Android Malware Attacks Soaring

More than six times as many malware attacks on Android systems were registered this year than last year, according to a report released Tuesday (Oct. 21) by Kaspersky Lab and Interpol.

“In absolute terms, there were more than 588,000 Android users worldwide who faced financial malware (Trojan-SMS and Trojan-Banker) during the reporting period. That is six times greater than the number from the equivalent period 12 months earlier,” the report said.  The cyber criminals mostly targeted users in Russia, but Ukraine, Spain, the UK, Vietnam, Malaysia, Germany, India and France also faced attacks.

Mutation in attack vectors are also growing, according to the report.

“Although during the reporting period Kaspersky Lab products registered relatively few attacks using mobile banking Trojans, the Company’s experts found the number of mobile malware modifications grew sharply,” the report said, which saw crimes rise from 423 attacks in August 2013 to 5,967 in July 2014.

Around 57 percent of all reported incidents involved the Trjoan SMS malware scams. Russia registered the greatest number of Trojan SMS attacks with 64.42 percent of all Kaspersky Lab anti-virus detections registered on devices of users in the country, the report said.

“A successful Trojan-Banker infection can give a fraudster access to all of the victim’s money, while a Trojan-SMS needs to infect dozens or even hundreds of devices to show a worthwhile profit. In addition, not all owners currently use mobile online banking applications. That’s why there is such a difference in the number of trojan-SMS and trojan-banker attacks registered by our products,” Roman Unuchek, senior virus analyst at Kaspersky Lab said in the release.