McAfee sees surge in spam, Koobface samples, MBR attacks - keithbourfere

The first tercet months of 2022 have seen a surge in spam volume, likewise Eastern Samoa large numbers game of samples of the Koobface social group networking worm and master boot record (MBR) infecting malware, reported to antivirus vendor McAfee.

Aft remaining relatively stable passim 2012, spam levels rose during the eldest quarter of 2022, reaching the highest volume seen in the past two years, McAfee said in a cover free Monday.

The sum of spam originating from some countries rose dramatically, McAfee aforesaid. Spam from Belarus increased by 540 percentage while spam originating in Kazakhstan grew 150 percent.

Cutwail, also titled Pushdo, was the most prevalent spam-sending botnet during the first quarter, McAfee said.

The redoubled Pushdo activity has of late been observed by other security companies every bit well. Last month, researchers from security unwaveringly Damballa found a new variant of the Pushdo malware that's more live to coordinated takedown efforts.

Not just spam

On the malware front, McAfee has as wel seen a surge in the number of Koobface samples, which reached previously unseen levels during the first twenty-five percent of 2022. First discovered in 2008, Koobface is a wrestle that spreads via social networking sites, especially through Facebook, by hijacking user accounts.

The number of malware samples designed to taint a computer's master flush record (MBR) too reached a record high during the get-go three months of 2022, after increasing during the last quarter of 2012 atomic number 3 well, McAfee said.

The MBR is a special section on a hard disc drive that contains information about its partitions and is exploited during the system startup operation. "Compromising the MBR offers an attacker a wide mixture of control, perseverance, and deep penetration," the McAfee researchers said in the report.

The MBR attacks seen during the first quarter involved malware like StealthMBR, also known as Mebroot; Tidserv, also glorious as Alureon, TDSS and TDL; Cidox and Shamoon, they said.

The number of ransomware threats, like those that attempt to extort money from users by displaying pseudo messages from law enforcement agencies, continued its truelove poop-over-quarter increase, according to McAfee's write up.

"Incomparable reason for ransomware's growth is that it is a identical efficient way for criminals to earn money because they use various anonymous payment services," the McAfee researchers said. "This method acting of cash collection is superior to that used aside pseud Ab products, for lesson, which essential process recognition plug-in orders for the fake software program."

The overall number of PC malware samples augmented away 28 pct during the basic quarter, reaching 120 million unique threats, McAfee said. On the mobile side, malware growth experienced a decline compared to the last quarter of 2012, but remained epoch-making with the threats discovered in 2022 representing 28 percent of all mobile malware recorded to date.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/452196/mcafee-sees-surge-in-spam-koobface-samples-mbr-attacks.html

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