Cyber criminals have intensified their attacks through malicious document files leading to a 3pc increase in daily attacks to 411,000.
According to cybersecurity firm, Kaspersky, there was a significant daily increase of malicious files in various document formats such as Microsoft Office, PDF rose by 53pc to about 24,000 files.
The firm says the increases may be linked to a rise in attacks utilising phishing PDF files, designed to pilfer data from potential victims
“The cyberthreat landscape continues to evolve, becoming more dangerous year after year. Adversaries continue to develop new malware, techniques and methods to attack organisations and individuals,” said Vladimir Kuskov, Kaspersky Head of Anti-Malware Research.
Malware attacks though trojans is still the most preferred by cybercriminals as there were 40,000 detected files per day this year compared to 15,000 last year.
“The number of vulnerabilities reported is also growing annually, and threat actors including ransomware gangs use them without hesitating,” he added.
Kaspersky says backdoors stand out as one of the most hazardous types of trojans, providing attackers with remote control over a victim’s system to carry out tasks such as sending, receiving, executing, and deleting files, as well as harvesting confidential data and logging computer activity.
Last year, Kaspersky says it detected 125 million malicious files.
