A 60% Rise Reported on Malware Designed to Harvest Consumers’ Digital Data, aka Password Stealers

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A 60% Rise Reported on Malware Designed to Harvest Consumers’ Digital Data, aka Password Stealers

By CircleID Reporter
July 25, 2019, 9:21 pm PDT Views: 10,743 Add Comment

A significant rise has been detected in the use of malware aimed at harvesting consumer data, known as password stealers. According to a report from the security firm Kaspersky, the number of consumers targeted by the password stealers rose from under 600,000 people in the first half of 2018 to over 940,000 during the same period in 2019. Europe and Asia are reported to have had the most levels of stealer activity targetting Russia, India, Brazil, Germany and the United States.

What it does: “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.” (Kaspersky)

By CircleID Reporter — CircleID’s internal staff reporting on news tips and developing stories. Do you have information the professional Internet community should be aware of? Contact us.
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