Attackers are leveraging vulnerabilities in applications to gain access to sensitive user data, according to the latest Global Threat Intelligence Centre (GTIC) report by NTT Ltd.
According to the report, approximately 55 per cent of attacks detected by NTT’s systems were either web-application or application-specific attacks.
“Threat actors are attacking applications and are looking for flaws in the applications available through their web presence. Vulnerabilities in off-the-shelf applications, custom-built applications, databases, support infrastructure, as well as development and management tools, allow cyber criminals to gain direct and public access to databases to churn sensitive data,” it explained.
Attackers are targeting certain versions of Oracle products, ThinkPHP, Joomla!, vBulletin, Apache products, OpenSSL, IIS, and WordPresWeb-based applications to gain direct access to databases.
Joomla! Accounted for 17 per cent of the attacks, while Apache products accounted for 16 per cent. Attacks against content management systems such as Oracle, Adobe and WordPress accounted for 19 per cent of the attacks, said the report.
“In June 2020, attacks against networking products (i.e., Zyxel, Netis, Netcore, Netgear, Linksys, D-link and Cisco) and video cameras accounted for about 32 per cent of all attacks. Many of these were brute force or authentication attacks,” the report said.
The firm suggests adoption of a web-application firewall (WAF) for businesses to prevent such attacks. It also suggests segregation of internal networks to protect other systems from getting exposed.