A report on online banking threats reports that malware that can steal money from online banking account users has seen an increase.
From April 19 to May 19, Kaspersky Lab solutions blocked 341,216 attempts to install malicious programs of this type on users' computers.
This number represents a 36.6% increase compared to the previous month. More than a third of users attacked by banking malware were located in Brazil, Russia and Italy. This increase is likely related to the start of the holiday season, during which users actively use electronic services and payment details to make online purchases of all kinds.
Typically, cybercriminals try to steal users’ bank card details with the help of specialized Trojan programs. From mid-April to mid-May, Zeus (Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot) once again emerged as the most widespread banking Trojan. According to Kaspersky Lab’s research, this program was involved in 198,200 attacks against online banking customers. About 82,300 people were attacked by Trojan-Banker.Win32.ChePro and Trojan-Banker.Win32.Lohmys. The above malicious programs are mainly spread via spam emails with the subject “Internet bank charges”.
Phishing attacks are another method of stealing banking data. During the period covered by the Kaspersky Lab report, the company's solutions prevented 21.5 million such attacks. Almost 10% (about 2 million) of these attacks targeted users' bank card details.
This period was also marked by the consequences of an event that seriously compromised the security of electronic payment systems: the Heartbleed vulnerability, which was discovered in the popular OpenSSL encryption library.
This bug allows attackers to gain unauthorized access to the buffer memory of vulnerable devices, such as smartphones, computers or servers. The Heartbleed vulnerability leaves no trace and it is still not known what kind of data was stolen and what is its volume. It is noted that most companies that carried out electronic transactions using the vulnerable version of OpenSSL have recommended their customers to change their account passwords and closely monitor any unusual activity.
"The emergence of Heartbleed triggered a series of data leaks of all kinds, in various business sectors. This is due to the fact that it affected the OpenSSL cryptographic library, which is used in various software, including banking software," commented Sergey Golovanov, Principal Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab.
"The absence of an official update of the 'library' for several hours after the vulnerability was identified, combined with the fact that there was a delay in installing the update in the electronic security systems of financial institutions, led, in some cases, to the leakage of data related to banking transactions. For this reason, we can expect an increase in illegal transactions in the coming months," he added.
Source: newsit.gr
