SonicWall Report Says Cryptojacking in the Finance Industry Has Increased by Almost 270% YTD
- Cryptojacking is a cyberattack where spammers insert a software virus on a computer used for mining digital currencies.
The latest mid-year report by cybersecurity firm, SonicWall, says that there has been a 269 percent increase in the rate of cryptojacking cases in the finance sector between January and July 2022. Cryptojacking is a cyberattack where spammers insert a software virus on a computer used for mining digital currencies.
The report states that most victims are not usually aware that their computers have been exploited. Hence, the reason for the rising number of cases, according to the report. In recent years, cryptojackers often targeted the government, education, and healthcare sectors. However, they have made a massive shift this year.
Further Notes SonicWall Report on Cryptojacking
The report said cryptojacking attacks on the finance sector shot up 270 percent, while attacks targeted at the retail sector surged 63 percent in the last 12 months. Hence, the attacks on the finance sector are now the second highest as they are five times higher than retail.
Conversely, there has been a decrease in ransomware attacks. These attacks are also a result of rising interest in crypto payments. Ransomware is a malware attack where the hacker locks and encrypts the victim’s important files and asks for payment before unlocking or decrypting the locked file.
Vice-president of SonicWall for the EMEA region, Terry Greer-King, said many victims of cryptojacking are entirely unaware of any exploit on their computers. What they only notice is that their pcs become unnecessarily slow. However, many of them won’t link the slowness of their computer to any criminal activity. Hence, they won’t bother trying to find the source of the attack.
The SonicWall report highlighted a 23 percent 12-month drop in ransomware attempts since the beginning of this year. In this period, there have been 236.3 million of these ransomware attempts. The SonicWall researchers claim that many cyber criminals are drifting away from ransomware attacks due to a general decline in cryptos’ prices since January 2022.
In the first six months of this year, bitcoin lost nearly 140 percent of its value, dropping from $48,000 to $20,000. Worsening global macroeconomic conditions and rising inflation rates are the main reasons for the slump in crypto prices. A SonicWall representative said that Bitcoin’s price is an early indicator of the rate of ransomware attacks despite zero direct correlation between them.
According to SonicWall researchers, more vigorous efforts from law enforcement agents and more excellent security standards by companies are other reasons for the decline in ransomware attacks. The spokesperson added that it is impossible to make a direct correlation in the first half of this year because of several variables.
However, fluctuations in the price of popular digital currencies such as bitcoin often indicate the general direction in ransomware levels. Ransomware attacks reached their highest level last year when hackers targeted famous firms such as Colonial Pipeline and JBS foods. These victims had to pay the hackers Bitcoins worth millions of dollars to recover their data.
Rebecca is a Senior Staff Writer at BitcoinWisdom, working hard to bring you the latest breaking news in the cryptocurrency market. In the words of Elon Musk “Buy stock in several companies that make products & services that *you* believe in. Only sell if you think their products & services are trending worse. Don’t panic when the market does. This will serve you well in the long-term.”
