Latest statistics by Kaspersky Lab, on the Middle East, Turkey and Africa (META) have shown that the region witnessed 17% increase in banking malware attack at almost half a million attacks in 2018.
Otherwise, outgoing year 2018 has been extremely eventful in terms of the digital threats faced by financial institutions as cybercrime groups used new infiltration techniques, and the geography of attacks has become more extensive.
Crypto-currencies have also become an established part of many people’s lives, and a more attractive target for cybercriminals across the world, which resulted in a rapid increase in malicious mining of crypto-currencies.
Kaspersky Lab recorded a 4-fold increase in crypto-mining attacks in the META region from 3.5 million in 2017 to 13 million in 2018.
In his remarks, Fabio Assolini, Senior Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab said “The META region is becoming more appealing to cybercriminals, with financial and malicious crypto-mining attacks taking center stage. We discovered six new ATM malware families in 2018. On the other hand, illegal mining of crypto-currencies has increased dramatically to overtake the main threat of the last few years: ransomware. We believe the reason behind this is that mining is silent and cause less impact that ransomware, making it less noticeable.”
Cybercriminals are not showing any signs of stopping and attacks will continue to evolve. Below are predictions by Kaspersky Lab experts on how these trends could affect our lives in the coming year.
On financial cyber threats, it is believed that 2019 could see the first attacks through the theft and use of biometric data.
Biometric systems for user identification and authentication are being gradually implemented by various financial institutions. Several major leaks of biometric data have already occurred. These two facts lay the foundation for the first POC (proof-of-concept) attacks on financial services using leaked biometric data.
The emergence of new, local groups attacking financial institutions in the Indo-Pakistan region, South-East Asia and Central Europe
The activity of cybercriminals in these regions is constantly growing: the immaturity of protective solutions in the financial sector and the rapid spread of various electronic means of payment among the population and companies in these regions are contributing to this. Now, all the prerequisites exist for the emergence of a new center for financial threats in Asia, in addition to the three that exist already in Latin America, the Korean peninsula and the former-USSR.
Mobile applications for business are gaining popularity, which is likely to lead to the first attacks on their users. There are enough tools for this, and the possible losses that businesses incur would be much higher than the losses incurred when individuals are attacked.
