Cyber Risks · Unit 42 Palo Alto Networks

Analyzing Web Application and API Attacks: The Cloud as a Target and a Launch Pad

Summary: Unit 42 researchers analyzed roughly 12 billion attacks on web applications and APIs and found that 14.9% of attacks in late 2022 targeted cloud-hosted deployments, specifically workloads hosted by the top three cloud vendors. They also found that 5.1% of the attacks originated from addresses hosted by those same top three cloud service providers, which they attribute in part to attackers compromising legitimate cloud workloads and using them as launch pads.

Bottom line: Roughly one in twenty attacks in this dataset came out of cloud provider address space, meaning the infrastructure your business rents is also being used as a staging ground against you and others. A compromised workload in your own cloud tenancy can serve as someone else's launch pad into other environments.

Read the original at Unit 42 Palo Alto Networks ↗

Topics
Malware
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