cyber trends
COVID-19 HAS MADE A STAMP ON MANY INDUSTRIES AND IMPACTED BUSINESS OPERATIONS ON A LARGE SCALE . WE TAKE A LOOK AT HOW CYBERCRIMINALS HAVE EXPLOITED THE PANDEMIC AND CAUSED DETRIMENTAL HARM TO BUSINESSES FOR PERSONAL GAIN . RAJ SAMANI , MCAFEE FELLOW AND CHIEF SCIENTIST , DISCUSSES THE FINDINGS OF THE MCAFEE REPORT IN MORE DETAIL .
cAfee , the device-tocloud cybersecurity
M company , has released its McAfee COVID-19 Threat Report : July 2020 , examining cybercriminal activity related to COVID-19 and the evolution of cyberthreats in Q1 2020 . McAfee Labs saw an average of 375 new threats per minute and a surge of cybercriminals exploiting the pandemic through COVID-19 themed malicious apps , phishing campaigns , malware and more . New PowerShell malware increased 688 % over the course of the quarter , while total malware grew 1,902 % over the past four quarters . Disclosed incidents targeting the public sector , individuals , education and manufacturing increased ; nearly 47 % of all publicly disclosed security incidents took place in the US .
“ Thus far , the dominant themes of the 2020 threat landscape have been
McAfee report shows threat actor evolution during pandemic
cybercriminal ’ s quick adaptation to exploit the pandemic and the considerable impact cyberattacks have had ,” said Raj Samani , McAfee Fellow and Chief Scientist . “ What began as a trickle of phishing campaigns and the occasional malicious app quickly turned into a deluge of malicious URLs and capable threat actors leveraging the world ’ s thirst for more information on COVID-19 as an entry mechanism into systems across the globe .”
Each quarter , McAfee assesses the state of the cyberthreat landscape based on in-depth research , investigative analysis and threat data gathered by the McAfee Global Threat Intelligence cloud from over a billion sensors across multiple threat vectors around the world .
Capable threat actors exploit pandemic
McAfee researchers found it is typical of COVID-19 campaigns to use pandemicrelated subjects including testing , treatments , cures and remote work topics to lure targets into clicking on a malicious link , downloading a file , or viewing a
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