Defence Industry Cyber Threats: Espionage Meets Monetization

CYFIRMA observed sustained cyber campaigns targeting the global defence sector.

Key Highlights from the report:

• China: Long-term persistence in telecom & enterprise networks via router/switch compromises, harvesting IP and credentials.
• Russia: Disrupting logistics & transport contractors supporting Ukraine, aiming to destabilize defence supply chains.
• North Korea: Blending IP theft with aggressive financial operations, treating cybercrime as both a strategy and a revenue stream.
• Iran: Politically motivated intrusions aligned with regional tensions, occasionally spilling into Western-linked suppliers.
• Cybercriminals: Pivoting away from ransomware encryption → toward direct data theft + leak-driven extortion, exploiting misconfigured cloud environments and subcontractor access.
• Hacktivists: Amplifying propaganda through nuisance-level DDoS, often pro-Russian aligned.

Why it matters:
The defence industry is now under dual pressure, espionage-driven persistence and monetization-driven extortion. The underground economy confirms it: data leaks dominate dark web chatter, while ransomware “lock-and-encrypt” tactics are fading. Cloud-native techniques, subcontractor abuse, and living-off-the-land persistence are reshaping how adversaries sustain access and monetize breaches.

Link to the research report: https://www.cyfirma.com/research/cyfirma-defence-industry-threat-report/

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