The Moscow-based cybersecurity provider Kaspersky Lab said Thursday that cybercrimes have spiked as people have been increasingly surfing the internet amid the coronavirus lockdowns across the world.
The provider’s CEO, Yevgeny Kaspersky, said that the quarantines “have forced cybercriminals to hunt for prey with greater frenzy”: “Every day we fish out several million files on the suspicion they may have malicious functions. Also, every day we identify more than 300,000 malicious samples we’ve never come across”, he said, adding that cyberattacks have increased by 25% globally.
Kaspersky also said that Russia and some other former Soviet republics train “the best programmers in the world”, but that has a negative side, too, as the world’s most advanced hackers are mainly Russian-speakers.
“We are known for having the world’s best programmers and software developers, but also for having the world’s top hackers. They all graduated from the same universities but went on different paths in the end. While one part works to create something new, the other one seeks to hack and destroy. In almost 100% of the cases, the hackers’ motivation is the same – to reap money, and money again, and still more money, and not only from a victim, but also from their clients”, Kaspersky said.