Ransomware detections up 200 percent with businesses the main target

The latest quarterly threat research from Malwarebytes for Q1 2019 reveals a 200 percent jump in ransomware and continued increase in business targets for cyberthreats.

This shift back to ransomware comes in the wake of a continued decline in cryptomining, as well as an increased focus on mobile attacks and large-scale business invasions.

There's been a drop of 10 percent for consumer ransomware detections and a 33 percent drop in consumer-focused ransomware compared to the same period last year. Meanwhile businesses ransomware detections are up over 200 percent compared to the previous quarter and over 500 percent more than this time last year.

Adam Kujawa, director of Malwarebytes Labs says, "We're seeing more and more infections on the business side and more intent by cyber criminals to focus on businesses rather than consumers. In recent years we've seen a steady increase in malware each year, but seeing this big an increase in business detections and a drop in consumer is pretty rare."

The report finds cryptomining is now essentially extinct with consumers. Though business-focused miners have increased from the previous quarter, especially in the APAC region.

Trojan malware has gone up over 200 percent from the previous quarter and almost 650 percent from the same time last year. And there's a similar trend towards business targets, with the number of Trojan detections more than tripled on the business side but decreased to less than half on the consumer side.

"Consumers might breathe a sigh of relief seeing that malware targeting them has dropped by nearly 40 percent, but that would be short-sighted," adds Kujawa. "Consumer data is more easily available in bulk from business targets, who saw a staggering 235 percent increase in detections year-over-year. Cybercriminals are using increasingly clever means of attack to get even more value from targets through the use of sophisticated Trojans, adware and ransomware."

You can read more on the Malwarebytes blog.

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