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The Zix | AppRiver Global Security Report for 2020 shares the threats and trends our cybersecurity analysts saw throughout the first half of the year. Perhaps unsurprisingly, attackers were quick to take advantage of the global pandemic, launching scams that played on peoples’ anxieties as well as attacks targeting remote workforces. Analysts saw a continued surge of “living off the land” (LotL) attacks— attacks which hijack legitimate services—for phishing and distributing malware. Our analysts also observed a resurgence of banking trojans used by large-scale malware distributors.

2017 certainly pulled no punches in the world of cybercrime. We saw attackers continue to embrace many of their favorite tried and true tactics throughout the year. We also saw a noteworthy number of attacks leveraging previously unexploited vulnerabilities as well as taking advantage of known vulnerabilities on unpatched systems. We saw Conversation Hijacking Attacks gaining in popularity as attackers leveraged data stolen in phishing attacks. We also saw the resurgence of an old attack but with a new twist.

2016 was another tumultuous year in the realm of cybersecurity. Attackers leveraged many new attack vectors, as well as utilizing other tried and true methods that have been successful in the past, to net billions of dollars along the way. The victims of these attacks ranged across a broad spectrum from small business to some of the largest public and private organizations in the world.

Each quarter, we release a Global Security Report that’s tracked the threat landscape of the preceding three months. Once again, malware traffic expanded for the fourth straight quarter with our security team noting 5.7 billion messages containing malware. Though the popular distribution file types for malware shifted this quarter, the bulk of malware traffic remained to be from ransomware. Botnet distribution of malware also remained a popular conduit.

While spam email traffic is leveling off, email traffic has never been more dangerous. What used to be a constant stream of messages touting fake Rolex watches, male enhancement pills and pornography has now become a 24/7 deluge of ransomware, spyware, phishing, and other malware.

Malware activity continued to expand in the second quarter. While our research team saw a disruption from one massive botnet, the respite proved to only be temporary.