50 percent of schools did not prepare for secure distance learning, Labs report reveals

Labs quarterly report finds ransomware’s gone rampant against businesses

Ransomware’s back—so much so that we created an entire report on it.

For 10 quarters, we’ve covered cybercrime tactics and techniques, covering a wide range of threats we saw lodged against consumers and businesses through our product telemetry, honeypots, and threat intelligence. We’ve looked at dangerous Trojans such as Emotet and TrickBot, the explosion and subsequent downfall of cryptomining, trends in Mac and Android malware, and everything in between.

But this quarter, we noticed one threat dominating the landscape so much that it deserved its own hard look over a longer period than a single quarter. Ransomware, which many researchers have noted took a long breather after its 2016 and 2017 heyday, is back in a big way—targeting businesses with fierce determination, custom code, and brute force.

Over the last year, we’ve witnessed an almost constant increase in business detections of ransomware, rising a shocking 365 percent from Q2 2018 to Q2 2019.

Therefore, this quarter, our Cybercrime Tactics and Techniques report is a full ransomware retrospective, looking at the top families causing the most damage for consumers, businesses, regions, countries, and even specific US states. We examine increases in attacks lodged against cities, healthcare organizations, and schools, as well as tactics for distribution that are most popular today. We also look at ransomware’s tactical shift from mass blanket campaigns against consumers to targeted attacks on organizations.

To dig into the full report, including our predictions for ransomware of the future, download the Cybercrime Tactics and Techniques: Ransomware Retrospective here.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wendy Zamora

Editor-at-Large, Malwarebytes Labs

Wordsmith. Card-carrying journalist. Lover of meatballs.