Mobile threats

In May, while monitoring Roaming Mantis, aka MoqHao and XLoader, we observed significant changes in their M.O. The group’s activity expanded geographically and they broadened their attack/evasion methods. Their landing pages and malicious apk files now support 27 languages covering Europe and the Middle East.

According to KSN, Kaspersky Lab solutions blocked 796,806,112 attacks launched from online resources located in 194 countries across the globe.

In January, we uncovered a sophisticated mobile implant Skygofree that provides attackers with remote control of infected Android devices. Network worm OlympicDestroyer attacked on the Olympic infrastructure just before the opening of the games in February.

ZooPark is a cyberespionage operation that has been focusing on Middle Eastern targets since at least June 2015. The threat actors behind the operation infect Android devices using several generations of malware, with the attackers including new features in each iteration.

We found that because of third-party SDKs many popular apps are exposing user data to the internet, with advertising SDKs usually to blame. They collect user data so they can show relevant ads, but often fail to protect that data when sending it to their servers.

In March 2018, Japanese media reported the hijacking of DNS settings on routers located in Japan, redirecting users to malicious IP addresses. During our research we received some invaluable information about the true scale of this attack, we decided to call it ‘Roaming Mantis’.

In recent months, the topic of cryptocurrency has been a permanent news fixture — the value of digital money has been see-sawing spectacularly. Such pyrotechnics could hardly have escaped the attention of scammers, which is why cryptocurrency fluctuations have gone hand in hand with all kinds of stories. These include hacked exchanges, Bitcoin and Monero ransoms, and, of course, hidden mining.

For the last few years, rooting malware has been the biggest threat to Android users. These Trojans are difficult to detect, boast an array of capabilities, and have been very popular among cybercriminals.

This report summarizes a series of Kaspersky Lab reports that between them provide an overview of how the financial threat landscape has evolved over the years. It covers the common phishing threats, along with Windows-based and Android-based financial malware.

At the beginning of October 2017, we discovered new Android spyware with several features previously unseen in the wild. In the course of further research, we found a number of related samples that point to a long-term development process. We believe the initial versions of this malware were created at least three years ago.

Trojan.AndroidOS.Loapi boasts a complicated modular architecture that means it can conduct a variety of malicious activities: mine cryptocurrencies, annoy users with constant ads, launch DDoS attacks from the affected device and much more.

Two years ago we published a blogpost about a popular malware that was being distributed from the Google Play Store. In October and November 2017 we found 85 new malicious apps on Google Play that are stealing credentials for VK.com

The end of the year is a good time to take stock of the main cyberthreat incidents that took place over the preceding 12 months or so. To reflect on the impact these events had on organizations and individuals, and consider what they could mean for the overall evolution of the threat landscape.

There’s certainly no shortage of commercial spying apps for Android, with most positioned as parental control tools. In reality, however, these apps barely differ from spyware, with the exception perhaps of the installation method.

According to KSN data, Kaspersky Lab solutions detected and repelled 277,646,376 malicious attacks from online resources located in 185 countries all over the world.