Kaspersky Lab: The landscape of digital threats in the third quarter of 2015

Kaspersky Lab published the report IT Threat Evolution for the third quarter of 2015, providing details of the major security incidents that occurred this time. online security Kaspersky Lab

Using statistics from Kaspersky Security Network (KSN), which receives information from millions of product users Kaspersky Lab in 213 countries, the report brings to light important facts from the evolving landscape of threats such as mobile devices threats, attempts to steal money from online bank accounts, but also targeted digital attacks.

Mobile threats Kaspersky Lab

In the third quarter of 2015, its mobile security solutions Kaspersky Lab identified 323.374 new malware which turned against portable devices. This size is an increase of 10,8% relative to second quarter of 2015, while it is also 3,1 times higher than the first quarter of 2015.

At the same time, more than 1,5 million malicious packages were found installed on portable devices. This size is 1,5 times higher than in the previous quarter.

Ad serving to users is still the primary method of mobilizing money through mobile threats. During the quarter, Kaspersky Lab noticed an increase in the number of programs that used such ads.

Often, these programs acquire special administrator privileges on the victim's device, which makes it very difficult to combat them. In the third quarter of 2015, these Trojans were over 50% of the most popular mobile malware programs.

Top 20 malicious mobile programs

Name % of attacked users *
1 DangerousObject.Multi.Generic 46.6
2 Trojan..Rootnik.d 9.9
3 Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.Podec.a 7.4
4 Trojan-Downloader.AndroidOS.Leech.a 6.0
5 Trojan.AndroidOS.Ztorg.a 5.5
6 Exploit.AndroidOS.Lotoor.be 4.9
7 Trojan-Dropper.AndroidOS.Gorpo.a 3.3
8 Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.Opfake.a 3.0
9 Trojan.AndroidOS.Guerrilla.a 2.9
10 Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakeInst.fz 2.6
11 Trojan-Ransom.AndroidOS.Small.o 2.3
12 Trojan-Spy.AndroidOS.Agent.el 2.1
13 Trojan.AndroidOS.Ventica.a 1.9
14 Trojan.AndroidOS.Ztorg.b 1.9
15 Trojan.AndroidOS.Ztorg.pac 1.8
16 Trojan.AndroidOS.Fadeb.a 1.6
17 Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.Smaps.a 1.5
18 Trojan.AndroidOS.Iop.a 1.5
19 Trojan.AndroidOS.Guerrilla.b 1.5
20 Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakeInst.fi 1.4

* Percentage of users attacked by the malware in question, relative to all users attacked.

Online financial attacks

In the third quarter of 2015, its solutions Kaspersky Lab they blocked almost 626.000 attempts of malware, capable of stealing money through access to users' online banking transactions. This number is down 17,2% from the second quarter of the year, although it is up 5,7% from the third quarter of 2014. Also during the third quarter, there were 5,68 millions of notifications of attempted "infections" by malicious programs trying to steal money from users through online access to bank accounts.

In the third quarter of 2015, Austria was the country where users received most of the Trojan bank attacks. In particular, 5% of all Kaspersky Lab users in Austria faced this threat during the quarter. Singapore, the country on the top of the list in the previous quarter, was in second place (4,2%), while 3% of users in Turkey were faced with this threat.

Most of the countries on the list have a significant number of online banking users, which attracts digital criminals. Of the malware programs used for online banking users, Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Upatre was the most widespread, since it was used in 63,1% of payment-debit attacks.

Targeted digital attacks

In the third quarter, Kaspersky Lab's Global Research and Analysis Team investigated a series of sophisticated digital espionage campaigns. Among other things, these included the exploration of the campaigns Turla, which uses satellite communications to manage data traffic to its server, Darkhotel APT, which penetrates Wi-Fi hotel networks to place backdoors on targeted computers, and Blue Termite APT, which focuses on the interception of information by organizations in Japan. Kaspersky Lab also collaborated with the NHTCU and Panda Security Police, which resulted in the arrest of two suspects allegedly involved in the CoinVault program ransom attacks.

«Developments in the third quarter show that the global threat landscape continues to evolve rapidly. With 5,6 million attempts to steal from online bank accounts and with digital criminals developing ever more sophisticated attacks, using high-quality digital security products has never been more important. It is vitally important to everyone who uses Dia to protect themselves from these growing threats," said David Emm, Principal Security Researcher in the Global Research and Analysis Group of Kaspersky Lab.

The third quarter in numbers

  • According to Kaspersky Security Network, Kaspersky Lab's solutions have identified and prevented a total of 235,4 millions of malicious attacks from online sources across the globe. This size is 38% smaller than the second quarter.
  • 75,4 million unique URLs were identified as malicious by Kaspersky Lab's web antivirus features. This number is increased by 16% compared to the second quarter of 2015.
  • Kaspersky Lab's web antivirus features detected 38,2 millions of unique malicious objects (scripts, exploits, executable files, etc.). This figure is higher by 46,9% compared to the second quarter.
  • There have been 5,68 million registered alerts for "malware" attempts to steal money through online access to bank accounts.
  • Kaspersky Lab's antivirus file detected a total of 145 million unique malware and possibly unwanted items.
  • Kaspersky Lab's security mobile products have identified:
  1. 1,6 million malicious installation packages
  2. 323.374 new malicious mobile programs
  3. 2.516 Mobile Banking Trojan
  • The general trend observed so far for 2015 continued in the third quarter. The exploits targeting Adobe Flash Player and Internet Explorer remain the most popular tools among digital criminals.

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Written by Dimitris

Dimitris hates on Mondays .....

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