2022 was another busy and tumultuous year for cybersecurity. Cybercriminals were working hard to steal your money and identity — Trend Micro was working harder to prevent that. In the last year, we tracked and reported on hundreds of cybersecurity threats and topics, with over 180 articles on scams alone. As the New Year approaches, we thought we’d provide a rundown of our 2022.

2022 Scams

Scams: The Year in Stats

We began the year reporting on Fake MetaMask Security Emails and the risk of scams within the crypto community, followed by the fake jewelry store, ispyjewelry[.]com, which wasn’t real gold, to say the least. In February $2 million worth of NFTs had been stolen from OpenSea accounts, and on March 1^st we reported on the growing threat of social security scams.

In the spring, the Ukraine War was afoot and we reported on the horrendous case of fake Ukraine charity scams. In June we assured readers that Cash & Go was indeed legit, and reported on Amazon Prime Day scams.

With summer vacations on the way, we reported on a bunch of travel scams like fake Sundara Inn and Booking.com websites. Around this time, it also became clear that many of you were looking for freelance gigs to make some extra money over the summer. Also over the summer, our articles on “you just sent a payment” scams and CVS scams proved to be very popular.

By September, Biden’s student loan forgiveness program was everywhere in the news: we warned about the scammers seeking to make a buck off of the trending topic. The next month, we ran a great interview with Jorij Abraham from ScamAdviser. While last month, we reported on scams related to Twitter’s new verification policy — and finally, the Midterm elections and Black Friday / Christmas shopping scams.

2022 Data Security

Samsung had a brilliant year with not one but two data breaches — the first came in March with the sequel out in September. Not to be outdone, Cash App suffered a data breach in April that affected 8.2 million customers. 2022 wasn’t a great year for crypto, and to make matters worse OpenSea was hit by an email data breach in July. To round off the year, in November WhatsApp suffered a data leak of 500 million phone numbers, while 5.4 million Twitter users were affected in a huge data leak.

Data Security: The Year in Stats

2022 Ransomware and Viruses

We began the year reporting on a large ransomware attack against the luxury fashion house, Moncler, in January. February came along and brought reports of a scary new bug, called Samba — discovered by yours truly here at Trend Micro HQ. In March, we reported on the growing phenomenon of hackers targeting Microsoft Teams, which many had previously assumed was completely secure.

Later in the year came the Android banking malware, Octo, as well as the Microsoft zero-day vulnerability, Follina. With increasing reports of ransomware attacks throughout the year, we then put together a piece on all things ransomware in September.

Ransomware: The Year in Stats

• A 52% increase in threats from the last year
• 63 billion email threats and malicious files/URLs blocked by Trend Micro
• 75% surge in ransomware attacks on Linux systems
  
  For a full report, head over here.

Trend Micro Has Your Back

We have the tools you need to protect against scams, data breaches and leaks, and malware threats like ransomware. Use our Trend Micro ScamCheck for free and detect scams with ease: ScamCheck is an all-in-one browser extension and mobile app for detecting scams, phishing attacks, malware, and dangerous links. Check out this page for more information.

ID Security will make sure you’re never the victim of ID theft. It comes with great features such as a tool that scours the dark web for any mention of your personal data. Lastly, our premium cybersecurity product, Maximum Security, will ensure your devices and home have the strongest defenses possible. Both currently have a 30-day free trial on offer.

We hope this has been an interesting look back at 2022, if so, please do SHARE with family and friends to help keep the online community secure and informed. Consider also leaving a like or comment below. Stay safe — and Happy Holidays, folks!