Kaspersky Q2 IT Report Highlights Mobile Security Threat

Kaspersky Lab has published its Q2 cyberthreats report highlighting key security incidents in the quarter and evaluating the Q2 cyber threat level.

The company reported that 51 percent of Web-borne attacks blocked by its products were launched from Russia, followed closely by the U.S., the Netherlands, Germany, France, Virgin Islands, Ukraine, Singapore, the U.K. and China.

Mobile threats in Q2
•291,800 new mobile malware programs emerged; 2.8 times more than in Q1;
•1 million mobile malware installation packages; seven times more than in Q1.

Mobile banking has remained a top target for mobile threats, especially Trojans. In Q1, the Kaspersky Lab report mentioned Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.OpFake.cc, which was capable of attacking no less than 29 banking and financial applications.

A new version that emerged in Q2 is capable of attacking 114 banking and financial applications. Its main goal is to steal the user's login credentials which are used to attack several popular email applications.

Attacks on the Web
•5,900,000 notifications about attempted malware infections to steal money via online access to bank accounts; 800,000 notifications fewer than in Q1.

At 5.3 percent, Singapore took the lead among Kaspersky users attacked by banking Trojans in Q2. Following were Switzerland (4.2 percent), Brazil (4 percent), Australia (4 percent) and Hong Kong (3.7 percent).

Noticeably, most countries in the top 10 list are technologically advanced and have a developed banking system, which draws the attention of cybercriminals.

However, threats are not limited to malware that attacks the users of online banking systems. Financial threats are posed by Bitcoin miners (9 percent), as well as Bitcoin wallet thieves, (6 percent) and key-loggers (2 percent).

Q2 numbers
•Kaspersky Lab solutions detected and repelled a total of 379.9 million malicious attacks from online resources worldwide —19 percent fewer than in Q1;

•an average of 23.9 percent of Internet users' computers across the world came under a Web-borne attack at least once during Q2, 2.4 percentage points less than in Q1;

•26,084,253 unique malicious objects were detected — 8.4 percent fewer than in Q1; AdWare.JS.Agent.bg was the most widespread of these — this script is injected by adware programs into arbitrary Web pages.