It took 8.8 days, on average, for threats to become known by hash to antivirus engines – giving hackers over a week’s ‘head-start’ to further their campaigns.

The report reveals the key attack vectors and techniques observed by CPR researchers as criminal, political and nation-state threat actors exploited the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to target organizations across all sectors.

ESET telemetry showed further growth in attacks targeting Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), which grew throughout H1. While the number of unique clients targeted rose by more than a third, the total number of attack attempts surged by 140%.