In its recent report on global cyber threats, leading cybersecurity firm Kaspersky revealed that it discovered an average of 3,60,000 new malicious files every day over the past 12 months, a rise of 5.2 percent compared to the previous year.
Kaspersky’s ‘Security Bulletin: Statistics of the Year Report’ attributed the rise in the number of malicious files mostly to the number of Trojans, malicious files capable of deleting data and spying as well as backdoors, a specific type of Trojan that gives attackers remote control over the infected device.
In a statement to the media, Denis Staforkin, Kaspersky’s security expert observed that “It’s hard to know whether or not attackers were more active or our solutions detected more malicious files simply because of greater activity. It could be a combination of both.”
“Either way, we have registered a noticeable increase in the number of new malicious files this year, and this will most likely continue going into 2021 as employees continue to work from home and countries implement different restrictions,” Mr. Staforkin added.
Rise of Trojans
The report revealed that 60 percent of malicious files detected in 2020 were non-specific Trojans. Meanwhile, there was a 40.5 percent increase in the detection of Trojans compared to the previous year.
Backdoors and worms, malicious VisualBasicScript programs that self-replicate on systems were also seemed to have increased.
Detection of adware, programs that barrage users with advertisements experienced a decline of 35 percent.
The report observed that there was also a 27% increase in the number of different scripts, sent via malicious email campaigns or encountered on infected websites as attackers capitalized on having more people online as working from home became the norm.
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