There were nearly 200,000 new telecommunications and banking Trojans developed in 2022, an increase of 100% over the previous year and the biggest spike in mobile malware development seen in the previous six years, confirming the trend of mobile malware development being propelled forward in recent years.
The information was provided by Kaspersky Lab's report entitled "Mobile Threats in 2022" which can be found here. During the year, the firm also reported that 1.6 million malware installers were detected as part of its telemetry as provided by telemetry. While malware creation surged ahead in 2020, there was a decline in threat activity (down from 3.5 million in 2021 and 5.7 million in 2020), despite the surge in attacks in 2021.
Based on the report released today, cybercriminals are increasingly targeting mobile users. They are also investing a lot of time in creating updated malware to steal financial information, making these increased activities more likely. Similarly, it stated, over the last few years, cybercriminal activity has leveled off, with attack numbers staying steady after slackening in 2021.
The truth is that cybercriminals continue to improve the functionality of malware as well as how it spreads.
The banking Trojan is designed to steal mobile banking credentials and e-payment information, but it can quickly be repurposed to steal other kinds of information, including those related to identity theft and the spread of other malware. In the past few years, many malware strains have emerged that have become synonymous with the term "all-purpose malware strains", including popular strains like Emotet and TrickBot, for instance.
There is a great risk that you might encounter a banking Trojan if you use a non-official app store, but Google Play has been repeatedly flooded with "downloaders of trojans such as Sharkbot, Anatsa/Teaban, Octo/Copper, and Xenomorph disguised as utilities."
According to Kaspersky's report, unofficial apps pose the greatest risk.
Sharkbot is an example of malware masquerading as a legitimate file manager that is malicious (and can evade Google's vetting process) until it has been installed.
After that, it will begin to request permission to install other packages which will together perform malicious banking Trojan activities that can be considered malicious.
In recent years, mobile banking Trojans have been one of the most prevalent and concerning mobile malware threats, used to implement attacks to steal data related to online banking and e-payment systems as well as bank credentials. This is the highest number of mobile banking Trojan installers detected by Kaspersky in the past six years. The number was double what Kaspersky detected in 2021 and represents a fifty percent increase from that year's figure.
In light of this, cybercriminals are increasingly interested in stealing financial data from smartphone users, and this information is a target of their attacks. It is also clear that they seem to be investing heavily in updating their malware, which may result in severe losses for their targets in the long run.
The Trojan banker malware is spread by cyber criminals through both official and unofficial app stores, through which they distribute their malware. Several banking Trojan families are still available on Google Play, including Sharkbot, Anatsa/Teaban, Octo/Copper, and Xenomorph, which are disguised as utilities but are downloaders for banking Trojans.
In Sharkbot's case, they created a fake file manager in which they would distribute downloaders. A Trojan can request permission to be installed on the device of a user, thus putting the user's security at risk. Furthermore, these downloaders can request permission to be installed on the device so that it can operate on the user's device.
