- Cyber criminals are increasingly using vulnerable businesses to target their partners and peers
- The number of third -party events doubled year to year, Verizon’s new report shows
- The attacks are used to access target organizations
New research has claimed that third -party involvement in data violations has doubled and is now seen in 30% of all cyberattacks.
The Data -Violation Report report from 2025 (DBIR) from Verizon Business, which is based on more than 22,000 security events and 12,195 confirmed data violations, found supply chain and partner ecosystems are increasingly abused in cyberattacks.
Cyber criminals use third parties to gain initial access, it was further explained as 81% of third -party violations involved compromise with victim systems.
Targeting open source stocks
The results may not be too surprising, as some of the biggest cyber attacks ever recorded came as a result of third -party comedy.
Solarwind’s hack in December 2020 was one of the most significant cyber-spionage attacks in history. Threat actors compromised Solarwinds’ Orion Software Updates and Posted Malicious Code (later named “Sunburst”), which was unconsciously distributed to about 18,000 customers.
This enabled attackers to implement back doors in networks of companies that installed the tainted update.
The violation was reportedly undiscovered for months and compromised US state agencies (the departments of Treasury, State and Security in Homeland), major tech companies (Microsoft) and countless private companies.
The attack was blamed on a Russian state -sponsored threat actor called APT29 (alias cozy bear).
To complete third-party cyberattacks, threat actors will often target open source coding storage, such as GitHub. They will try to push malicious updates to code packages, or will try to “typosquat” a piece of malware in the hope that software developers themselves install the malicious code.
It also works as news often breaks down of bad code discovered on GitHub, or people’s accounts that are compromised and abused in the distribution of malware. Security researchers often warn that software developers should always verify and never trust the code, regardless of who the author is.
Via Infosecurity Magazine
