Islamabad: While the malware development market continues to grow with new hackers like Lumma, Redline remains the data-stealing malware used by cybercriminals for the past three years. According to a new study by Kaspersky Digital Footprint Intelligence, 55% of devices targeted for password theft will be infected by the Redline malware by 2023.
Redline was used in 51% of infostealer infections from 2020 to 2023, according to data from log files freely distributed on the commercial or dark web. In total, using metadata from files between 2020 and 2023, Kaspersky Digital Footprint Intelligence identified almost 100 different infostealers.
Hackers access devices to illegally obtain confidential credentials, such as logins and passwords stored in shadow markets, posing a cybersecurity threat to personal and corporate systems.
The underground market for developing data-stealing malware is growing, evidenced by the recent rise in popularity of hackers. Between 2021 and 2023, the proportion of newly infected patients increased from 4% to 28%. In particular, the new Lumma thieves are responsible for more than 6% of all infections in 2023.
Lumma appeared in 2022 and gained popularity in 2023 through the Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) distribution model. This means that any criminal, even those without advanced technical skills, can download pre-packaged malware and carry out these hacker cyber attacks. “Lumma is mainly designed to steal Credentials and other information from cryptocurrency wallets distributed via email, YouTube and Discord spam campaigns,” said Hafeez Rahman, technical team manager at Kaspersky.
Companies can help protect users, employees, and partners from threats by proactively monitoring for leaks and encouraging users to immediately change leaked passwords.
More information about the Infostealer threat has been collected on the Kaspersky Digital Footprint Intelligence website.
