For many of us, Microsoft Office is impossible to avoid, such is its popularity among businesses, and cybercriminals are using this ubiquity to their advantage. According to analysis by security firm SonicWall, the number of malicious Office documents in circulation has skyrocketed since the start of the year, totaling more than 70,000, an increase of 176% since the first half of 2019. The company has also seen an increase in the sophistication of malware campaigns based on Microsoft Office. One particular new Excel malware was found to contain facilities that allowed it to evade signature-based security software and hinder scanning attempts. "Threats are becoming more evasive and damaging, particularly those that exploit PDF and Office files," the report states. "Cybercriminals are too sophisticated to use known malware variants, so they are reinventing and rewriting malware to bypass security controls like traditional sandboxing techniques, and it works.
Threat landscape
While malicious Office documents seem to pose a growing threat, this type of attack is just one of many facing security teams today. Ransomware attacks are also on the rise, according to SonicWall, with 121.4 million attacks recorded since the start of the year, an increase of 20%. The power of this type of attack was highlighted this week, with fitness giant Garmin finding itself on the tail end of a ransomware attack that crippled its systems, causing outages that lasted several days. Cryptojacking cyberattacks have also reportedly rebounded from a dip in 2019, with a whopping 252% increase in the United States this year as phishing remains a pervasive threat. Security risk has also increased in recent months with the rise of remote work, brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, which has seen an unprecedented volume of employees operating outside the traditional security perimeter. "These latest cyber threat data show that cybercriminals continue to shift tactics to shift the odds in their favor in these uncertain times," said Bill Conner, SonicWall president and CEO. “With the world more remote and mobile than ever before, businesses are highly exposed and the cybercrime industry is well aware of this. It is imperative that organizations move away from traditional or makeshift security strategies and realize that this new business standard is no longer new. "