Surge In Malware, Phishing And Credential Theft; Blocked 16.7 Million High-Risk Email: Trend Micro

New Delhi: Cloud security giant Trend Micro on Wednesday said that malware detections, credential theft detections, and phishing email detections all increased by double digits year over year in 2020, while BEC volumes fell marginally.

Trend Micro’s Cloud App Security (CAS), an API-based solution that offers second-layer security for Microsoft Exchange Online, Gmail, and a variety of other services, has released new statistics.

Malware-infected emails: Trend Micro discovered 1.1 million emails containing malware that would have otherwise reached users’ inboxes, up 16 percent from 2019. Many Emotet and Trickbot attacks were among them, which are often used as a precursor to targeted ransomware.

Phishing: In 2020, Trend Micro intercepted over 6.9 million phishing emails, up 19% from the previous year. With the exception of credential phishing, the number of threats in this group increased by 41% during the same time span. COVID-19, as well as big-name brands like Netflix, which became famous during the pandemic, were popular lures. Usually, attackers were searching for personal and financial details to sell.

Credential Phishing: Existing cloud native security filters enabled nearly 5.5 million attempts to steal users’ credentials to pass through, according to Trend Micro. This was a 14 percent rise from the previous year, and it accounted for the vast majority of phishing emails found. Vishing attacks on phones are constantly being used to suppliment these. ​

BEC (business email compromise): While BEC detections decreased 18% year over year, average losses increased 48 percent from the first to the second quarter of 2020.

“COVID-19 forced many organizations to accelerate their digital adoption plans, and SaaS apps have become indispensable to remote workers. However, where there are users, there are also threats and we’ve seen a spike in attacks targeting organizations’ perceived weakest link during the pandemic,” said Wendy Moore, vice president of product marketing for Trend Micro.