Nearly Half of Cloud-based Malware Is Used To Distribute Ransomware

The topic of malware and ransomware has been touched upon quite a few times in the past. Despite all of this attention, it remains one of the most potent threats in the world today. A new report by Netskope goes to show 43.7% of cloud malware is known to deliver ransomware. That is only the tip of the iceberg of bad news, though.

A New Condemning Report on Malware

Every time a new report on malware is released, people hold their breath. The amount of bad news generated by malicious software continues to grow, and there is no improvement in sight. In fact, things only seem to get worse as more time progresses. The new report by Netskope is rather worrisome for anyone who deals with software or cloud services these days.

Malware targeting cloud-based services is nothing new under the sun, as it has been around for quite some time now. However, it appears cloud malware continues to evolve, as more versions start to spread ransomware as well. These numbers have been steadily increasing over the past 18 months. A similar rise can be seen in the number of backdoors and Linux malware variants for Q2 2016.

Microsoft Office macros remain a popular way of distributing malicious software these days. But JavaScript exploits are still far too common as well. Linux Malware is the second most popular type of cloud malware in circulation right now. To make matters even worse, 80.3% of all of these threats carry a “high” security risk for users and enterprises.

If that wasn’t enough reason for concern, over half of malware infected files hosted on cloud services are shared with others. In doing so, users unknowingly amplify the effect these malicious types of software have. Additionally, it increases the chances of exposure to ransomware, which is never a good thing.

All of this goes to show the increase in the number of cloud apps used by enterprises is positive and negative at the same time. The cloud infrastructure presents an inherent risk, and internet criminals are happy to exploit those opportunities. We can only hope the next report is less worrisome, albeit it is doubtful that will be the case.

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