The cyberattacks are constantly growing in contemporary periods with new techniques and tactics across the world. As the cybersecurity industry introduces a certain measure to tackle a specific type of attack, the hackers find a new way to hack the systems. The ransomware became a big threat in 2017 but soon the crypto-mining malware became among the hackers from the beginning to the end of 2018. Both ransomware, as well as crypto-mining, are still the trend among the hackers including other malware, phishing and other means of hacking. The targeted attacks in the past were basically associated with state-backed hacking performances and the victims were usually a specific type of companies or groups of people. But the contemporary trend of the attacks is targeted towards more personal attacks.
The contemporary methods of cyberattacks have shifted their targets from more numbers of targets to more accurate attacks. The key factor of this trend or development is exclusively the money factor or in other words, targeting the appropriate hostage for ransom can earn a big money for the attackers. On the other hand, following after the general mass of people may not be as profitable as the accurately targeted ransom hostages. Another reason for changing the trend of the attackers is the factor of security. The hackers are conscious of the cybersecurity developments and attempts of the police and therefore self-preservation is another factor of the attackers to change the trend and remain hidden. In other words, when the attackers have the chances of attacking the big financial institutions like banks or a big bank and get a substantial amount of ransom easily why should they be interested to target to infect general public systems in China?
However, many cybercriminal organisations are still loud but still instead of going through the traditional route of email which was the trend in the previous years, they are more interested in networks of enterprises. This is another tactic of the attackers which gives them dual benefits of making their attack more effective and spearheading as well as effectively and successfully avoid detection of the police. Similarly, another factor of targeting internet-enabled devices is also getting outdated by the attackers because of the reasons of top priority of the antivirus software and the possibilities of getting spotted by the security measures of the internet-enabled devices. On the other hand, they are more interested in the backend of the organization and directly compromise with the servers.