OREANDA-NEWS Russia has seen a 20-fold increase in the number of malicious bookmarks in open source software since February this year, the Kommersant newspaper reported, citing a major cybersecurity company, according to Gazeta.ru.

Kaspersky Lab said it has detected 100 malicious elements in foreign open-source software since February. They were placed in different repositories. It is noted that these bookmarks "contain provocative content or calls for any action," mostly with political texts.

Dmitry Shmoylov, head of software security at Kaspersky Lab, said that the main danger of the bookmarks is that if malicious code has been introduced into an Open Source project, these elements will also spread to the solutions of those developers who used earlier versions.

That is, if a threat is embedded into over 100 Open Source solutions, then many programs in all the companies which use their elements in their work may become infected, the expert specified.