Ransomware Threats Now Accepted as 'Common Commodity' According to Report

As it comes to us as not being a surprise, ransomware is no accepted to be a 'common commodity' as explained in the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report 2018. In the report, Symantec divulges into how cyber-crime grew significantly and the financial impact of such lead to many companies struggling to recover from cyber-attacks.

We suspect on many fronts from our daily threat analysis alone that ransomware is now a commonplace threat. Moreover, it's a daily occurrence that we witness and report on new ransomware threats that have emerged to, for the most part, encrypt data on a PC and then demand a ransom payment to decrypt that data.

Being what is referred to as a "common commodity" is strong language coming from a well-known security firm like Symantec. In their 2018 Internet Security Threat report they lay out specific ransomware threats that have infected hundreds of thousands of computers around the world in a span of several months. Threats like WannaCry or NotPetya Ransomware, at one time, took the rankings of being the most aggressive types or ransomware as they caused havoc within the UK's National Health Service with the help of leveraging the EternalBlue exploit, which was part of the Vault7 leak from the NSA (U.S. National Security Agency).

Other streams of cybercriminal activity that have taken the world by storm in recent months is cryptojacking, which is explained in Symantec's report as being the new cybercriminal alternative revenue stream. Cryptojacking plays into the new wave of cryptocurrency mining, which closely revolves around the new Bitcoin crazy among many other types of cryptocurrency. Hackers and cybercrooks are using aggressive cryptojacking malware threats to attack computers so they may be used as zombies that go out to mine cryptocurrency much like how dedicated cryptocurrency miner machines would.

What cryptocurrency miners discover is that their dedicated machines used to mine cryptocurrency utilize an astronomical amount of energy. Hackers and cybercrooks realized the same thing, which is why they have gone out of their way to put forth their freed-up efforts from the spoils of spreading ransomware to spreading cryptojacking threats that use victimized PCs to do their dirty work of mining cryptocurrency.

On the front of vulnerable PCs, cybercrooks are looking for other platforms to spread ransomware and cryptojacking threats. The mobile world has literally exploded and provided crooks with a vast and nearly endless supply of mobile devices to attack. Also outlined in Symantec's report is the idea that the world has gone mobile and cybercriminals have shifted their focus to target such devices using ransomware and many other types of aggressive threats. The main target in the mobile world remains to be Android devices, which are susceptible to many levels of ransomware and other threats that steal data or leverage the device's software in a way to garner money at some level.

Computer users are always urged by security firms to stay abreast of the latest happenings in the world of computer threats and general data security. The latest Symantec report is one of many outliers of what today's computer security landscape is made up of and how to avoid dire situations in becoming the next cybercriminal victim.