Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 20 | Page 91

FINAL WORD and education sectors comprised more than 50% of the total. • • • • • Malware. New malware samples rebounded in Q1 to 32 million. The total number of malware samples increased 22% in the past four quarters to 670 million known samples. New malware counts rebounded to the quarterly average seen during the past four years. Mobile malware. Mobile malware reports from Asia doubled in Q1, contributing to a 57% increase in global infection rates. Total mobile malware grew 79% in the past four quarters to 16.7 million samples. The largest contributor to this growth was Android/SMSreg, a potentially unwanted program detection from India. Mac OS malware. During the past three quarters, new Mac OS malware has been boosted by a glut of adware. Although still small compared with Windows threats, the total number of Mac OS malware samples grew 53% in Q1. Ransomware. New ransomware samples rebounded in Q1 primarily due to Congur ransomware attacks on Android OS devices. The number of total ransomware samples grew 59% in the past four quarters to 9.6 million known samples. Spam botnets. In April, the mastermind behind the Kelihos botnet was arrested in Spain. Kelihos was responsible over many years for millions of spam messages that carried banking malware and ransomware. The US Department of Justice acknowledged international cooperation between United States and foreign authorities, the Shadow Server Foundation and industry vendors. ¡ Mohamad Rizk, Manager System Engineers, Middle East at Veeam THIS QUARTER’S REPORT REMINDS US THAT EVASION HAS EVOLVED FROM TRYING TO HIDE SIMPLE THREATS EXECUTING ON A SINGLE BOX, TO THE HIDING OF COMPLEX THREATS TARGETING ENTERPRISE ENVIRONMENTS OVER AN EXTENDED PERIOD OF TIME, TO ENTIRELY NEW PARADIGMS, SUCH AS EVASION TECHNIQUES DESIGNED FOR MACHINE LEARNING BASED PROTECTION. www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 91