Kaspersky researchers found 360,000 malicious files per day in 2020

Researchers at Kaspersky discovered an average of 360,000 new malicious files every day over the past 12 months – 18,000 more per day than the previous year, an increase of 5.2 percent.

In the company’s Statistics of the Year Report released today, the researchers said the growth was influenced by the increased number of trojans and backdoors that were observed this year. Overall, the percent of increased trojans jumped by 40.5 percent when compared with the previous year.

Just six countries experienced 10 percent or more each of the total attacks on users in this order: Spain (14.03 percent), France (13.54 percent), Canada (11.35 percent), United States (10.76 percent), India (10.53 percent), and Brazil (10.22 percent).

The vast majority of the malicious files detected – 89.8 percent – occurred via Windows PE files, a file format specific to Windows operating systems. There was good news for Android users in that the number of new malware related to the Android OS declined by 13.7 percent. Adware was also on the decline this year, experiencing a 35 percent decrease when compared to 2019.

Kaspersky’s researchers also found a 27 percent increase in the number of different scripts sent via malicious email campaigns or encountered on infected websites. The researchers theorize this could reflect that people spent more time on the internet because they were working from home – and the bad threat actors attempted to capitalize on the trend during the pandemic.

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