COVID-19 themed cyber-attacks increased by 114% in Q4 2020 compared to Q3, according to data from the
McAfee Threats Report: April 2021. This followed rises of 605% and 240% in Q2 and Q3 2020 respectively, demonstrating that threat actors have continued to leverage the pandemic to target organizations and individuals.
The study, which looked at the evolving threat landscape in the final quarter of 2020, found there was a 10% overall rise in malware detections in Q4 compared to Q3, reaching an average of 648 threats per minute.
There was a particularly large surge in Powershell threats in Q4 compared to Q3, up by 208%, which McAfee said was largely driven by Donoff malware. Additionally, mobile malware grew by 118% quarter-on-quarter, partly due to a growth in SMS Reg samples. The HiddenAds, Clicker, MoqHao, HiddenApp, Dropper and FakeApp strains were the most commonly detected mobile malware families.