Rise in Banking Malware Threats and Attacks on Social Networking Sites Predicted by Quick Heal

Quick Heal Technologies has announced the results of its Second Quarter Threat Report for 2016. The complete report, which can be downloaded from the Quick Heal website, outlines the top malware a­fflicting Windows and Android users, with a brief overview on each of the malware families. The report also compares the malware detection statistics of this quarter with that of the previous quarter.

According to the report, trojans, worms, infectors and exploits have shown constant detection rates during all the months of Q2. The combined figure of Adware and PUA category detection is 28% on an average. Ransomware detection has declined by a tiny margin in June when compared with May but is on a rise as compared to Q1 2016.

As observed in the detection statistics of Q2 2016, adware remains one of the major malware categories. The dominance of the ransomware family showed no respite even in this quarter. Locky Ransomware continued to maintain its dominance by encrypting files on the infected system and adding the “.locky” extension to them. Due to a lack of decryption possibility, Locky was considered as one of the most dangerous ransomware in this quarter.

Sharing an insight into the report, Sanjay Katkar, MD & CTO, Quick Heal Technologies Limited said; “We consider creating awareness around IT and cyber security as our prime responsibility and therefore, we have been releasing threat reports periodically.” He further added; “At Quick Heal, our teams constantly monitor the threat landscape and develop solutions to counter these threats. Our Threat Reports are an attempt towards building safe and secure IT environments and online experiences. We are constantly innovating to equip our consumers and enterprises to monitor and prevent these threats and safeguard their critical data.”

Trends and Predictions

PUA and Adware are suspected to be laced with destructive functionalities including damaging or crashing boot sector records of infected computers. Additionally, adware is most likely to be used for delivering ransomware into the targeted systems.

Ransomware variants will keep rising in the coming quarter as well. The cryptxxx ransomware is suspected to hit its targets with new and more advanced variants. Locky ransomware is expected to remain complicated because of its continuously changing internal coding and obfuscation techniques.

Ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) is another trend which is taking momentum. In RaaS, malware authors sell ransomware along with a customizable kit through the online black market. Interested people can register and download them for free or a nominal fee. Once the ransomware file is customized as per the requirement, it is then spread through the desired infection vectors.

Attacks on social networking sites are expected to increase

Malware attacks on social networking sites are likely to increase in the near future. By 2018, it is estimated that there will be about 2.55 billion users on social network. With such a sheer volume of user interaction, such sites are only easy targets for online scammers and cyber criminals.

Banking malware threats are going to rise

Banking malware is going to be a concern in the coming days for security experts and more importantly users of mobile Internet banking. With almost all banks developing dedicated apps for banking, hackers are going to leverage this as a lucrative opportunity to trick users and generate illegitimate cash to further fuel their nefarious intentions.