This year saw near-exponential growth in all areas related to cybersecurity, as well as increased complexity in cyberattacks, according to a security bulletin on the year's top security stories assembled by the by the Kaspersky Lab Global Research and Analysis Team.

A year ago, Kaspersky accurately predicted trends in advanced, persistent cyberthreats for 2015, including:

• The evolution of malware techniques. In 2015, GReAT discovered previously unseen methods used by the Equation group, whose malware can modify the firmware of hard drives, and by Duqu 2.0, whose infections make no changes to the disk or system settings, leaving almost no traces in the system.
• The merger of cybercrime and advanced persistent threats. In 2015 the Carbanak cybercriminal gang stole up to $1 billion from financial institutions worldwide using targeted attack methods.
• Precise attacks merged with mass surveillance. Animal Farm's targeted cyberattacks merged with DDoS attacks from the same threat actor, which is rare for advanced targeted cybercampaigns.
• The addition of mobile attacks to the cyberthreat arsenal. Desert Falcons targeted Android users.

Cybercriminals targeted financial institutions, government, military and diplomatic organizations, telecommunications companies and energy firms, political activists and leaders, mass media, private business and more. The attacks were all global.  

"Select any economic sector at random, and the chances are high that you'll find something in the media about a cybersecurity incident or problem. The same goes for all aspects of everyday life," said Aleks Gostev, chief security expert for the global research and analysis team. "Today, attacking and defending internal and external networks, such as the Internet, are subjects of considerable interest to various illegal groups."

See Kaspersky's predictions for 2016.