Many more attacks with ransomware

amsterdam - Last year there were half more ransomware attacks than one year earlier. That is what the US telecom provider Verizon reports in its annual Data Breach Investigations Report. This is ransomware, which uses a security vulnerability to take over and host a computer unless the user pays the fifth most popular form of malware.

The report was based on over 42,000 security incidents and nearly 2,000 data coverage in 84 countries. Cyber ​​espionage proved to be the main threat to producing companies, the public sector and education. Many attempts at cyber spying began with a phishing mail.

Malware was used in more than half (51 percent) of the incidents analyzed. Phishing was used in 43 percent of incidents. A new technique that becomes popular is pretexting. This means that information is collected under false pretenses. Often, financial department employees become the target of this.