Avast estimates that ransomware continued to evolve in 2020, targeting healthcare facilities. The increase in the activity of such types of threats as stalker and adware is due to the fact that people who were forced to comply with the self-isolation regime more often used mobile devices. Lots of fake stores and coronavirus-related malware have emerged.

In March and April 2020, in the first months of the pandemic, the number of ransomware attacks increased by 20% compared to January and February. Although the number of phishing attacks increased in March (7.9% of which exploited the coronavirus theme), their impact on the total number of phishing cases was negligible: less than 2% of phishing attacks worldwide were associated with COVID-19 during the year.

Of all Android threats detected in 2020, adware was the dominant malware, accounting for nearly 50% of threats in the first quarter, over 27% in the second and 29% in the third.

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