IT threat evolution in Q2 2026. Non-mobile statistics
IT threat evolution in Q2 2026. Mobile statistics

The statistics in this report are based on detection verdicts returned by Kaspersky products unless otherwise stated. The information was provided by Kaspersky users who consented to sharing statistical data.

Quarterly figures

In Q2 2026:

• Kaspersky products blocked nearly 400 million attacks that originated with various online resources.
• Web Anti-Virus responded to 52 million unique links.
• File Anti-Virus blocked more than 16 million malicious and potentially unwanted objects.
• There were 2538 new ransomware variants discovered.
• More than 71,000 users experienced ransomware attacks.
• 15% of all ransomware victims whose data was published on threat actors’ data leak sites (DLS) were attacked by Qilin.
• More than 213,000 users were targeted by miners.

Ransomware

Quarterly trends and highlights

Threat actor disruption

Microsoft has dismantled an illicit malware-signing service used by ransomware operators. Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit has shut down a malware-signing-as-a-service (MSaaS) operation run by the threat group Fox Tempest. The illicit service abused the Microsoft Artifact Signing platform to generate digital signature certificates for malicious software. Malware signed by these certificates was observed in campaigns conducted by such ransomware groups as Rhysida, Akira, INC, Qilin, and BlackByte. The service was also leveraged by operators of the Oyster loader as well as the Lumma and Vidar infostealers. To disrupt the operation, Microsoft seized the domain used by the MSaaS platform, revoked all associated certificates, and disabled the related accounts. Additionally, the company filed a lawsuit against Fox Tempest.

Vulnerabilities and attacks

CISA has confirmed that a Windows vulnerability known as BlueHammer is actively being exploited in ransomware attacks. On April 22, the agency updated its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog to note the ongoing ransomware exploitation of CVE-2026-33825. The local privilege escalation flaw in Microsoft Defender was originally disclosed earlier in April. Although Microsoft released a fix on April 14, unpatched systems remain vulnerable. CISA did not disclose further details or attribute the attacks to specific threat groups.

Check Point has linked zero-day exploitation of CVE-2026-50751 to the Qilin ransomware group. The critical vulnerability affects Check Point Remote Access VPN and Mobile Access. Attackers began exploiting the flaw as a zero-day on May 7, with activity spiking sharply in early June. While several dozen organizations have been targeted, at least one incident has been definitively tied to Qilin. Check Point also disclosed a related certificate validation flaw (CVE-2026-50752) that affects site-to-site VPN connections relying on the legacy IKEv1 key exchange protocol.

Researchers assess with high confidence that the PayoutsKing group is leveraging the legitimate QEMU emulator to deploy hidden, Alpine Linux-based virtual machines on compromised hosts. Because security solutions often lack visibility inside virtualized environments, the threat actors use this technique to evade detection. Inside the VM image, the operators deploy various tools — such as credential theft software — and configure the virtual machine as a backdoor managed via a reverse SSH tunnel to their command-and-control infrastructure. While the technique is not new, and we’ve detailed it before, it remains relatively rare in ransomware attacks.

The most prolific groups

This section highlights the most prolific ransomware gangs by number of victims added to each group’s DLS. Qilin reclaimed the top spot (accounting for 14.57% of total listings) after placing second last quarter. It is followed by the Akira ransomware (7.80%) and the DragonForce RaaS group (6.88%).

Number of each group’s victims according to its DLS as a percentage of all groups’ victims published on all the DLSs under review during the reporting period (download)

Number of new ransomware variants

In Q2, Kaspersky solutions detected four new ransomware families and 2538 new modifications. This signals a continued stabilization following spikes seen in Q1 and Q4 of last year.

Number of new ransomware modifications, Q2 2025 — Q2 2026 (download)

Number of users attacked by ransomware Trojans

Our solutions protected a total of 71,860 unique users from ransomware during Q2. Ransomware activity peaked in April, with 31,206 targeted users recorded during that month.

Number of unique users attacked by ransomware Trojans, Q2 2026 (download)

TOP 10 countries and territories attacked by ransomware Trojans

	Country/territory*	%**
1	South Korea	0.87
2	Pakistan	0.76
3	China	0.71
4	Libya	0.49
5	Tajikistan	0.46
6	Turkmenistan	0.38
7	Cameroon	0.38
8	Indonesia	0.36
9	Bangladesh	0.36
10	Mozambique	0.34

* Excluded are countries and territories with relatively few (under 50,000) Kaspersky users.
** Unique users whose computers were attacked by ransomware Trojans as a percentage of all unique users of Kaspersky products in the country/territory.

TOP 10 most common families of ransomware Trojans

	Name	Verdict	%*
1	(generic verdict)	Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Gen	28.02
2	WannaCry	Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Wanna	7.14
3	(generic verdict)	Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Crypren	6.27
4	(generic verdict)	Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Agent	4.89
5	(generic verdict)	Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Encoder	4.65
6	(generic verdict)	Trojan-Ransom.Python.Agent	3.07
7	(generic verdict)	Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Crypmod	2.70
8	(generic verdict)	Trojan-Ransom.MSIL.Agent	2.45
9	PolyRansom/VirLock	Virus.Win32.PolyRansom / Trojan-Ransom.Win32.PolyRansom	2.31
10	(generic verdict)	Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Phny	2.12

* Unique Kaspersky users attacked by the specific ransomware Trojan family as a percentage of all unique users attacked by this type of threat.

Miners

Number of new miner variants

In Q2 2026, Kaspersky solutions detected 6067 new miner variants, almost twice the number for the previous reporting period.

Number of new miner modifications, Q2 2026 (download)

Number of users attacked by miners

In Q2, we detected attacks using miner programs on the computers of 213,003 unique Kaspersky users worldwide.

Number of unique users attacked by miners, Q2 2026 (download)

TOP 10 countries and territories attacked by miners

	Country/territory*	%**
1	Mali	1.56
2	Senegal	1.54
3	Tanzania	1.32
4	Panama	1.04
5	Bangladesh	1.03
6	Ethiopia	0.87
7	Costa Rica	0.67
8	Bolivia	0.67
9	Côte d’Ivoire	0.65
10	Kazakhstan	0.62

* Excluded are countries and territories with relatively few (under 50,000) Kaspersky users.
** Unique users whose computers were attacked by miners as a percentage of all unique users of Kaspersky products in the country/territory.

Attacks on macOS

Quarterly highlights

In April, Aikido researchers reported a new attack by the GlassWorm stealer, which was distributed via malicious IDE extensions on the Open VSX Registry. The payload operated by installing a secondary malicious extension across all installed IDE environments on the host machine. Ultimately, this second-stage implant exfiltrated crypto wallet data, environment variables, and other secrets. It also installed a RAT on the infected device.

In May, Socket researchers uncovered a supply chain compromise involving the popular npm package art-template. As a result of the breach, the weaponized package injected the Coruna exploit kit into web applications it was used to build. Coruna targets iOS devices.

In June, Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 discovered FlutterShell, a new backdoor family that targets macOS devices. Developed with the Flutter framework, the malware leverages the WebView engine to load web pages that contain malicious JavaScript. On the client side, the backdoor registers bridge functions invoked by the loaded JavaScript that allow threat actors to execute arbitrary payloads on the victim’s device. Notably, the malicious applications successfully passed Apple notarization. Although the specific samples analyzed functioned primarily as adware, the underlying architecture permits the delivery of far more sophisticated malicious payloads.

TOP 20 threats to macOS

* Unique users who encountered this malware as a percentage of all attacked users of Kaspersky security solutions for macOS (download)

* Data for the previous quarter may differ slightly from previously published data due to some verdicts being retrospectively revised.

Detections of PasivRobber spyware continued their downward trend. Meanwhile, adware and traffic-routing utilities (categorized as NetTool) rose to the top of the rankings. Additionally, Q2 saw a noticeable spike in detections for the DirtyCow exploit frequently leveraged for iPhone jailbreaking.

TOP 10 countries and territories by share of attacked users

Country/territory	%* Q1 2026	%* Q2 2026
Brazil	1.13	1.13
China	1.04	1.28
Hong Kong	0.92	0.49
Singapore	0.85	0.19
France	0.62	1.18
Mexico	0.43	0.72
India	0.41	0.42
Thailand	0.40	0.24
Germany	0.33	0.71
The Netherlands	0.31	0.62

* Unique users who encountered threats to macOS as a percentage of all unique Kaspersky users in the country/territory.

IoT threat statistics

This section presents statistics on attacks targeting Kaspersky IoT honeypots. The geographic data on attack sources is based on the IP addresses of attacking devices.

In Q2 2026, the breakdown of attacking devices and sessions that targeted Kaspersky honeypots by protocol was as follows:

Distribution of attacked services by number of unique IP addresses of attacking devices (download)

The share of SSH attacks saw a slight uptick compared to the previous quarter.

Distribution of cybercriminal sessions in Kaspersky honeypots (download)

TOP 10 threats delivered to IoT devices

Share of each threat delivered to an infected device as a result of a successful attack, out of the total number of threats delivered (download)

As is typically the case, Mirai botnet variants continue to dominate the IoT threat landscape. Activity of another prominent botnet, Prometei, also saw an increase.

Attacks on IoT honeypots

the Netherlands, Germany, and The United States accounted for the highest proportions of SSH-based attacks during this period. While the top three countries remained the same as last quarter, their relative rankings shifted.

Country/territory	Q1 2026	Q2 2026
The Netherlands	17.57%	21.18%
Germany	10.34%	16.73%
United States	23.74%	6.76%
Bulgaria	1.10%	5.50%
Sweden	2.09%	4.93%
Panama	6.34%	4.67%
Luxembourg	0.16%	4.62%
Romania	5.82%	4.06%
Vietnam	3.50%	3.91%
India	6.05%	2.78%

The percentage of Telnet-based attacks originating from Pakistan continued to climb, knocking China down to second place.

Country/territory	Q1 2026	Q2 2026
Pakistan	27.31%	36.60%
China	39.54%	35.62%
Russian Federation	8.25%	8.75%
India	4.66%	4.19%
Brazil	3.30%	3.34%
United States	0.45%	3.03%
Indonesia	6.71%	1.52%
Philippines	0.36%	0.95%
France	0.17%	0.84%
Thailand	0.55%	0.66%

Attacks via web resources

The statistics in this section are based on detection verdicts by Web Anti-Virus, which protects users when suspicious objects are downloaded from malicious or infected web pages. These malicious pages are purposefully created by cybercriminals. Websites that host user-generated content, such as message boards, as well as compromised legitimate sites, can become infected.

TOP 10 countries and territories that served as sources of web-based attacks

The following statistics show the distribution by country/territory of the sources of internet attacks blocked by Kaspersky products on user computers (web pages redirecting to exploits, sites containing exploits and other malware, botnet C&C centers, and so on). One or more web-based attacks could originate from each unique host.

To determine the geographic source of web attacks, we matched the domain name with the real IP address where the domain is hosted, then identified the geographic location of that IP address (GeoIP).

In Q2 2026, Kaspersky solutions blocked 399,312,961 attacks launched from internet resources worldwide. Web Anti-Virus was triggered by 52,850,592 unique URLs.

Web-based attacks by country/territory, Q1 2026 (download)

Countries and territories where users faced the greatest risk of online infection

To assess the risk of malware infection via the internet for users’ computers in different countries and territories, we calculated the share of Kaspersky users in each location on whose computers Web Anti-Virus was triggered during the reporting period. The resulting data provides an indication of the aggressiveness of the environment in which computers operate in different countries and territories.

This ranked list includes only attacks by malicious objects classified as Malware. Our calculations leave out Web Anti-Virus detections of potentially dangerous or unwanted programs, such as RiskTool or adware.

	Country/territory*	%**
1	Bangladesh	11.71
2	India	7.40
3	Tajikistan	7.13
4	Venezuela	7.05
5	New Zealand	6.58
6	Vietnam	6.34
7	Taiwan	6.28
8	Belgium	6.24
9	France	5.97
10	Hungary	5.92
11	Nepal	5.91
12	Portugal	5.86
13	Italy	5.77
14	Costa Rica	5.72
15	Canada	5.65
16	Qatar	5.61
17	Dominican Republic	5.52
18	Palestine	5.48
19	Greece	5.47
20	UAE	5.43

* Excluded are countries and territories with relatively few (under 10,000) Kaspersky product users.
** Unique users targeted by web-based Malware attacks as a percentage of all unique users of Kaspersky products in the country/territory.

On average during the quarter, 4.54% of users’ computers worldwide were subjected to at least one Malware web attack.

Local threats

Statistics on local infections of user computers are an important indicator. They include objects that penetrated the target computer by infecting files or removable media, or initially made their way onto the computer in non-open form. Examples of the latter are programs in complex installers and encrypted files.

Data in this section is based on analyzing statistics produced by anti-virus scans of files on the hard drive at the moment they were created or accessed, and the results of scanning removable storage media. The statistics are based on detection verdicts from the On-Access Scan (OAS) and On-Demand Scan (ODS) modules of File Anti-Virus and include detections of malicious programs located on user computers or removable media connected to the computers, such as flash drives, camera memory cards, phones, or external hard drives.

In Q2 2026, our File Anti-Virus detected 16,986,351 malicious and potentially unwanted objects.

Countries and territories where users faced the highest risk of local infection

For each country and territory, we calculated the percentage of Kaspersky users whose computers had the File Anti-Virus triggered at least once during the reporting period. These statistics reflect the level of personal computer infection in different countries.

Note that this ranked list includes only attacks by malicious objects classified as Malware. Our calculations leave out File Anti-Virus detections of potentially dangerous or unwanted programs, such as RiskTool or adware.

	Country/territory*	%**
1	Turkmenistan	46.38
2	Cuba	29.70
3	Tajikistan	28.46
4	Afghanistan	28.19
5	Yemen	27.85
6	Burundi	26.82
7	Mozambique	25.01
8	Republic of the Congo	24.88
9	Syria	23.17
10	Uzbekistan	22.49
11	China	21.92
12	Nicaragua	21.60
13	Cameroon	21.47
14	Bangladesh	20.43
15	Democratic Republic of the Congo	20.25
16	Algeria	19.78
17	Uganda	19.48
18	Ethiopia	18.57
19	Tanzania	18.54
20	Mali	18.53

* Excluded are countries and territories with relatively few (under 10,000) Kaspersky users.
** Unique users on whose computers Malware local threats were blocked, as a percentage of all unique users of Kaspersky products in the country/territory.

On average worldwide, Malware local threats were detected at least once on 10.93% of users’ computers during Q2.

Russia scored 10.78% in these rankings.

Introduction

ExifTool is a widely adopted utility for reading and writing metadata in image, PDF, audio, and video files. It is available both as a standalone command-line application and as a library that can be embedded in other software. In this article, we break down CVE-2026-3102, an ExifTool vulnerability discovered by Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) in February 2026 and patched by the developers within the same month. Affecting macOS systems with ExifTool version 13.49 and earlier, this flaw could let an attacker run arbitrary commands by hiding instructions inside an image file’s metadata.

This investigation originated from revisiting an n-day vulnerability I first examined years ago: CVE-2021-22204. That flaw exploited weak regex-based sanitization before feeding user input into an eval sink. By auditing adjacent input validation routines across ExifTool codebase for similar oversights, I discovered CVE-2026-3102. Successful exploitation of CVE-2026-3102 enables an attacker to execute arbitrary shell commands with the privileges of the user invoking ExifTool, potentially leading to full system compromise.

Technical details

Disclaimer

Exploiting CVE-2026-3102 requires the -n (also known as -printConv) flag and outputs machine-readable data without additional processing.

Tracing the vulnerable sink

Taint analysis (aka tainted data analysis) allows for the detection of “dirty” data that reaches dangerous locations without validation. In this context, a “sink” is a point or function in a program where data or a parameter marked as “tainted” or originating from an untrusted source (e.g., user input) can affect the program’s behavior. In ExifTool, these functions are eval and system, both of which are capable of executing system commands. While CVE-2021-22204 exploited an eval function as a sink, this vulnerability (CVE-2026-3102) targets the system function. Knowing the vulnerable sink, we needed to trace how user-controlled data reaches it. Below, we break down the details.

Finding an unsanitized date value

The screenshot above shows where the system() sink resides within the SetMacOSTags function. Tracing backward from system(), we identified the $cmd variable as the source of the executed command. This variable is assembled from three inputs: $file (properly sanitized), $setTags (processed iteratively), and $val (user-controlled and, crucially, left unsanitized in the vulnerable branch).

In ExifTool, a tag is a named metadata field. When parsing an image, the utility extracts date and time values from standard EXIF records or macOS filesystem attributes. To handle file creation dates on macOS, ExifTool relies on the Spotlight system attribute MDItemFSCreationDate. Within the program code, this attribute maps to the internal alias $FileCreateDate. These two identifiers govern how the file creation date is stored and applied.

This creates a critical link to the vulnerability: when parsing an image, ExifTool iterates through the discovered tags. The current tag’s name is assigned to the $tag variable, while its text content (e.g., a date string) is assigned to $val. The vulnerable code path is triggered only when $tag matches MDItemFSCreationDate or $FileCreateDate. At this point, the tag’s content flows into $val and is passed to the SetMacOSTags function. As shown in the screenshot below, the filename parameter is properly escaped, but the date value ($val) is not. Because the date is extracted directly from file metadata, an attacker can inject quotes into this field. This breaks the command structure and allows the payload to execute via the system() sink.

The following screenshots show some of the tags that can be modified. With the vulnerable parameter identified, the next challenge was delivery: how to place our payload into FileCreateDate without triggering early validation? We found the answer in the official documentation.

Planning the payload delivery

Let’s refer to the documentation to understand how ExifTool handles tag operations and identify a legitimate feature that can be repurposed for exploitation. Specifically, we need to find a way to deliver our payload into the vulnerable FileCreateDate parameter. When looking for macOS-related tags as well as FileCreateDate, we can find the following information:

• To write or delete metadata, tag values are assigned using –TAG=[VALUE], and/or the -geotag, -csv= or -json=
• To copy or move metadata, the -tagsFromFile feature is used.

(You can find the useful info on tag operations above and how it relates under the hood in ExifTool in the dedicated section of the documentation and on the ExifTool description page.)

To trigger the vulnerability, we need to copy a string (date format: MM/DD/YYYY) using the -tagsFromFile feature, as this operation invokes the SetMacOSTags function where the unsanitized $val parameter reaches the system() sink.

Why copy instead of writing directly? Because the vulnerable code path (SetMacOSTags) is only triggered when metadata is copied into FileCreateDate — not when it is written directly. By using -tagsFromFile, we can prepare a “source” tag (e.g., DateTimeOriginal) that accepts arbitrary values and copy that value into FileCreateDate, thereby invoking the vulnerable function with our controlled input.

Furthermore, we want to introduce single quotes (since they are not being escaped in $val). For starters, we can look for date-time tag and copy via -tagsFromFile by searching the EXIF tag table. Direct assignment to FileCreateDate is heavily validated, so we looked for a source tag that accepts raw values and can be copied into the target field. The following snippet shows the beginning of said table.

When doing the analysis, I made use of DateTimeOriginal though I believe you can also use CreateDate which is 0x9004 (see the following screenshot). Initial attempts to inject malformed dates failed: ExifTool’s built-in filter rejected the input. To bypass this, we examined how the tool handles raw metadata.

Bypassing the filter

To confirm that the PrintConvInv filter rejects invalid dates when written directly, I ran the following command, where evil_benign.jpg is a normal JPG with an invalid date time format. We are greeted with the error message: Invalid date/time. This requires the time as well. The next screenshot confirms that direct exploitation fails: ExifTool’s date validation detects the malformed input and rejects the change, activating the internal PrintConvInv filter.

That said, it is possible to ignore the formatting and use the -n flag which accepts raw values instead of human-readable value.  The -n flag skips the PrintConvInv conversion step, which is exactly where input sanitization occurs. This confirmed we could park unsanitized data in a source tag. The final step was to trigger the vulnerable code path by copying that data into FileCreateDate. This means we should now be able to modify the DateTimeOriginal tag with the invalid date time format with an -n flag. Examining the EXIF metadata tag, we can confirm that we can store a raw value without a proper human readable format that ExifTool accepts:

Triggering the exploit

To inject commands, we have to revisit the single quote injection into this datetime related tag.

The following screenshot shows that we have successfully set the datetime metadata with the single quote. With the payload safely stored in a source tag, the next step was to copy it into FileCreateDate, triggering the vulnerable system() call.

The next step now is to copy the datetime tag to a file which invokes SetMacOSTags. According to the documentation, this is how we can copy the data from the SRC tag to the FileCreateDate tag as seen in the SetMacOSTags with the -tagsFromFile feature.

exiftool [_OPTIONS_] -tagsFromFile _SRCFILE_ [-[_DSTTAG_<]_SRCTAG_...] _FILE_...

Therefore, we can craft our final command:

cp evil_benign.jpg pwn.jpg;
../../exiftool -n -tagsFromFile evil_benign.jpg "-FileCreateDate<DateTimeOriginal" pwn.jpg

Here, we confirm that the payload has been executed! Note that when copying tags in MacOS (Darwin), the /usr/bin/setfile command is used. To view the full $cmd value before the injection, I have added the debugging statement to displaying the actual command that is executed within the system function.

Upon injection, we can see that our command gets executed via command substitution. The single quotes that we added helped to make the entire command syntactically valid. The following shows a more detailed labelling and their roles in making this command line injection successful:

Such an image can appear completely benign and easily find its way into a newsroom or any organization that processes photos on macOS using ExifTool. Once processed, an attacker could silently deploy a Trojan for covert data exfiltration, drop additional malware, or use the compromised machine as a foothold to expand the attack within the victim’s network.

Patch analysis

After verifying successful exploitation, we examined how the maintainer addressed the flaw in version 13.50. In the vulnerable version of ExifTool, commands were sanitized before being concatenated together. This means that it is possible to concatenate single quotes which led to the exploitation. However, by abstracting the system call into a dedicated wrapper and requiring a list of arguments instead of concatenated string, the fix removes the need for any manual escaping altogether.

1. Replacing string form to argument list form:

#### BEFORE
$cmd = "/usr/bin/setfile -d '${val}' '${f}'";
system $cmd;
  
#### AFTER
system('/usr/bin/setfile', '-d', $val, $file);

2. Create new System() wrapper. In version 13.49, the output is piped to /dev/null . To maintain that logic, the wrapper would temporarily redirect STDOUT/STDERR to /dev/null and restore them after the call.

# Call system command, redirecting all I/O to /dev/null
# Inputs: system arguments
# Returns: system return code
sub System
{
    open(my $oldout, ">&STDOUT");
    open(my $olderr, ">&STDERR");
    open(STDOUT, '>', '/dev/null');
    open(STDERR, '>', '/dev/null');
    my $result = system(@_);
    open(STDOUT, ">&", $oldout);
    open(STDERR, ">&", $olderr);
    return $result;
}

How to protect against ExifTool vulnerability

It’s critical to ensure that all photo processing workflows are using the updated version. You should verify that all asset management platforms, photo organization apps, and any bulk image processing scripts running on Macs are calling ExifTool version 13.50 or later, and don’t contain an embedded older copy of the ExifTool library.

ExifTool, like any software, may contain additional vulnerabilities of this class. To harden defenses, I recommend using Kaspersky Open Source Software Threats Data Feed for continuous monitoring of open-source components in your software supply chain, and Kaspersky for macOS as comprehensive endpoint protection. Additionally, isolate processing of untrusted files on dedicated machines or virtual environments with strictly limited network and storage access. If you work with freelancers, contractors, or allow BYOD, enforce a policy that only devices with an active macOS security solution can access your corporate network.

Conclusions

CVE-2026-3102 highlights the risks of inconsistent input sanitization in tools that bridge high-level metadata parsing with platform-specific utilities. While exploitation requires explicit flag usage (-n) and is restricted to macOS, the vulnerability underscores the danger of manual escaping routines in evolving codebases. The transition to list-form system execution provides a robust, architecture-level fix that eliminates shell interpretation risks entirely. This case reinforces a core security principle: replacing fragile string concatenation with secure, list-based API calls remains the most reliable mitigation against command injection.

IT threat evolution in Q1 2026. Non-mobile statistics
IT threat evolution in Q1 2026. Mobile statistics

The statistics in this report are based on detection verdicts returned by Kaspersky products unless otherwise stated. The information was provided by Kaspersky users who consented to sharing statistical data.

Quarterly figures

In Q1 2026:

• Kaspersky products blocked more than 343 million attacks that originated with various online resources.
• Web Anti-Virus responded to 50 million unique links.
• File Anti-Virus blocked nearly 15 million malicious and potentially unwanted objects.
• 2938 new ransomware variants were detected.
• More than 77,000 users experienced ransomware attacks.
• 14% of all ransomware victims whose data was published on threat actors’ data leak sites (DLS) were victims of Clop.
• More than 260,000 users were targeted by miners.

Ransomware

Quarterly trends and highlights

Law enforcement success

In January 2026, it was reported that the FBI had seized the domains of the RAMP cybercrime forum, a major platform used extensively by ransomware developers to advertise their RaaS programs and to recruit affiliates. There has been no official statement from the FBI, nor is it clear if RAMP servers were seized. In a post on an external website, a RAMP moderator mentioned law enforcement agencies gaining control over the forum. The takedown disrupted a key element of the RaaS ecosystem, creating ripple effects for ransomware operators, affiliates, and initial access brokers.

A man suspected of links to the Phobos group was apprehended in Poland. He was charged with the creation, acquisition, and distribution of software designed for unlawfully obtaining information, including data that facilitates unauthorized access to information stored within a computer system.

In March, a Phobos ransomware administrator pleaded guilty to the creation and distribution of the Trojan, which had been used in international attacks dating back to at least November 2020.

In March, the U.S. Department of Justice charged a man who had acted as a negotiator for ransomware groups. The company he worked for specializes in cyberincident investigations. The prosecution alleges the suspect colluded with the BlackCat threat actor to share privileged insights into the ongoing progress of negotiations. Additionally, the suspect is alleged to have had a prior direct role in BlackCat attacks, serving as an affiliate for the RaaS operation.

In a separate development this March, a U.S. court sentenced an initial access broker associated with the Yanluowang ransomware group to 81 months of imprisonment. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the convict facilitated dozens of ransomware attacks across the United States, resulting in over $9 million in actual loss and more than $24 million in intended loss.

Vulnerabilities and attacks

The Interlock group has been heavily exploiting the CVE-2026-20131 zero-day vulnerability in Cisco Secure FMC firewall management software since at least January 26, 2026. The vulnerability enabled arbitrary Java code execution with root privileges on the affected device. This campaign demonstrates the ongoing reliance on zero-day vulnerabilities for initial access, a focus on network appliances as high-value entry points, and the rapid weaponization of new vulnerabilities within the ransomware ecosystem.

The most prolific groups

This section highlights the most prolific ransomware gangs by number of victims added to each group’s DLS. This quarter, the Clop ransomware (14.42%) returned to the top of the rankings, displacing Qilin (12.34%), which had held the leading position in the previous reporting period. Following closely is a new threat actor, The Gentlemen (9.25%). Emerging no later than July 2025, the group had already surpassed the activity levels of mainstays such as Akira (7.25%) and INC Ransom (6.13%).

Number of each group’s victims according to its DLS as a percentage of all groups’ victims published on all the DLSs under review during the reporting period (download)

Number of new variants

In Q1 2026, Kaspersky solutions detected six new ransomware families and 2938 new modifications. Volumes have returned to Q3 2025 levels following a surge in Q4 2025.

Number of new ransomware modifications, Q1 2025 — Q1 2026 (download)

Number of users attacked by ransomware Trojans

Throughout Q1, our solutions protected 77,319 unique users from ransomware. Ransomware activity was highest in March, with 35,056 unique users encountering such attacks during the month.

Number of unique users attacked by ransomware Trojans, Q1 2026 (download)

Attack geography

TOP 10 countries and territories attacked by ransomware Trojans

	Country/territory*	%**
1	Pakistan	0.79
2	South Korea	0.64
3	China	0.52
4	Tajikistan	0.40
5	Libya	0.38
6	Turkmenistan	0.36
7	Iraq	0.35
8	Bangladesh	0.33
9	Rwanda	0.30
10	Cameroon	0.28

* Excluded are countries and territories with relatively few (under 50,000) Kaspersky users.
** Unique users whose computers were attacked by ransomware Trojans as a percentage of all unique users of Kaspersky products in the country/territory.

TOP 10 most common families of ransomware Trojans

	Name	Verdict	%*
1	(generic verdict)	Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Gen	33.90
2	(generic verdict)	Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Crypren	6.38
3	WannaCry	Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Wanna	5.87
4	(generic verdict)	Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Encoder	4.68
5	(generic verdict)	Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Agent	3.80
6	LockBit	Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Lockbit	2.80
7	(generic verdict)	Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Phny	1.99
8	(generic verdict)	Trojan-Ransom.MSIL.Agent	1.96
9	(generic verdict)	Trojan-Ransom.Python.Agent	1.93
10	(generic verdict)	Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Crypmod	1.89

* Unique Kaspersky users attacked by the specific ransomware Trojan family as a percentage of all unique users attacked by this type of threat.

Miners

Number of new variants

In Q1 2026, Kaspersky solutions detected 3485 new modifications of miners.

Number of new miner modifications, Q1 2026 (download)

Number of users attacked by miners

In Q1, we detected attacks using miner programs on the computers of 260,588 unique Kaspersky users worldwide.

Number of unique users attacked by miners, Q1 2026 (download)

Attack geography

TOP 10 countries and territories attacked by miners

	Country/territory*	%**
1	Senegal	3.19
2	Turkmenistan	3.06
3	Mali	2.63
4	Tanzania	1.62
5	Bangladesh	1.06
6	Ethiopia	0.95
7	Panama	0.88
8	Afghanistan	0.79
9	Kazakhstan	0.77
10	Bolivia	0.75

* Excluded are countries and territories with relatively few (under 50,000) Kaspersky users.
** Unique users whose computers were attacked by miners as a percentage of all unique users of Kaspersky products in the country/territory.

Attacks on macOS

In Q1 2026, Google uncovered a new cryptocurrency theft campaign. The scammers directed victims to a fraudulent video call, prompting them to execute malicious scripts under the guise of technical support fixes for connection problems.

In March, researchers with GTIG and iVerify reported the discovery of an in-the-wild exploit chain targeting both iOS and macOS devices. The exploit kit was apparently marketed on the dark web, providing threat actors with a suite of spyware capabilities alongside specialized cryptocurrency exfiltration modules. The exploit was delivered via drive-by downloads when victims visited various compromised websites. Our analysis confirmed that the toolkit included an updated version of a component previously identified in the Operation Triangulation attack chain.

Devices running macOS were similarly impacted by the high-profile supply chain attack targeting the Axios npm package, a widely used HTTP client for JavaScript. The installation of the infected package led to the deployment of a backdoor on macOS devices.

TOP 20 threats to macOS

Unique users* who encountered this malware as a percentage of all attacked users of Kaspersky security solutions for macOS (download)

* Data for the previous quarter may differ slightly from previously published data due to some verdicts being retrospectively revised.

The share of PasivRobber spyware attacks is beginning to decline, giving way to more traditional adware and Monitor-class software capable of tracking user activity. The popular Amos stealer also maintains its presence within the TOP 20.

Geography of threats to macOS

TOP 10 countries and territories by share of attacked users

Country/territory	%* Q4 2025	%* Q1 2026
China	1.28	1.97
France	1.18	1.07
Brazil	1.13	0.98
Mexico	0.72	0.52
Germany	0.71	0.45
The Netherlands	0.62	0.75
Hong Kong	0.49	0.53
India	0.42	0.48
Russian Federation	0.34	0.37
Thailand	0.24	0.27

* Unique users who encountered threats to macOS as a percentage of all unique Kaspersky users in the country/territory.

IoT threat statistics

This section presents statistics on attacks targeting Kaspersky IoT honeypots. The geographic data on attack sources is based on the IP addresses of attacking devices.

In Q1 2026, the share of devices attacking Kaspersky honeypots via the SSH protocol saw a significant increase compared to the previous reporting period.

Distribution of attacked services by number of unique IP addresses of attacking devices (download)

The distribution of attacks between Telnet and SSH maintained the ratio observed in Q4 2025.

Distribution of attackers’ sessions in Kaspersky honeypots (download)

TOP 10 threats delivered to IoT devices

Share of each threat delivered to an infected device as a result of a successful attack, out of the total number of threats delivered (download)

The primary shifts in the IoT threat distribution are linked to the activity of various Mirai botnet variants, although members of this family continue to account for the majority of the list. Furthermore, a new variant, Mirai.kl, surfaced in the rankings. We also observed a significant decline in NyaDrop botnet activity during Q1.

Attacks on IoT honeypots

The United States, the Netherlands, and Germany accounted for the highest proportions of SSH-based attacks during this period.

Country/territory	Q4 2025	Q1 2026
United States	16.10%	23.74%
The Netherlands	15.78%	17.57%
Germany	12.07%	10.34%
Panama	7.72%	6.34%
India	5.32%	6.05%
Romania	4.05%	5.82%
Australia	1.62%	4.61%
Vietnam	4.21%	3.50%
Russian Federation	3.79%	2.35%
Sweden	2.25%	2.09%

China continues to account for the largest proportion of Telnet attacks, though there was a marked increase in activity originating from Pakistan.

Country/territory	Q4 2025	Q1 2026
China	53.64%	39.54%
Pakistan	14.27%	27.31%
Russian Federation	8.20%	8.25%
Indonesia	8.58%	6.71%
India	4.85%	4.66%
Brazil	0.06%	3.30%
Argentina	0.02%	2.51%
Nigeria	1.22%	1.38%
Thailand	0.01%	0.55%
Sweden	0.54%	0.55%

Attacks via web resources

The statistics in this section are based on detection verdicts by Web Anti-Virus, which protects users when suspicious objects are downloaded from malicious or infected web pages. These malicious pages are purposefully created by cybercriminals. Websites that host user-generated content, such as message boards, as well as compromised legitimate sites, can become infected.

TOP 10 countries and territories that served as sources of web-based attacks

The following statistics show the distribution by country/territory of the sources of internet attacks blocked by Kaspersky products on user computers (web pages redirecting to exploits, sites containing exploits and other malicious programs, botnet C&C centers, and so on). One or more web-based attacks could originate from each unique host.

To determine the geographic source of web attacks, we matched the domain name with the real IP address where the domain is hosted, then identified the geographic location of that IP address (GeoIP).

In Q1 2026, Kaspersky solutions blocked 343,823,407 attacks launched from internet resources worldwide. Web Anti-Virus was triggered by 49,983,611 unique URLs.

Web-based attacks by country/territory, Q1 2026 (download)

Countries and territories where users faced the greatest risk of online infection

To assess the risk of malware infection via the internet for users’ computers in different countries and territories, we calculated the share of Kaspersky users in each location on whose computers Web Anti-Virus was triggered during the reporting period. The resulting data provides an indication of the aggressiveness of the environment in which computers operate in different countries and territories.

This ranked list includes only attacks by malicious objects classified as Malware. Our calculations leave out Web Anti-Virus detections of potentially dangerous or unwanted programs, such as RiskTool or adware.

	Country/territory*	%**
1	Venezuela	9.33
2	Hungary	8.16
3	Italy	7.58
4	Tajikistan	7.48
5	India	7.21
6	Greece	7.13
7	Portugal	7.10
8	France	7.05
9	Belgium	6.83
10	Slovakia	6.80
11	Vietnam	6.62
12	Bosnia and Herzegovina	6.57
13	Canada	6.56
14	Serbia	6.50
15	Tunisia	6.36
16	Qatar	6.01
17	Spain	5.95
18	Germany	5.95
19	Sri Lanka	5.89
20	Brazil	5.88

* Excluded are countries and territories with relatively few (under 10,000) Kaspersky users.
** Unique users targeted by web-based Malware attacks as a percentage of all unique users of Kaspersky products in the country/territory.

On average during the quarter, 4.73% of users’ computers worldwide were subjected to at least one Malware web attack.

Local threats

Statistics on local infections of user computers are an important indicator. They include objects that penetrated the target computer by infecting files or removable media, or initially made their way onto the computer in non-open form. Examples of the latter are programs in complex installers and encrypted files.

Data in this section is based on analyzing statistics produced by anti-virus scans of files on the hard drive at the moment they were created or accessed, and the results of scanning removable storage media. The statistics are based on detection verdicts from the On-Access Scan (OAS) and On-Demand Scan (ODS) modules of File Anti-Virus and include detections of malicious programs located on user computers or removable media connected to the computers, such as flash drives, camera memory cards, phones, or external hard drives.

In Q1 2026, our File Anti-Virus detected 15,831,319 malicious and potentially unwanted objects.

Countries and territories where users faced the highest risk of local infection

For each country and territory, we calculated the percentage of Kaspersky users whose computers had the File Anti-Virus triggered at least once during the reporting period. This statistic reflects the level of personal computer infection in different countries and territories around the world.

Note that this ranked list includes only attacks by malicious objects classified as Malware. Our calculations leave out File Anti-Virus detections of potentially dangerous or unwanted programs, such as RiskTool or adware.

	Country/territory*	%**
1	Turkmenistan	47.96
2	Tajikistan	31.48
3	Cuba	31.03
4	Yemen	29.59
5	Afghanistan	28.47
6	Burundi	26.93
7	Uzbekistan	24.81
8	Syria	23.08
9	Nicaragua	21.97
10	Cameroon	21.60
11	China	21.09
12	Mozambique	21.02
13	Algeria	20.64
14	Democratic Republic of the Congo	20.63
15	Bangladesh	20.44
16	Mali	20.35
17	Republic of the Congo	20.23
18	Madagascar	20.00
19	Belarus	19.78
20	Tanzania	19.52

* Excluded are countries and territories with relatively few (under 10,000) Kaspersky users.
** Unique users on whose computers local Malware threats were blocked, as a percentage of all unique users of Kaspersky products in the country/territory.

On average worldwide, Malware local threats were detected at least once on 11.55% of users’ computers during Q1.

Russia scored 11.92% in these rankings.