Ransomware most prevalent malicious software

Ransomware is the most prevalent variety of malicious software and attacks doubled since 2017, according to Verizon’s 2018 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR).

Ransomware was found in 39 percent of malware-related data breaches – double that of last year’s DBIR – and accounts for over 700 incidents. Attacks are now moving into business-critical systems, which encrypt file servers or databases, inflicting more damage and commanding bigger ransom requests, the analysis shows.

The DBIR report also flags a shift in how social attacks, such as financial pretexting and phishing, are used. Increasingly human resource (HR) departments are being targeted in a bid to extract employee wage and tax data, so criminals can commit tax fraud and divert tax rebates.

The human factor continues to be a key weakness of organisations, according to the report. Financial pretexting and phishing represent 98 percent of social incidents and 93 percent of all breaches investigated – with email continuing to be the main entry point (96 percent of cases). Companies are nearly three times more likely to get breached by social attacks than via actual vulnerabilities.

In addition, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks can impact anyone and are often used as camouflage, often being started, stopped and restarted to hide other breaches in progress, the analysis states.

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