It’s a tough pill to swallow, but you can add malware alongside death and taxes on your list of inevitabilities. To make matters worse, just as you manage to secure your IT system against the common offenders from days past, a new generation of “bugs” seems to come along, presenting fresh threats to your security and functionality. Here are a few of the malware issues that have already raised their ugly heads in the first half of 2019.

Cryptoloot: We’ve discussed the hassles caused by crypto mining malware before, and this competitor to another common program called Coin Hive is becoming more prevalent. It’s a JavaScript Trojan than can hijack most of the popular Web browsers -- skimming cycles off of your computing power to serve the cryptominers.

Yatron: Yatron is the latest big ransomware threat to watch out for. It’s not too different from other ransomware-as-a-service programs; it encrypts your data and demands that you pay a hefty sum if you ever want to see that data again. Yatron automatically deletes the captured data after 72 hours if the ransom isn’t paid.

Glupteba: Glupteba is a Trojan that often gets fed into computer systems via other malware packages or delivery systems. Once the users open what they think is legitimate software, their addresses are directed to bogus domains, allowing user data to be stolen through the users’ addresses/ports.

Kuik: This bug is classified as adware, but it’s much worse than that. It pretends to be a copy of Adobe Flash Player. Once installed, it adds its own DNS, which links to Kuik’s hosting domain -- opening the gateway to a host of other malware operations.

This is scary stuff -- so what do you do? Toughen up your password usage, refresh your employees on safe computing practices, and contact our Austin IT business services team at Gravity Systems so we can make sure you’ve got the necessary safeguards in place!

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