Viruses and worms attacking business tripled in second half of 2015

The number of viruses and worms targeting businesses and computer users more than tripled between the third and fourth quarters of 2015, according to a report.

Research by Solutionary’s Security Engineering Research Team showed that the number of the attacks increased by 236 per cent over the period, a statistic it said “often indicates successfully compromised enterprise networks”.

Meanwhile, reconnaissance activity fell by 88 per cent between the second and fourth quarters. The report showed that 130 Android vulnerabilities were discovered in 2015 – more than the number of flaws that were reported in the previous six years combined.

With more than three quarters of Android devices running old versions of Google’s operating system, this could be of concern to users and businesses with BYOD policies.

Elsewhere, the amount of malware from the US, China, France, Italy and the UK increased by 25 per cent in the fourth quarter, accounting for nearly 95 per cent of the malware detected.

Web application attacks were the top type of attack, representing 41 per cent of all attacks during the fourth quarter of 2015.