In a blink of an eye, we have already come into the second quarter of 2018! This means that Malwarebytes Labs has once again released the quarterly Malwarebytes Labs Cybercrime Tactics and Techniques report (aka the Labs CTNT report).
To a get the full picture of what is going on in the cybercrime landscape, the Labs team has specifically generated this report, providing insights and statistics gathered from April through June 2018. Pulled together by their Intelligence, Research and Data Science teams, the report includes telemetry data from both consumer and business products, which are deployed across millions of machines worldwide.
Key takeaways specific to the ANZ region include:
- Australia and New Zealand follow global trend of cryptomining cases decreasing from Q1
- Globally, the number of cryptomining cases decreased by more than 4.8 million cases
- Australia saw a decrease of 3.8% from 147,721 detections in Q1, to 142,107 in Q2
- New Zealand saw a similar but more dramatic reduction of 73%, dropping from 39,157 cases in Q1 to 10,725 in Q2
- Sharp increase in backdoor malware in Australia, rising by 1886%
- Australian cases increased from 7,102 in Q1 to 141,046 in Q2
- New Zealand backdoor detections remained relatively constant, decreasing by 168 cases quarter-to-quarter from 1,326 to 1,158
- The number of adware detections have increased in both markets, reflecting a global increase of 19% over the last quarter
- 31% increase in Australia, from 237,564 to 311,401 cases
- 33.4% increase in New Zealand from 39,035 to 52,091 cases
- Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) such as spyware and dialers and Potentially Unwanted Modifications (PUMs) detection have also increased respectively
- Between Q1 and Q2, PUPs rose from 2.6 to 2.7 million in ANZ (increase of 3.9%), while PUMs jumped from 125,723 to 176,755 cases (increase of 40%)
- New Zealand showed a more gradual increase from Q1, with PUPs growing from 373,843 to 390,019 cases (increase of 4.1%)
- PUMs also increased in New Zealand by more than 11,000 cases from 21,641 to 33,192. (increase of 53%)
- In the past 12 months Malwarbytes detected and cleaned more than 62,000 pieces of Malware from schools in Australia
- Riskware at 2,266 detections, Adware at 1,957 detections and Hijacker at 1,793 detections have been some of the most common threats for students this quarter in Australia.
For more ANZ insights from the CTNT Q2 Report or to connect with Jim Cook, Regional Director, Australia and New Zealand, Malwarebytes please feel free to email us at malwarebytes@decpr.com.au and we’d be happy to assist.
To read more about other quarterly trends in cybercrime, and view Malwarebytes’ predictions for the next quarter, download the full Cybercrime Tactics and Techniques (CTNT) report here: https://blog.malwarebytes.com/malwarebytes-news/ctnt-report/2018/07/cybercrime-tactics-techniques-q2-2018/
