Key Takeaways
- State sponsored cyberattacks are increasingly a major threat to global cybersecurity.
- Governments, enterprises, telecom networks, and critical infrastructure are all vulnerabilities for nation-state attackers.
- State sponsored attacks are on the rise thanks to geopolitical tensions and the practice of cyber warfare.
- Cyberattacks are becoming more sophisticated through the use of AI-powered phishing, malware, and social engineering.
- Lack of robust security in the supply chain makes it easy for an attacker to infiltrate an organization via third parties.
- Healthcare, energy, finance and transportation are just some of the critical sectors that are important targets of attack.
These days, cyber threats can’t be limited to cash-laden cybercriminals and only one hacker. Attacks sponsored by the State are among the biggest threats to governments, enterprises, and critical infrastructure today. These are cyberattacking that are orchestrated, funded and often conducted on behalf of governments which are looking to further political, military, economic or strategic agendas.
The world of cybersecurity has evolved in a drastic way in the last few years. This new era of cyberattacks is more sophisticated, covert and can cause disruption to critical functions, steal valuable intelligence, and impact geopolitical events. These attacks are not only affecting the electrical grid and healthcare networks but are also expanding their reach to include cyber espionage against defense-related institutions around the world. The nation-state threat actors are continually deploying advanced cyber tools against public institutions, telecom networks, research organizations and critical infrastructure, as noted in several threat intelligence reports.
What is a State Sponsored Cyber Attack?
A state sponsored cyber-attack is a cyber-attack that is sponsored or supported by a country’s state. Typically, these attacks are executed through attacks by specialized groups of hackers, intelligence agencies or Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) on behalf of a nation.
Unlike typical cybercriminals, state sponsored attackers are not necessarily after today’s profit. They may aim to conduct cyber espionage, political influence, infrastructure disruption, intellectual property theft, military intelligence gathering, and economic sabotage. They’re typically long-term campaigns that can be stayed in networks for several months or even years.
Why State-Sponsored Cyberattacks Are Increasing
Government-sponsored cyberattacks are growing in number, and governments and nation-state actors are also strengthening their cyber warfare armamentarium. Cyber operations are a potent alternative to conventional military operations in today’s digital world and are currently used to disrupt systems, steal sensitive information, and damage critical infrastructure with less cost and physical threat.
Meanwhile, the growing digitization, cloudification, and interdependency of technologies have expanded attack surfaces for bad guys and state-sponsored cyber attackers. Cyber-attacks from states are becoming increasingly common and increasingly sophisticated all over the world as organizations and governments increasingly depend upon digital infrastructure.
Rising Geopolitical Tensions
The number of states sponsored cyberattacks is growing in part due to the growing political conflicts and international tensions. The world is becoming more a place where states pay increasing attention to cyber operations to achieve strategic gains over competitors without resorting to actual warfare. Government agencies, defense groups, financial and public infrastructure are common targets for nation-state actors to gain an advantage in the form of intelligence or disruption. The point is that today cyberattacks are a critical element of modern geopolitics and can be used to weaken an opponent without being easily traced to a specific country.
- Maturing Advanced Threat Defense
- 4 Must-Do's for Advanced Threat Defense
- Automating Detection and Response
Digital Transformation and Attack Surfaces are growing
Organizations are quickly adopting cloud computing, remote work systems, IoT devices, and digital platforms across the industries. The technologies not only make things more efficient and connected, but they also create new attackers’ opportunities.
Digital infrastructure is so critical in sectors such as healthcare, energy, transportation, manufacturing, and finance, that it becomes an enticing target for state-sponsored attackers. With the growing digitization of businesses, attackers have greater opportunities to take advantage of vulnerabilities and gain access to networks.
AI-Powered Cyber Warfare
AI is revolutionizing the cyber threat landscape, creating more sophisticated and challenging cyberattacks. The ability to exploit vulnerabilities, drive sophisticated social engineering campaigns, augment malware and phishing capabilities, and automate phishing attacks are all being exploited by nation-state groups with the help of AI.
Security researchers highlighted that nation-state threat groups are taking advantage of AI to exploit vulnerabilities faster, leverage for sophisticated social engineering operations, enhance malware and phishing capabilities and automate phishing operations. Cyberattacks using AI can change rapidly and attack victims more effectively than traditional attacks. With the increased availability of AI technology, state sponsored cyber-attacks are likely to increasingly be more frequent, automated, and dangerous.
Weak Supply Chain Security
Today’s businesses depend heavily on third party vendors, software providers, cloud services, and outside contractors to help get things done. But flaky supply chain security has now emerged as a problem for businesses around the world. Smaller vendors or software vendors are frequently the initial target of nation-state actors to access larger organizations or government systems indirectly. These attacks can be carried out in the supply chain, making them very effective and hard to track down. In the last several years, there have been several significant cyber incidents that have demonstrated the harmful effect of a compromise of the supply chain.
Increased Dependence on Critical Infrastructure
Today, critical infrastructure sectors such as healthcare, energy, telecommunications, transportation, and banking are increasingly connected with digital networks. Rising technology needs and dependence has opened up avenues for cyber-attacks being conducted by state actors in these areas. The disruption of critical infrastructure can have a devastating effect on the economy, on people’s fears, and on the running of the business.
The sectors are often targeted by nation-state actors due to the ability to cause disruption to essential public services and damage to national security with success. Countries are continuing to make their infrastructure increasingly digital to keep up with modernization, and securing such environments from cyber threats is getting harder.
Common Tactics Used by State Sponsored Attackers
Today’s state sponsored attack campaigns are effective with high level techniques that are able to evade traditional security defenses. Spear phishing is one of the most frequent attacks, and it occurs when employees are sent an email filled with a lot of detail that encourages them to reveal credentials or download malware. Nation-state groups are also leveraging zero-day exploits or exploits that attack software prior to when the vendor can write a patch. Many attackers exploit some legitimate system tools that are already embedded within networks, a technique referred to as “living off the land.”
The primary targets of cyber espionage are the theft of sensitive government information, defense intelligence, trade secrets and intellectual property, and their extraction is typically done in a stealthy manner.
State Sponsored Cyber Attack Examples
Several high-profile cyber-attack examples have surfaced state-sponsored attacks recently, and they’ve become much more serious.
An example of this is the SolarWinds attack, in which attackers gained access to software supply chains and targeted government agencies and enterprises around the world. One of the other significant examples is Stuxnet, which is regarded as one of the first cyber warfare attacks on ICS.
The Colonial Pipeline incident also provided a great example of how cyberattacks can affect critical infrastructure and have an economic impact. Other groups associated with China have been seen attacking telecom and infrastructure networks as well. Groups tied to China also have been linked to attacks on telecom and infrastructure networks.
Nation State Cyber Espionage Is Expanding
With regard to the cyber espionage aspect, contemporary nation state activity is increasingly persistent and advanced. Governments and intelligence agencies are increasingly seeking to hack into telecom operators, research labs, defense firms, healthcare institutions, universities, and energy companies.
Public institutions and critical infrastructure sectors continue to be the most targeted sectors and organizations by state-aligned threat groups, noted ENISA. Cyber espionage is not like the traditional cybercrime, which is generally hidden for long periods, and the attacks are conducted for a prolonged duration to gather important information in a continuous manner.
Cyber Terrorism vs Hactivists vs State Sponsored Cyber Attacks
It is important to differentiate between these threat types, but they have vastly different objectives. The primary goal of cyberterrorism is usually to instill fear, disruption, or actual damage for an ideological reason. Such attacks could be directed at public infrastructure or vital services to cause panic.
Hacktivism is a political or social movement in which hackers engage in hacking as a means of a political or social protest. They will typically deface websites, DDoS sites, or leak information to get attention or publicity.
Compared to this, a state sponsored cyber-attack is a government sponsored, strategic and national interest-based attack operation. It’s crucial to know the difference between cyber terrorism, hacktivists and state sponsored cyber-attacks if you want to develop better cyber security strategies.
How Fidelis Solutions Help Defend Against State Sponsored Threats
The sophistication of nation-state cyber threats necessitates organizations to be able to detect and get a high level of visibility into sophisticated intrusions early. Fidelis Security offers cybersecurity solutions to detect advanced cyber threats, monitor suspicious activity, and respond to persistent attacks.
Fidelis solutions enable businesses to better see their network, detect lateral movement, track encrypted traffic, and bolster incident response efforts in hybrid and cloud environments. Continuous monitoring and deep threat visibility have become vital to minimizing the time attackers can spend on your network before detection, as many state sponsored cyberattacks go unnoticed for long periods of time.
- Detect and Correlate Weak Signals
- Active Threat Detection
- Evaluate Findings Against Known Attack Vectors
- Proactively Secure Systems
Conclusion
The attack has now ramped up to the state and has transformed the cyber security landscape. Today, cyberattacks are carried out by state-sponsored actors and are sophisticated, persistent, and well planned. They specialize in global government, enterprises, critical infrastructure, and supply chains. From cyber espionage and disrupting infrastructure to the use of AI in phishing attacks and influence operations, the reality of nation-state threats has evolved and is changing the landscape of cyber warfare.
To ensure security however, companies must embrace a new approach to security and move beyond traditional security technologies and embrace more sophisticated threat detection, detection processes, continuous monitoring, Zero Trust security and proactive incident response. As cybercrime and cyber warfare and espionage become increasingly blurred. One of the biggest challenges over the next decade in cybersecurity will be protecting against a nation-state attack.
