In what seems like next to no time at all, we are heading into the final quarter of 2018.
It has been an eventful quarter, with multiple government and ministerial changes, the first round results of the Notifiable Data Breach Scheme and continuous discussions around national data decryption legislation. With this amount of change on a local level, combined with global news and major players such as Facebook and Google impacted by unprecedented data breaches, cybersecurity remains a high priority for many businesses in Australia and New Zealand.
As we look ahead to 2019 and begin planning for the next year of cyber prevention, now is the perfect time to reflect on the latest updates from the Malwarebytes Labs. The Q3 Malwarebytes Labs Cybercrime Tactics and Techniques (CTNT) report helps uncover the full picture of what is going on in the cybercrime landscape, delivering a specifically generated report that provides insights and statistics gathered from July through September 2018.
Key takeaways specific to the ANZ region include:
- Cryptomining increased in both Australia and New Zealand in Q3, each reaching the highest rate of detection for the year respectively
- Australian cases of cryptomining increased by 36.37% to 194,282 cases in Q3.
- New Zealand also experienced a significant increase in the number of reported cryptomining cases, skyrocketing by 644.50% on Q2 results to reach 79,851 cases in Q3.
- Australia and New Zealand markets differ significantly in relation to Backdoor, Adware and Anomalous (machine learning) malware detections
- Australian backdoor detections have dramatically decreased by 94.2% from 141,046 in Q2 to 8,191 in Q3. In contrast, New Zealand backdoor detections have increased by 116.23% in Q3, reaching 2,504 detections compared to 1,158 in Q2.
- Adware cases reportedly increased in Australia by 89.86%, with detections growing from 311,401 cases in Q2 to 591,237 in Q3. By comparison, New Zealand has experienced 24.71% decrease, going from 52,091 cases in Q2 to 39,218 cases in Q3.
- While Australia saw a decrease of 29.31% in Anomalous (machine learning) detections in Q3, New Zealand cases grew by 208.80% from 3,557 in Q2 to 7,896.
- Virus and Spyware detections increased the most in Australia in Q3
- Virus detections in Australia increased by 3832.13% from 501 cases in Q2 to 19,700 in Q3.
- Similarly, Spyware incidents grew by 231% from 4,818 cases in Q2 to 15,948 in Q3.
- Aside from cryptomining incidents, in New Zealand Worm detections had the biggest increase from Q2, with 2,621 cases increasing by 238.08% to 8,861 in Q3.
APAC and Global Comparisons
- 65% of cryptomining malware detections occur in APAC region
- While cryptomining malware activity was slow initially, it has quickly picked up its pace this quarter. Interestingly, 65% of the total global cryptomining malware detections occurred in the APAC region in Q3.
- Cryptomining has matured in the face of market downturn. Globally, malicious cryptomining has decreased by 26% for businesses from Q2 2018.
To read more about other quarterly trends in cybercrime, and our predictions for the next quarter, download the full Cybercrime Tactics and Techniques (CTNT) report here.
