L A T E S T I N T E L L I G E N C E

Executive Summary

In this report, the Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 research team shares current

trends in malware and the evolving threat landscape. This includes an analysis of the most common types of malware and their methods of distribution. With the growing volume and sophistication of today’ s threats, it’ s critical for network security professionals to understand the threat landscape and how to properly defend against it. The insights provided in this report are intended to give you a better understanding of how the threat landscape is evolving and provide security recommendations for organizations to protect themselves.

Most findings are based on data and observations we gathered in 2022 and are a comparison to one year earlier. Data for AI was collected between November 2022 and April 2023. Here are some key highlights of the findings:

• We’ ve seen a boom in traditional malware techniques taking advantage of interest in AI / ChatGPT.

• The ratio of malware impacting industries using Operational Technology( OT) has increased by 27.5 %.

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• Exploitation of vulnerabilities increased 55 % compared to 2021.

• PDFs are the most popular file type for delivering malware as email attachments( 66.6 % of all attachments).

• While nearly 49 % of network communication generated during sandbox analysis( including both malicious and benign files) uses encrypted SSL for its traffic, 12.91 % of network traffic generated by malware( such as phoning home, getting time calibration) is encrypted with SSL.

• Cryptominer traffic has doubled in 2022. �

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