Malware Declines, but Ransomware Soars

Malware Declines, but Ransomware Soars

Malware Declines, but Ransomware Soars

While security professionals succeeded in crippling malware last year, ransomware surged by a factor of 167, to reach a shocking 638 million attacks in 2016.

Point-of-Sale Malware Attacks Decline

POS malware attacks declined by 93% from 2014 to 2016. The number of new POS malware variants decreased by 88%, thanks to chip-based POS systems and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.

SSL/TSL Encryption Helped

Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security encrypted traffic grew 38%.
5.3 trillion web connections in 2015 grew to 7.3 trillion in 2016.
62% of web connections were SSL/TLS-encrypted.

Dominant Exploit Kits Disappear

In early 2016, the malware market was dominated by Angular, Nuclear and Neutrino, but they later disappeared. The remaining exploit kits fragmented into smaller versions to fill the void. By Q3 2016, there were three versions of Rig.

Exploit Kits Are Part of Ransomware Delivery

Variants of Cerber, Locky, CrypMic, BandarChor and TeslaCrypt have become primary workloads.

There’s a Huge Surge in Ransomware

Ransomware grew by a factor of 167 since 2015, from 3.8 million to 638 million attacks. Locky was deployed in 90% of Nemucod attacks.

Ransomware Hit All Industries

Ransomware spared no industries. Mechanical and industrial engineering received 15% of average ransomware hits, pharmaceuticals and financial services got 13%, and real estate got 12%.

IoT Compromised on Massive Scale

Cyber-criminals launched the largest DDoS attacks in history using the Mirai botnet. Most of the attacks took place in the United States (70%), Brazil (14%) and India (10%).

Android Benefited Only Temporarily

Google patched vulnerabilities, but attackers used new techniques to beat them by coaxing Android users into providing permissions that allowed overlays to be used.

Cyber-Criminals Victimized App Store Users

Ransomware and self-installing apps plagued third-party app stores. 4,000 distinct apps with self-installing payloads appeared within two weeks.