A report by the market research firm Sophos revealed that cyberattackers have 11 days after breaching a target network before they are discovered, and most often the detection happens due to the use of ransomware.
This number of days is more than enough for hackers to get a complete overview of a corrupted network, its weaknesses, and how to damage it.
Sophos explains the short dwell time in its incident response data, where 81% of the incidents it helped customers with involved ransomware attacks, which is a loud attack that immediately triggers an alarm for tech departments.
Other attacks include data theft, cryptominers, banking trojans, data wipers, and the use of penetration testing tools such as Cobalt Strike.
Another issue is the widespread attacks of the Remote Desktop Protocol, whereby 30% of attacks on RDP and 69% are carried out with RDP. Attacks on RDP are primarily used to initiate ransomware operations.
Also, phishing became the gateway for 12% of attacks, while 10% involved exploiting an unpatched system.
Sophos also came up with a list of the most widespread ransomware groups.
According to Sophos, REvil (aka Sodinokibi), was the most active ransomware threat in 2020 along with Ryuk, who has made an estimated $150 million through ransomware.
Other large ransomware groups include Dharma, Maze, Ragnarok, and Netwalker.
For more information, read the original story in ZDNet.