Malware

06/13/2017 - WannaCry's encryptor was deactivated by a kill switch. But the worm component is still active. It crawls the internet for vulnerable systems and captures them where possible. It has recently been hitting US hospitals. In addition, the case WannaCry shows that it could have been worse. Time to prepare for the next wave.

05/12/2017 [UPDATE: 06/08/2017] - An outbreak of the latest version of "WannaCry" has been claiming victims in several countries. The speed and ferocity of the outbreak has taken many by surprise. Researchers are as yet puzzled as to the origin of the outbreak which hit 11 countries within just three hours. So far Spain and Russia were are among those who were hit hardest.

05/23/2017 - After the big infection wave that hit thousands of computers all over the world on Friday, May 12, we are taking a look at some things that WannaCry has taught us and some of the aspects that have surprised many.

04/27/2017 - People and media are mostly looking at ransomware as a fairly recent problem. That seems to be logical if you see the steep rise of ransomware the past three years. In fact, the problem is much older than most of us think. For this we need to go back in time to the beginning of December 1989.

04/27/2017 - The Android operating system clearly dominates the mobile market, with a share of around 72 percent. In Germany alone, around 67 percent of smartphone owners use a device with an Android operating system (source: Statcounter). G DATA security experts discovered over 750,000 new Android malware apps in the first quarter of 2017. That represents almost 8,400 new malware instances every day.

04/10/2017 - We've done some counting for 2016 and the first quarter of 2017. Here is the first part of our malware statistics for the past and the current year.

03/30/2017 - A company offering protection against Zero-day exploits, exposes a vulnerability in Windows, which allegedly allows attackers to turn AV-products into malware. A lot of uncertainty has been created. On closer inspection, there is no reason to panic.

02/07/2017 - Despite a tendency of criminals to abandon banking malware in favor of ransomware, there is no reason to let down your guard. The ZeuS banking malware has been reported about a number of times already. It used to be one of the most notorious and prolific pieces of malware around. Lately, researchers at G DATA Advanced Analytics have observed an increase in the number of infections. They have taken...

01/18/2017 - Spora spreads via USB drives like Gamarue and Dinihou aka Jenxcus whilst also encrypting files. The sophistication of this threat could easily make it the new Locky. We discuss its infection and encryption procedure and show how it uses statistical values about encrypted files to calculate the ransom amount.

01/09/2017 - G DATA started its blogs six years ago and the team has published numerous articles about IT security, malware, mobile device security, awareness and also the Internet of Things since then. It is time for us to take a look back at the Top 10 most read articles in 2016 – both in the German and the English G DATA Blog.