Threat of Mobile Malware Continues to Grow as 'HummingBad' Attacks Move Up Check Point Research Rankings

NICE, FRANCE and SAN CARLOS, CA--(Marketwired - Apr 19, 2016) -  At the company's annual customer event, the Check Point Customer Experience (CPX), Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: CHKP) today announced the most prevalent malware families being used to attack organizations' networks and mobile devices globally in March 2016.

Following its entry into the top ten for the time in February 2016, mobile agent HummingBad was the sixth most common type of malware attack worldwide in March. It has also entered the top ten index for the entire first quarter of 2016, despite it only being discovered by Check Point researchers in February, indicating that attacks against Android mobile devices using this previously unknown malware family are growing rapidly.

Check Point identified 1,300 unique malware families during March, a slight decrease on the previous month. This highlights the fact that cyber criminals do not need to develop entirely new malware to launch damaging attacks; they simply need to make small changes to existing families to enable the updated variant to bypass traditional security measures. It also reinforces the need for advanced threat prevention measures on networks, endpoints and mobiles to stop malware at the pre-infection stage, such as Check Point's SandBlast and Mobile Threat Prevention solutions.

In March, Conficker was the most prominent family with 20% of the recognized attacks; Sality was responsible for 9.5%, and Cutwail for 4% of the recognized attacks. The top ten families were responsible for over half of all recognized attacks.

1. Conficker - Worm that allows remote operations and malware download. The infected machine is controlled by a botnet, which contacts its Command & Control server to receive instructions.
2. Sality - Virus that allows remote operations and downloads of additional malware to infected systems by its operator. Its main goal is to persist in a system and provide means for remote control and installing further malware.
3. Cutwail - Botnet mostly involved in sending spam e-mails, as well as some DDOS attacks. Once installed, the bots connect directly to the command and control server, and receive instructions about the emails they should send. After they are done with their task, the bots report back to the spammer exact statistics regarding their operation.