New research from Kaspersky revealed that the variety of malware increased by 13.7% in 2019 and the cybersecurity company attributes this growth to an increase in web skimmers. According to Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2019, the number of unique malicious objects detected by the company's web antivirus solution increased by an eighth compared to last year, reaching more than 24 million due to a 187% increase in malware files. skim web. Kaspersky also found that other threats such as backdoors and banking Trojans have increased, while the presence of cryptocurrency miners has decreased by more than half. These trends demonstrate a shift in the type of threats used by cybercriminals who are constantly looking for more effective ways to attack users online.
Online Skimmers
Online skimmers, sometimes called sniffers, are scripts embedded by attackers in online stores and used to steal credit card details from website users. The growth of unique online skimmer files (scripts and HTML) detected by Kaspersky Web Anti-Virus increased by 187% to reach 510k. Web skimmers also made the list of the top 20 malicious objects detected online by the company, ranking 2019th overall. Vyacheslav Zakorzhevsky, Kaspersky's head of anti-malware research, explained why cybercriminals began to favor certain types of attacks while eliminating others in a press release, stating: "The volume of online attacks has been increasing for years, but in XNUMX saw a marked shift from certain types of attacks becoming ineffective to those focused on getting the bottom line for users.This is due in part to the fact that users are becoming more aware of threats and how to avoid them, and that organizations are becoming more responsible. A good example is that of miners, who have lost their popularity due to declining profitability and the fight of cryptocurrencies against secret mining. This year we have also seen an increase in zero-day exploits, showing that products are still vulnerable and used by attackers for sophisticated attacks, and this trend is expected to continue in the future. " To avoid becoming a victim of a cyber attack, Kaspersky recommends that you do not open suspicious files or attachments, do not download or install applications from untrusted sources, do not click on links from unknown sources, use strong passwords, install the latest updates and ignore messages requesting to disable security solutions for office or antivirus software.