Mobile Malware ‘Grows Almost Three-Fold’ In Just Three Months

Smartphone users are facing a wider amount of threats than ever before, as the amount of malware targeting mobile devices grew dramatically in the last few months, a new report has found.

According to a study by security experts Kaspersky Labs, 291,800 new mobile malware programs were discovered in the second quarter of 2015, which is nearly three times the amount seen in the first three months of the year.

There were also one million mobile malware installation packages detected in Q2 2015, seven times greater than in the first quarter, as mobile banking services became a particularly popular target for cybercriminals.

At risk

Overall, Kaspersky Labs was able to detect and repel 379.9 million malicious attacks from online resources located all over the world, which was 19 percent lower than in Q1.

During the last quarter, an average of 23.9 percent of Internet users’ computers across the world came under a web-borne attack at least once, 2.4 percent less than the first quarter.

Fifty-one percent of all attacked blocked on the Internet by Kaspersky Lab’s products were launched from malicious web resources located in Russia. Next on the list came the USA, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Virgin Islands, Ukraine, Singapore, the UK and China.

Financial-themed threats were one particularly popular area, as the report found 5,900,000 notifications about attempted malware infections to steal money via online access to bank accounts –800,000 lower than in Q1.

Although banking malware made up the bulk of financial threats (with 83 percent of the total number detected), users were also put at risk by Bitcoin miners (nine percent), as well as bitcoin wallet stealers (six percent) and keyloggers (two percent).

Small and medium-sized businesses were also found to be significantly at risk, as criminals look to target organisations that might not have fully formed security provisions to protect themselves.

Sectors such as nanotechnologies, education, agriculture, mass media, construction and the chemical industry also proved appealing targets for hackers, the report found.

Kaspersky’s report follows findings earlier this month from security firm G DATA Security Labs that found that Android tablets and smartphones came under threat from around 4,900 new malware files every day – equivalent to 18 a second.

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