Geographical Region With the Most Ransomware Encounters in 2017 Was Asia

[tarekma7]

In the land of IT security, there is no better source for malware statistics than Microsoft, the company that has an antivirus engine running on almost all recent Windows operating systems.

Every six months, Microsoft releases the Security Intelligence Report (SIR), a comprehensive dossier full of juicy insights regarding malware and cybercrime operations.

Released today, the Microsoft SIR 23 report contains a section dedicated to ransomware —2017's most lucrative cybercrime operation.

Asia most hit by ransomware:

According to Microsoft, based on analytics the company recorded between February and December 2017, Asia was the geographical region that recorded the greatest number of ransomware encounters last year.

Myanmar and Bangladesh were the two most hit countries, accounting for 0.48% and 0.36% of all encounter rates, while third place went to Venezuela, with 0.33%.

Locations with the lowest ransomware encounter rates included Japan, Finland, and the US, all of which had an average monthly ransomware encounter rate of 0.03%.

Android screenlocker was 2017's most active ransomware:

But even if 2017 will be remembered as the year of the three ransomware outbreaks —WannaCry, NotPetya, and Bad Rabbit— according to Microsoft, the year's most encountered ransomware family was a relatively unknown strain named LockScreen.

This isn't an encryption-based ransomware, but a mere screenlocker that displays your typical "you've been watching porn" message and asks you to send an SMS to a premium phone number to receive an unlock code for your computer's screen.

According to Microsoft, LockScreen was first seen infecting Android devices, then it slowly started infecting Windows systems.

"This can happen if, for example, Android users sync their phones or download Android applications in Windows and do side loading of the applications that are not sanctioned (for example, not sourced from the official Google Play store)," Microsoft said. "The Southeast Asia region tends to have a higher adoption rate of Android, which would explain the greater number of encounters in that region."

Besides LockScreen, the rest of the top five belonged to WannaCry, Cerber, a generic Enestedel detection, and the now-defunct Spora family.

SOURCE