In 2019, the number of unique cyber malicious objects grew influenced by a rise in web skimmer files and other threats, such as backdoors and banking Trojans, according to the Kaspersky Security Bulletin.

In 2018, unique malicious objects (including scripts, exploits and executable files) detected by Kaspersky’s web antivirus solution totaled 21,643,946, rising to 24,610,126 this year.

The growth accounts for an increase in the number and variety of HTML pages and scripts with hidden data loading – usually used by unscrupulous advertisers.

Yet, most notably, the growth was also partially caused by online skimmers (sometimes referred to as sniffers) – where scripts are embedded by attackers in online stores and used to steal users’ credit card data from websites.

The growth of online skimmers’ unique files (scripts and HTML) detected by Kaspersky web antivirus equaled 187 per cent, reaching 510,000.

At the same time the number of threats detected by web antivirus have risen five-fold (by 523 per cent), totaling 2,660,000 in 2019.

Web skimmers also entered the top 20 malicious objects detected online, taking 10th place in the overall ranking. The share of new Backdoors and banking Trojan files, among all types of threats detected in-lab, also grew by 134 per cent and 61 per cent to reach 7,644,402 and 739,551 respectively.

85 per cent of web threats were detected as malicious URL – this detection name is used to identify links from Kaspersky’s blacklist.

It includes links to web pages containing redirects to exploits, sites with exploits and other malicious programs, botnet command and control centers, extortion websites, and others.

"The volume of online attacks has been growing for years, but in 2019 we saw a clear shift from certain types of attacks that are becoming ineffective, to the ones focused on gaining clear profit from users,”

"A good example is miners, which have lost their popularity due to lower profitability and cryptocurrencies’ fight against covert mining. This year we also witnessed growth in zero-day exploits, showing products remain vulnerable and are used by attackers for sophisticated attacks, and this trend is likely to continue in the future,” said Vyacheslav Zakorzhevsky, Head of Anti-Malware Research at Kaspersky.