January’s Most Wanted Malware: Cryptomining Malware Continues to Drain Enterprise CPU Power, say Check Point

Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: CHKP), a leading provider of cybersecurity solutions globally, has revealed that cryptomining malware continues to impact organizations globally as 23 percent of themwere affected by the Coinhive variant during January 2018, according to the company’s latest Global Threat Impact Index.

Check Point’s researchers discovered three different variants of cryptomining malware in its Top 10 most prevalent ranking, with Coinhive ranking first, impacting more than one-in-five organizations. Coinhive performs online mining of Monero cryptocurrency when a user visits a web page without the user’s approval. The implanted JavaScript then uses the computational resources of the end user’s machines to mine coins, impacting system performance.

“Over the past three months cryptomining malware has steadily become an increasing threat to organizations, as criminals have found it to be a lucrative revenue stream,” said Maya Horowitz, Threat Intelligence Group Manager at Check Point. “It is particularly challenging to protect against, as it is often hidden in websites, enabling hackers to use unsuspecting victims to tap into the huge CPU resource that many enterprises have available. As such, it is critical that organizations have the solutions in place that protect against these stealthy cyber-attacks.”

In addition to cryptominers, Check Point researchers also discovered that 21 percent of organizations have still failed to deal with machines infected with the Fireball malware.  Fireball can be used as a full-functioning malware downloader capable of executing any code on victims’ machines.  It was first discovered in May 2017, and severely impacted organizations during Summer of 2017.

In January, crypto-mining malware continued to be the most prevalent with Coinhive retaining its most wanted spot impacting 23 percent of organizations, followed by Fireball in second and Rig Exploit Kit in third impacting 17 percent of organizations.

January 2018’s Top 3 ‘Most Wanted’ Malware:

*The arrows relate to the change in rank compared to the previous month.

1. ↔Coinhive – Crypto-Miner designed to perform online mining of Monero cryptocurrency when a user visits a web page without the user’s approval.
2. ↑ Fireball – Browser-hijacker that can be turned into a full-functioning malware downloader.
3. ↔ Rig ek – Rig delivers Exploits for Flash, Java, Silverlight and Internet Explorer

Lokibot, an Android banking Trojan, was the most popular malware used to attack organizations’ mobile estates followed by the Triada and Hiddad.

January’s Top 3 ‘Most Wanted’ mobile malware:

1. Lokibot – Android banking Trojan and info-stealer, which can also turn into a ransomware that locks the phone.
2. Triada – Modular Backdoor for Android which grants superuser privileges to downloaded malware.
3. Hiddad – Android malware which repackages legitimate apps then releases them to a third-party store.

The map below displays the risk index globally (green – low risk, red – high risk, white – insufficient data), demonstrating the main risk areas and malware hot-spots around the world.

Check Point’s Global Threat Impact Index and its ThreatCloud AI Map is powered by Check Point’s ThreatCloud AI intelligence, the largest collaborative network to fight cybercrime which delivers threat data and attack trends from a global network of threat sensors. The ThreatCloud AI database holds over 250 million addresses analyzed for bot discovery, more than 11 million malware signatures and over 5.5 million infected websites, and identifies millions of malware types daily.

* The complete list of the top 10 malware families in December can be found on the Check Point Blog

Check Point’s Threat Prevention Resources are available at:  /threat-prevention-resources/index.html

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