Trend Micro’s report reveals a surge in fileless attacks in the first half of 2019.
Trend Micro has published its roundup report for the first half of 2019, revealing a surge in fileless attacks designed to disguise malicious activity. Detections of this threat alone were up 265% compared to the first half of 2018.
Out of the 1.8 billion ransomware threats gathered globally from January 2016 to June 2019 by Trend Micro Smart Protection Network (SPN) security infrastructure, Asia saw the highest number of ransomware threats (42.98%). And within Asia, India accounted for 23.88% of ransomware threats blocked by Trend Micro.
Banking threats still posed challenges to the financial sector, with RAMNIT as a cybercriminal mainstay in June 2019. In addition, India ranks first in the AMEA region (Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa) for encountering the highest number of banking malware (8,585) in the first half of 2019. The findings in 2019 so far confirm many of the predictions Trend Micro made last year. Namely, attackers are working smarter to target businesses and environments that will produce the greatest return on investment.
Along with the growth in fileless threats in the first half of the year, attackers are increasingly deploying threats that aren’t visible to traditional security filters, as they can be executed in a system’s memory, reside in the registry, or abuse legitimate tools. Exploit kits have also made a comeback, with a 136% increase compared to the same time in 2018.
