New IBM Security X-Force data reveals that many cloud-adopting businesses are falling behind on basic security best practices, introducing more risk to their organizations.
Shedding light on the ‘cracked doors’ that cybercriminals are using to compromise cloud environments, the 2022 X-Force Cloud Threat Landscape Report uncovers that vulnerability exploitation, a tried-and-true infection method, remains the most common way to achieve cloud compromise. Gathering insights from X-Force Threat Intelligence data, hundreds of X-Force Red penetration tests, X-Force Incident Response (IR) engagements and data provided by report contributor Intezer, between July 2021 and June 2022, some of the key highlights stemming from the report include:
- Cloud vulnerabilities are on the rise: amid a sixfold increase in new cloud vulnerabilities over the past six years, 26 percent of cloud compromises that X-Force responded to were caused by attackers exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities, becoming the most common entry point observed.
- More access, more problems: in 99 percent of pentesting engagements, X-Force Red was able to compromise client cloud environments through users’ excess privileges and permissions. This type of access could allow attackers to pivot and move laterally across a victim environment, increasing the level of impact in the event of an attack.
- Cloud account sales gain grounds in Dark Web marketplaces: X-Force observed a 200 percent increase in cloud accounts now being advertised on the dark web, with remote desktop protocol and compromised credentials being the most popular cloud account sales making rounds on illicit marketplaces.
