Cryptojacking Declining While Ransomware on the Rise: Kaspersky

While crypto mining malware continued to target computers, the number of attacks went down drastically in the past year, cybersecurity firm Kaspersky revealed.

In November last year, around 475,000 computing devices were attacked by Crypto Mining malware while, last October, the figure dropped to little more than 150,000.

“During the reporting period, 2 259 038 unique KSN users were attacked by miners. In the total volume of detections, the share of miners was 3.64%; for Risktool it was 6.94%,” the cybersecurity company stated.

“...the most active miner was Trojan.Win32.Miner.bbb; it accounted for 13.45% of the total number of users attacked by miners. It was followed by Trojan.Win32.Miner.ays (11.35%), Trojan.JS.Miner.m (11.12%) and Trojan.Win32.Miner.gen (9.32%).”

The attacks were concentrated in Asian countries, along with many countries in Africa and South America.

Extortion using digital currencies

However, according to the Russia-headquartered firm, the number of modifications using crypto-ransomware increased significantly, while October has seen a significant drop in the attacks.

“During the year, we detected 46 156 modifications of encryptors and discovered 22 new families,” Kaspersky noted. “During the reporting period, 755 485 unique KSN users were attacked by encryptors, including 209 679 corporate users (excluding SMB) and 22 440 SMB users.”

The report also detailed that the most vulnerable countries to these attacks are Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Mozambique, Turkmenistan, and Nepal.

Despite the declining number of crypto mining malware, hackers are constantly developing new attacking techniques to target potential victims. Finance Magnates, earlier this month, reported that hackers are using processing hollowing techniques to deceive the victims from detecting any unusual activity on their devices.

Meanwhile, infamous botnet Stantinko also added crypto mining capabilities and is using YouTube videos to deceive detection.

The decline in Cryptojacking malware can also be explained as many security softwares and even browsers are adding support to fight against such attacks.