In 2020’s second quarter, there were more than 400 new cybersecurity threats recorded every minute, according to a report from McAfee. The new malware samples grew by 11.5% in the same period. Covid-19 themed attacks and PowerShell malware has dominated the entire landscape.
Donoff Office document attacks took PowerShell malware to the next level by raising it by 117%.
These documents are a lot like TrojanDownloaders, using Windows Command to launch PowerShell. The process then downloads and executes the malicious files. McAfee says that Donoff was also behind the 689% surge in PowerShell malware in the last quarter.
Covid-19 is the theme
Covid-19 was a popular theme among attackers in this year’s second quarter. McAfee’s networks have more than a billion sensors, which registered a 605% increase in Covid-19 themed attacks compared to the first quarter.
The whole thing began as a phishing campaign and the occasional malware. However, it became a storm of malicious URLs, attacks on the cloud, and other threats leveraging Covid-19 as a way to infiltrate systems across the world, according to Raj Samani, a McAfee Fellow, and Chief Scientist.
The entire thing has gotten out of control since more and more people work from home, and workloads are moving to clouds that aren’t adequately secured.
Almost every major industry was affected
McAfee has said that there were about 7.5 million external attacks on cloud user accounts in the same quarter. The firm says that most of the world’s major industries were affected by this torrent of attacks.
Most of the industries affected include healthcare, education, technology, retail, financial services, etc. There is more to come unless most of the systems are secured against known attack methods.
New malware is especially harder to combat since it doesn’t have known prevention or blocking measures.
6 hours ago
