While millions of users may have patched their systems in order to thwart cybercriminals using WannaCry, cyberattacks featuring last year's infamous ransomware still account for 28.72 percent of all users targeted by cryptors in Q3 2018, Russia-based Kaspersky Labs has said. The cybersecurity company said that WannaCry ransomware has attacked 74,621 unique users worldwide. “The percentage has risen over the last year, demonstrating more than two thirds growth against Q3 2017, when its share in cryptor attacks was 16.78 percent," it said. The company says that Kaspersky Lab security solution protected 259,867 unique users from cryptors attacks, showing a substantial rise of 39 percent, since the second quarter this year, when the figure was 158,921. Most of the places in this rating are occupied by Asian countries. Bangladesh tops the list with 5.8 percent, followed by Uzbekistan (3.77 percent) and Nepal is the newcomer with 2.18 percent grabbing the third spot. Pakistan (1.41 percent) came fourth, while India stands at fifth spot with 1.27 percent followed by China at 1.05 percent. (Countries where Kaspersky Lab users were under 50,000 are excluded). “The rising share of WannaCry attacks is another reminder that epidemics don’t end as fast as they start – there are always long-running consequences. In the case of cryptors, attacks can be so severe that it is necessary to take preventive measures and patch the device, rather than deal with encrypted files later,” Fedor Sinitsyn, Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab said in a statement. Other highlights of Kaspersky Lab’s Q3 IT threat evolution report Kaspersky Lab claims that its solutions detected and repelled 947,027,517 malicious attacks from online resources located in around 200 countries and territories around the world, which is a 1.7 percent decrease against the previous period. The company says that 246,695,333 unique URLs were recognised as malicious by web antivirus components, that is a 29.9 percent decrease against previous period. Attempted infections by malware that aims to steal money via online access to bank accounts were registered on 305,315 user computers - a 41.5 percent growth against last year. Further, and Kaspersky Lab’s file antivirus detected a total of 239,177,356 unique malicious and potentially unwanted objects (24.5 percent growth year-on-year). Kaspersky Lab mobile security products also detected 1,305,015 malicious installation packages, which is a 25.2 percent decrease against previous period. To recall, WannaCry ransomware encrypts files on the computer, blocking users from accessing critical information and asks for a payment in Bitcoins to unlock files on each affected computer. Infrastructure services, banks, telecom companies, airports and hospitals across 99 countries and 200,000 computer systems were reported to be affected by this cyber attack in May 2017. At least two new strains of the malware infection that exploits vulnerabilities in older Windows software such as XP and Windows Server 2003, were blamed for the attack.
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