for companies
In the past twelve months, 38 percent of companies worldwide had to deal with cryptomining malware in one way or another. The biggest culprit was the Coinhive cryptominer with a share of 24 percentage points. This is evident from the Global Threat Index of Check Point.

The Coinhive cryptominer has been at the top of the list of ‘most popular’ threats since 2017 and can now call itself number one for exactly one year. The positions two and three are currently being held by Cryptoloot and Andromeda. However, in the November edition of the Global Threat Index , compiled by security specialist Check Point, the rise of the Emotet botnet is striking. That botnet grew strongly after several new attack waves, including a successful Thanksgiving-themed campaign. Because of this Emotet managed to acquire a spot in the top ten of most popular malware in a short time.

The Thanksgiving campaign was built around so-called tender spam e-mails, disguised as Thanksgiving cards with topics like “Thanksgiving Day Wishes” and “Thanksgiving Day congratulation.” The mails contain malicious attachments, again with file names in Thanksgiving theme. This allowed the botnet to spread further and computers were also infected with other malware. This strategy increased the global impact of the Emotet botnet according to Check Point by 25 percent.

IT security officer ESET also notes in its latest trend report that cases of cryptocurrency mining and cryptojacking will continue to increase in 2019. The company predicts that attackers will increasingly focus on smart devices and home assistants to expand cryptomining farms.

Update, 11.55 : The title of the article has been changed. Initially, one in three companies was infected in 2018, based on the Dutch-language press release, but it was probably a translation error in the press release because it is not in the English source article.