This year is crucial for global politics and democracy, with more than half of the world’s population participating in leadership elections, especially Russia, the EU and the US. This has predictably translated into a serious increase in cyber attacks targeting government organizations around the world.
SonicWall has its threat briefly focusing on government organizations, and saw a shocking 236% year-over-year increase in malware-related attacks in the first quarter. The trend is particularly worrying considering the month leading up to the US election, which saw a 27% increase in attacks.
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are on track to surpass previous ones by 32% this year, and SonicWall alone has prevented a total of 12.9 million IP camera attacks, which are often part of the DDoS process .
Undermining public trust
Governments, like everyone else, are increasingly dependent on digital services and online systems, which naturally creates vulnerabilities that threat actors will try to exploit.
“As attackers continue to target critical government services and election-related systems, the importance of multi-layered cybersecurity measures cannot be overstated,” said Doug McKee, executive director of Threat Research.
“In a rapidly evolving threat landscape, the stakes have never been higher. We must embrace cross-sector collaboration and threat intelligence sharing to ensure the integrity of our electoral processes and protect our vital infrastructure from those who seek to exploit these systems,” he said. continued.
The US elections in particular have been a popular target for foreign interference, with disinformation campaigns from Iranian, Russian and Chinese threat actors looking to cause chaos among an already deeply divided public.
Earlier this year, Iranian hackers targeted senior members of the Trump campaign with a cyberattack that compromised some communications, demonstrating how urgent the need for robust cybersecurity really is.