The greatest growth has been in brute force attacks relying on attrition to succeed. Image: wk1003mike/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffCyber attacks against federal agencies increased by about 10 percent in fiscal 2023 over the prior year, with the email/phishing attacks—executed via an email message or attachment—showing the largest increase by more than doubling to some 6,200, OMB has said.
That was the second most common form of attack, said a report on the Federal Information Security Management Act, behind “improper usage”—defined as “any incident resulting from violation of an organization’s acceptable usage policies by an authorized user” not fitting other categories. That grew from about 10,500 to about 12,300.
Another category potentially involving failings by agency employees, loss or theft of equipment, meanwhile increased by about two-thirds to about 3,100, while web-based attacks grew by about half to about 3,600.
The greatest growth, though, was in “attrition” attacks—that use “brute force methods to compromise, degrade or destroy systems, networks or services”—from about 200 to about 1,100.
There meanwhile was a drop of nearly half, to about 5,700 in attacks that do not fit into any defined category or whose cause was unidentified.
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