COVID-Related Threats, PowerShell Attacks Lead Malware Surge

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Surging numbers of COVID-themed attacks, PowerShell trojans, along with the SolarWinds compromise and the continued spread of Sunburst malware were major contributors to a massive spike in the number of observed attacks in the wild during the last half of 2020, which McAfee’s said averaged 588 attacks per minute within its telemetry during Q3 and Q4 of 2020.
 
Researchers observed an average of 648 threats per minute in Q4 in the wild, an increase of 10 percent over the third quarter a continued upward trend from the 40 percent jump compared to Q2 2020, McAfee’s latest threat report said.
 
COVID-19-related attacks continued to leave their mark the ecosystem: “McAfee’s global network of more than a billion sensors registered a 605 percent increase in total Q2 COVID-19- themed threat detections,” the report said.
 
“The world — and enterprises — adjusted amidst pandemic restrictions and sustained remote challenges, while security threats continued to evolve in complexity and increase in volume,” the report said. “Though a large percentage of employees grew more proficient and productive in working remotely, enterprises endured more opportunistic COVID-19-related campaigns among a new cast of bad-actor schemes. Prominent campaigns such as Sunburst and new ransomware tactics left [security operations centers] SOCs no time to rest.”
 
The team of security researchers also measured a 208 percent increase in PowerShell threats, from Q3 to Q4 2020, most notably Donoff, a sneaky trojan downloader that uses macros in a file to sneak past virus detection protections.
 
Additionally, Office-targeted malware grew by 199 percent, and observed mobile malware was up 118 percent thanks to SMS Reg and others, the McAfee team explained.

Read more: COVID-Related Threats, PowerShell Attacks Lead Malware Surge | Threatpost