The Kaspersky Security Bulletin Overall Statistics Report for 2015 highlights a new trend for the first time ever. Mobile financial threats rank among the top ten malicious programs designed to steal money. Two families of mobile banking Trojans – Faketoken and Marcher were included in 2015’s top 10 banking Trojans. Another remarkable and alarming trend for the year is the rapid spread of ransomware. Kaspersky Lab detected this in 200 countries and territories in 2015.
In 2015 two families of mobile banking Trojans -Faketoken and Marcher, appeared in the rankings of the top 10 financial malware families. The malicious programs belonging to the Marcher family steal payment details from Android devices.
Representatives of the Faketoken family work in partnership with computer Trojans. A user is manipulated to install an application on their smartphone, which is actually a Trojan that intercepts the one-time confirmation code (mTAN). The Marcher family of mobile banking Trojans tracks the launch of just two apps after infecting a device – the mobile banking app of a European bank and Google Play. If the user starts Google Play, Marcher displays a false window requesting credit card details which then go to fraudsters. The same method is used by the Trojan if the user starts the banking application.
“This year cybercriminals focused time and resources in developing malicious financial programs for mobile devices. This is not surprising as millions of people worldwide now use their smartphone to pay for services and goods. Based on current trends, we can assume that next year, mobile banking malware will account for an even greater share,” – says Yury Namestnikov, Senior Security Researcher at Global Research and Analysis Team, Kaspersky Lab.
“Traditional” financial cybercrime hasn’t declined, however. In total, Kaspersky Lab solutions blocked almost two million (1,966,324) attempts to launch malware capable of stealing money via online banking on computers in 2015, an increase of 2.8% on 2014 (1,910,520).
The numerous modifications of the most widely-used malware family, ZeuS, were dethroned by Dyre / Dyzap / Dyreza. Over 40% of those attacked by banking Trojans in 2015 were hit by Dyreza using an effective web injection method in order to steal data and access the online banking system.