Ransomware families that belong to Ryuk and Sodinokibi are responsible for the huge rise in the ransom payments. In Q4 of 2019, 98% of companies had received a working decryptor tool for the ransom paid. With the increase in ransomware attacks, the average ransom payment has risen to 104% in the fourth quarter of 2019. A report from Coveware reveals that the ransomware attackers had collected an average of around $84,000 from victim organizations in the Q4 of 2019 when compared to $41,198 in Q3 of 2019.
Hefty collection of U.S. and international payment cards from the incident revealed in December found up for sale on dark-web marketplace Joker’s Stash. A recent dump of payment card information being sold on a popular online fraud marketplace suggests that more than 30 million payment cards may have been affected by a malware attack and data breach at Wawa convenience stores and gas stations that was first revealed in December.
Admins are encouraged to update their websites to stave off attacks from Magecart card-skimmers and others. Critical vulnerabilities in Adobe’s Magento e-commerce platform – a favorite target of the Magecart cybergang – could lead to arbitrary code execution.
Some of the prominent tax scams involve a fake IRS website. In such cases, the victims are told that the IRS has halted their tax refunds as they are missing out on one crucial piece of information such as bank account numbers. With the advent of tax season, scammers have started adopting social engineering tricks to dupe taxpayers and steal their sensitive information. Therefore it is very necessary for users to be cautious about tax-related scams that are being widely carried out by scammers. Some of the prominent tax scams involve a fake IRS website. In such cases, the victims are told that the IRS has halted their tax refunds as they are missing out on one crucial piece of information such as bank account numbers.
The company is about to publish a report into the Android threat landscape. The data is staggering. The company has unearthed 98,000 “malicious apps,” which have infected 43 million devices. The worst five apps, Dimitris Maniatis tells me, have been downloaded 700 million times, “this shows the scale of the issue.” And that risk is accelerating. That number of malicious apps is up 50% in the last year, and shows every sign of spiralling out of control.
