Latin America. 2020 was a major challenge for global cybersecurity. In this sense, cybersecurity has had to face the challenge of addressing a secure teleworking environment, the challenge of disinformation, the challenge of cybersecurity in sectors as critical at the moment as health, especially the corporate sector that is much more exposed to cyberattacks.
According to the report of TOP 100 ELECTRONIC SECURITY INTEGRATORS 2022, the size of the cybersecurity market exceeded US $ 150 billion in 2019 and analysts say it is prepared to grow at more than 15% CAGR between 2020 and 2026. The growth of the industry is attributed to the increase in demand for robust and secure networks by enterprises for secure access to data.
The cybersecurity industry landscape is characterized by increasing adoption of security software and solutions across various industry verticals to address the growing threat caused by cyberattacks. Different forms of cybercrime, such as hacking and phishing, have increased rapidly, especially after the increasing use of the internet during the COVID-19 quarantine phase. This has led to business disruptions and financial losses around the world.
In relation to these issues, Helder Ferrão, Akamai's director of industry strategist for Latin America, highlighted that home users represent a demographic that is often not as secure as a corporate environment. Attackers know this and are therefore looking for ways to monetize their ability to more easily infect home devices; These become part of a massive botnet, whereby attackers could mobilize these zombie devices to perform countless cyber criminal activities without the user's knowledge, such as sending spam and launching DDoS attacks against organizations.
"For botnets to succeed or for cybercriminals to rent their botnets, they need to infect as many devices as possible. There are data of attacks carried out in 2022 in which the number of devices used for a DDoS attack reached a volume of more than 1800 different points of origin, something very worrying, since until 2021 these figures did not exceed a few tens or hundreds. A significant amount of attack traffic can be correlated with mobile malware and IoT botnets. Another way for attackers to monetize by affecting home users is to use the computing resources of infected devices for cryptocurrency mining purposes."
However, for the years 2020 and 2021 at the international level, it was said that the decrease was directly linked to the negative impact on demand caused by the coronavirus crisis, especially in the airport, commercial and leisure areas. The domestic alarm business, the new security protocols to fight the pandemic and the dynamism of demand associated with the logistics sector thanks to the expansion of online commerce have prevented a further decline in this market, appreciating a more favorable behavior compared to other service sectors.
As for what awaits the industry in the field of economic recovery and development, it is also given by the evolution of the systems segment with respect to the rest of private security areas, which is explained by the trend of replacing face-to-face surveillance services with electronic security systems and technological development. that has allowed the commercialization of equipment with increasingly advanced features.
By 2025, it is estimated that Latin America will reach 1.2 billion IoT connections, of which around 64% will be for consumers, including smart home devices, wearables and autonomous vehicles, among others. This growth explains why cybercrime is leveraging home networks to remotely control not only traditional devices like computers, but also mobile phones and Internet of Things (IoT) devices to perform malicious activities. Therefore, it will be necessary to be prepared before attacks occur.
Malicious DNS traffic from home networks
According to the report from Akamai: Attack Superhighway: An Analysis of Malicious DNS Traffic in DNS, malicious DNS traffic from home networks in Latin America from July 2022 to January 2023, it highlighted that the top threats belong to botnets, which could explain how attackers are leveraging IoT devices for different purposes.
In that region, Monerodownloader, a network of cryptocurrency mining bots, tops the list of active botnet pools with 42 million flagged queries, followed by Necurs (34 million) and Tempedreve (20 million). The high rate of cryptocurrency adoption in Latam, fueled by high inflation and remittances, could explain why botnets like Monerodownloader top the list. Without the user's knowledge, cybercriminals could be using the resources of users' devices for mining purposes and for their own economic gain. Including devices for smart homes, wearables and autonomous vehicles, among others.
This growth explains why cybercrime is leveraging home networks to remotely control not only traditional devices like computers, but also mobile phones and Internet of Things (IoT) devices to perform malicious activities. Therefore, it will be necessary to be prepared before attacks occur.
