Further to reports of a massive cyber attack hitting a number of companies in Ukraine, including banks, energy companies and transport services as well as the government, we believe this is another example of the Petya-based ransomware, which was first…
One of the many reasons Avast acquired AVG last year was our mutual confidence that we’d be better together, with improved security quality, reliability, and performance. The combination of Avast’s CyberCapture and our artificial&nb…
Selecting the right security solution to protect your devices isn’t always an easy decision to make – whether you’re a consumer or a larger organization. Luckily, there are many independent testing laboratories who do their job at testing security products well, so end customers have a way to compare and select a solution that suits their needs best. It’s not often we see a new kid (tester) on the block.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the hottest new trend that’s been around for years. While that may sound like an oxymoron, there’s a reason the buzz around AI and its subset, machine learning, hasn’t quieted down and is likely to continue for a long time. It’s uniquely critical in our fight against the ever-growing number and variety of cyberthreats and vital to our ability to scan for and remove malware.
A little less than a year ago, we started providing free decryption tools for victims of ransomware attacks. Today we’re pleased to announce that we’ve just released our 20th free ransomware decryption tool: a free decryption tool for the En…
I rediscovered gaming a few years ago and am now totally immersed in the worlds of Witcher 3, GTA V, and, among the latest PC games, Resident Evil 7. These games are gripping, but they also have a few things in common:
I’ve been in the business of defeating malware for more than 25 years. Having started as a part-time developer at Avast, which was called ALWIL at the time, I found myself hooked by the cat-and-mouse game of white hat against black hat, and I still am today, as Avast’s Chief Technology Officer.
Avast is now detecting mobile ransomware, which we will refer to as “WannaLocker” from now on. The ransomware is targeting Chinese Android users. WannaLocker’s ransom message screen may look familiar to you and that’s because it looks just like the WannaCry ransomware screen, the ransomware that spread like wildfire around the world mid-May. Another interesting aspect is that WannaLocker encrypts files on the infected device’s external storage, something we haven’t seen since Simplocker in 2014.
WannaCry (AKA WanaCrypt0r, WCry, Wannageddon or another day of cyberinfamy), which marries ransomware with worm-type spread targeted at Microsoft Windows operating systems, is the “the worst ransomware outbreak in history.” But according to Jakub Křoustek, a lead on Avast’s Threat Intelligence team, it could easily have been avoided through proper patch management. The attack, which began on May 12, has cost victims as much as $4 billion.
While the WannaCry ransomware outbreak wreaked havoc on computers around the globe, Avast’s Threat Intelligence team worked around the clock to protect our users. In fact, our team had been tracking an early version of WannaCry since February, well before the first widely detected strain that debuted on Friday, May 12, at which point we detected more than 10,000 infections per hour as it began to spread worldwide.