Maverick: a new banking Trojan abusing WhatsApp in a mass-scale distribution

A malware campaign was recently detected in Brazil, distributing a malicious LNK file using WhatsApp. It targets mainly Brazilians and uses Portuguese-named URLs. To evade detection, the command-and-control C2 server verifies each download to ensure it originates from the malware itself. The whol...

GodRAT – New RAT targeting financial institutions

Summary In September 2024, we detected malicious activity targeting financial trading and brokerage firms through the distribution of malicious .scr screen saver files disguised as financial documents via Skype messenger. The threat actor deployed a newly identified Remote Access Trojan RAT named...

Incident response analyst report 2024

Kaspersky provides rapid and fully informed incident response services to organizations, ensuring impact analysis and effective remediation. Our annual report shares anonymized data about the investigations carried out by the Kaspersky Global Emergency Response Team GERT, as well as statistics an...

The SOC files: Chasing the web shell

Web shells have evolved far beyond their original purpose of basic remote command execution, and many now function more like lightweight exploitation frameworks. These tools often include features such as in-memory module execution and encrypted command-and-control C2 communication, giving...

Investors, Trump and the Illuminati: What the “Nigerian prince” scams became in 2024

"Nigerian" spam is a collective term for messages designed to entice victims with alluring offers and draw them into an email exchange with scammers, who will try to defraud them of their money. The original "Nigerian" spam emails were sent in the name of influential and wealthy individuals from...

Our secret ingredient for reverse engineering

Nowadays, a lot of cybersecurity professionals use IDA Pro as their primary tool for reverse engineering. While IDA is a complex tool that implements a multitude of features useful for dissecting binaries, many reverse engineers use various plugins to add further functionality to this software. W...

Stealer here, stealer there, stealers everywhere!

Introduction Information stealers, which are used to collect credentials to then sell them on the dark web or use in subsequent cyberattacks, are actively distributed by cybercriminals. Some of them are available through a monthly subscription model, thus attracting novice cybercriminals. Accordi...

Whispers from the Dark Web Cave. Cyberthreats in the Middle East

The Kaspersky Digital Footprint Intelligence team analyzed cybersecurity threats coming from dark web cybercriminals who targeted businesses and governments in the Middle East in H1 2024. Our research highlights the most severe and pervasive threats, and identifies potential risks and consequence...

Scam Information and Event Management

While trying to deliver malware on victims' devices and stay on them as long as they can, sometimes attackers are using quite unusual techniques. In a recent campaign starting in 2022, unknown malicious actors have been trying to mine cryptocurrency on victims' devices without user consent; they'...

Business on the dark web: deals and regulatory mechanisms

Download the full version of the report PDF Hundreds of deals are struck on the dark web every day: cybercriminals buy and sell data, provide illegal services to one another, hire other individuals to work as "employees" with their groups, and so on. Large sums of money are often on the table. To...

The life cycle of phishing pages

Introduction In this study, we analyzed how long phishing pages survive as well as the signs they show when they become inactive. In addition to the general data, we provided a number of options for classifying phishing pages according to formal criteria and analyzed the results for each of them...

The story of the year: ransomware in the headlines

In the past twelve months, the word "ransomware" has popped up in countless headlines worldwide across both print and digital publications: The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, the New York Times. It is no longer just being discussed by CISOs and security professionals, but politicians, school...

Extracting type information from Go binaries

During the 2021 edition of the SAS conference, I had the pleasure of delivering a workshop focused on reverse-engineering Go binaries. The goal of the workshop was to share basic knowledge that would allow analysts to immediately start looking into malware written in Go. A YouTube version of the...

Who’s who in the Zoo

ZooPark is a cyberespionage operation that has been focusing on Middle Eastern targets since at least June 2015. The threat actors behind the operation infect Android devices using several generations of malware, with the attackers including new features in each iteration. We label them from v1-v...

IT threat evolution in Q1 2026. Non-mobile statistics

IT threat evolution in Q1 2026. Non-mobile statistics IT threat evolution in Q1 2026. Mobile statistics The statistics in this report are based on detection verdicts returned by Kaspersky products unless otherwise stated. The information was provided by Kaspersky users who consented to sharing...

Spam and phishing in 2025

The year in figures 44.99% of all emails sent worldwide and 43.27% of all emails sent in the Russian web segment were spam 32.50% of all spam emails were sent from Russia Kaspersky Mail Anti-Virus blocked 144,722,674 malicious email attachments Our Anti-Phishing system thwarted 554,002,207 attemp...

IT threat evolution in Q3 2025. Mobile statistics

IT threat evolution in Q3 2025. Mobile statistics IT threat evolution in Q3 2025. Non-mobile statistics The quarter at a glance In the third quarter of 2025, we updated the methodology for calculating statistical indicators based on the Kaspersky Security Network. These changes affected all...

Notes of cyber inspector: three clusters of threat in cyberspace

Hacktivism and geopolitically motivated APT groups have become a significant threat to many regions of the world in recent years, damaging infrastructure and important functions of government, business, and society. In late 2022 we predicted that the involvement of hacktivist groups in all major...

Batavia spyware steals data from Russian organizations

Introduction Since early March 2025, our systems have recorded an increase in detections of similar files with names like договор-2025-5.vbe, приложение.vbe, and dogovor.vbe translation: contract, attachment among employees at various Russian organizations. The targeted attack begins with bait...

Threat landscape for industrial automation systems in Q4 2024

Statistics across all threats In Q4 2024, the percentage of ICS computers on which malicious objects were blocked decreased by 0.1 pp from the previous quarter to 21.9%. Percentage of ICS computers on which malicious objects were blocked, by quarter, 2022–2024 Compared to Q4 2023, the percentage...

StaryDobry ruins New Year’s Eve, delivering miner instead of presents

Introduction On December 31, cybercriminals launched a mass infection campaign, aiming to exploit reduced vigilance and increased torrent traffic during the holiday season. Our telemetry detected the attack, which lasted for a month and affected individuals and businesses by distributing the XMRi...

When spear phishing met mass phishing

Introduction Bulk phishing email campaigns tend to target large audiences. They use catch-all wordings and simplistic formatting, and typos are not uncommon. Targeted attacks take greater effort, with attackers sending personalized messages that include personal details and might look more like...

IT threat evolution in Q1 2024. Non-mobile statistics

IT threat evolution Q1 2024 IT threat evolution Q1 2024. Mobile statistics IT threat evolution Q1 2024. Non-mobile statistics The statistics presented here are based on detection verdicts by Kaspersky products and services received from users who consented to providing statistical data. Quarterly...

LockBit Green and phishing that targets organizations

Introduction In recent months, we published private reports on a broad range of subjects. We wrote about malware targeting Brazil, about CEO fraud attempts, Andariel, LockBit and others. For this post, we selected three private reports, namely those related to LockBit and phishing campaigns...

The nature of cyberincidents in 2022

Kaspersky offers various services to organizations that have been targeted by cyberattackers, such as incident response, digital forensics, and malware analysis. In our annual incident response report, we share information about the attacks that we investigated during the reporting period. Data...

Consumer cyberthreats: predictions for 2023

The consumer threat landscape constantly changes. Although the main types of threats phishing, scams, malware, etc. remain the same, lures that fraudsters use vary greatly depending on the time of year, current major events, news, etc. This year, we have seen spikes in cybercriminal activity aime...

IT threat evolution in Q3 2022. Mobile statistics

IT threat evolution in Q3 2022 IT threat evolution in Q3 2022. Non-mobile statistics IT threat evolution in Q3 2022. Mobile statistics These statistics are based on detection verdicts of Kaspersky products received from users who consented to providing statistical data. Quarterly figures Accordin...

Malicious WhatsApp mod distributed through legitimate apps

Last year, we wrote about the Triada Trojan inside FMWhatsApp, a modified WhatsApp build. At that time, we discovered that a dropper was found inside the distribution, along with an advertising SDK. This year, the situation has repeated, but with a different modified build, YoWhatsApp version...

External attack surface and ongoing cybercriminal activity in APAC region

To prevent a cyberattack, it is vital to know what the attack surface for your organization is. To be prepared to repel the attacks of cybercriminals, businesses around the world collect threat intelligence themselves or subscribe for threat intelligence services. Continuous threat research enabl...

The hateful eight: Kaspersky’s guide to modern ransomware groups’ TTPs

These days ransomware analysis gets a lot of coverage in commercial and public reports, with vendors issuing dozens of ransomware-related publications each year. These reports provide analysis on specific malware families or new samples, describe the activities of a particular ransomware group,...

SAS 2021: Fireside chat with Chris Bing

How to build up a fascinating story from a hardcore APT report? Where to find details and how to work with information sources? Sitting by the virtual fireside, Brian Bartholomew Kaspersky GReAT and Christopher Bing Reuters will discuss how malware researchers and investigative journalists can he...

Bingo, Amigo! Jackpotting: ATM malware from Latin America to the World

Introduction Of all the forms of attack against financial institutions around the world, the one that brings traditional crime and cybercrime together the most is the malicious ecosystem that exists around ATM malware. Criminals from different backgrounds work together with a single goal in mind:...

How legitimate cloud platforms enable phishers to bypass MFA

Threat actors are increasingly exploiting legitimate cloud services to evade detection and streamline the deployment of their scam infrastructure. Cloud hosting services and decentralized networks have become primary platforms for hosting phishing pages and sites. Throughout 2025 and 2026, we hav...

What’s in the container? Analyzing vulnerabilities, risks and protection with Kaspersky Container Security and the KIRA AI assistant

Introduction Containerization using Docker has become firmly established in modern development standards, significantly increasing the speed and convenience of deploying various services. Developers often use ready-made Docker images, making only minimal changes. The largest repository of contain...

OceanLotus suspected of using PyPI to deliver ZiChatBot malware

Introduction Through our daily threat hunting, we noticed that, beginning in July 2025, a series of malicious wheel packages were uploaded to PyPI the Python Package Index. We shared this information with the public security community, and the malware was removed from the repository. We submitted...

FakeWallet crypto stealer spreading through iOS apps in the App Store

In March 2026, we uncovered more than twenty phishing apps in the Apple App Store masquerading as popular crypto wallets. Once launched, these apps redirect users to browser pages designed to look similar to the App Store and distributing trojanized versions of legitimate wallets. The infected ap...

Exploits and vulnerabilities in Q4 2025

The fourth quarter of 2025 went down as one of the most intense periods on record for high-profile, critical vulnerability disclosures, hitting popular libraries and mainstream applications. Several of these vulnerabilities were picked up by attackers and exploited in the wild almost immediately...

Old tech, new vulnerabilities: NTLM abuse, ongoing exploitation in 2025

Just like the 2000s Flip phones grew popular, Windows XP debuted on personal computers, Apple introduced the iPod, peer-to-peer file sharing via torrents was taking off, and MSN Messenger dominated online chat. That was the tech scene in 2001, the same year when Sir Dystic of Cult of the Dead Cow...

Evolution of the PipeMagic backdoor: from the RansomExx incident to CVE-2025-29824

In April 2025, Microsoft patched 121 vulnerabilities in its products. According to the company, only one of them was being used in real-world attacks at the time the patch was released: CVE-2025-29824. The exploit for this vulnerability was executed by the PipeMagic malware, which we first...

TookPS: DeepSeek isn’t the only game in town

In early March, we published a study detailing several malicious campaigns that exploited the popular DeepSeek LLM as a lure. Subsequent telemetry analysis indicated that the TookPS downloader, a malware strain detailed in the article, was not limited to mimicking neural networks. We identified...

Take my money: OCR crypto stealers in Google Play and App Store

Update 07.02.2025: Google removed malicious apps from Google Play. Update 06.02.2025: Apple removed malicious apps from the App Store. In March 2023, researchers at ESET discovered malware implants embedded into various messaging app mods. Some of these scanned users' image galleries in search of...

IT threat evolution in Q3 2024. Mobile statistics

IT threat evolution in Q3 2024 IT threat evolution in Q3 2024. Non-mobile statistics IT threat evolution in Q3 2024. Mobile statistics Quarterly figures According to Kaspersky Security Network, in Q3 2024: As many as 6.7 million attacks involving malware, adware or potentially unwanted mobile app...

IT threat evolution in Q2 2024. Mobile statistics

Quarterly figures According to Kaspersky Security Network, in Q2 2024: 7 million attacks using malware, adware or unwanted mobile software were blocked. The most common threat to mobile devices was RiskTool software – 41% of all detected threats. A total of 367,418 malicious installation packages...

Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2023. Statistics

All statistics in this report come from the Kaspersky Security Network KSN global cloud service, which receives information from components in our security solutions. The data was obtained from users who had given their consent to it being sent to KSN. Millions of Kaspersky users around the globe...

What threatens corporations in 2023: media blackmail, fake leaks and cloud attacks

Kaspersky detects an average of 400,000 malicious files every day. These add up to 144 million annually. The threat landscape is constantly updated through new malware and spyware, advanced phishing methods, and new social engineering techniques. The media routinely report incidents and leaks of...

The nature of cyber incidents

Kaspersky provides incident response services and trainings to organizations around the world. In our annual incident response report, we share our observations and statistics based on investigation of real-life incidents. The report contains anonymized data collected by the Kaspersky Global...

The Verizon 2022 DBIR

The Verizon 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report is out. We are proud to collaborate as a supporting contributor to this years data efforts once again and to have contributed for the past 8 years. The report provides interesting analysis of a full amount of global incident data. Several things...

Black Friday 2021: How to Have a Scam-Free Shopping Day

Fact 1: cybercriminals love to exploit big holidays for personal gain. Case in point: were already seeing scams targeting World Cup fans more than a year out from the event. Fact 2: the retail sector, particularly e-commerce, has always been popular with cybercriminals. In Q3 2021, online stores...

Jack of all trades

Nowadays, it's all too easy to end up with malicious apps on your smartphone, even if you're using the official Google Play app store. The situation gets even worse when you go somewhere other than the official store – fake applications, limited security checks, and so on. However, the spread of...

IoT lottery: finding a perfectly secure connected device

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are great for shopping. Vendors flood the market with all kinds of goods, including lots of exciting connected devices that promise to make our life easier, happier and more comfortable. Being enthusiastic shoppers just like many other people around the world, at...