On April 3, McAfee became an independent entity, no longer wholly owned by Intel. The spin-off, a culmination of months of effort to prepare critical functions and transition employees to the new entity, is now known as McAfee LLC.

Welcome to the McAfee Labs Threats Report. In this edition, we highlight the statistics gathered by McAfee Labs in Q3 of 2017.

With McAfee’s spin-off from Intel completed, our focus has turned to growing the business. Our commitment to the strategy articulated more than two years ago remains unchanged.

Last fall, cybersecurity crossed into political territory in a major way. In the United States, there were attacks on entities associated with both major political parties, apparently in an attempt to influence the U.S. presidential election.

In late August, Intel security researchers joined with global law enforcement agencies to take down the WildFire ransomware botnet. In addition to assisting with the takedown, Intel Security developed a free tool that decrypts files encrypted by WildFire.

While many were away, we’ve been busy.Chris Young, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Intel Security, was appointed by the White House to serve on the US Department of Homeland Security’s National Security and Telecommunications Committee

During Intel Security’s RSA keynote on March 1, Chris Young discussed an important cybersecurity challenge: the dearth of truly effective models and alliances for sharing threat intelligence

The full force of winter is upon us—at least those of us in the Northern Hemisphere—and it is clear that the bad guys have been keeping themselves very busy while stuck indoors.