There has been a significant increase in the number of attacks across the Asia Pacific (APAC) region, according to the FireEye Advanced Threat Report for APAC.
The report provides an overview of the advanced persistent threats (APT) that FireEye discovered targeting computer networks in APAC over the first six months of 2014.
From January - June 2014, FireEye found that countries in APAC are more likely to be targeted by advanced cyber-attacks than the world as a whole.
The report reveals that more than one in two FireEye appliances in the region captured attacks versus roughly one in three seen elsewhere.
Frequent activities were seen consistently in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. FirEye also saw a noticeable increase in APT activity (Kaba/PlugX) in Hong Kong due to attacks featuring themes of interest to Chinese and Japanese non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and activists.
Notably, 51% of all FireEye appliances in the Asia Pacific region have seen at least one instance of APT, which is significantly more than the 35% of global appliances.
The Top APT malware – Gh0stRat and DarkComet – have been used for crimeware like stealing banking credentials. These two remote access tools (RAT) are freely available on the Internet, and provide advanced backdoor functionalities – which make them popular tools for cyber criminals and APT actors throughout the world.