Kaspersky Lab Identifies Attacks Based on Exploits As Cyber Headache
Attacks based on exploits are considered to be very powerful, as they do not require any additional interactions with the user and can deliver their dangerous code discreetly.
Kaspersky Lab, one of the world’s leading cybersecurity and anti-virus brands, has identified attacks based on Exploits as one of the key causes of cyber headaches in Q1, 2018. Overall, the number of users attacked with malicious Microsoft Office documents rose more than four times compared to Q1 2017. In a period of only three months, its share of exploits used in attacks have grown to almost 50 percent - this is double the average share of exploits for Microsoft Office throughout 2017. These are the main findings from Kaspersky Lab’s Q1 IT threat evolution report.
Attacks based on exploits are considered to be very powerful, as they do not require any additional interactions with the user and can deliver their dangerous code discreetly, Kaspersky Lab report said. They are used by cybercriminals looking for profit and also by more sophisticated nation-backed state actors for their malicious purposes.
The first quarter of 2018 experienced a massive inflow of these exploits, targeting popular Microsoft Office software. According to Kaspersky Lab experts, 'this is likely to be the peak of a longer trend, as at least ten in-the-wild exploits for Microsoft Office software were identified in 2017-2018' – compared to two zero-day exploits for Adobe Flash player used in-the-wild during the same time period.
Altogether 796, 806, 112 malicious attacks were successfully detected and repelled from online resources by Kaspersky Lab Solution. These were spotted in 194 countries across the world. As many as 282, 807, 433 unique URLs were recognized as malicious by web antivirus components.
Besides, in what can add further worries, attempted infections by malware that aims to steal money via online access to bank accounts were registered on 204, 448 user computers. Kaspersky Lab’s file antivirus detected a total of 187, 597, 494 unique malicious and potentially unwanted objects.
That’s not all. As high as 1,322,578 malicious installation packages, and 18,912 mobile banking Trojans (installation packages) were detected by Kaspersky Lab mobile security products.