Kaspersky Lab’s in-lab detection technologies reached 360,000 a day in 2017 – 11.5% more than last year.

The number of daily-detected malicious files reflects the average activity of cyber criminals involved in the creation and distribution of malware.

More than 94% of files were identified as dangerous, while other files that advertise software are not considered malicious by default, but can cause risks and private information to be exposed.

‘New malware could be less important’

Nearly 10% of all dangerous files detected daily are identified by Astraea – Kaspersky Lab’s machine-learning malware analysis system, which identifies and blocks malware automatically.

Vyacheslav Zakorzhevsky, head of the anti-malware team at Kaspersky Lab, said: “In 2015, we witnessed a visible drop in daily detections and even started thinking that new malware could be less important for criminals, who have instead shifted their attention towards reusing old malware.

‘Ongoing rise in cryptocurrencies’

“However, over the last two years, the number of new malware we discovered has been growing, which is a sign that interest in creating new malicious code has been revived. The explosive increase in ransomware attacks over the last couple of years is only set to continue, as there is a huge criminal ecosystem behind this type of threat, producing hundreds of new samples every day.

“This year, we have also seen a spike in miners – a class of malware that cyber criminals have started to use actively, in light of the ongoing rise in cryptocurrencies. The reason for the increase in detections could also be attributed to the constant improvements we are making in our protection technologies.”

Written from press release by Leah Alger