Cybercriminals are leaning towards financial institutions because, not surprisingly, that's where the money is. In fact, Kaspersky says that 47.48% of all phishing attempts detected target financial institutions, be these banks, payment processing systems, retailers, hotels or other businesses.
The Financial cyberthreats in 2016 report from Kaspersky Lab states that the number of users attacked with malware targeting financial data started increasing again in 2016, following a slight decrease in 2014 and 2015.
Data shows that in 2016, the number of users attacked with banking Trojans increased by 30.55%, reaching over 1 million. Over 17% of users attacked with this type of malware were corporate users.
Not surprisingly given the trends followed so far, users in Russia, Germany, Japan, India, Vietnam and the United States were the most targeted by such attacks.
When it comes to the banking malware types used, Zbot took the top position with over 44% of attacked users being targeted by it. Malware from the Gozi family came in second, followed by Nymaim, Shiotob, ZAccess, Tinba and Shiz, to name a few.
Android under the spotlightAndroid users weren't forgiven by attackers either. " Android banking Trojans deserve a mention in our financial cyberthreat report due to some particularly interesting activity. From mid-2016 we discovered that the number of attacked Android users was increasing at an exponential rate, from just 3,967 attacked users in January to around 75,000 in October 2016," reads Kaspersky's report.
The situation has escalated to such an extent that the number of users that encountered Android malware climbed by 430% by Kaspersky's count, with the most attacked users living in Russia, Australia, and Ukraine.
It's pretty clear that regardless of the system you use, you have to pay special attention to where you go when surfing the Internet, what links you follow, what data you input and what files you download.