APIs latest target for cyber attacks on financial services firms: Akamai

Cybercriminals are increasingly targeting APIs to launch attacks against the financial services industry, according to the latest Akamai State of the Internet / Security

Cybercriminals are increasingly targeting APIs to launch attacks against the financial services industry, according to the latest Akamai State of the Internet / Security: Financial Services - Hostile Takeover Attempts report. Akamai notes that up to 75 per cent of all credential abuse attacks against the financial services industry targeted APIs directly. However, some attacks used a mix of API targeting and other methodologies, the official release notes.

On August 7 last year, Akamai recorded the single largest credential stuffing attack against a financial services firm in its history, consisting of 55,141,782 malicious login attempts. The top attack against the financial services sector was Local File Inclusion with 47 per cent observed traffic, followed by Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and Denial of Service (DoS) attacks.

Akamai's observations from November 2017 until October 2019, also show that the financial services industry ranked third in attack volume. With more than 40 per cent of the unique Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) targets in the financial services industry, it is also the top target for unique victims. (ANI)

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