Symantec Internet Security Threat Report highlights

Symantec a leading Internet Security firm has released it’s 015 Internet Security Threat Report.

• Symantec found that 17 percent of all Android apps (nearly one million total) were actually malware in disguise.
• Ransomware attacks grew 113 percent in 2014, driven by more than a 4,000 percent increase in crypto-ransomware attacks. In 2013, crypto-ransomware accounted for a negligible percentage of all ransomware attacks (0.2 percent, or 1 in 500 instances).
• Non-targeted attacks still make up the majority of malware, which increased by 26 percent in 2014.
• In 2014, Symantec observed that 70 percent of social media scams were manually shared.
• And the potential for cyberattacks against cars and medical equipment should be a concern to watch
• Web threats got bigger and much more aggressive in 2014 as holes in commonly used tools and encryption protocols were exposed and criminals made it harder to escape their malicious clutches
• Approximately 28 billion spam emails were in circulation worldwide each day in 2014, compared with 29 billion in 2013, representing a decrease of 3.3 percent in global spam volume.
•  The top spam botnet, Kelihos, was responsible for 51.6 percent of spam, generating an estimated 1 billion spam emails each day, compared with 10 billion in 2013.
• The United States was at the top of the spam-sending botnet table in 2014 and was the source of approximately 7.7 percent of global botnet spam, 0.8 percentage point higher than Spain, in second place.
• Of all emails sent to businesses with up to 250 employees in 2014, 1 in 1,401.5 was identified and blocked as a phishing attack, compared with 1 in 689.5 in 2013.