Malware Targeting Internet Banking Increased for Australia during Third Quarter; Trend Micro
Trend Micro lately published a report named "The invisible Web Unmasked" according to which, Australia has been ranked No.4 among the nation states targeted with Internet-based banker malware in Q3-2013 (July-September 2013).
Trend Micro spotted more than 200K malware contaminations during the period owing to targeted attacks at the time of Internet banking sessions, the security company stated within the report. Australia, which came fourth in banking malware attacks, was behind just USA (23%), Brazil (16%) and Japan (12%).
But, in spite of getting ranked as No.4 most targeted nation in Internet-banking malware contaminations globally, Australia was behind just 3% of the incidences, said Sanjay Mehta Managing Director of Trend Micro, Australia and New Zealand (ANZ). Technologydecisions.com.au published this statement on November 11, 2013. According to Mehta, the above observation might be because of the intense multifactor authentication that's mandatory during Internet-banking transactions in the country.
Trend Micro's new report further spotted that the number of central C&C (command-and-control) systems steadily rose with the advancement of the quarterly period. Cyber-criminals, with their sophisticated malware tactics, were able to more efficaciously conceal the C&C systems they deployed, while such systems' total number in the third quarter became nearly twofold of the second quarter within ANZ.
Moreover, during Q3-2013 itself, the malicious program most frequently detected was Worm_Downad.ad. The particular malware spread via installing its own duplicates onto detachable drives.
Nevertheless, according to another important observation, malware incidences declined to a total of 345,000 from 509,000.
Conversely, phishing campaigns increased, chiefly because of Apple associated phishing sites. An enormous surge in such web-page/sites was noted during May 2013, possibly stemming from rumors about iOS7's release.
In this context, Vice President JD Sherry for Technology & Solutions, Trend Micro stated that since long everyone considered Apple as immune to malware attacks, however, Trend Micro's discoveries showed that private credentials could get endangered while phishing campaigns, which attacked Apple, kept on gaining momentum. That suggested there could be one perfect storm when vacation would set in having business and individual end-users resorting to the mobile platforms, Sherry added. Walls Street Journal published this dated November 11, 2013.
ยป SPAMfighter News - 11/18/2013
