Posted on February 22, 2019 at 12:52 PM

State Hackers Can Steal Anything in Just 18 Minutes

According to the official report from the Crowd Strike web safety company, cyber attacks present a rising concern to national security. Russian “bears” are the fastest hackers in the world, followed by North Korea, China and Iran. This report comes just as Australia is facing cyber attacks on the parliament and major political parties. Whether the hackers’ motives are of political, financial or of some other nature, the view of the future is not very bright.

What’s in the report?

Analyzing data from 30 000 cyber attacks, Crowd Strike found that the Russians are significantly faster than the other countries when it comes to hacking speed. Crowd Strike’s experts considered time for the whole process of hacking a personal computer and then breaching the whole network laterally. Intruders steal personal information and data, alter functions and spy on the personal activity of the user.

The average time for the whole breaching process was about 18 minutes and 49 seconds for the Russian hackers known as „Bears“. The second best time had North Koreans with two hours and 20 minutes. China was the third with around 4 hours, followed by Iranians with the average time just an hour longer. Comparing to the regular hacker criminal groups, who take about 9 hours to do the same, state hackers have impressive results.

Even though the countries are officially claiming to be reducing malicious cyber activity, data shows the opposite. Some of them invested even twice as more effort to sponsor hacker groups. Different countries hire hackers for the purpose of spying, causing damage, and financial gain. State hackers from China are especially active in launching attacks on telecommunication companies. Using telecom, hackers can take actions against targets from the government.

Over 60% of attacks are made through malware. The report also noticed how the standard groups of cybercriminals are adopting “big game” strategies to launch attacks on corporations.

Hacker attacks in Australia

Earlier this week, Australia officials revealed there have been cyber threats to parliament and several major political parties. Few months after the elections in Australia there has been registered a hacker attack on the critical state information. Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison did not want to point the finger to a particular country. He only said that it was a “sophisticated state actor” involved in the attack.

Danielle Cave, an official of the International Cyber Policy Centre of Australian Strategic Policy Institute said that the attack was most probably launched from China. She believes only China has an interest in Australian politics enough to sponsor hacker groups to steal important information. Other countries known for their powerful hackers such as Russia or Iran don’t really have that much benefit in stealing information from Australia. Cave also stated that she’s not sure what information has been jeopardized and what would be the consequences.

According to Matthew Warren, an expert in the field of cybersecurity, this is just the begging. He reminds how the Russian hackers affected the 2016 election in America and Clinton’s presidential campaign. Warren emphasized that for some countries hackers can be a tool for altering foreign politics of taking financial advantage. He believes there will be a growth rate of hacker’s attack sponsored by the countries in the future.