Financial malware victim rate grew by 7 per cent in 2019 to reach 430,000

Kaspersky researchers have discovered 430,000 users faced malware aimed at stealing finances, cryptocurrencies and web-money services in the first half of 2019 – seven percent more than in the same period last year. Over a third (30.9 per cent) of those affected are corporate users – double the figure discovered in the first half of 2018 (15.3 per cent).

Financial malware, commonly identified as banking Trojans, is aimed at stealing finances and financial data, as well as providing threat actors with access to users’ and financial organisations’ assets and machines. Such threats have always occupied a significant part of a threat landscape, as finance is the most common motivation for cybercriminals and fraudsters. Kaspersky data on new samples of these threats constantly demonstrates that malware aimed at stealing funds is active and extremely dangerous, especially when it comes to corporate environments – since most corporate networks usually rely on connected devices, and if one is compromised then the whole entity may be under threat.

Typical attack vectors for malware are spam emails and phishing web pages. The latter usually appear to be legitimate websites, yet in fact are created by threat actors in an attempt to steal credentials, bank card details or other types of sensitive information. During the first half of 2019, Kaspersky researchers have detected more than 339,000 phishing attacks from web pages disguised as landing pages of large banks.

The researchers have also compiled a list of the most popular banking Trojan families that were used to attack corporate users. Four-in-ten (40 per cent) financial threats on corporate users came from the RTM banking Trojan – one of the most dangerous types of banking malware for businesses in 2018. RTM is followed by the Emotet banking Trojan at 15 per cent. This threat can be particularly damaging as once it gets inside the entity’s network perimeter, it can self-distribute through vulnerabilities in unpatched devices and then download extra threats onto the victim’s device. The Trickster banking Trojan rounds up the top three identified malwares, with 12 per cent of discovered threats.

For private users the situation was found to be different. The list of malwares that attempted to attack them is topped by Zbot malware (26 per cent), which steals credentials with the option of remote control by threat actors, followed by RTM and Emotet (both mentioned above). Interestingly enough, in 2018 RTM was almost entirely aimed at organisations, while figures from the first half of 2019 show that this malware is now reaching a significant share of ordinary, domestic users.