Cybercrime: An overview of the threat situation

Hackers are constantly on the lookout for new methods to improve their attacks. Accordingly, this year's Swisscom Cyber Security Threat Radar focuses on AI-based attacks (artificial intelligence). According to the provider, these are cyber attacks in which artificial intelligence technologies are used. This enables hackers to carry out their attacks more effectively and efficiently in order to circumvent defensive measures.

In the last few months, a strongly increasing threat has been observed in this area. According to Swisscom, this has to do with the publicly available tools, which have made a real evolutionary leap. These include the Large Natural Language Model ChatGPT, which was published in November 2022. The AI model was developed to generate human-like text and act as a voice assistant, he said. Cybercriminals have also discovered it for themselves. For example, it would allow personalized phishing emails to be formulated more convincingly, the telecommunications company said. This makes phishing attacks more difficult to detect and could trick recipients into revealing sensitive information or clicking on malicious links.

Perennial Ransomware

In most cases, phishing is also the gateway for ransomware attacks - another major challenge for IT security. Here, the telecommunications provider's security specialists expect a significant increase in multiple extortion, i.e. the combination of several attack tactics such as ransomware, data theft and denial of service. Managed service providers would also be increasingly attacked, as they are often willing to pay ransom and their customers can be attacked directly.

Preventing the shortage of skilled workers with internal training

In order to strengthen the resilience against cyber threats in one's own company, it is essential to consider cyber and IT security in its entirety. In addition to technical precautions, well-trained employees and internal cyber experts also play a key role. However, IT security experts are in high demand and hard to find. Another option is to look inward and invest in the further training and education of the company's own employees.

The "Cyber Security Threat.-Radar serves as a guide and compass for safely maneuvering through the cyber world, according to the company. The report observes trends and challenges in the cyber world, links and evaluates them, and provides a compact overview of the threat situation and its development in Switzerland by bundling expert knowledge.

Press release Swisscom