Leading cybersecurity firm, Kaspersky, has unveiled alarming statistics in its latest report, revealing a substantial uptick in cyber threats in Kenya throughout 2023.

The firm’s security bulletin says the company’s detection systems identified an average of 411,000 malicious files every day, indicating a nearly 3 per cent increase compared to the previous year.

It highlights a particularly concerning trend in the types of threats, with a significant surge of 53 per cent in attacks involving malicious Microsoft Office and other document formats.

“The number of vulnerabilities reported is also growing annually, and threat actors including ransomware gangs use them without hesitating,” the report notes.

“Furthermore, the entry barrier into cybercrime is now being lowered due to the proliferation of AI, which attackers use, for example, to create phishing messages with more convincing texts.”
Attackers have increasingly employed more sophisticated tactics, such as utilizing backdoors to infiltrate systems undetected, showcasing the evolving and complex nature of cyber threats.

In total, Kaspersky’s systems detected almost 125 million malicious files this year. Windows emerged as the primary target for cyberattacks, constituting 88 per cent of all malware-filled data detected daily.
Malicious families disseminated through various scripts and document formats ranked among the top three threats, making up 10 per cent of all malicious files detected on a daily basis.

Notably, there was a substantial daily increase of 53 per cent in malicious files found in various document formats, including Microsoft Office and PDF.

Experts suggest that this growth may be linked to an increase in attacks utilizing phishing PDF files, designed to steal sensitive data from unsuspecting victims. Trojans remain the most widespread type of malware, and in 2023, there was a noteworthy uptick in the use of backdoors. The detection of backdoors increased from 15,000 files per day in 2022 to 40,000 in 2023.

Backdoors, considered one of the most hazardous types of trojans, provide attackers with remote control over a victim’s system, enabling them to execute various malicious tasks and harvest sensitive data.