Deutsche Telekom’s new and interactive real-time map of global cyber attacks is significant because the bulk of attacks (27.3m last month) identified by the Sicherheitstacho service were against the Server Message Block (SMB) – aka the Common Internet File System (CIFS). This attack vector operates across an application-layer network protocol that is mainly used for providing shared access to files, printers, serial ports, and miscellaneous communications between nodes on a network.
With over 226 million SMB attacks tracked last month – compared to 800,000-plus against the NetBIOS services, 680,000-plus on port 33434 and 600,000-plus against SSH – this highlights the fact that businesses – and high-end consumers – are losing control over their network resources – including their firewalls.
The results of this real-time and rolling analysis from Deutsche Telekom – which takes in data from almost 100 honeypot-style sensors around the world – confirms the findings of our annual Firewall Management Survey, details of which were released late last month, and which found that half of businesses audit their firewalls just once a year and, and 15% never audit their firewalls at all.
The problem with controlling the firewall in many organizations – and why SMB/CIFS attacks make it through – is that modern firewalls need to be regularly updated to cope with configuration changes, with 70% of the 200 respondents to Tufin’s annual survey reporting application service disruptions up to 20 times a year due to configuration changes.
We found that 93.6% of all firewall change requests are application-related, this confirms our observation that the function of firewalls has evolved to include secure application connectivity – in addition to their traditional role of perimeter security. The problem highlighted by Deutsche Telekom’s new cyber attack service – is that cybercriminals are clearly exploiting the loopholes that arise as a result of these changes.
You can see Deutsche Telecom’s interactive map here
Read the Annual Firewall Management Survey
