On Wednesday a new report said, The businesses are witnessing 504 new cyber security threats every minute & ransomware has grown 118 % as hackers adopt new tactics & code innovations to steal data globally.

More than two billion stolen account credentials were made available in the underground market in the first quarter (Q1) this year, revealed the report by cyber security company McAfee.

McAfee fellow & chief scientist, Raj Samani said, “The impact of these threats is very real. It’s important to recognise that the numbers, highlighting increases or decreases of certain types of attacks, only tell a fraction of the story".

Samani added, “Every infection is another business dealing with outages, or a consumer facing major fraud. We must not forget for every cyber attack, there is a human cost".

The threat data was gathered by the McAfee “Global Threat Intelligence” cloud from over a billion sensors across multiple threat vectors around the world.

While spearphishing remained popular, ransomware attacks increasingly targeted exposed remote access points, such as Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).

The researchers also observed actors behind ransomware attacks using anonymous email services to manage their campaigns versus the traditional approach of setting up command-and-control (C2) servers.

The findings showed that “The use of email services is perceived by threat actors to be a more anonymous method of conducting criminal business".

“Dharma” (also known as Crysis), GandCrab & Ryuk appeared to be the most active ransomware families of the quarter.

McAfee Lead Scientist & Senior Principal Engineer, Christiaan Beeks said, “Paying ransoms supports cybercriminal businesses & perpetuates attacks. There are other options available to victims of ransomware. Decryption tools & campaign information are available through tools such as the No More Ransom project".

New cryptomining malware increased 29 % in Q1 2019.

“CookieMiner” malware targeted Apple users, attempting to obtain bitcoin wallets credentials.

As a byproduct, the malware also gained access to passwords & browsing data. Total coin mining malware samples grew 414 % over the past four quarters.

Cybercriminals continued to leverage lax security in IoT devices. New malware samples increased 10 % & total IoT malware grew 154 % over the past four quarters.

412 publicly disclosed security incidents, an increase of 20 % from Q4 2018 were counted by the McAfee Labs.

According to the report, 32% of all publicly-disclosed security incidents took place in the Americas, followed by 13 % in Europe & 13 % in the Asia-Pacific region.

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