Cybercriminals unleashed an average of 411,000 malicious files every day in 2023, representing a 3% increase from the previous year, according to Kaspersky.
The firm's Security Bulletin: Statistics of the Year Report, published on December 14, 2023, showed that particular types of threats also escalated.
One example is the use of malicious desktop files to spread malware.
Out of the 125 million files detected by Kaspersky in 2023, 24,000 were such documents - representing a 53% increase from 2022.
Microsoft Windows remained the primary target for cyber-attacks, accounting for 88% of all malware-filled data detected daily.
The firm observed a few interesting samples of macOS malware, especially in France, China and Italy.
Many of the malicious files targeting macOS systems were disguised as adware.
The most widespread type of malware continues to be Trojans, with a notable uptick in the use of backdoors, registering a growth from 15,000 detected files per day in 2022 to 40,000 in 2023.
Magniber, WannaCry and Stop/Djvu were among the ten Trojan families most detected by Kaspersky.
Bangladesh, Yemen, and Taiwan were the top three countries most targeted by ransomware Trojans.
Cybercriminals particularly favored Microsoft Office services' vulnerabilities.
They represented 69.10% of all exploited vulnerabilities.
According to Kaspersky's telemetry, the most prolific ransomware group was LockBit, which claimed a 24.63% share in the total number of victims published on all the groups' data leak sites.
All figures in the report, which covers the period from November 2022 through October 2023, come from the Kaspersky Security Network global cloud service.
Data was obtained from users who had consented to it being sent to KSN..
This Cyber News was published on www.infosecurity-magazine.com. Publication date: Tue, 26 Dec 2023 10:00:31 +0000