- AI is burning a huge increase in cyberattacks
- US is the primary target of ransomware -attack
- Threat actors turn to vulnerable assets
It does not come as a surprise to many cybersecurity professionals, but AI is behind a drastic increase in the number of cyberattacks, with new research from Fortinet that reveals the apparent scale of the problem.
The study found that automated scanning activity year to year has experienced an increase of 16.7%, with 36,000 scans per year. Second recorded global-with research describing threat actors as “changing left” against vulnerable digital assets “earlier in the attack’s life cycle”, especially Remove, IoT Systems and Session Initiation Protocols.
Infostealers have been threatening organizations for a long time, but this research has revealed a staggering 500% increase in available logs from compromised systems – which means that over 1.7 billion stolen credentials circulate on the dark web and notes, “This flood of stolen data has led to a sharp increase in targeted cyber attacks and single persons.”
A call for action
The report warns cyber criminals also benefits from these login information with a 42% increase in compromised credentials observed for sale.
Interestingly, zero-day attacks only draw for a “small percentage” of threats, and cyber criminals are increasingly using “Live of the Land” vulnerabilities to remain undetected.
The Ransomware-as-A-Service landscape is expanding where new groups emerge and old players solidify their winnings. Ransomhub was the most active group in 2024 and claimed 13%of the victims, with Lockbit 3.0 (12%), games (8%) and Medusa (4%), all following back closely.
Such ransomware attacks are particularly targeted at a country in which the United States takes 61% of the incidents, followed by the United Kingdom of 6%, and Canada at 5% – a strong indication of the trend against US organizations.
“Our 2025 Global Threat Landscape Report makes it clear: Cyber criminals scale faster than ever using AI and automation to get the upper hand,” said Derek Manky, Chief Security Strategist and Global Vice President of Threat Intelligence at the Fortiguard Labs.
“Defenders must abandon outdated security gamebooks and transition to proactive, intelligence-driven strategies containing AI, Zero Trust architectures and continuous threat exposure management.”
