Global cyber security and digital privacy company, Kaspersky, has discovered an average of 411,000 malicious files every day, which is an increase of nearly three per cent in 2023 compared to the previous year.
  
Through its detection systems, Kaspersky said particular types of threats also escalated, with experts observing a marked surge of 53 per cent in attacks involving malicious Microsoft Office and other types of documents.
  
According to it, attackers leaned towards more dangerous tactics, such as utilising backdoors to infiltrate systems undetected. In 2023, Kaspersky’s systems detected almost 125 million malicious files in total. Windows continued to be the primary target for cyber attacks, accounting for 88 per cent of all malware-filled data detected daily. Malicious families disseminated through various scripts and different document formats ranked among the top three threats, accounting for 10 per cent of all malicious files detected daily.
  
Kaspersky’s detection systems discovered a rather significant daily increase of malicious files in various document formats. For instance, Microsoft Office, PDF, among others rising by 53 per cent to about 24,000 files. The growth may be linked to a rise in attacks utilising phishing PDF files, designed to pilfer data from potential victims.
   
According to the cybersecurity firm, the most widespread type of malware continues to be trojans. This year, there has been 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.

Kaspersky noted that 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.
     
Head of Anti-Malware Research at Kaspersky, Vladimir Kuskov, said: “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. The number of vulnerabilities reported is also growing annually, and threat actors including ransomware gangs use them without hesitating.    
  
Kaspersky offers tips to users and organisations to stay protected, saying: “Do not download and install applications from untrusted sources; do not click on any links from unknown sources or suspicious online advertisements; create strong and unique passwords, including a mix of lower-case and upper-case letters, numbers, and punctuation, as well as activating two-factor authentication; always install updates. Some of them may contain critical security issue fixes.

“Ignore messages asking to disable security systems for office or cybersecurity software. Use a robust security solution appropriate to your system type and devices.”
   
For organisations, Kaspersky advised them to always keep software updated on all the devices to prevent attackers from infiltrating your network by exploiting vulnerabilities; establish the practice of using strong passwords to access corporate services; use multi-factor authentication for access to remote services; choose a proven endpoint security solution such as Kaspersky Endpoint Security; use a dedicated set for effective endpoint protection, threat detection and response products to timely detect and remediate even new and evasive threats.”