India records 18% surge in weekly cyber attacks in January-March 2023: Report

Each organisation in India faced an average of 2,108 weekly attacks in the first quarter of 2023, around 18 per cent higher than that in the year-ago period, a Check Point report said on Friday.

Cybercriminals are misusing legitimate tools like ChatGPT for code generation that can help less-skilled threat actors effortlessly launch cyberattacks, Trojanizing 3CXDesktop app for a supply chain attack etc for malicious gains, the report said.

"During the first quarter of 2023, India average weekly attacks rose by 18 per cent in comparison to the corresponding period in 2022, with each organization facing an average of 2,108 weekly attacks per organization," the report said.

Global weekly attacks rose by 7 per cent during the reported quarter versus same quarter last year with each organization facing an average of 1,248 attacks per week.

Globally, the education and research sector faced the highest number of attacks, rising to an average of 2,507 attacks per organization per week, marking a 15 per cent increase compared to March 2022 quarter, the report said.

"APAC region experienced the highest YoY surge in weekly attacks, with an average of 1,835 attacks per organization, marking a 16 per cent increase 1 out of every 31 organizations worldwide experienced a ransomware attack every week," the report said.