60% Rise in Consumers Hit by Password Stealers in 2019
Kaspersky has uncovered a significant rise in the use of malware designed to harvest consumers’ digital data, known as password stealers. According to Kaspersky’s data, the number of consumers targeted by the stealers increased from less than 600,000 people in the first half of 2018 to over 940,000 during the same period in 2019.
Password-stealing ware (PSW) is a major weapon in a cybercriminals’ toolkit to sabotage consumers’ privacy. This malicious type of software grabs data directly from users’ web browsers using various methods. Often, this includes sensitive data such as access details for online accounts, saved passwords, autofill data and payment card details. Furthermore, some families of this type of malware are designed to steal browser cookies, user files from a specific location (such as a user’s desktop) or app files.