Crypto-Mining Malware Still Exhibits Speedy Rising Trend

McAfee, on September 25, 2018, released its most recent study report about e-threats underscoring there has been a massive rise in malicious software mining crypto-currencies. The top such malware is ransomware exhibiting the leading trend with no indications of abating. Following the growth of fresh crypto-mining malware strains at the rate of 629% to over 2.9m strains during January-March 2018, the growth went on; while during Q2-2018, the aggregate strains increased 86% to over 2.5m fresh strains.

The cyber-security firm for device-to-cloud McAfee's new report titled "McAfee Labs Threats Report: September 2018" studies the increase as well as trends of novel malware samples during second quarter 2018. During this period, McAfee Labs observed profuse rise in crypto-mining malware which started during Q4-2017 and kept on rising through January-June 2018. The firm further observed the vulnerability abusing malware being still adaptive to the NotPetya and WannaCry attacks of 2016 and 2017. Albawaba.com posted this, September 25, 2018.

Meanwhile according to senior principal engineer and lead scientist Christiaan Beek for McAfee Advanced Threat Research, the Internet router devices of the recent years appeared as mediums for helping mine crypto-currencies. Moreover as per the new report, instances of malicious programs exploiting software security flaws, whose patches had possibilities of being developed, too grew 151% in April-June quarter, a tendency according to Beek is alarming. People playing online games were duped into taking down and installing such malware strains that would then consume their CPU power to churn profit. Incidentally, although crypto-mining malware essentially attacks computers, it has victimized other devices too.

And together with crypto-mining malware, both malware targeting mobile devices and ransomware strains have maintained their trends of growing, with the latest ransomware strains growing at the rate of 57% during 2017. However, the growth rate has been slower compared to found earlier although considerable. Mobile malware increased at the rate of 27% during April-June, with the maximum number of fresh samples prevalent in South America.

Beek commented it was yet astonishing to see so many security flaws since 2014 getting utilized effectively to lead into cyber assaults despite patches existing for deflecting the exploits.

» SPAMfighter News - 10/1/2018