• by Ray Schultz , August 8, 2018

GandCrab, a malicious payload delivered by email, is now the top ransomware variant, according to Cybercrime Tactics And Techniques: Q2 2018, a study by Malwarebytes Labs.

But it’s not the only hot technology apparent in this space in Q2. “The introduction of complex VPNFilter malware, which dropped multi-stage attacks on hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting small office and consumer users, shook the sleepy cybersecurity industry awake,” the study states.

What’s so dangerous about this technology? “This malware is not only able to harvest usernames and passwords, but it can also change webpages and insert artificial data to deceive users while, at the same time, draining accounts in the shadows,” the report continues.

The top two consumer detections are adware and cryptomining, although the latter is declining. Miners grabbed the number one spot for consumer detections in Q2 and banking trojans held second place, although they experienced an almost 50% drop in detections.

Backdoors grew in both areas, and drove a 442% increase in consumer detections.

In addition, Malwarebytes has detected “scammers blatantly stealing PII from victims with Bitcoin scams,” it says.

It adds that “as the victim pool for traditional tech support scams has contracted in the face of user awareness and increased enforcement, scammers have been stealing passwords, bank account information, and email accounts with increasing frequency.”