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Number of users affected by financial malware grew by 7% in semester 1, reaching 430,000
430,000 users had to cope with malware programs created to steal money and crypto coins from them in semester 1, 2019, 7% more than in the same period of 2018. Over a third of those affected (30.9%) were companies, double the number of the first half of 2018 (15.3%).
According to Kaspersky researchers,financial malware, usually identified as bank trojan viruses, are meant to steal money and information, and offer attackers access to techniques of users and financial organizations. Such threats have always represented a significant part of threats, since money is most often a motivation of cyber criminals and frauds. Kaspersky data about new samples of threats prove that malware programs which have in view money thefts are active and extremely dangerous, especially when it comes to companies , since most company networks are based on connected devices, and in case one is compromised, then the whole entity can be threatened.
“In the first half of 2019, Kaspersky researchers detected over 339,000 phishing attacks on web pages disguised as landing pages of large banks,”a company press release shows.
Researchers made up a list with the most spread families of bank trojans used to attack companies. Four out of ten (40%) of financial threats on corporate users came from RTM bank trojan, one of the most dangerous types of bank malware for companies in 2018. RTM is followed by Emotet trojan, with 15%. This threat can be very dangerous- once it enters an entity it can multiply by means of vulnerabilities, in devices not upgraded and then they download additional malware on the victim's device.
Trickster bank trojan completes top 3 identified malware programs, representing 12% of discovered threats.
For individual users, the situation was different. The list of malware that tried to attack them was headed by Zbot (26%), which steals authentication data by means of remote control options, followed by RTM and Emotet. In 2018, RTM targeted only organizations while in 2019 it reached a significant share of individual users.
“We expect the second half of 2019 to register an increase of the number of users attacked. Usually we see an activity increase after holiday time, when people use devices less than usual, therefore the risk of becoming victims is smaller. We recommend all users to be very attentive to all bank and financial operations they make online,”said Oleg Kupreev, security researcher at Kaspersky.
Kaspersky is a global cyber security company founded in 1997. The company portfolio includes endpoint protection and several specialised security solutions and services to fight complex digital threats. Over 400 million individual users and companies are protected by Kaspersky technologies.