{"id":358296,"date":"2025-08-20T21:43:20","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T16:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/?p=358296"},"modified":"2025-08-20T21:43:20","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T16:13:20","slug":"acronis-report-reveals-india-tops-global-malware-charts-as-ai-fuel-surge-in-ransomware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/acronis-report-reveals-india-tops-global-malware-charts-as-ai-fuel-surge-in-ransomware\/","title":{"rendered":"Acronis Report Reveals India Tops Global Malware Charts as AI Fuel Surge in Ransomware"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><em>Ransomware remains top threat to large and midsized businesses, most active groups are increasingly leveraging AI for low-effort, high-reward campaigns.<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>National,\u00a0<\/strong><strong>August 20, 2025 \u2013\u00a0<\/strong>Acronis, a global leader in\u00a0cybersecurity\u00a0and\u00a0data protection,\u00a0today released the findings of the Acronis Cyberthreats Report H1 2025, detailing the most popular threat vectors, active threat groups, and targeted industries in the first half of 2025. Ransomware remains the major threat for large and medium-sized businesses, with new groups increasingly leveraging AI to automate their activities \u2013 phishing accounted for 25% of all attacks and 52% of attacks targeting MSPs, a 22% increase compared to H1 2024.\u00a0India emerged as the most targeted country worldwide, with 12.4% of monitored endpoints affected \u2014 highlighting the nation\u2019s growing vulnerability to sophisticated threats such as AI-powered phishing and impersonation attacks.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">The biannual report covers the global threat landscape as encountered by the Acronis Threat Research Unit (TRU) and Acronis sensors on Windows endpoints from January through June 2025. Based on signals from over 1,000,000 unique endpoints distributed around the world, the report also incorporates statistics focused on threats targeting Windows operating systems, given their prevalence as compared to macOS and Linux.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">\u201cWhile the endgame for cybercriminals is still ransomware, how they get there is changing,\u201d said\u00a0<strong>Gerald Beuchelt, CISO at Acronis<\/strong>. \u201cEven the least sophisticated attackers today have access to advanced AI capabilities, generating social engineering attacks and automating their activities with minimal effort. The result is that MSPs, manufacturers, ISPs, and others are constantly exposed to sophisticated attacks, including increasingly advanced deepfakes, and all it takes is one mistake to put the organizations\u2019 entire future at risk. To survive in this threat landscape and avoid damaging ransomware payloads, a holistic cyber protection strategy that incorporates advanced detection, response and recovery capabilities is essential.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>Key Findings of the\u00a0<\/strong><strong>Acronis Cyberthreats Report H1 2025 include:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>Ransomware is Still Top-Dog:<\/strong>The number of publicly known ransomware victims increased nearly 70% over the measured time period, as compared to both 2023 and 2024. Cl0p, Akira, and Qlin are the most active ransomware gangs.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>AI Powering Surge in Social Engineering:\u00a0<\/strong>Ransomware gangs are increasingly utilizing AI, and this is reflected in their chosen threat vectors &#8211; social engineering and BEC attacks increased from 20% to 25.6% in January 2025 through May 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, likely due to the growth in AI use for crafting convincing impersonations. Malware was discovered in 1.47% of Microsoft 365 email backups.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>MSPs Bombarded by Phishing and BEC Attacks:\u00a0<\/strong>While the overall number of attacks targeting MSPs fell over the measured time period, the nature of attacks changed significantly; phishing accounted for 52% of all attacks targeting MSPs as compared to 30% in 2024, while Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) attacks all but vanished.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>Not All Phishing Attacks are Created Equal:\u00a0<\/strong>While phishing is the weapon of choice for attackers, they are increasingly focusing on collaboration apps, eschewing simple BEC campaigns. Almost 25% of the attacks in collaboration apps leveraged AI-generated deepfakes or automated exploits.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>Manufacturers in the Crosshairs:\u00a0<\/strong>Manufacturing was ransomware gangs\u2019 most targeted industry, representing 15% of all recorded cases in Q1 2025. Retail, food and drink (12%) and telcos and media (10%) were also popular targets.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>Implications for Indian Industries<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">Collaboration applications, widely used across Indian enterprises, have become a growing attack vector. Phishing incidents on platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Slack surged from 9% to 30.5% in the first half of 2025. Meanwhile, advanced email threats \u2014 including payload-less and spoofed attacks \u2014 rose sharply from 9% to 24.5%, underscoring the urgent need for adaptive, AI-informed security systems.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">\u201cIndia\u2019s digital economy is expanding rapidly, but with that growth comes an expanded attack surface. As threat actors evolve, Indian enterprises \u2014 especially in manufacturing and infrastructure \u2014 must implement AI-aware cybersecurity frameworks to stay ahead,\u201d said\u00a0<strong>Rajesh Chhabra, General Manager, India &amp; South Asia at Acronis<\/strong>. \u201cGiven the sector\u2019s strategic importance under the Make in India initiative, ransomware attacks targeting manufacturing pose a significant risk to the country\u2019s economic growth and industrial resilience. These figures paint a sobering picture. AI is empowering cybercriminals to operate at scale and with higher precision. Enterprises must transition from reactive to behavior-based security models.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">Attackers are also increasingly compromising Managed Service Providers (MSPs) by exploiting Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tools. TeamViewer emerged as the most targeted, with 4.56% of global Acronis customers still using unpatched versions. India\u2019s expanding IT services sector must prioritize regular patching and vigilant monitoring of such platforms to reduce risk.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ransomware remains top threat to large and midsized businesses, most active groups are increasingly leveraging AI for low-effort, high-reward campaigns. National,\u00a0August 20, 2025 \u2013\u00a0Acronis, a global leader in\u00a0cybersecurity\u00a0and\u00a0data protection,\u00a0today released the findings of the Acronis Cyberthreats Report H1 2025, detailing the most popular threat vectors, active threat groups, and targeted industries in the first half [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14083],"tags":[37510],"class_list":{"0":"post-358296","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-technology-industry-news","7":"tag-acronis-report-reveals-india-tops-global-malware-charts-as-ai-fuel-surge-in-ransomware"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}