Threat landscape for industrial automation systems, Q2 2024 – Source: securelist.com

Statistics across all threats

In the second quarter of 2024, the percentage of ICS computers on which malicious objects were blocked decreased by 0.9 pp from the previous quarter to 23.5%.

The percentage has decreased by 3.3 pp compared to the second quarter of 2023, when the indicator reached its highest level since records began in 2022.

Regions ranking

In most regions, the percentage of ICS computers that blocked malicious objects decreased compared to the first quarter of 2024. The indicator increased only in East Asia (by 1.0 pp), Western Europe (by 0.8 pp), Australia and New Zealand (by 0.7 pp) and the USA and Canada (by 0.2 pp).

Industries ranking

The building automation sector continues to lead the surveyed industries in terms of the percentage of ICS computers on which malicious objects were blocked. In general, this indicator continues to decrease across all industries for the second quarter in a row.

Diversity of detected malware

In the second quarter of 2024, Kaspersky’s protection solutions blocked malware from 11,349 different malware families of various categories on industrial automation systems.

Compared to the previous quarter, the most noticeable proportional increase in the second quarter of 2024 was in the percentage of ICS computers on which ransomware was blocked – a 1.2-fold increase.

Malicious object categories in numbers

Malicious objects used for initial infection

This category includes dangerous web resources, malicious scripts and malicious documents.

• Denylisted internet resources – 6.63% (-0.21 pp compared to the first quarter of 2024);
• Malicious scripts and phishing pages (JS and HTML) – 5.69% (-0.15 pp);
• Malicious documents (MSOffice+PDF) – 1.96% (+0.24 pp).

Next-stage malware

Malicious objects used to initially infect computers deliver next-stage malware – spyware, ransomware, and miners – to victims’ computers. As a rule, the higher the percentage of ICS computers on which the initial infection malware is blocked, the higher the percentage for next-stage malware.

• Spyware (spy Trojans, backdoors and keyloggers) – 4.08% (+0.18 pp);
• Ransomware – 0.18% (+0.03 pp);
• Miners (in the form of executable files for Windows) – 0.89% (-0.03 pp).

Self-propagating malware

These are worms and viruses. Worms and virus-infected files were originally used for initial infection, but as botnet functionality evolved, they took on next-stage characteristics.

To spread across ICS networks, viruses and worms rely on removable media, network folders, infected files including backups, and network attacks on outdated software.

• Worms – 1.48% (-0.03 pp);
• Viruses – 1.54% (-0.02 pp).

AutoCAD malware

This category of malware is typically a low-level threat, coming last in the malware category rankings in terms of the percentage of ICS computers on which it was blocked.

• AutoCAD malware – 0.42% (+0.01 pp).

Main threat sources

The internet, email clients and removable storage devices remain the primary sources of threats to computers in an organization’s technology infrastructure. (Note that the sources of blocked threats cannot be reliably identified in all cases.)

The full global report is available on the Kaspersky ICS CERT website.