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Malware is 30% New or Zero-Day in Q4 2016

what is malware

In this day and age, malware is something device owners will complain about a lot. With good measure: this is the kind of malicious software that can do real damage to your computer and smartphone. How? By gaining access to your PC’s private system and gathering sensitive info. That’s not all: malware can also show unsolicited ads and damage your smartphone’s or computer’s operations.

Malware can incorporate ransomware, PC viruses, scareware, Trojan horses and so much more. Some of the most well-known malware were CryptoLocker, Stuxnet and Regin. They did a lot of damage before they could be removed for good. That’s not to say that our devices are free from harm. A recent study report published by a famous security firm says otherwise. According to them, 30% of malware is either new or zero-day.

what is malwareThe name of this security firm is WatchGuard Technologies. For their latest report, people over at WatchGuard used data from Firebox Feed. The malware samples they analyzed were all from the fourth quarter of 2016. The report was created so that businesses knew the effects of security problems. The Firebox Feed the firm used is anonymous data gathered from more than 24,000 WatchGuard UTM devices from all over the world. The report highlighted five interesting discoveries.

The browsers and web services are preferred by hackers

For starters, the large majority of network attacks are directed at these two: browsers and web services. To be more precise, the number of malicious threats reached a peak of 73%. Another crucial finding: hackers love to damage web servers via dangerous web shells. This is one of the most ancient types of attack. It’s not the only problem: spear-fishing attacks use files which contain harmful macros. As a result, the latest document format offered by Microsoft is greatly affected.

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The third important discovery of WatchGuard has to do with Wscript.shell Remote Code Execution. This is a major network attack which affected one European country more than others. That country was Germany. Number four on the list of findings was that 30% of malicious software turned out to be new or zero-day. The reason for this classification: it couldn’t be detected by security solutions. Which means that attackers have found ways to modify malware so that antiviruses can’t catch new signatures in time. If you want your business to continue to thrive, you need to use a powerful security software. There are many popular ones which incorporate modern detection tools and features. They’ll quickly find malicious threats and solve them efficiently.

Vulnerabilities in JavaScript

WatchGuard’s report has a fifth and final point to make. Which is the following: there’s a very well-known delivery tool for malware. And that is the popular JavaScript. Besides bringing malware to a device, JavaScript can also complicate your computer’s and smartphone’s performance. The Firebox Feed used by the security firm reached this conclusion: malicious JavaScript has been on the rise since last year. This kind of dangerous threat mostly came over the Internet. It was also reported via email.

The CTO of WatchGuard Technologies said that his team will continue to keep an eye on malicious software. According to him, they’ll do this every quarter of the upcoming years. The reports they’ll publish in the future will use latest Firebox Feed data. This will be combined with analysis gathered via security events and the information they provide. Vulnerabilities will be kept under close observation from now on, too. In case you wish to read more of WatchGuard’s report, you can go to their official website.

A top rated antimalware solution: Bitdefender

If you want to get rid of this type of harmful software, Bitdefender has a new addition to their strong line of security solutions. The most recent creation of theirs is called Bitdefender Antivirus 2017. For many users, it’s the best security program this year has seen. Install the product on your device after you check its system requirements and let it do its job in the background. This new version will efficiently protect you not only against malware but against a lot of other major threats.

As you could see from today’s post, malware is one of the most encountered issues nowadays. The Bitdefender Antivirus 2017 is excellent at removing this threat from your PC. A more detailed review of the company’s latest product can be found here.

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