688 new malware threats found per minute in Q1

New malware threats emerged at a rate of 688 per minute during the June quarter, according to McAfee’s latest Threat Report.

The quarterly report found that the pace at which new threats were emerging grew by 40 threats per minute from the prior quarter.

The technology sector was particularly hard hit during the quarter, with McAfee tracking a 54% increase in publicly reported cyber incidents targeting the sector during the quarter.

Broken down by region, threat incidents surged in 54% in Asia and 43% in Europe, but declined 13% in North America.

Meanwhile, cryptocurrency coin miner malware grew by 117% during the quarter due to growth in 64-bit CoinMiner applications.

A surge in the growth of new Mirai-based malware variants also drove increases in malware targeting Internet of Things (55%) and Linux (38%) systems.

“Criminals will always evolve their techniques to combine whatever tools enable them to best maximise their monetary gains with the minimum of complication and risk,” said Raj Samani, McAfee fellow and chief scientist.

“We first saw them use ransomware to extract small payments from millions of individual victims. Today, we see ransomware as a service supporting many players in these illicit schemes holding organisations hostage and extorting massive sums for the criminals.”

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