Surge in healthcare, cryptocurrency mining and fileless malware attacks, Says McAfee

by Bailey Martin SEO Expert

McAfee, the world-renowned device-to-cloud-cybersecurity company has observed more than 478 online attacks every minute. According to the company, new surges in these online attacks have been recorded from the healthcare industry, fileless malware, and cryptocurrency mining. McAfee Labs’ Threat Report for this month spills the beans about the instant hike in the disclosed security incidents associated to the healthcare experiences in the last year.

On the other hand, the Fileless malware is solely targeting the Microsoft’s PowerShell software hiked 247% in the Q4 of the year 2017. With such attacks, cybercriminals are getting the money into cryptocurrency mining. The latest Ransomware rose 35%, mobile malware dropped by 35% and the latest Mac OS malware rose by 24% by the end of fourth quarter in 2017.

These reports checked the growth and trends of the latest viruses, Ransomware and other online threats happened in the fourth quarter of 2017. As per McAfee Labs reports, eight new threats samples were observed per second. The report also saw the growing use of fileless malware attacks leveraging Microsoft PowerShell. The fourth quarter of the last year raised the cost of Bitcoin resulted in the cybercriminals to pay attention on cryptocurrency hijacking via a number of ways, incorporating malicious Android applications.

Q4 was also defined by frequently crybercriminal adoption of the latest schemes and tools such as cryptocurrency mining, steganography, and fileless malware. McAfee fellow and chief scientist, Raj Samani said in a statement that the already-tried and true ways, like Ransomware campaigns were used beyond their usual purpose to generate mirrors and smokes to divert the defenders from the online attacks. He further added that the “collaboration and liberalized info-sharing for the betterment of the attack defenses is still crucial as the defenders work to fight with the escalating asymmetrical cyber warfare”.

McAfee Labs examines the situation of the online threat each quarter. This state is based on the threat data collected by the McAfee Global Threat Intelligence cloud from innumerable sensors across different threat vectors around the globe. According to the McAfee labs report, Q4 of the last year observed rise of the newly classified online threats.

For example, the rise in the cost of the BitCon raised actors to branch out from moneymakers like Ransomware to initiate hijacking Monero wallets and Bitcoins. The hackers also continued to choose fileless malware leverage Microsoft PowerShell, which has been raised 432% over the entire period of 2017. It has become a totally different threat category. In order to execute the first stage of attacks, the scripting language is being used within the Office files.

By adopting the digital ways to accomplish a number of day-to-day tasks, there has been observed a great rise in the number of online attacks, said, Steve Grobman, chief technology officer for McAfee, in a report. With it, it is no surprise to see the hackers paying attention of the stealthy fileless PowerShell attacks.

This is also going to attack on the soft targets such as hospital. Attack vectors in the last quarter of the 2017 have been disclosed along with the account hijacking, leaks, code injection, and distributed denial of service. The quarter has also observed law enforcements successes against the criminals causing the Ransomware campaigns.

Bailey Martin is a passionate technical writer who loves to make research and then find the precise solution of all the latest online security vulnerabilities. She has written hundreds of blogs on antiviruses, Facebook security, Microsoft Office errors and updates and other related topics. Her articles have also been published on many of the renowned tech websites.If any one wants to know more about McAfee product go through mcafee.com/activate.

Source: http://mcafee.com-setup-activate.uk/surge-in-healthcare-malware-attacks/