Subscribe

Financial attacks increase by 16%

Sibahle Malinga
By Sibahle Malinga, ITWeb senior news journalist.
Johannesburg, 17 Aug 2016
New banking Trojans have significantly extended functionality of financial malware, says Kaspersky Lab.
New banking Trojans have significantly extended functionality of financial malware, says Kaspersky Lab.

Financial malware is evolving through collaboration between malware creators, and has increased by 15.6% globally.

This is according to Kaspersky Lab's IT threat evolution Report for Q2, which reveals one of the reasons for the rise in malware is the collaboration between the authors of two leading banking Trojans: Gozi Trojan and Nymaim Trojan, both falling into the top 10 ranking of financial malware.

"Financial malware are still active and developing rapidly. New banking Trojans have significantly extended their functionality by adding new modules, such as ransomware. If criminals do not succeed in stealing users' personal data, they will encrypt it and demand a ransom. Another example is the Neurevt Trojan family. This malware was used not only to steal data in online banking systems, but also to send out spam," explains Denis Makrushin, security expert at Kaspersky Lab.

According to the software security group's statistics, Turkey became the country most attacked by this type of malware, and Russia was in second place, followed by Brazil.

Last month the South African Banking Risk Information Centre (SABRIC), on behalf of its member banks, introduced the "Schemes and Scams Campaign" which aims to raise awareness about online banking crimes.

"Online banking fraud increased as a result of the high level of phishing and malware attacks targeting South African banking customers. It is with this in mind that the industry is currently embarking on a national campaign to encourage bank customers to take great care of their cyber security," says Kalyani Pillay, CEO of SABRIC.

SABRIC revealed the three most popular online scams in SA are: the change of bank account details scam, the deposit scam and the refund scam.

A Juniper Research titled: "Online Payment Fraud: Key Vertical Strategies & Management 2016-2020", found e-retail tops the list of online fraud with 65% of overall incidents estimated to reach $16.6 billion by 2020. Second on the list was online banking fraud, making up 27% of cases globally, which is valued at $6.9 billion. Airline ticketing fraud ranked in at third place with 6% of incidents making up $1.5 billion.

Juniper forecasts an increase in online fraud as fraudsters turn their attention to online sales. Online retail fraud in the US alone is expected to rise by 106% over the next three years.

Security software company Norton recently released a report on online banking crimes, which shows that an average of 21 hours and $358 was lost per consumer globally over the past year due to online banking scams.

Share