A US based
cyber security firm through its most recent threat report observed a 118%
increase in new Ransomware strains basically in the first quarter of 2019 as
compared with the last of 2018. It believes that the resurgence in ransomware
is being driven by a flood of new malware families that are regularly more
focused on.
The firm
discovered that attackers were targeting the governments and organizations
which were followed by companies in the financial, chemical, defence and
education sectors. Their information corresponded with an ever expanding number
of ransomware attacks standing out as truly newsworthy, especially US
governments and urban communities, very much like the Texas Ransomware attack.
This new
spate of ransomware attacks is said to have been a move away from 'spray and
pray' ransomware strategies, in such targeted attacks, spear phishing – sending
vindictive emails from an "apparently trusted person" – is progressively being utilized to gain
initial access 68% of the time.
Attackers
are likewise said to have been utilizing unknown email services to oversee the
ransomware crusades. The most widely recognized groups of ransomware during
this period are known to be Dharma (otherwise called Crysis), GrandCrab and
Ryuk.
In any
case, McAfee, made some amazing disclosures also, first the cyber security firm
found that culprits are turning to various attack approaches with regards to
coin mining malware, like the CookieMiner malware focusing on Apple users.
Furthermore,
also, it found an average of 504 'new threats per minute' in the first quarter
of 2019 and noticed that more than 2.2 billion stolen account credentials were
made accessible on the cybercriminal underground during the same period.
Its
discoveries depend on the information accumulated from its Global Threat
Intelligence cloud,, which comprises of over a billion sensors checking for
different sorts of cyber dangers around the globe.
Raj Samani, McAfee fellow and chief scientist, stresses on
the fact that the impact of these threats is very real and added further that
“It’s important to recognise that the numbers, highlighting increases or
decreases of certain types of attacks, only tell a fraction of the story. Every
infection is another business dealing with outages, or a consumer-facing major
fraud. And we must not forget that for every cyber-attack, there is a human
cost.”
