Palo Alto’s Unit 42 report identifies zero-day vulnerabilities as top culprit for ransomware attacks for 2023

The high increase in the number of ransomware attacks in 2023 was driven by malicious cyber groups exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities, according to a new report from Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 research team diving into trends and takeaways from threat actor data on the dark web.

“Ransomware groups such as CL0P have used zero-day exploits against newly discovered critical vulnerabilities, which represent a complex challenge for potential victims,” Palo Alto’s Unit 42 says in the report released on Monday....