October 23, 2016
According to statistics gathered by Check Point, for the first time ever, ransomware has entered the top 3 of today’s most dangerous malware.
While everybody knows how dangerous and devastating a ransomware infection can be, the number of affected victims was regularly low, and never large enough to warrant a spot on the top 10, let alone top 3 most dangerous malware families around.
Things changed this summer and autumn when ransomware infections seem to have gone out of control. The ransomware family that made it into the top 3 is none other than Locky.
Locky’s prevalence is no surprise, knowing that it received several updates in the past months and is spread via the massive Necurs botnet, which according to recent statistics gathered by MalwareTech, has over 6 million bots ready to send Locky spam.
Check Point’s findings regarding Locky’s rise in infections are also corroborated by a recent Proofpoint report released last week which revealed that Locky accounted for 97 percent of all malicious file attachments spread via spam email.
Below is the full top 10 based on Check Point’s data. Only desktop malware is included. The mobile malware top 3 is made up by HummingBad, Triada, and Ztorg.