Lots and Lots of Bots: Looking at Botnet Activity in 2021

guest · Oct 11, 2021

Lots and Lots of Bots: Looking at Botnet Activity in 2021
October 8, 2021
https://www.securityweek.com/lots-and-lots-bots-looking-botnet-activity-2021

Botnets continue to be a major problem for cybersecurity teams. With the growth in sophisticated threats, botnets are becoming more malicious, sometimes able to create hundreds of thousands of drones that can attack a variety of machines, including Mac systems, Linux, Windows systems, edge devices, IoT devices, and so on.

Examining threat trends around botnet activity is helpful because it provides a glimpse into the malicious activities tied to Command and Control tactics. In the first half of 2021, the percentage of organizations detecting botnet activity jumped from 35% to 51%, according to the latest global threat landscape report from FortiGuard Labs.
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That increase was led by a surge in the use of TrickBot, which was taken offline in 2020 but came back on the radar in mid-2021, not as prolific as before.
Major botnet trends
The surge we’ve seen so far this year is rather peculiar for aggregate botnet activity. Mirai was the most prevalent, overtaking Gh0st in 2020 and continuing to dominate ever since. Mirai became notorious several years ago after fueling massive IoT-based DDoS attacks

In a very unusual twist, other than Gh0st and Mirai, most of the remaining botnets we saw in 2021 weren’t in the top 10 previously. The usual suspects tend to turn up every time, so it’s surprising to see some newcomers to the group.
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We’re seeing a lot of web-borne threats and, unfortunately, many environments still aren’t segmented or secured the way they should be. And attackers are definitely using botnets to take advantage of this. A botnet today can be used as a foundation for bad actors to carry out other attacks later.
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Global Threat Landscape Report - A Semiannual Report by FortiGuard Labs
(PDF): https://www.fortinet.com/content/dam/fortinet/assets/threat-reports/report-threat-landscape-2021.pdf

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