The cyber-security industry has been putting up an impressive show on the bourse, of late, with the slew of cyber attacks, over the past few months, playing the supporting role. Cisco’s CSCOlatest report hints at another attack hovering over Ukraine, once again, which might cause a complete blackout in the country.
Per the findings of Talos — a cyber-intelligence unit of Cisco — hackers have infected more than 500,000 routers and storage devices across 54 nations. It is feared that this sophisticated malware, VPNFilter, has infected the devices of Linksys, MikroTik, Netgear NTGR, TP-Link and QNAP.
The sensitivity of this cyber attack can be understood with the fact that the malware codes discovered in the infected devices were similar to the ones used earlier to attack Ukraine. In 2015 and 2016, cybercriminals had wrongfully accessed and paralyzed the country’s power utility networks, causing nationwide blackouts and factory shutdowns. Therefore, Cisco is suspecting another similar blackout, this time too, ahead of Ukraine’s Constitution Day on June 28.
While the jitters sent across the globe by Cisco’s latest report had yet not dissipated, another massive cybercrime report hit headlines on May 28. This Monday, two of the largest Canadian banks reported fraudsters gaining access to the personal and financial information of almost 90K of their customers.
Fresh Boost for Security Stocks
Nevertheless, cyberattacks do not spell bad news for all companies. Particularly, cyber-security stocks have been on a roll since the second half of 2017, thanks to the plaguing attacks which created havoc across the globe last year.
Some of the most notable ones included the two back-to-back ransomware attacks — WannaCry or WannaCrypt in May and Petya in June — followed by the massive data breach at Equifax EFXin September. In addition to these, the data theft and ransom paid by Uber disclosed in November further fueled the bullish momentum of the stocks in this space.
In 2018, so far, the ETFMG Prime Cyber Security ETF (HACK) has returned 19%, outperforming the Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLK) and S&P 500’s gains of 9.3% and 0.4%, respectively. The Cyber Security ETF has gained 4.3% in a month’s time.