According to a Nuspire threat report, there was a surge in botnet activity in Q3 2023. The report found that the rise in botnet activity can largely be attributed to Torpig Mebroot, clocking an increase in activity of nearly 93% over Q2 and accounting for more than 69% of all Q3 botnet activities.

The report found that an older botnet, TorrentLocker, re-emerged in Q3 as a favorite attack method, supplanting Q2's FatalRAT botnet in Nuspire's list of top five botnets. TorrentLocker is primarily delivered through phishing emails, enticing victims with unpaid invoices, undelivered packages, or fines.

Total malware detections decreased by 5.94%; however, ransomware maintained the high level of activity witnessed in Q2.

Read the full report here.