12 Things You Didn’t Know About Malware
Malware stands for malicious software, coded and intended to cause damage to the system where it embeds or copies itself. Malware relies on assistance through clicks or connected devices in order to wreak its intended havoc, which means that vigilance is a simple and important way to prevent malware infection and its disastrous results.
Nowadays, malware is commonly delivered through phishing emails with infected attachments. These can be incredibly difficult to spot, especially as hackers improve their social engineering tactics.
Here are 12 surprising things you may not have known about Malware:
Ransomware
Ransomware blocks or leaks access to data or your network unless a ransom is paid. It’s the most common form of attachment and can affect any size of organisation.
- In 2022, the average cost of a ransomware attack cost UK businesses £3.69 million
- One in four UK SMEs have been targeted by ransomware within the past year, with almost half (47%) of those falling victim having paid the ransom to regain access to their files or systems.
DDoS
Also known as a distributed denial of service. DDoS is an attempt to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming and flooding it with traffic from multiple sources.
- Cloudflare states that there was a 67% increase in ransom DDoS attacks in 2022.
- The restoration of services and operations after an attack can cost a small or midsize business £97,000.
Security bug
A security bug introduces security vulnerabilities by compromising one or more of authentication of users and other entities.
- 70% of apps contain at least one security flaw after 5 years in production.
- A record 26,448 software security flaws were reported in 2022, with the number of critical vulnerabilities up 59% from the previous year.
Rootkit
Rootkit is a set of software tools that enable an unauthorised user to gain control of a computer system without being detected. A rootkit is not malware in the usual sense. Its specific capability lies in hiding files and processes from other applications as well as the operating system malware from virus scanners and security solutions
- 28% of security pros rank unauthorised file transfers as their top insider threat.
Worm
Worms are a parasite. A malicious software program whose primary function is to infect other computers while remaining active on infected systems.
- 33% of detected exploits are of Adobe Flash, up 28.2 percentage points from the previous year.
- Instant messaging software (including the extremely popular Facebook Messenger) are one of the most common ways for computer worms to spread, disguised as jpeg images.
Trojan Horse
Often disguised as legitimate software, users are tricked by social engineering into loading and executing the malware onto their system. Once activated, it’s straight access for the cyber-criminals into the system.
- Trojans account for 64% of all malware attacks on Windows systems.
- When it comes to malicious software, Trojans are the most common. Almost six out of 10 pieces of computer malware fall into the Trojan horse category.
