Microsoft: Cerber Ransomware infections are dominating!

According to statistics published by Microsoft yesterday, Cerber ransomware is responsible for a quarter of all ransomware detections for the past 30 days.

The data comes exclusively from Microsoft security products, such as Windows Defender. While some other security companies provide different statistics, most of them have blogged about Cerber ransomware campaigns in the past month, as this threat family has been particularly active in the past month, more than ever before.

While Cerber was responsible for 25.97 percent of all ransomware detections, Exxroute (another name for CryptXXX) took the silver medal with 15.39 percent of all detections, followed by the infamous Locky with 12.80 percent.

Locky's presence in the top three most detectable ransomware is somewhat strange, considering that Locky's distribution was halted for quite some time and at the same time as the Necurs botnet , which was down for three weeks.

With the Necurs botnet down, malware distribution plummeted in June. Enigma Software reported that June 2016 had the lowest number of total malware infections of any month since April 2013.

Despite the decline in overall malware numbers, the company also reports that ransomware figures were unaffected with the number of monthly ransomware infections jumping 7.92 percent in 2015.

With Microsoft's July 2016 release, the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) now comes with specific support for detecting Cerber ransomware.