Very interesting data from Symantec. This is fresh from the press and shows Phishing, Spam and Malware trends. There is a PDF with a whole bunch more data, but these are the most relevant graphs from my perspective.
As reported in the ISTR Volume 19, 2013 saw a 500 percent increase in ransomware in the latter part of the year. Overall ransomware levels remained high through March 2014, and then slowly started to decline, in part due to the disruption of the GameOver Zeus botnet back in late May.
In contrast, crypto-style ransomware has seen a 700 percent-plus increase. These file-encrypting versions of ransomware began the year comprising 1.2 percent of all ransomware detections, but now make up 31 percent at the end of August. One variant known as CryptoDefense began to appear in large numbers in early June. By the end of July, it made up 77 percent of all crypto-style ransomware for the year to date.
This is a pretty staggering uptrend, which only points out that you really, really need to step end-users through effective security awareness training.
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Tags: phishing,data breach,hackers,spam,spear-phishing
