Kaspersky sees APAC shift in financial malware threats
A new report from global cybersecurity leader Kaspersky, entitled Financial Cyberthreats in 2020, fund that while the volume of threats decreased via computers or mobiles, criminals were using advanced propagation techniques, especially to target mobile banking.
The geography of attacks became more diversified and extensive and the focus on mobile represents a change of tack. Mobile bankers have particularly impacted, with malware designed to steal users’ credentials, or even funds from their accounts.
In 2019, the 10 countries with the highest percentage of users that encountered Android banking malware included:
Russia.0.72%
South Africa 0.66%
Australia 0.59%
Spain 0.29%
Tajikistan 0.21%
Turkey 0.20%
United States 0.18%
Italy 0.17%
Ukraine 0.17%
Armenia 0.16%
In 2020, Russia (a leader in this category for some time) moved down to seventh place. Japan and Taiwan, absent from the list in 2019, now occupy the top two spots:
Japan 2.83%
Taiwan (Province of China) 0.87%
Spain 0.77%
Italy 0.71%
Turkey 0.60%
Republic of Korea 0.34%
Russia 0.25%
Tajikistan 0.21%
Poland 0.17%
Australia 0.15%
“In 2020, we observed a number of new countries becoming a hotbed for cyber-infections. The clearest example of this is Japan, which faced a wave of attacks from the Wroba.g banking Trojan. The bright side here is that most of these attacks can be prevented. Therefore, we urge users to take extra care when conducting mobile financial transactions,” says Victor Chebyshev, security expert at Kaspersky.
In order to protect themselves from financial malware, Kaspersky advises the following measures:
- Only install applications from reliable sources
- Check what permissions the application requests
- Install a trusted security solution to protect against financial cyber threats
- Install all latest updates and patches for existing software
To learn more about financial malware and additional findings from the report, Financial Cyberthreats in 2020, visit Securelist.com.
