Kaspersky Lab has published its Q2 cyber threats report highlighting key security incidents of the quarter and evaluating the Q2 cyber threat level. 51 percent of Web-born attacks blocked by Kaspersky Lab products were launched from malicious Web resources located in Russia. Followed closely by the USA, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Virgin Islands, Ukraine, Singapore, the UK and China.According to Kaspersky 291,800 new mobile malware programs emerged in Q2,which is 2.8 times greater than in Q1of 2015.There were 1 million mobile malware installation packages in Q2, which is seven times greater than Q1 of 2015.Moble banking has remained a main target for mobile threats, especially Trojans. The Kaspersky Lab Q1 of 2015 report mentioned Trojan-SMS. AndroidOS.OpFake.cc,which was capable of attacking no less than 29 banking and financial applications. The Trojan latest version that emerged in Q2 is now capable of attacking 114(four times more)banking and financial applications. It’s main goal is to steal the user’s login credentials with which to attack, among others, several popular email applications.There were 5,900,000 notifications about attempted malware infections to steal money via online access to bank accounts – this is 800,000 notifications lower than in Q1.
In Q2 of 2015, Singapore took the lead in the percentage of Kaspersky Lab users attacked by banking Trojans with 5.3 percent. It was followed by Switzerland (4.2%), Brazil (4%), Australia (4%) and Hong Kong (3.7%). Noticeably, most countries in the top 10 list are technologically advanced and have a developed banking system, which draws the attention of cybercriminals.
Financial threats are not just limited to banking malware programs that attack the clients of online banking systems. Apart from banking malware (83%), financial threats are posed by Bitcoin miners (9%), as well as Bitcoin wallet stealers (6%) and keyloggers (2%).
In Q2, the Kaspersky Lab Global Research and Analysis Team disclosed four cyberespionage campaigns CozyDuke,Naikon,Hellsing and Duqu 2.0.The victim toll includes government agencies, commercial companies and other high-level targets.
The second quarter also showed that cybercriminals are interested in small and medium businesses – this type of businesses was targeted by the cyberespionage campaign Garbit. In this campaign, cybercriminals focused on such economic sectors as chemical, nanotechnologies, education, agriculture, mass media and construction.
“In Q2 we launched an important initiative called Securing Smart Cities which aims to help those responsible for developing smart cities to do so without forgetting about cybersecurity. If security measures are not planned at the development stage, it could have serious implications later, and retro-fitting security might not be a straightforward task,” commentsAlexander Gostev, chief security expert at the Kaspersky Lab Global Research and Analysis Team.
According to Kaspersky Security Network (KSN) data, Kaspersky Lab solutions detected and repelled a total of 379.9 million malicious attacks from online resources located all over the world – this is 19 percent lower than in Q1.During the three month period, an average of 23.9 percent of Internet users’ computers across the world came under a Web-borne attack at least once. This is 2.4 percentage points lower than in Q1.In addition, 26,084,253 unique malicious objects were detected, which is 8.4 percent lower than in Q1. The script AdWare.JS.Agent.bg was the most widespread among such objects – this script is injected by adware programs into arbitrary web pages.