CYREN, a cyber security platform, recently announced the release of its latest CYREN Cyber Threat Report that examines trends surrounding malware, phishing, spam and other online threats.
Friday malware spike results in busy Mondays for IT security professionals
In the report, CYREN research confirms long-held suspicions that criminals are purposely intensifying their malware distribution on Fridays in order to take advantage of employees who are less protected over the weekend.
Examining daily malware distribution trends during Q3 2015, CYREN detected an average of 2.25 billion malware attachments on Fridays—that’s more than triple the number seen on Mondays during the same quarter.
CYREN’s findings validate the theory that Monday mornings are one of the most common times for threats and breaches to appear on corporate networks due to employees downloading unsafe content on Saturdays and Sundays when using unsecured networks.
When employees take their devices home over the weekend, they often connect to the Internet through public or personal unsecured Wi-Fi networks, and proceed to surf the web, download content, and click on links delivered through email.
Sophisticated phishing emails target corporate and government email credentials
The report also describes a new phishing campaign that specifically targets organizations, not individuals. The criminals attempt to gain the name of the victim’s employer as well as their names, email address, password and phone number, using spoofed images from well-known and reputable cloud service companies such as LinkedIn, Apple, and Amazon.
CYREN analysts believe this may be part of a long-term threat process in which criminals are trying to amass corporate login data to eventually be sold and/or used in corporate breaches. The attacks may also be intended to target well-known webmail services that can be used to access corporate data.
In most cases the phishing websites are legitimate websites that have been compromised. HTML code is then embedded in the hacked site, providing an almost identical phishing experience wherever it is found.
Time to train employees on importance of cyber security
“These latest malware and phishing findings come on the heels of Cyber Security Awareness Month as well as a fresh CYREN survey that underscores just how difficult it is for the average user to identify a threat,” said Lior Kohavi, CTO at CYREN. “Now, more than ever before, both individuals and enterprises should embrace cyber security awareness. Organizations must arm employees with knowledge of the vast, ever-changing tricks used by criminals.”
Other report highlights include:
- 6.25% of installed Android apps are malicious
- Spam hit a six-year low in September with an average of 47.4 billion daily spam emails sent that month
- The average number of daily spam emails detected by CYREN decreased to 52 billion in Q3 from 55 billion in Q2
- Phishing URLs tracked by CYREN are down 19% from Q2 to Q3—likely a normalizing trend from the significant jump seen in Q2
The full report is available to download here.
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