4% of Indian users attacked by banking Trojans in 2018: Kaspersky Lab

Kaspersky Lab has said that out of almost 900,000 affected people, about 4 percent of Indian users were attacked by banking Trojans in 2018. According to the company, this is an increase of 15 percent as compared to the previous year when 767,000 users were hit.   

Read the complete press release below

In 2018, 889,452 users of Kaspersky Lab solutions were attacked by banking Trojans, an increase of 15.9% compared to 2017, when over 767,000 users were hit. The growth partially occurred due to increased activities of only one banker, according to an analysis of the financial threat landscape by Kaspersky Lab.

Attacks with banking Trojans or ‘bankers’ are among the most popular for cybercriminals as they are focused directly on financial gain. This kind of malware steals credentials for e-payment and online banking systems from victims, intercepting one-time passwords, and then sending the data to the attackers behind the Trojan.

Of 889,452 attacked users, almost 25% were corporate ones, a figure that has remained fairly consistent for the last three years. According to Kaspersky Lab experts, the reason behind this is clear: while attacks on consumers will only provide access to banking or payment system accounts, successful hits on employees can also compromise a company’s financial resources.

The collected data also shows that Russia became the most targeted nation in 2018, accounting for over 22% of global users attacked with banking malware. It is followed by Germany (with a share of over 20%) and India (almost 4%).

Phishing:

• In 2018, the share of financial phishing decreased from 53.8% to 44.7% of all phishing detections, still accounting for almost a half of overall detections.
• Around one in five attempts to load a phishing page blocked by Kaspersky Lab products is related to banking phishing.
• The share of phishing-related attacks to payment systems and online shops accounted for almost 14% and 8.9% respectively in 2018. This is slightly less (single percentage points) than in 2017.
• The share of financial phishing encountered by Mac users slightly grew, accounting for 57.6%.

 Banking malware:

• In 2018, the number of users attacked with banking Trojans was 889,452 – an increase of 15.9% in comparison with 767,072 2017.
• 24.1% of users attacked with banking malware were corporate users.
• Users in Russia, Germany, India, Vietnam, Italy, US, and China were the most often attacked by banking malware.
• Zbot and Gozi are still the kings when come to the most widespread banking malware family (over 26% and 20% of attacked users), followed by SpyEye (15.6%).

 Android banking malware:

• In 2018, the number of users that encountered Android banking malware more than tripled to 1,799,891 worldwide.
• Just three banking malware families accounted for attacks on the vast majority of users (around 85%).
• Russia, South Africa, and the United States were the countries with the highest percentage of users attacked by Android banking malware.