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According to a report by Positive Technologies, ransomware accounts for 69% of all malware-based cyberattacks. The report says that ransomware has reached stratospheric levels in Q2 of the year. At the same time, the overall number of cyberattacks has not changed much, rising by about 0.3%, compared to the previous quarter.

The authors of this report argue that businesses were able to slow down further growth by taking security seriously through network perimeter protection and remote access systems.

This means that other types of malware attacks have been dropped in favour of ransomware.

The pandemic made the attacks inevitable

Remote work is taking centre stage, meaning that ransom demands are skyrocketing, which makes the spike in ransomware attacks predictable.

The report says that there were more ransomware attacks but adds that many of them used new malware types. Positive Technologies identified two new versions, named JDUN and Tomiris. The former was deployed in attacks against energy companies.

The other is used to gain persistence and send encrypted information about the workstation to a server the attacker controls. The report also states that researchers noted a rise in malware strains made to target Unix systems.

Unix in the crosshairs

Yana Yurakova, an Information Security Analyst at Positive Technologies, said that people got used to the idea that attackers distributing malware are a threat to Windows-based systems alone. Now, Yurakova says they are seeing a stringer trend of malware attacks on Unix systems, orchestrators and virtualization tools.

More and more companies, including giant corporations, use Unix-based software, which is why attackers are paying more attention to those systems.

It is crucial for every business operating during these times to focus on making security more robust to prevent the almost inevitable next major attack.

Tip: It’s still better to prevent than recover from ransomware