Mobile banking trojans hit historic high with 61k+ in Q2 2018

Mobile banking trojan modifications have reached an all-time high, making them one of the biggest cyber headaches in 2018.

The number of installation packages for mobile banking malware peaked at over 61,000 during the second quarter of 2018, representing a historic high and a three-fold increase when compared to the first three months of the year.

This was just one of the notable findings in Kaspersky Lab’s Q2 IT threat evolution report, which revealed that the company’s solutions detected and repelled 962.9 million malicious attacks from online resources located in 187 countries around the world - marking a 20 per cent uplift on the previous period.

Elsewhere, 351.9 million unique URLs were recognised as malicious by web antivirus components - up more than 24 per cent.

There was also five per cent growth in attempted infections by malware that aims to steal money via online access to bank accounts (215,762), while Kaspersky Lab’s file antivirus detected 192 million unique malicious and potentially unwanted objects.

Victor Chebyshev, security expert at Kaspersky Lab, said the findings gave lots of cause for concern regarding mobile users’ security.

“The overall growth in mobile malware installation packages - especially associated with banking - demonstrates that cyber criminals are constantly creating new modifications to their malicious software to make it more sophisticated and discreet for cyber security vendors to detect,” he commented. 

“Users and the industry should be extremely cautious and vigilant in the coming months as the trend continues to grow.”