Malware attacks continued to accelerate in the first half of 2018, including a surprising rebound in the incidences of ransomware, according to the latest research from SonicWall.

According to the newly released 2018 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report, the company’s Capture Labs researchers recorded 5.99 billion malware attacks during the first six months of the year, compared with 2.97 billion attacks logged during the first half of 2017 – a 102 percent increase. The volume of recorded malware attacks stayed consistent during the first quarter, then dropped to fewer than a billion per month in April, May and June, according to the report.