Welcome to the September edition of the Symantec Intelligence report. Symantec Intelligence aims to provide the latest analysis of cyber security threats, trends, and insights concerning malware, spam, and other potentially harmful business risks.
The Finance, Insurance, & Real Estate sector was the most targeted sector during September, comprising 27 percent of all targeted attacks. Large enterprises were the target of 45.7 percent of spear-phishing attacks in September, up from 11.7 percent in August.
Agriculture, Forestry, & Fishing was the most targeted sector in September for both phishing attempts and emails containing malware. One in every 307.9 emails contained malware and one in every 988 emails was a phishing attempt. The mining sector, which includes oil and gas extraction, had the highest spam rate at 55.8 percent.
There were ten zero-day vulnerabilities disclosed in September, down slightly from August. This includes three targeting Microsoft software and two vulnerabilities targeting security software from two vendors.
Crypto-ransomware was up during September, setting another high for 2015. However, this device-locking type of ransomware is still down from the peak we saw last year in October.
There were 38.5 million new pieces of malware created in September, down from the high for 2015 of 57.6 million seen in June, but still higher than the numbers seen in the first few months of 2015.
OSX.Sudoprint was again the most commonly seen OS X threat on OS X endpoints in September. This threat continues to take advantage of a vulnerability targeting the OS X operating system, discovered in July and patched in August.
We hope you enjoy the August Symantec Intelligence Report. You can download your copy here.