Kaspersky Report: 37 percent of computers affected by malware, ransomware and phishing
Cyber criminals attacked a good one in three computers that process biometric data in the third quarter of 2019, as the new report from IT security provider Kaspersky shows.
This was primarily generic malware such as remote access Trojans (RATs) (5.4 percent), malware used in phishing attacks (5.1 percent), ransomware (1.9 percent) and banking Trojans ( 1.5 percent).
Fingerprints etc
According to Kaspersky experts, the use of biometric data such as fingerprints, hand geometry or iris structure for authentication, as a supplement or replacement to traditional login data, is constantly increasing. It is used, among other things, to access government and commercial offices, industrial automation systems, corporate and private laptops and smartphones - and is therefore increasingly the focus of hackers.
Alarms were triggered on 37 percent of the computers examined and protected by Kaspersky products. 14.4 percent of the threats came from the Internet. This includes malicious and phishing websites and web-based email services; Removable media (8.0 percent), most commonly used to spread worms that typically reload spyware, RATs, or ransomware .
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6.1 percent of threats came from email clients. In most cases, these were typical phishing emails that contained links to malicious websites or malicious attachments. In 1.6 percent of cases, network folders were the source of the threat.
More awareness needed
“The current situation is critical regarding the security of biometric data and requires the attention of industry, regulators, the information security community and the public,”
said Kirill Kruglov, Senior Security Expert at Kaspersky ICS CERT.
“While we believe our customers are cautious, we must note that infection by the malware we discovered and blocked could have compromised the integrity and confidentiality of biometric processing systems.
This is particularly true for databases that store biometric data if it is not protected.”
You might also be interested in: What actually is malware?
Source: press text
Article image: Alexander Supertramp / Shutterstock
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