Iran war triggers cybercrime surge, report finds

Cybercriminal activity aimed at North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific has spiked by 245% since the Iran war broke out at the end of February, with botnet-driven discovery traffic recording the highest increase at 70%, followed by automated reconnaissance traffic and widespread scanning of exposed infrastructure, reports The Register.

Most of the attacks have been aimed at banking and fintech organizations, followed by e-commerce, game development, and technology firms, according to a report from Akamai. Additional findings showed that Iran only accounted for 14% of IP addresses leveraged in cyberattacks, which was behind both Russia and China. However, such figures suggest that attackers may only be co-opting Chinese and Russian digital crime infrastructure due to their more lax regulations.

"Geopolitically motivated hacktivists are using proxy services in countries like Russia and China as a source for billions of designed-for-abuse connection attempts," said Akamai.

Akamai's report comes weeks after Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 senior manager Justin Moore detailed the intensification of pro-Russian hacktivist intrusions that has expanded the Middle East's attack surface.