Kaspersky Lab’s research has revealed a worrying increase of malware specifically designed for theft of login information and money from users’ bank accounts.
More specifically, the security company data show that 29,841 records of this malware were found in the first quarter of 2019 compared to 18,501 in the fourth quarter of 2018. In total, were detected attacks to more than 300,000 users. The above figures are among the main findings of Kaspersky Lab’s “IT threat evolution” report for the first quarter of 2019.
Mobile banking Trojans is one of the fastest growing, flexible, and dangerous types of malware. They typically steal money directly from the bank accounts of mobile users, but sometimes their interest is directed to theft of login information. Malicious software generally resembles a legitimate application, such as a banking application. When a victim attempts to get to his bank’s actual application, the attackers gain access to it as well.
In the first quarter of 2019, Kaspersky Lab detected about 30,000 modifications of various Trojan bank families that attempted to attack 312,235 unique users. In addition, bank Trojans increased their share of the threat landscape, as well as the number of different samples found. In the fourth quarter of 2018, mobile banking Trojans accounted for 1.85% of all malware for portable devices, while in the first quarter of 2019 their share was 3.24%.
While users were attacked by various mobile banking malware families, one was particularly active at the time: a new version of Asacub malware accounted for 58.4% of all bank Trojans attacking users. Asacub appeared for the first time in 2015. The attackers spent two years perfecting their distribution plan and as a result malware came to its peak in 2018 when it attacked 13,000 users within a day. Since then, its growth rate has declined, though it remains a strong threat: In the first quarter of 2019, Kaspersky Lab reports that Asacub targets an average of 8,200 users per day.
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