Avast Security News

Cybercriminals have caught on. Our mobile devices are where it’s at. Personal info, bank accounts, passwords, important contacts — all this data is on our phones. And data today is more valuable than gold, which makes smartphones the new motherload. Realizing “there’s gold in them thar cells!” the cyber-underground targeted devices more than ever over the past year.

Dangerous PDF exploit combines two vulnerabilities Fortunately, patches exist for both vulnerabilities in question, but if an unpatched Windows system suffers infection from this PDF exploit, all bets are off.

Cryptojacking like an animal: the Drupal vulnerability The San Diego Zoo is just one of almost 400 websites that has been compromised by a bug called Drupalgeddon 2.0. This vulnerability in the Drupal content management system was discovered and patched in March 2018. But the almost-400 infected sites, mostly government and university organizations, had not yet updated with the patch and unfortunately found themselves targeted by a cryptojacking scheme. The ploy saps CPU power from site visitors without their knowledge, using it to mine Monero.

On May 12, 2017, WannaCry, the biggest ransomware attack in history, spread like wildfire around the world, indiscriminately affecting PCs belonging to consumers, businesses, hospitals, and government departments. Now, nearly one year later, the same malware continues to be prevalent, reportedly hitting aircraft manufacturer Boeing recently. Since the initial attack last year, Avast has detected and blocked more than 176 million WannaCry attacks across 217 countries. In March 2018 alone, we blocked 54 million WannaCry attacks.

MA school district pays $10,000 ransom On April 14, the Leominster school district in Massachusetts was hit with a ransomware attack that took the education sector’s computer system hostage, locking all administrators and teachers out of their email. Authorities believe the attack was intended only as a money-making scheme and not to mine sensitive data.