Mcafee Labs Report Sees New Ransomware Surge 165 Percent in Q1 2015
Intel® Security's McAfee Labs Threats Report: May 2015 showed a 165-percent increase in new ransomware in Q1 2015.
The first quarter also saw new Adobe Flash malware samples increase by 317 percent, researchers attribute the rise to several factors: the popularity of Adobe Flash as a technology; user delay in applying available Adobe Flash patches; new methods to exploit product vulnerabilities; a steep increase in the number of mobile devices that can play Adobe Flash files (.swf); and the difficulty of detecting some Adobe Flash exploits. Researchers are seeing a continued shift in focus among exploit kit developers, from Java archive and Microsoft Silverlight vulnerabilities to Adobe Flash vulnerabilities.
Forty-two new Adobe Flash vulnerabilities were submitted to the National Vulnerability Database in Q1. On the same day those vulnerabilities were posted, Adobe made initial fixes available for all 42 vulnerabilities.