McAfee Labs Threats Report: August 2019

Welcome to the McAfee Labs Threats Report, August 2019. In this edition, we highlight the significant investigative research and trends in threats statistics and observations in the evolving threat landscape gathered by the McAfee® Advanced Threat Research and McAfee® Labs teams in Q1 of 2019.

In the first quarter of 2019, ransomware attacks grew by 118%, new ransomware families were detected, and threat actors used innovative techniques. In January, the McAfee Advanced Threat Research team was the first to discover a new ransomware family, Anatova, designed to cipher all files before requesting payment from the victim. Anatova’s architecture is unusual in that it is modular, which could facilitate future development of ransomware.