Cybersecurity company McAfee has released a new report that examines the growth and trends of new malware, ransomware, and threats in Q1 2018.

In its research, the company identified five new threat samples every second on an average. This includes growth in cryptojacking and other cryptocurrency mining malware, and notable campaigns demonstrating a deliberate drive to technically improve upon the most sophisticated established attacks of 2017.

McAfee said that cryptocurrency mining and cryptojacking offer cybercriminals lower risk, higher efficacy, and ease of monetization of efforts, thereby adding passive exploitation to the portfolio of ransomware extortion, data breach theft, and fraud.

The key takeaways of the McAfee Labs Threats Report: June 2018 report includes:

• Coin miner malware grew at 629% in Q1 2018, rocketing from around 400,000 total known samples in Q4 2017 to over 2.9 million the next quarter
• Lazarus cryptocurrency campaigns (highly sophisticated Bitcoin-stealing phishing campaign “HaoBao”) targeted global financial organizations and Bitcoin users
• Gold Dragon targeted Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea to steal data using fileless techniques
• GhostSecret campaigns target health care, finance, entertainment, and telecommunications. It is by its ability to evade detection and throw forensic investigators off its trail.
• Gandcrab ransomware infected around 50,000 systems in first three weeks of Q1
• Total new LNK malware grew 59% as enhanced PowerShell techniques proliferate

“There were new revelations this quarter concerning complex nation-state cyber-attack campaigns targeting users and enterprise systems worldwide,” said Raj Samani, chief scientist at McAfee. “Bad actors demonstrated a remarkable level of technical agility and innovation in tools and tactics. Criminals continued to adopt cryptocurrency mining to easily monetize their criminal activity.”