180 million+ Windows threats detected in Q2 2018: Quick Heal

The global threat landscape is growing and evolving at a rapid pace. Rapid digitisation, in the absence of appropriate cybersecurity measures, has also made users and businesses across India more vulnerable to emerging threats. It is to draw attention to this massive risk leading IT security solutions provider Quick Heal Technologies and its enterprise security brand Seqrite have released the Quarterly Threat Report Q2 2018.

According to the report, more than 180 million threats were detected on Windows devices of individual and enterprise users between April and June 2018. May was the busiest month with more than 74 million incidents detected, while April and June followed with 55 million and 51 million detections respectively. On a daily basis, the brands detected more than 2 million malware, 16,000 ransomware, 13,000 crypto mining malware, 141,000 exploits, and 40,488 potentially unwanted applications (PUAs) and adware. All security incidents were successfully resolved by Quick Heal and Seqrite.

Speaking on the data, Sanjay Katkar, Joint Managing Director and Chief Technology Officer, Quick Heal Technologies, said, “Cybercriminals are at a completely different level today than they were a few years ago. They are using novel technologies to drive increasingly-complex attacks and are targeting larger user bases. The latest Threat Report highlights this risk that individuals and businesses in India currently face with this evolution of the threat landscape.”

According to data from the report, the Trojan Horse families retained its position as the most dominant malware in Q2 2018, registering a quarter-on-quarter growth of 4.01 per cent over the statistics in Q1 2018. Security experts also identified a spike in the EternalBlue exploit, which was used for the WannaCry ransomware attack, one of the biggest global cybersecurity incidents ever seen. Other key trends identified in the report include a significant increase in the number of ransomware attacks targeting the Master Boot Record (MBR) of infected devices and crypto mining.

“Individual users and businesses across India need to understand the massive risk that they are exposed to at present. Ignorance is not a viable cybersecurity strategy. The need of the hour is to drive large-scale adoption of cutting-edge security solutions such as those offered by Quick Heal and Seqrite. We have proven our security expertise and technological capabilities time and again by successfully protecting our customers against advanced cyber threats. We will continue to further strengthen our range of offerings with more innovative security solutions aimed at raising cybersecurity preparedness levels for our customers across India,” Sanjay Katkar added.

The report also highlighted the rise of crypto jacking as one of the most worrying security trends and warned about it becoming an ‘advanced threat’ as it is the new source of getting direct monetary benefits to cybercriminals. Cryptojacking attacks remain undetected for a long time and can often be used as a platform to launch other complex attacks. According to a recent Quick Heal report, over 3 million crypto jacking hits were detected till May 2018, with the number of active mobile crypto jacking variants increasing to 25.