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Ransomware Variants Nears 100% Growth in 1H 2022, FortiGuard Labs Says — Fortinet released its semiannual FortiGuard Labs Global Threat Landscape Report, highlighting that ransomware remains a top threat to organizations. 

Ransomware threats continue to evolve with more variants enabled by ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS). FortiGuard Labs recorded 10,666 ransomware variants in the past six months, which was nearly double the amount of variants seen in the previous sixth-month period.

RaaS “continues to fuel an industry of criminals forcing organizations to consider ransomware settlements,” the report states. As threats continue to evolve, there is evidence that the spread of wiper malware as part of adversary toolkits is increasing. Wiper malware trends are more destructive and sophisticated attacks that destroy data by wiping it clean. 

FortiGuard Labs discovered at least seven new wiper variants in the first half of 2022. The increase of wiper malware has ties to the war in Ukraine, and variants were used in “various campaigns against government, military, and private organizations” in 24 other countries besides Ukraine. 

This number is significant because it closely resembles the total number of wiper variants publicly detected within the last decade, the report added. 

“[Cyber adversaries] are using aggressive execution strategies such as extortion or wiping data and systems as well as focusing on reconnaissance tactics pre-attack to ensure better return on threat investment,” Derek Manky, chief security strategist and VP of global threat intelligence at FortiGuard Labs, said. “To combat advanced and sophisticated attacks, organizations need integrated security solutions that can ingest real-time threat intelligence, detect threat patterns, and correlate massive amounts of data to detect anomalies and automatically initiate a coordinated response across hybrid networks.”

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