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Top-9 cybersecurity threats in 2023

Sep 14, 2023
Sergey Chernyshev
16.3

Global digitalization increases the surface for cyberattacks that become more relentless, sophisticated, and capable of bringing down hundreds of enterprises and harming millions of people at once. 

Forewarned, forearmed: We gathered the most prevalent cybersecurity threats in 2023 so that you can verify whether your current security policies are capable of warding them off effectively.

Table of Contents

  1. A quick note on terminology
  2. Attack vectors
    1. Social engineering
    2. Malware
    3. Drive by download
    4. Spam
    5. Insider job
  3. Exploitable vulnerabilities
    1. Zero-day exploits
    2. Known vulnerabilities
    3. Credentials breach
    4. Misconfiguration
  4. Tune your Java apps for enhanced security!

A quick note on terminology

First thing first, let’s dig deeper into the key concepts: 

  • A threat is a possible disruptive action that an attacker can carry out; 
  • An attack is an attempt to gain unauthorized access to a system with malicious intent (data compromise or destruction, system disruption, etc.);
  • A vulnerability is a flaw in an IT infrastructure that makes it open to harmful impact;
  • An attack vector is a specific method, scenario, or path, associated with vulnerable components of the target system and used for gaining unauthorized access to the system.

For convenience, we will group the threats into attack vectors and vulnerabilities. Note that threats often go hand-in-hand (e.g., spam can be used as a social engineering technique to spread malware), or they may be embedded into each other (e.g., malware may exploit zero-day vulnerabilities).

Attack vectors

1. Social engineering

Social engineering covers all techniques aimed at manipulating human psychology to gain sensitive information, access restricted information, or coerce victims into performing desired actions (download a malicious file, authorize a transaction, etc.) Social engineering relies heavily on such human emotions as curiosity, greed, fear, and compassion, with criminals following a typical pattern of

  • Gathering information about the victim;  
  • Engaging in communication;
  • Exploiting the victim’s weak spots to perform the attack;
  • Disappearing and covering the tracks.

Not all social engineering schemes require such thorough preparation. Sometimes, one excellently crafted email mimicking a legitimate message from the bank is enough to lure a person to a malicious site.