McAfee Labs Sees Cryptocurrency Mining Surge

McAfee Labs’ most recent threats report – McAfee Labs Threats Report: June 2018 – found cryptojacking and cryptocurrency mining malware increased over the quarter. Coin miner malware, which installs a cryptocurrency mining program on infected PCs, grew 629% in Q1 2018, while the Lazarus cybercrime ring launched a sophisticated Bitcoin-stealing phishing campaign, targeting global financial organizations and Bitcoin users.

Overall, McAfee Labs saw an average of five new threat samples every second in Q1.

Other report highlights included:

  • Gold Dragon targets Winter Games to steal data using fileless techniques
  • GhostSecret campaigns target health care, finance, entertainment, and telecommunications
  • Gandcrab ransomware infects around 50,000 systems in first three weeks of Q1
  • Total new LNK malware grows 59% as enhanced PowerShell techniques proliferate

For more information on these threat trends and statistics, please visit:

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