Mobile threats

Our growing dependence on technology, connectivity and data means that businesses present a bigger attack surface than ever. Targeted attackers have become more adept at exploiting their victims’ vulnerabilities to penetrate corporate defences while ‘flying under the radar’.

Gaza cybergang is an Arabic politically motivated cyber criminal group, operating since 2012 and is actively targeting the MENA (Middle East North Africa) region. Gaza cybergang attacks have never slowed down, recent targets by the group does seem to be varied in nature, attackers do not seem to be selectively choosing targets, but rather seeking different kinds of MENA intelligence.

We took the most popular dating apps and analyzed what sort of user data they were capable of handing over to criminals and under what conditions.

During the preparation of the “IT threat evolution Q2 2017” report I found several common Trojans that were stealing money from users using WAP-billing. We hadn’t seen any Trojans like this in a while, but several of them appeared out of nowhere.

The Trojan-Banker.AndroidOS.Faketoken malware has been known about for already more than a year. Not so long ago, thanks to our colleagues from a large Russian bank, we detected a new Trojan sample, Faketoken.q, which contained a number of curious features.

The threat from ransomware continues to grow. Between April 2016 and March 2017, we blocked ransomware on the computers of 2,581,026 Kaspersky Lab customers. In May, we saw the biggest ransomware epidemic in history, called WannaCry.

According to KSN data, Kaspersky Lab solutions detected and repelled 342, 566, 061 malicious attacks from online resources located in 191 countries all over the world.

In mid-July 2017, we found a new modification of the well-known mobile banking malware family Svpeng – Trojan-Banker.AndroidOS.Svpeng.ae. In this modification, the cybercriminals have added new functionality: it now also works as a keylogger, stealing entered text through the use of accessibility services.

All of Ztorg Trojans were rooting malware that used exploits to gain root rights on the infected device. In May 2017, a new Ztorg variant appeared on the Google Play Store – only this this time it wasn’t a rooting malware but a Trojan-SMS.

In April 2017 we started observing new rooting malware being distributed through the Google Play Store. Unlike other rooting malware, this Trojan not only installs its modules into the system, it also injects malicious code into the system runtime libraries.

According to KSN data, Kaspersky Lab solutions detected and repelled 479,528,279 malicious attacks from online resources located in 190 countries all over the world. File antivirus detected a total of 174,989,956 unique malicious and potentially unwanted objects.

We’ve become accustomed to seeing a steady stream of security breaches month after month; and this quarter has been no exception, including attacks on Barts Health Trust, Sports Direct, Intercontinental Hotels Group and ABTA.

This research started when we discovered an infected Pokémon GO guide in Google Play. We detected the malware as Trojan.AndroidOS.Ztorg.ad. After some searching, I found some other similar infected apps that were being distributed from the Google Play Store.

In 2016, the growth in the number of advertising Trojans capable of exploiting super-user rights continued. Throughout the year it was the No. 1 threat, and we see no sign of this trend changing.

Fraudulent apps trying to send Premium SMS messages or trying to call to high rate phone numbers are not something new. It is much more interesting to talk about how certain groups bypass detection mechanisms such as those used by Google Play.