Web threats

This past spring, as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, online learning became the new norm as universities and classrooms around the world were forced to close their doors. By April 29, 2020, more than 1.2 billion children across 186 countries were impacted by school closures. Shortly after schools began to transition to emergency remote learning,

During the second quarter Kaspersky solutions blocked 899,744,810 attacks launched from online resources across the globe, as many as 286,229,445 unique URLs triggered Web Anti-Virus components.

The second quarter is normally calmer than the first, but this year is an exception. The long-term downward trend in DDoS-attacks has unfortunately been interrupted, and this time we are witnessing an increase.

We’ve already looked at links under old YouTube videos or in Wikipedia articles which at some point turned bad and began pointing to partner program pages, phishing sites, or even malware. It was as if the attackers were purposely buying up domains, but such a scenario always seemed to us too complicated.

Recently, we identified several cases where Google Analytics was misused: attackers injected malicious code into sites, which collected all the data entered by users, and then sent it via Analytics.

Over the past two years we have reviewed how adult content has been used to spread malware and abuse users’ privacy. This is a trend that’s unlikely to go away, especially under current circumstances. While many pornography platforms are enjoying an influx of new users and providing legitimate and safe services, the security risks remain, if not increase.

The world is witnessing an unprecedented demonstration of digital technology primarily helping children develop, rather than impede their development.

Kaspersky solutions blocked 726,536,269 attacks launched from online resources across the globe, a total of 442,039,230 unique URLs were recognized as malicious.

Verizon’s 2020 DBIR is out, you can download a copy or peruse their publication online. Kaspersky was a contributor once again, and we are happy to provide generalized incident data from our unique and objective research.

The pandemic has affected us all in some way, so it would be surprising if cybercriminals were an exception. Spammers and phishers were naturally the trailblazers in this but the entire cybercrime landscape has changed in the last few months.

Since the beginning of 2020, due to the COVID-2019 pandemic, life has shifted almost entirely to the Web. This is reflected in the goals of recent DDoS attacks, with the most targeted resources in Q1 being websites of medical organizations, delivery services, and gaming and educational platforms.

With the spread of COVID-19, organizations worldwide have introduced remote working, which is having a direct impact on cybersecurity and the threat landscape.

We recently discovered a new approach to the well-known distributing malware technique: visitors to infected sites were informed that some kind of security certificate had expired.

In the last quarter of the year, the number of both attacks and C&C servers fell sharply, while the number of extra-long attacks (over 400 hours) was the highest ever recorded in the history of our observations.

During the year, Kaspersky solutions repelled 975 491 360 attacks launched from online resources located all over the world and 273 782 113 unique URLs were recognized as malicious by web antivirus components.