The number of cyber attacks targeting the government sector increased by 95 percent in the second half of 2022 compared to the same period last year, according to a report by cyber-security firm CloudSEK.
The report also said that India, the USA, Indonesia, and China continued to be the most targeted countries in the past two years. Together these four countries accounted for about 40 percent of the total reported incidents in the government sector.
In 2022, attacks on the Indian government intensified to the point where it became the country that was most frequently targeted in this sector. This expansion, according to CloudSEK, is the result of the hacktivist group Dragon Force Malaysia's #OpIndia and #OpsPatuk campaigns.
Numerous hacktivist groups joined and supported these campaigns, which laid the path for subsequent ones. However, this increase has other causes besides the growing hacktivism. Government agencies in India have become popular targets for extensive phishing campaigns.
China was the most targeted country in 2021. The significant hike observed in the number of attacks targeting the Chinese government can be attributed to APT groups. It is speculated that conspiracy theories about China being responsible for the outbreak of COVID-19 may have contributed to the increase in attacks.
The primary motive of most of the threat actors is exfiltrating data and selling it for monetary benefits, yet it is not the only reason they target governments. This change is clearly evident from the emergence of various APT groups and hacktivist campaigns over the last decade.
Threat actors’ favoured attack vector against India in 2022 (Image: CloudSEK)India's premier healthcare institute AIIMS suffered a massive ransomware attack which crippled its network for several days.
Also, data of around 30 million travellers registered with the Indian Railways has been hacked and reportedly put on sale on the Dark Web, as per reports.
The Twitter handle of the Ministry of Jal Shakti (Water Resources) was also hacked twice in December, promoting a fake cryptocurrency giveaway scam.
The year 2022 saw a significant increase in hacktivist activity accounting for about nine percent of the recorded incidents reported in the government sector. Ransomware groups were also very active in this industry accounting for six percent of the total incidents reported, with LockBIT as the most prominent ransomware operator.
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