Dragos: Manufacturing Industry Leads Amongst Ransomware Targets in 2022

Dragos' review of ransomware attacks in 2022, identified a significant volume of attacks aimed at the manufacturing sector holding the lead with nearly three-quarters of attacks over the second-place food & beverage industry. The telemetry captured by Dragos tracked 437 attacks against the manufacturing industry followed by 52 in food & beverage, 29 in energy, 27 against pharmaceuticals, and 21 in oil & gas to complete the top five. A further breakdown by manufacturing subsectors reveals metal products, automotive, electronic & semiconductors, building materials, industrial equipment, and plastics as the most impacted subsectors. Poor network visibility and segmentation are determined by Dragos incident responders as the most critical issues in manufacturing and industrial organizations. Dragos also tracked LockBit as the most dominant ransomware group of 2022 with 169 attacks, followed by Conti at 58, Black Basta with 54, ALPHV at 43, and Hive with 33. LockBit's success is attributed to its ransomware-as-a-service to draw affiliates and grow their operations.