Kaspersky Lab estimated that the number of victims of extortion programs for the year increased almost twofold.

The scheme of work of malicious extortionists is reduced to the following. Penetrating the victim's device, the malicious program encrypts files of common formats. Next, the screen displays a message about the coding carried out, which is accompanied by a proposal to pay a ransom for restoring access to data. As a rule, cybercriminals demand compensation in the crypto currency.

So, according to Kaspersky Lab, the number of victims of Trojans encrypting files has almost doubled - from 718,536 in 2015-2016 to 1,152,299 in 2016-2017. At the same time, the number of users who became victims of all extortion programs increased by only 11.4% over the same period: from 2,315,931 to 2,581,026.

Experts note that increasingly cryptographers are focused on financial and industrial infrastructure. The reason for this trend is obvious: criminals think targeted malicious attacks on organizations are much more profitable than mass attacks on ordinary users. In this case, the goal of cybercriminals is not only the company's money, but also valuable information that can be used for blackmail or sabotage.

Attackers are also actively exploring new territories.