utilizing Microsoft 365 (previously Workplace 365). Certainly one of these assaults was profitable in knowledge exfiltration however did not progress to ransomware execution. A number of others have been blocked throughout makes an attempt to collect credentials and transfer additional into the focused organizations’ community (and doubtlessly, into their software-as-a-service occasion and its knowledge).
These assaults by two completely different risk teams used “electronic mail bombing”—the sending of a giant quantity of emails to focused folks throughout the organizations they attacked—adopted by a faux technical help name over Microsoft Groups to these folks, utilizing their very own 365 account to ship Groups messages and make Groups voice and video calls into the focused organizations.
MFA phishing
Criminals have additionally adjusted their deception strategies for gathering consumer credentials. MFA has made it tougher to transform usernames and passwords into entry. The cybercriminal market has responded with new methods to seize each credentials and multifactor tokens in actual time to beat that impediment.
MFA phishing depends on an “adversary-in-the-middle” method, the place the phishing platform acts as a proxy to precise authentication course of for the multifactor-protected service. The platform then passes captured credentials and the session cookie returned from the login to the cybercriminal over a separate channel, which in flip permits them to move the credentials and token to the goal’s professional service web site and acquire entry.
An MFA phishing platform referred to as Dadsec emerged within the fall of 2023, and would later be linked to campaigns in 2024 by a phishing-for-hire platform referred to as Tycoon. However Tycoon was not the one phishing ring utilizing Dadsec-derived instruments. Rockstar 2FA and FlowerStorm each look like based mostly on up to date variations of the Dadsec platform, utilizing Telegram as a command-and-control channel. Rockstar 2FA was extremely energetic in the midst of 2024 and appeared to endure from technical failures in November, however was rapidly supplanted by FlowerStorm.
Intelligence collected from each platforms revealed a big quantity of compromised accounts, but it surely was unclear what number of had really been used for entry by cybercriminals.
Adversarial AI utilization
Cybercriminals engaged in intrusion-style assaults have made restricted use of synthetic intelligence. Most of the usage of generative AI by cybercriminals has targeted on social engineering duties: creating photographs, movies and textual content for faux profiles, and to be used in communication with targets to masks language fluency points and id. In addition they use it to make their very own instruments look extra skilled—as RaccoonStealer builders did for a graphic for his or her portal login web page.
One space the place there was emergent use of generative AI is in phishing emails. Giant Language Fashions (LLMs) similar to ChatGPT can be utilized to create grammatically appropriate content material in a format that varies from goal to focus on—defeating content material filters that determine signatures in spam and phishing emails. SophosAI demonstrated that a complete marketing campaign of focused emails might be created utilizing AI-orchestrated processes based mostly on data gathered from focused people’ social media profiles, utilizing present instruments.
Sophos X-Ops expects use of those capabilities by cybercriminals to broaden sooner or later. At present, (based mostly on our analysis into discussions of LLMs on legal boards, together with an preliminary investigation in late 2023, adopted by an replace in early 2025), there stays a substantial quantity of skepticism amongst some risk actor communities. Some are experimenting and utilizing AI for routine duties, however malicious functions stay largely theoretical—although in our most up-to-date replace we famous {that a} handful of risk actors are starting to include generative AI into spamming companies and related instruments.
Quishing
Across the identical time that RockStar was peaking, Sophos X-Ops found a “quishing” marketing campaign concentrating on Sophos workers (none of whom fell for the lure). Emails with QR codes alleged to supply safe entry to a doc have been embedded in a PDF attachment; the QR code in reality contained a hyperlink to a fraudulent document-sharing web site that was, in reality, an adversary-in-the-middle phishing occasion, with traits similar to Rockstar 2FA and FlowerStorm.
Malvertising and search engine marketing poisoning
Malvertising is the usage of malicious net ads, together with paid listings on search outcomes. It continues to be a popular methodology of distributing malware. Lengthy utilized by droppers similar to ChromeLoader, malvertising has develop into the distribution methodology of alternative for information-stealing malware, however Sophos MDR has noticed different malware injection mechanisms leveraging malvertising as properly.
A malvertisment can both hyperlink to a malicious net web page or on to a malicious script that’s downloaded and launched by the sufferer, ensuing within the set up of malware or different instruments giving the attacker persistence on the sufferer’s pc. For instance, within the second half of 2024, Sophos X-Ops noticed a browser hijacking marketing campaign related to Google search malvertising leveraging key phrases that focused customers looking for a PDF device obtain. The ads led to downloads of malicious Microsoft installer (.MSI) recordsdata which put in what seemed to be an precise functioning PDF device—but additionally created a system process, a startup merchandise, and registry keys to ascertain persistence for malware that hijacks browsers, redirecting targets’ net searches to websites managed by the malware’s operators.
Malvertising has been noticed by Sophos MDR in circumstances related to among the different most energetic malware campaigns of 2024: DanaBot, Lumma Stealer, and GootLoader. Different assault vectors have been additionally noticed utilizing malvertising, together with backdoors and distant administration trojans (together with SectopRat), the Cobalt Strike assault device set, and abused professional distant entry software program similar to AnyDesk.
EDR killers
Sophos X-Ops has noticed quite a lot of malicious software program instruments developed for the legal market over the previous two years known as “EDR killers.” These instruments are meant to use kernel drivers to realize privileged entry to the working system and kill focused protected processes—particularly, endpoint safety software program—in order that ransomware or different malware will be deployed unimpeded. More and more, we have now seen the builders of those instruments depend on a set of professional however susceptible drivers to energy them, in what are referred to as “deliver your individual susceptible driver” (BYOVD) assaults.
Sophos X-Ops noticed quite a lot of would-be EDR killers utilized by ransomware actors in 2024. Essentially the most often seen of those was EDRSandBlast, a device utilized by a number of actors. Seen in each MDR and Incident Response circumstances, EDRSandBlast variants have been detected in waves of tried ransomware assaults all year long, together with a dramatic peak across the US Thanksgiving vacation in November.
Determine 12: Prime 10 EDR-killer malware detected by Sophos endpoint safety
Sophos tamper safety, behavioral detection, and particular detections of malicious use of kernel drivers for disabling defenses assist stop these instruments from making ransomware assaults extra damaging. However the fixed evolution of those instruments places much more stress on defenders to detect and cease attackers earlier than they will deploy them.
Conclusion
The risk panorama for small and midsized companies stays extremely dynamic, with criminals always adapting their ways to new defensive measures and exploiting vulnerabilities new and outdated alike as alternatives emerge. Responding to this setting is greater than most small organizations can deal with with out exterior help and is a pressure even on organizations with devoted IT groups.
Lifecyle administration of all techniques, together with Web routers, firewalls, VPN home equipment, and Web-facing functions and servers, is a necessary a part of deterring a big share of assaults. Units left in service with out patches or after the top of their help by distributors can act as a beacon for entry brokers and ransomware actors who carry out large community scans of the Web for susceptible techniques to assault.
This 12 months’s knowledge exhibits that criminals are more and more attacking the place we aren’t wanting.
- Sophos MDR is more and more seeing the exploitation of vulnerabilities and misconfigurations of community edge units, that are used to acquire and disguise legal entry to networks.
- If there’s a danger of their ransomware encryption device being detected by your endpoint safety safety, attackers merely use “distant ransomware” strategies from under-defended property.
- If they will discover a method to elevate their privileges, they bring about alongside a susceptible system driver with the intention of blinding your safety instruments from their malicious intent.
Whether or not stealing MFA codes, utilizing QR codes to trick customers into visiting malicious logins from their telephones, or convincing customers to ask them in by means of electronic mail bombing and vishing assaults, cybercriminals frequently adapt and evolve to our defenses.
When taken as an entire, the info and tendencies on this report illustrate the necessity to take a defense-in-depth method to defending any dimension group. Many of those don’t require a deeper funding in safety, as a lot as a change in mindset to match the evolving risk. Small and midsized organizations can cut back their danger profile with these steps:
- Migrate from passwords to passkeys for account credentials. Passkeys are saved digital keys assigned to particular units and may’t be intercepted by adversary-in-the-middle phishing kits.
- For accounts that may’t be secured with passkeys, use multifactor authentication, and migrate to passkey safety when potential.
- If accounts can’t be secured by both methodology, intently monitor them by means of an id risk detection and response technique—both internally or with a managed service supplier.
- Prioritize patching edge units similar to firewalls and VPN units, and following by means of on all required steps for patching (together with system resets).
- Be certain that endpoint safety software program is deployed throughout all of your property in order that unmanaged units can’t be leveraged by attackers.
- Enlist exterior assist to audit and monitor your exterior assault surfaces recurrently to make sure you don’t have exploitable entry factors for attackers scanning for targets.
Acknowledgements
Sophos X-Ops thanks Anna Szalay, Colin Cowie and Morgan Demboski of Sophos MDR Menace Intelligence and Chester Wisniewski, Director, International Discipline CISO for his or her help within the manufacturing of this report.
