Call it a marketing gimmick or factual stats; Microsoft has revealed that Ransomware attacks on Windows Computers have declined in the past months of the previous year. According to the new report from Microsoft Malware Protection Center, the malicious software volume has come down on a drastic note.
After surging to 385,000 in August 2017, ransomware encounters dropped to almost 50 percent in September this year. But these stats don’t say that the menace has ended on a permanent note.
The sophistication which is being used, the change in attack vectors and the release on new ransomware variants suggest that the malware menace is not going to end anytime soon.
From the year 2016, Microsoft has started to monitor ransomware on a quarterly basis. It has identified more than 500 million emails sent by spam campaigns and said that half of them contained the dreaded malware.
As per the report compiled by Malware Protection Center of Microsoft, over 13.4 million computers were infected by ransomware in 2016. Also, 4.5 million PCs got open to the elements of Meadgive and Neutrino Exploit Kits, whose primary payload is ransomware.
Microsoft has also made it official that users who are using Windows 10 Operating system are less prone to malware than the ones who are using other OSes like Chrome and iOS. The software giant has also warned that all those individuals or groups who are using the extinct Windows XP OS are extremely prone to ransomware.
So, all you PC users out there who are still using Windows 7 or other operating system is driven computing devices, it’s better to switch to the new Win 10 as soon as possible. Otherwise, you can become the next victim of ransomware which is spreading like an epidemic on an alarming rate.
