37% of organisations globally were hit by cryptominers in 2018: Check Point

New Delhi – The significant growth in stealthy, complex attacks designed to stay below the radar of enterprise security teams, according to the recently released 2019 Security Report by Check Point Software Technologies. It also shows the types of cyberattacks which enterprise IT and security teams rate as the biggest threats to their organisations.

Highlights include:

• Cryptominers digging undetected on networks: cryptominers infected 10x more organisations than ransomware in 2018, but only one in five IT security professionals were aware their company’s networks had been infected by mining malware. 37% of organisations globally were hit by cryptominers in 2018, and 20% of companies continue to be hit every week despite an 80% fall in cryptocurrency values.
• Threat risk of cryptominers underrated by organisations: when asked what they rated as the biggest threats to their organisation, just 16% stated cryptomining, compared with DDoS attacks (34%), data breaches (53%), ransomware (54%) and phishing (66%). This is concerning, as cryptominers can easily act as stealth backdoors to download and launch other types of malware.
• Malware-as-a-service rises: the GandCrab Ransomware-as-a-Service affiliate program shows how amateurs can now profit from the ransomware extortion business as well. Users keep up to 60% of the ransoms collected from victims, and its developers keep up to 40%. GandCrab has over 80 active affiliates, and within two months in 2018 had infected over 50,000 victims and claimed between $300,000 and $600,000 in ransoms.