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“Use of cryptocurrency miners is on the rise in the world of cybercrime,” Trend Micro Vice President of Cloud Security Mark Nunnikhoven told SC Media. “We haven't yet seen them coupled with ransomware, but that combination is one that's likely to surface.”

In most of the newly observed attacks, Locky has been distributed alongside another ransomware family calked FakeGlobe, also known as Globe Imposter, Trend Micro says.

According to Trend Micro Inc., FakeGlobe is a form of ransomware that encrypts different files to that of Locky, meaning that potentially victims could be forced to pay up for both infections.

BEC attacks generated $5.3 billion in global losses between 2013 and 2017, Trend Micro researchers reported earlier this year.

Uncovered by cyber security researchers at Trend Micro, the nature of the campaign means it's possible for victims infected by one form of ransomware to still be vulnerable to a further attack from the next one in the rotation.

These consumers could be at greater risk of identity theft because “the more data an attacker has, the harder it is to stop them,” said Mark Nunnikhoven, a vice president with Internet security company Trend Micro.

“There’s no simple fix,” says Mark Nunnikhoven, vice president of cloud-computing research at Trend Micro. “This kind of internal network was never meant to be connected the way it is now.”

A recently malware attack has been leveraging the Hangul Word Processor (HWP) word processing application and its ability to run PostScript code, Trend Micro reveals.

"Government regulation is the only way this is going to happen," William Malik, vice president of infrastructure strategies at Trend Micro said on the panel. "Automobiles didn't get safer until the government regulated them."

The first half of the year saw a continued surge in ransomware, Business Email Compromise (BEC) and other threats, with Trend Micro blocking over 38 billion during the period, it claimed in a new report.