Cybersecurity: Are your passwords stored securely

The use of malware designed to harvest consumers’ digital data—known as password stealers – has seen a significant rise in 2019. According to Kaspersky’s data, the number of users, targeted by the stealers, peaked from less than 6,00,000 in the first half of 2018 to over 9,40,000 during the same period in 2019.

Password Stealing Ware (PSW) is a major weapon in the cybercriminals’ toolkit to sabotage users’ privacy. This malicious type of software grabs data directly from users’ web browsers using various methods. Quite often, this information is sensitive and includes access details for online accounts as well as financial information—like saved passwords, autofill data and saved payment card details. In addition, some families of this type of malware are designed to steal browser cookies, user files from a specific location (for example, a user’s desktop) as well as app files, such as messenger services.