Cyber threats 2023: A year in retrospect

In the past year, the Canadian cyber threat landscape has continued to evolve as threat actors shift and refine their tools, techniques and procedures. Conflicts and tensions around the world are continuing to challenge organizations. And threat actors—particularly those with espionage, sabotage and hacktivism motivations—are taking advantage of the uncertainty.

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools and capabilities have proliferated since early 2023. These will have increasingly significant implications for the threat landscape as organizations and defenders integrate these advancements while threat actors exploit them.

%

of Canadian respondents to our Global Digital Trust Insights survey reported the most damaging data breach they experienced in the last three years cost them over $1 million.

Source: Global Digital Trust Insights, PwC Canada

Canadian threat landscape: Top cyber threats in the past year

Ransomware and cyber crime: Ransomware leak site victims reached their highest levels in the past year, and we also saw growing use of malware delivery systems and stealers.
Zero days and critical vulnerabilities: Espionage and financially motivated threat actors continued to exploit critical vulnerabilities in public-facing infrastructure following high levels of disclosed vulnerabilities. The ransomware threat actor known as CL0P launched several campaigns in 2023 exploiting zero days in popular file transfer solutions, increasing the number of affected victims, sectors and geographies.
GenAI: Threat actors continued to integrate GenAI tools into their operations. For example, GenAI was used to create deepfakes, which can be leveraged in real time during conference calls to impersonate identity and can lead to social engineering and fraud. Threat actors also experimented with using these types of tools in other aspects of their operations, including malware development.
Supply chain compromises: North Korea-based threat actors conducted several supply chain attacks as part of cryptocurrency theft operations, marking advancements in their capabilities.
Advanced persistent threat (APT) shifts and sophistication: Threat actors based in North Korea, China, Russia and Iran continued to evolve their espionage and sabotage-motivated operations.

^{Source: Cyber threats 2023: A year in retrospect, PwC Global}

%

of ransomware victims observed by PwC were Canadian organizations, making Canada the third most impacted country in the world (after the United States and United Kingdom)

Source: Cyber threats 2023: A year in retrospect, PwC Global

Threat outlook for Canadian organizations

Looking at the number of recent successful ransomware operations and business email compromises, the criminal space will likely be a more pertinent threat in the coming year than those from other operations and motives.

To build their cyber resilience in the face of increasing threats, organizations will need to prioritize the following actions:

Reduce attack surface
Reduce attackers’ dwell time
Limit blast radius of unauthorized access
Prepare to respond and recover
Consider a range of threat scenarios

Organizations must stress test their crisis management and incident response plans, as well as their supply chains. Intelligence-driven cyber defence strategies are critical to enable organizations to prioritize resources and investments, as well as to inform crisis management, incident response and risk management decisions.