Kaspersky Labs, one of the leading cyber security firms in the world has recently concluded a study of malware attacks on bitcoin community and industry. Even though there has been continuous attacks on bitcoin companies, exchanges and organizations, the overall trend of malware attacks with the intention of gaining bitcoin illegally has changed drastically.
According to Kaspersky Labs’ cybersecurity threat report, the number of malware created with the intention of hijacking the processing power of infected computer for mining bitcoins has reduced drastically. It now accounts for only 9 percent of the total number of malicious bugs encountered by the financial sector.
While the company is still analyzing the data to find the underlying cause for changing trends, it has gone ahead and released a report with most recent data points. According to the report, the banking and financial sector faced the highest number of malware attacks so far in this year. There are speculations that the change in trends can be attributed to rapid developments in both the sectors, where banks and other financial institutions are working on developing blockchain dependent applications for their operations.
Bitcoin mining sector follows banking sector with about 9 percent of total bitcoin malware targeting it. This is followed by bitcoin wallet stealing software and good old keyloggers in third and fourth places with 6 percent and 2 percent respectively.
A similar study conducted by Kaspersky Labs in 2013 had shown an exponential increase in the number on malware released during that time. According to the report, over 40 percent of computers connected to the network worldwide were targeted by malware.
In the recent days, Bitcoin businesses have also started giving more importance to the security and privacy on their platforms, making it tougher for malware developers to break into these security layers.