SA has highest proportion of infected devices

South Australia has the highest proportion of malware infected devices in Australia, according to research from Webroot.

An estimated 26.4% of devices in the state are infected by malware, with devices in the state having an average of 20 infections per device, the company said.

Western Australia and Tasmania had the equal second highest proportion of infected devices at 25.3%, followed by NSW at 25.2%. Northern Territory meanwhile had the lowest number of infections per device in the country at 6.7.

Webroot has also published its list of the nastiest malware of 2018, in the categories of botnets and banking trojans, cryptomining and cryptojacking, and ransomware.

The worst offenders in the first category include EMotenet, one of the first botnets to spread banking Trojans laterally within the infected network. Trickbot followed suit with this capability, but added additional modules and has even been detected spreading ransomware.

Finally, Zeus Panda has similar functionality to Trickbot, but uses a variety of different distribution methods such as Word macros, exploit kits and even compromised remote monitoring and management systems.

In the cryptojacking category, GhostMiner lives up to its name by masking its entry point and appearing to materialise out of thin air.

WannaMine has differentiated by abusing Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to maintain persistence, and Coinhive has been quickly added to the standard toolkit for attackers looking to compromise websites.

For ransomware, the Crysis/Dharma family of ransomware is emerging as one of the top ransomware-as-a-service offerings. GandCrab uses the unsactioned .bit top-level domain to provide additional secrecy.

Finally, the SamSam ransomware has been targeting and compromising entire cities, such as the City of Atlanta and Colorado’s transportation department.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Leo Lintang

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